In his memoirs, former prime minister Lester Pearson said he would always wonder what might have happened had Paul Hellyer, not Pierre Trudeau, succeeded him in 1968.

But not in his wildest imaginings could Pearson have reckoned on the intriguing ways Hellyer would pass the decades even without the country’s top job.

All going well, Paul Theodore Hellyer — who first served in a Canadian cabinet 11 prime ministers ago under Louis St. Laurent — will be 92 this summer.

On Saturday morning, he was keynote speaker at a Toronto symposium on UFO secrecy, an event that saw about 150 people gather at a University of Toronto auditorium for the old politician’s fascinating review of what ails the country, the world economy, the entire planet.

In short, explained Hellyer, it is a secret cabal’s stranglehold on the international banking system, humankind’s failure to adopt the technology available from extraterrestrial visitors, and to apply it to the climate crisis of global warming.

“Most of us do not know what is going on,” Hellyer said. And the problem, he said, in the punning way he was famous for a half-century ago in Ottawa, is that “what you don’t see is what you get.”

To all appearances, the audience Saturday seemed to get pretty much what it came for.

Those in attendance passed through a lobby that, on its walls, had exhibits telling the story of doctors Banting and Best, and on tables beneath had vendors offering copies of Science Was Wrong, Flying Saucers and Science, UFOs and Aliens and, of course, Hellyer’s own books.

Hellyer was raised a devout Baptist, added a rich baritone to his church choir and studied as an engineer. After being elected, he served in cabinet for a few months under St. Laurent in 1957 before becoming defence minister under Pearson. In that portfolio, he played a key role in changing the Liberal government’s nuclear arms policy and integrating the Canadian armed forces.

Then things got a little hairy.

Hellyer ran for the Liberal leadership but lost to Trudeau in 1968, quit Trudeau’s cabinet and the Liberal party a year later, sat as an independent MP, joined the federal PCs and ran for their leadership in 1976, when he denounced Red Tories for not being true conservatives.

After that erratic phase, he tried unsuccessfully to negotiate the merger of the Canadian Action Party he founded with the NDP, rejoined the Liberals, made a few more doomed bids for election before turning his attention to UFOs, grand conspiracies and such.

Hellyer’s old pal in the Commons, Judy LaMarsh, with whom he sneaked across Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin in 1962 in a caper much frowned on by their bosses, once said “he wants to give people their money’s worth.”

You’d have to think that he did to those who’d ponied up $50 for a ticket on Saturday morning.

At first blush, it could have been a weekend continuing education class on, say, creative writing, or financial literacy for retiring baby boomers. But it was rather less banal.

Hellyer said that when extraterrestrials landed a flying disk in New Mexico — shortly after the end of the Second World War, a war that established the United States as the most technologically advanced nation in human history — well, “it was extremely upsetting” to the Americans to learn there were, in fact, other societies “light years ahead of theirs.”

Much of what has ensued over the last 60 years has been an effort to keep the public in the dark about technology available from ETs, he explained. “Why all the lies and coverup?”

Hellyer said he receives emails by the day from all over the world from people reporting UFO sightings.

From time to time, these visitors have interfered with control systems of nuclear missile installations on Earth, he said. The ETs have taken an inventory of earthly goings-on — “they have the whole picture” — and are not amused by what they see, he warned.

“It is my opinion that they look at us and say, ‘the children have been playing with matches.’ ”

Our planet is down to a few years, if not months, to get our house in order, he said. A key window for the massive monetary reform Hellyer says is needed to free up the resources to address climate change (in part by collaborating with the extraterrestrials) is in the final months of President Barack Obama’s administration, when he has little to fear from bold action.

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During a question period after the talk, one audience member suggested those on hand call themselves “Hellyer-ites,” the better (assuming, he said with a laugh, that Bill C-51 didn’t infringe on their activities) to reveal such alarming developments and demand action.

Though admittedly flattered, Hellyer — who said he is frequently on radio in the U.S. these days — suggested something like “Truth-ites” might better fit the bill.

Even the unflappable Mike Pearson, long in his grave, would surely be astonished.