On the night of January 4th, 2013, at approximately 10:50pm, I was brushing my teeth upstairs before going to bed and I walked into my son's room (he was at his mother's) to close his curtains. I looked out over our backyard and saw nothing at all. I then walked over to our spare bedroom, which is on the same side of the house and faces the same direction. When I went to close the blinds, I observed 6 large, bright red-orange lights hovering and circling around each other about 45 degrees above the horizon. When viewed in the sky, the objects were much bigger and brighter than stars but perhaps not as big as an aspirin tablet. I quickly called my wife to come over and we watched the objects circle each other in a large, vertical looping pattern for approximately three or four minutes. They then started to move off one-by-one in a north easterly direction. It took only seconds for each large, bright object to fade away and disappear in the sky.I opened the window so that we could see and hear better, and while there was some noise from our neighbour's house (the kind of humming a furnace makes) the objects themselves did not make any noise; there was no sound of engines or mechanics or anything else whatsoever. Before they were gone, two more lights rose up (one by one) from behind the houses and trees along the sightline of the horizon. They again slowly circled each other in the same vertical looping pattern before flying off, this time one to the northeast like the others and the other towards the northwest. Again, the large objects rapidly faded away and disappeared from sight.I looked at the clock in my son's bedroom and noted that it said 11:01pm. My wife and I talked about things for a few minutes, neither of us doubting what we had seen. I went downstairs to call my son and tell him, and when I did I noted that the time on the kitchen clock was 10:55. I realized that the clock in my son's room was wrong (which my wife later verified). I timed the walk from window to window at approximately 10-12 seconds, so the crafts rose into the air in that time and were visible for approximately 3-4 minutes (we estimate). We also estimate that the objects were about three kilometers away, perhaps over the Ottawa River. While I have read a great deal about UFOs and such, I have never seen one before (that I know of) and am not given to histrionics. Indeed, I am a long time employee of the federal government and have not one but two Master's degrees. Not that that necessarily matters, but I like to think it adds some credibility to my account. I have never seen nor reported anything like this before but would have no difficulty talking about it to authorities or investigators.