It was about two in the morning July 1, 1968, when Bill Hawks, a logger, and Albert Ward, a painting contractor, finally neared shore in their outboard motorboat after a fishing trip on Georgia Strait. Their destination was the boat basin at French Creek, immediately north of Parksville, and they were tired. Miles back their large motor had conked out and they had finished the journey on their one h.p. putt-putt.

So Ward was not just making conversation when he pointed out a pattern of red lights over by the mainland, approximately above Pender Harbor, 20 miles away. There was something unusual about those lights.

“It looks kind of like a forest fire,” Ward said. “What is it?”

“The lights -- there were seven of them -- were in the form of a rough triangle, wider at the bottom than top," Hawks recalled, "and they were too high to be a fire. The sky was in the background, Also, each light was shaped like a triangle, bright red with a sharply defined outline. The whole thing looked like a neon sign up there."

Obviously, however, it was not. Settlement along the shoreline there is sparse and Vancouver, far to the south, is out of view.

Also the pattern was of considerable size. The two estimated that at arm's length a 50- cent piece would just about have covered it, which at that distance gave it the dimensions of a large building.

"There was a light wind blowing but the lights stayed absolutely motionless, and they certainly weren't shining from a helicopter," Hawks added. "We could see the sky between them. There was no moon that night but there were lots of stars and visibility was

good."

Hawks and Ward watched the lights for about two minutes then, to their further amazement, saw them blink out one by one. In about three seconds the pattern was gone, leaving no afterglow.

So absorbed were the two men in discussing the incident that they forgot their weariness and also their navigation. Suddenly they ran aground on a submerged reef and remained stuck there until finally the tide freed them.