Je suis parti pour embarquer dans un vaisseau spatial extraterrestre . . . des rêves ont assuré un .
. . voyage pour explorer le vaste univers.
Amour, Granger
Le vaisseau spatial argenté repose sur des pilliers de métal sous les arbres à la ferme de Jim et Grace Taylor près de Duncan .
Sa porte et rampe d'accès en plaques d'aluminium est entrouverte et cassée—les Taylors suspectent après que des enfants aient joué avec—mais à l'intérieur, le vieux grand canapé, le poêle ventru, et le couchage en contreplaqué sont en gros tels que leur fils, Granger, les a laissés.
Tout autour de la propriété verdoyante qui s'étend jusqu'aux marais du Lac Somenos se trouvent des collections de vieux équipements—steam pots from donkey engines, vieux tracteurs, un ancient bulldozer, des restes de voie ferrée d'une autre époque—que leur fils a recueilli avec amour dans les buissons de Cowinchan Valley.
Eux aussi sont grossièrement tels que Granger les a laissés.
Les Taylor ont essayé de tout conserver intact.
Son lit dans sa chambre à coucher à côté de la cuisine n'a pas été touché. Les plaques qu'il a récupéré de moteur qu'il aurait réparés—triomphes et trophées de son aptitude en mécanique—sont accrochés à la poignée d'une porte.
Ses livres sont là, aussi, livres de poche, principalement avec des titres comme Trous noirs, Les forces secrètes de la Pyramide, Soucoupes volantes ici et maintenant et Venus de l'espace, empilés dans un carton.
Les Taylor veulent désespérément croire que leur fils va revenir.
Après après 51 mois, il est difficile de garder espoir.
Granger a tout simplement disparu. Presque comme s'il avait été arraché de la surface de la Terre.
Si vous en croyez Granger, c'est ce qui s'est passé.
Avant de partir, il a collé une note sur la porte de la chambre de son père. Son père la trouva en rentrant chez lui du travail, l'après-midi du samedi 29 novembre 1980.
Chers Mère et Père,
dit-il.
Je suis parti pour embarquer dans un vaisseau spatial extraterrestre, des rêves récurrents ayant assuré un voyage interstellaire de 42 mois pour explorer le vaste univers, avant de revenir.
Je vous laisse toutes mes possessions, car je n'en aurai plus l'usage. Merci d'utiliser les instructions de mon testament comme guide.
Amour, Granger.
De l'aure côté de la note se trouvait une carte topographique du Mont Waterloo, à l'ouest de Duncan près de Skutz Falls.
Si la carte avait une quelconque signification, personne ne sait ce que c'est.
Les 42 mois devaient aller jusqu'au 29 Mai. Cette nuit-là, les Taylor ont laissé la porte arrière déverrouillée, juste au cas où il se montrerait. Mais il ne l'a jamais fait.
La RCMP de Duncan a essayé de retrouver Granger, qui aurait eu 36 ans le 7 octobre dernier, mais malgré ce que le
Cpl. Mike Demchuk a décrit comme des vérifications exhaustives
rien n'a été trouvé, aucun début de trace.
Granger serait parti dans son Datsun bleu clair de 1972, une des vieilles camionnettes qu'il possédait.
Le véhicule n'a toujours pas été retrouvé et pour Demchuk c'est l'élément le plus déroutant de cette affaire particulièrement déroutante.
On s'attendrait à retrouver au moins le véhicule,
dit-il. Vous ne vous débarassez pas de quelque chose
d'aussi grand sans que quelqu'un soit au courant.
La carte grise du véhicule a expiré en l'année suivante donc la police est relativement certaine qu'il n'est plus sur les routes.
Les Taylor, réalisant à quel point la récupération du véhicule est cruciale pour résoudre le mystère de leur fils, publient régulièrement une publicité dans les journaux, offrant $100 à quiconque le retrouvera.
Il n'y a eu aucune réponse.
With so little to go on, the investigation has centered on standard checks - passport office, Revenue Canada, Unemployment Insurance. Granger’s name has been put on the national police computer system. And the motor vehicle branch in Victoria has been alerted in case Granger’s driver’s licence, which expires this October, is renewed.
The last anyone recalled seeing Granger was early Saturday evening, Nov. 29 1980, when he stopped in at Bob's Grill in Duncan for supper. He was a regular at the roadside diner.
Linda Baron was working in the kitchen. She saw him enter and take a table by himself. She couldn't recall any conversation, but Granger was the quiet type anyway.
