SPACESHIP GILMOUR
There was a time some years ago when UFO sightings (unidentified flying objects) were happening quite often in North Hastings; often in the Graphite area as I recall. So I was somewhat surprised at that time to hear there was a man reportedly building his own spaceship in Gilmour. As is turns out David Hamel, a WW2 vet, had relocated from Maple Ridge, B.C.
Apparently, while watching television – one version says he was watching Bonanza, another The Walton’s, on October 12, 1975 – Hamel was abducted by aliens that emerged from the TV screen. They said they were “A” and Arkan, from the planet Kladen located three billion miles from earth. They took Hamel for a tour aboard their flying saucer. Another bearded companion, named ON, showed how they had travelled to Earth. Apparently they said they had done so before the Egyptians built the pyramids at Giza turning up as the Star of Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus. On another occasion they visited the Third Reich unsuccessfully trying to avert WW2.
Hamel described the craft as being 18 feet high, 30 feet in diameter with windows around the outer edge. There were many small rooms, each four by six feet. A lab housed a device to purify water and magnets enabled them to float thus eliminating a need for beds. ON explained the ship was powered by perpetual motion and they would teach him to build his own craft. After an estimated 15 minutes Hamel was returned to his home.
Apparently, during those 15 minutes, the saucer flew over Gilmour, Ontario when he was told that he would one day live there to build his own craft.
In the early 1980s Hamel, who became known as the “UFO guy” and his wife moved to Gilmour.
According to one source NASA visited Hamel to investigate his project that focused on magnetic energy. “I would work for NASA if they would listen to me,” he reportedly said. “They can’t accept the magnetic … they’d rather play around with nuclear rods, but they’re poison…the end is coming.”
Coincidentally, lining the living room wall were blueprints for Hamel’s Ark of the Covenant Noah-inspired spaceship in which he hoped to carry survivors of the coming apocalypse.
Born in Montreal, the first of fifteen children, Hamel enlisted in the Canadian army in 1939 at the age of 15. He was wounded, captured at Dieppe and imprisoned at Dresden where, in 1945 Allied bombers generated the infamous fire storm. It was during his escape during that bombing raid that Hamel saw what, upon reflection, was his first flying saucer.
Hamel died in 2007 at the age of 83 before he could finish building his flying saucer.
Bob Thomas, of Washington State, wrote a book about this endeavor entitled “The Word Made Manifest Through Sacred Geometry”. Jeanne Manning also wrote “Granite Man and The Butterfly.”
In the spring of 2021 Umbrella Magazine (Quinte Arts Council) published an article about The Granite Man of Gilmour, a short documentary about Hamel by Canadian educator and filmmaker Matthew Hayes.
“I first found out about Hamel when I was a teenager. My mom had a colleague who had a cottage near his home, so it was through the grapevine that I first heard about him.”
While working on his Ph.D about the history of Canada’s UFO investigation from
1950-1995 Hayes rekindled Hamel’s story. “He’s really well known in some very
obscure circles, you know, strange parts of the internet. Trying to track people down to talk about the film was one of the hardest parts; just finding information about Hamel.”
For further information you can simply employ a search engine for more detail. FYI.
Photo – David Hamel – nighttimepodcast.com.