Mid-Island residents were alternately amused and annoyed Tuesday morning when a jet flying over Parksville abruptly turned in a hard bank and left a circular trail of vapour — or was it? — in the sky overhead.
“It was kind of fun to see,” said Danielle Bourbeau of Dashwood, who was working in her backyard when she saw what she described as a “small, private jet” creating the circle to the south. “That doesn’t happen every day.”
At the Heritage Centre shopping plaza in Parksville, owner John St. John of the British Bobby restaurant was essentially at ground zero as the plane made its low-altitude turn directly overhead.
“There’s no bloody way that was a vapour trail,” said St. John, who with his son Michael and friend Rick Charbonneau watched the white vapour emerge from the plane only as it made its pass overhead. “That was a chemtrail. He was having fun with us.”
Chemtrails, according to Wikipedia, are alleged but unproven trails left in the sky by high-flying craft, which consist of chemical or biological agents sprayed purposely for “sinister purposes undisclosed to the general public.”
St. John described the plane as a large jet, like a Boeing 727 or 747, which was white with blue and red tail markings. Both Bourbeau and St. John took photos of the circle but neither shows a clear view of the plane itself.
Don’t look to the Canadian Forces for a solution to the mystery.
“All our aircraft operations (Tuesday) were turboprop planes in the Comox Valley,” said an officer with the 19 Wing at Comox CFB. “They do not cause vapour trails, and none of them were operating on that day in the Parksville Qualicum Beach area.”
