“We were just a bunch of people having fun and had no idea what this was going to create,” White said.
He helped to make the big balloon that was mistaken for a UFO by a nurse in the psychiatric ward at the Duncan Hospital in the early morning hours of New Year’s 1970 — and has made headlines again because the encounter is the subject of a coin on unexplained phenomena struck by the Canadian Mint this month.
But the balloon they released at the New Year’s Party was much more refined — and much bigger, and it coincides with the nurse’s story and other witness accounts, who described the UFO as 15 metres in diameter and illuminated from the bottom. White and Halkyard, who died decades ago from cancer, had made eight of the balloons and set a few off from Mount Tolmie before taking one up to Duncan for Palmer’s New Year’s party.
The nurse who witnessed the UFO went into greater detail, saying she noticed figures in the flying object, one of them slowly turning to face in her direction. Another reached down to grab a lever, and the tilted craft began to spin in a counter-clockwise direction before silently and swiftly moving higher and away.
“We just felt we better keep quiet about the whole thing because we didn’t want to get into any trouble,” said White. White said Les and Renee Palmer threw legendary parties and jam sessions, noting Les Palmer and many of his friends were great guitar players, and Palmer was involved in bands and session recordings in Nashville at one point.
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