In our galaxy alone, it is estimated there are at least 100 billion stars.

If I tried counting them, I would get to 10, and then forget which ones I had counted, and would have to start again.

It is naive to think those stars don’t have planets in their solar systems. Of those planets, some are bound to have living things. Some of these things could resemble people.

Maybe there is a Planet of the Apes. Maybe there are little green people out there. Maybe the earthly William Shatner is a fake, and the real one is Star Trekking around the galaxy.

And maybe aliens have found us.

In the past few months, UFOs have been in the news. These aren’t regular people seeing them. This is big time. This is the United States military, and an airline pilot.

There is fuzzy US government video that shows things, for a lack of a better word, buzzing around our world.

There are skeptics who study these occurrences or, as some say, nonoccurrences. These scientists roll out explanations for what the pilots of U.S. fighter jets might have seen, but couldn’t catch.

Their theories seem plausible, but who cares what these eggheads think?

We want UFOs, with friendly beings aboard. They are obviously smarter than us. We have worked our butts off to get to Mars. And if we send people there, they can’t come home. Life on Mars would be OK, as long as there is a McDonald’s, Netflix and cell service.

If there is a reason for this column, it is sharing a Saskatchewan story from about 30 years ago.

Back then, a Saskatoon doctor said he woke up to see a grey-skinned creature with huge eyes standing at the side of his bed. (At my home, my wife would ask why I am standing there.)

The doctor, according to a Calgary Herald story, tried to scream, but was transported out of his home and into a strange craft. He told the newspaper he was up to his groin in a machine that looked like a medical CATscanner.

Two of the “creatures” transported him back to his bed, where he lost consciousness. The next morning, the doctor noticed tiny red marks on his groin. They disappeared after a day.

“These are not just vivid dreams,” the doctor, who has since passed away, told the newspaper. “My senses, my mind, are telling me that (experience) was real.”

He said a neurologist, psychologist and psychiatrist all found him to be of sound mind.

Coming forward must have been difficult for the physician, who I knew in a round-about way. I might be hesitant to see a doctor who has been abducted by aliens. I would want to believe him, but my Luke Skywalker senses would be tingling.

“Once abductees realize the intent is not to hurt them, they feel better,” the doctor told the StarPhoenix. “People shouldn’t feel that they will be next. It seems to be happening to those selected as kids in the 1940s and early 1960s.”

In 1989, at the invitation of the Saskatoon physician, a New York psychiatrist came to Saskatoon to hear the stories of four people who also claimed to have been abducted.

Under hypnosis, all four said they had lapses in time, and had memories of floating away with four-foot-high “visitors.” Each claimed to be part of a medical experiment.

Perhaps it is irrelevant to her work with those who are convinced they experienced abductions, but a couple of decades later, the psychiatrist was found to be a conspiracy theorist and scammer.

Other psychologists say what the doctor and the others experienced were hallucinations, and they were convinced of the reality of the experience.

One told the Calgary Herald that rational people have these experiences. He said this doesn’t make them psychotic.

The Saskatoon doctor said there was, at the time, a world-wide government suppression of UFO evidence.

Last month, the suppression ended when the U.S. government released the footage of objects its military couldn’t identify.

That adds serious credibility to UFO sightings.

There was an occurrence over Saskatchewan in May, when a Delta Air Lines pilot couldn’t explain what was above the plane.

According to a CBC story, the plane was flying over Hudson Bay, when the pilot spotted something moving from right to left. It was particularly interesting that the object was high above a plane flying at 39,000 feet. That is higher than David Crosby.

There were about 900 reported UFO sightings in Canada in 2019. That number was expected to rise in 2020, given people would have more time to gaze into the sky during the pandemic.

The last number in which I could find for Saskatchewan was a year with about 50 reported sightings.

For what it’s worth, I believe it is likely that there is other life in our wonderful Milky Way. I am a skeptical about abductions, but who knows for sure?

Now, I’m going to count my lucky stars.

*****

Thank you to our provincial government, to the Saskatchewan Health Authority and to every person who worked so hard in hospitals, care homes and at the clinics where we were vaccinated. I am forgetting to thank so many more, including those who got vaccinated to make opening the province possible.

It might be slightly premature, but we did it.

-Cam Hutchinson