Cherrywood U.F.O.

Dennis Prophet's life was changed when he saw his first UFO. An RCAF veteran and the operator of an automobile dealership in West Hill, near Pickering, a town east of Toronto, Prophet had no interest in unidentified flying objects until 16 January 1974. That was the night that he experienced his first sighting. "When you've seen what I have seen and what my family has seen, you've got to believe", he explained.

It was the sight of an oval, orange glowing object in the sky toward the east that excited him. He was talking with an employee on a cold night outside his West Hill dealership when they saw the UFO.
It was at an altitude of about 1,500 feet. It appeared to be hovering over the Cherrywood Hydro lines in Pickering, Ontario. After watching it hovering there for about 10 minutes, we noticed it coming closer to us. As it came closer, we observed a ribbon of light that appeared to be revolving on the top, which indicated that it had some form of cabin or observation tower on the top of it.

To define more clearly the ribbon of light, it appeared like a miniature rainbow revolving around the top of an observation deck. While hovering, it maintained the same altitude. Being an extremely cold night, the employee suggested that we step back into the showroom and for other reasons I felt the same way.
While observing the object at very close range for a further 5 minutes, we saw it slowly begin to rise, accelerating in a spiral pattern to an altitude of some 4,000 to 4,500 feet, where it stopped for a moment, hovering, then started to move across the sky to the north.

The object was observed for a further 10 minutes by my employee and another witness, my wife. I had called home and asked her to look into the sky to see if she could spot the object, which she did for some 10 minutes as it headed in a northerly direction still at an altitude of about 4,500 feet. The whole sighting lasted from 11 p.m. to 11.25 p.m. It seemed in the range of a quarter of a mile away.

That was simply the first in a series of sightings many of which were spotted in the vicinity of the Pickering nuclear power plant.