She remembered he wore a brown knitted sweater zipped up front, a black T-shirt (he was never without), jeans and logger boots. He didn't have his winter coat. Strangely, Taylor discovered the coat a couple of days later inside the sturdy doghouse that Granger built for his huge Newfoundland dog, Lady.
Granger left around 6:30 p.m.
That night a storm struck the central part of the Island. Hurricane winds were reported in Port Alberni. Power was knocked out in several locations, including Duncan.
Granger would have been hard to miss in any crowd.
Built like a bull, he weighed 120 kilos and was as fit as a wrestler. Indeed, he was a wrestling buff and even had his own ring on the farm. According to Taylor, the well-known Canadian wrestler Gene Kinisky once paid a visit.
Granger’s shyness, self-effacing manner and introspective nature earned him the sobriquet of Gentle Ben. But what really set him apart was his exceptional ability to fix anything mechanical.
“I guess you could call him an eccentric genius,” long-time friend Bob Nielsen said.
Even Granger’s teenage accomplishments were impressive.
At 14 he made himself a one-cylinder car. It’s now in the Duncan Forest Museum directly across the lake from the Taylor farm.
At 17 he overhauled a bulldozer that no one else had been able to repair.
He restored an old steam locomotive that he hauled from the bush. It’s in the museum, too.
He even built an airplane, a replica of a Kitty Hawk warplane that for a couple of years was mounted outside a store on the Island Highway just south of Duncan.
A Manitoba restorer of vintage aircraft bought it in 1981 for $20,000. The Taylors put the money in Granger’s bank account and there it waits, collecting interest. The balance now totals around $30,000, including other savings he had on hand.
A Grade 8 drop-out, Granger got his first job with a neighbor as a mechanic’s helper. After a year or so, he quit to go on his own. He never worked for anyone else.
At one point he got his pilot’s licence and bought a plane with a partner.
In the late ‘70s Granger, a keen believer in UFOs, built a spaceship out of two large satellite receiving dishes which he welded together.
His father said it took him six or seven months to complete the project.
He spent hours sitting in the contraption. He slept in it on occasion, too.
Granger was obsessed with finding out how spaceships were powered.
All of his friends knew of his interest. It was one subject about which Granger was never reticent about talking.
A month before he disappeared he told Nielsen he had had contact with some other being.
“He said it happened when he was in bed,” Nielsen recalled. “He lay there and got mental communications with somebody from another galaxy.”
“He couldn’t see them. I said they can’t just be mental, but he said it was like they were talking just to him and to his mind. He was asking questions about the means for powering their crafts. The only thing they’d tell him was it was magnetic.”
A few days later Granger mentioned he’d been invited to go on a trip through the solar system. He would know at the end of the month where and when he’d be picked up.
Granger was thrilled, Nielsen said. A week before he left he took several of his friends out on the town. It was sort of a going-away party.
“Everyone thought the trip was just a dream,” said Nielsen.
They humored him. But nobody entirely discounted Granger’s stories. “He was such an unusual sort of guy,” Nielsen said.
Granger didn’t reveal details of the rendezvous to anybody.
The night before he left he went into his father’s bedroom and had a long talk with him about how grateful he was for all Taylor had done for him. Granger was a stepson but that distinction had never mattered in the past. His mother was in Hawaii, her first holiday in years. She’s never completely forgiven herself for being away at this critical time.
Granger left two wills with detailed instructions to his parents on what to do with his possessions. The word “deceased” was scratched out and substituted with “departed.”
There are those who believe Granger went on his space trip.
John Magor of Duncan is one. He’s a UFO devotee who once edited his own quarterly magazine on the subject.
In the past five years or so he’s heard of at least 20 sightings on southern Vancouver Island, he said, many from the Mount Prevost area. (Mt. Waterloo is just a bit farther west.)
There have been reported cases of aliens taking humans on rides in saucers in other parts of the world; why not here, then? he mused.
Dr. Max Edwards, a linguist and former professor at the University of Victoria, is another believer. He’s devoted years of scholarly research to the phenomenon.
The Island is not on the favored route taken by saucers that girdle the globe, he said. Sightings here are relatively rare but that doesn’t mean they don’t occur, nor does it mean that Granger wasn’t telling the truth.
The simple truth is no one knows the answer.
“I can hardly believe Granger’s off in a spaceship,” his father said.
“But if there is a flying object out there, he’s the one to find it.”