Earlier this year, some resourceful individuals decided that Toronto needed to host a conference dealing with UFOs and what we all know about them. They decided to pursue this because the main people involved had considerable experience working with conferences over the years and they knew that with their knowledge and contacts that producing a quality conference would involve considerable work but it was in fact, possible. The criteria imposed to create this conference was to make sure that every single participant and the attendees would be more than pleased with the final product. With that objective in mind, potential guest speakers were contacted, a suitable venue contacted and decided upon and considerable legwork done to put everything in place before any announcement or promotion was to begin. In other words, have the t's crossed and the I's dotted before worrying about any money.

Budgets were drawn up, website designed, speakers contacted and tentatively booked, conference schedules created and all the initial work done to make sure that everyone associated with the conference would be a winner. The guest speakers who agreed to participate read like a Who's Who list of Ufology, the venue chosen was a five-star conference facility in the heart of downtown Toronto and initial contacts were made and contracts proposed.

The UFO-2002 conference was going to be simply the single most informative event that Canada would ever see devoted to what was known about UFOs. When the 3 Conference directors were sure that they had covered every contingency associated with the conference and had double-checked the details, they decided the time had come to announce and promote the event. The very first step was to create an Ontario based company and a bank account so that funds could be accepted and distributed legitimately and therein lay a trap that the directors were unaware of.

Unfortunately, The Ontario Public Sector Employees Union or OPSEU went on strike and as a result of this, Vehicle licensing along with many forms of registration, most notably, new business registrations, ground to a halt. Banks in Ontario require bona fide business registration numbers in order to open an account and the conference directors could not register their business name nor could they open an account without the proper paperwork.

The strike has recently ended, however it is far too late to be able to put together the quality kind of conference that UFO-2002 was envisioned as. The directors, of which I am one of them, decided that rather than put on a half-baked rushed conference that it would be better to postpone the project until the same time frame next year, august of 2003.

We were placed in the unfortunate position of having to go back to everyone that we discussed the conference with and telling them of our decision and having to apologize for something that we literally had no control over. The fortunate thing is that several of the speakers have already come forward and said they will still participate with what is now being called 'UFO-2003 - What We Know'.

Not only as a director of the conference, but also as a person who is genuinely interested in the UFO Phenomena, I still firmly believe that a conference like 'UFO-2003 - What We Know' will not only be a resounding success but also be the single most informative event regarding UFOs ever held on this continent.....

But that's just my take on it.