Who is paul hellyer

Then in his 80s, he turned to his final passion: UFOs. Hellyer testified at a Washington hearing organized by fellow UFO experts in Hellyer said that at least four species of aliens have been visiting Earth for thousands of years. He argued that their presence had been kept secret by a cabal of bankers, oilmen, members of the defence establishment and groups such as the Council on Foreign Relations, who had formed a shadow U.

Alway said. Despite his accomplishments in politics, Mr. Hellyer remained an outsider, never attracting honorary degrees and high-profile directorships. A few years ago, investment adviser Chris Snyder proposed that Mr. Hellyer, whom he knew from a weekly prayer breakfast, be named to the Order of Canada.

Snyder, a long-time friend. Hellyer, then transport minister and a candidate for the Liberal leadership, high-steps with mini-skirted supporters at Parliament Hill in Ottawa on April 3, The group marched with a band on the Hill as part of the pre-convention antics in the capital.

Besides his interests in politics, Mr. Hellyer was a successful businessman. For a time, he ran a dress shop in Toronto and was in the ginseng business. In the s, he bought a small resort on Lake Muskoka called Arundel Lodge, which he ran for many years.

It remains in the Hellyer family. He was an early investor in The Toronto Sun, where he wrote a column for 10 years. But it was in house-building that Mr. Hellyer made his fortune. Shortly after being elected to Parliament for the first time, he heard about a struggling Toronto construction called Curran Hall Ltd.

He took control with his family and another partner. It became hugely successful, developing large housing subdivisions in the Toronto suburbs.

He was also a deeply religious man, a lifelong member of the United Church of Canada. He had a powerful baritone voice, which he used in church and as a performer in musical comedy and opera.

His religion helped spark philanthropy, particularly in recent years. Hellyer was a supporter of ballet, opera, the Yonge Street Mission, a charity dedicated to development work in Lesotho and Indigenous causes.

He leaves his second wife, Sandra; his children, Mary Elizabeth, Peter and David; five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. He also served as an artillery gunner in the Canadian Army late in the conflict. Hellyer was once the youngest member of the House of Commons. He was elected to Parliament in just shy of his 26th birthday and earned his bachelor's degree in the same year. His interest in defence matters led to serving as parliamentary assistant to the defence minister and then associate minister of national defence in the government of Louis St.

Hellyer was briefly unseated after the election, but returned to the House of Commons after a byelection in Hellyer rose to prominence as a critic of the Diefenbaker administration and then as minister of national defence in Lester B. Pearson's cabinet. Few defence ministers would be as consequential as Hellyer, who urged Canada to accept nuclear weapons after several years of acrimonious public debate on the matter in the late s and early s. Hellyer was also responsible for the controversial decision to unify and integrate the service branches of the Canadian military into a single organization, the Canadian Armed Forces.

Despite the opposition to the idea at the time, the military remains a unified force to this day. Hellyer's time in cabinet led to a brief friendship with U. President John F. His lifelong fascination with aircraft and cutting-edge technology led President Lyndon B. Johnson to invite Hellyer to fly in Air Force 1 for a demonstration of the aircraft's state-of-the-art communications equipment. In the late s, Paul Hellyer spearheaded a federal task force on housing and urban development, one that ultimately recommended against the then-popular trend of wholesale demolition of older housing stock and its replacement by large housing projects.

And, apparently, "a lot of the things we use today, we got from them. Microchips and Kevlar vests are two of the other creations that, according to the serious Hellyer, came from outer spatial sources. Hellyer's concerned that we might truly need a Star Wars capability "if we shoot down every UFO that comes into our airspace.

It's easy to dismiss Hellyer as being, well, from another planet. But our obsession with what's out there belies, surely, our considerable dislike of what we have become. Perhaps hardest to swallow is Hellyer's notion that the majority of alien species out there are benign, loving, and progressive.

To be supposedly within reach of better attitudes and better technologies -- and only not receiving them because we don't ask for them -- seems to be the ultimate in tragedy.

So, dear aliens, could you just prove your benevolent ways by sorting out the three things that are bothering me right now. You know what they are, because you have the technology, right? Be respectful, keep it civil and stay on topic. We delete comments that violate our policy , which we encourage you to read.

Discussion threads can be closed at any time at our discretion. Canada's ex-defense minister: Aliens would give us more tech if we'd stop wars Paul Hellyer, who has long insisted that aliens have visited Earth for many years, says that when aliens saw the atomic bomb they decided that we were a great threat to the cosmos.

Chris Matyszczyk. Paul Hellyer, believer. Why would they be?