Harrison, Victor, Brother XII

Nanaimo Historical Society Fonds
Series 2 Sound Recording

Tapes 14a and 14b
Interview by Wm. Barraclough of Victor B. Harrison concerning Brother XII
Date of Interview: September 12 1968
Transcribed by Glenys Wall
Date: September/October 2003

Tape Sound Quality is Poor
Barraclough: This tape recording concerns the facts of the Brother XII affair. Brother XII, born about 1870 as Edward Arthur Wilson. His father was reputed to be a Catholic missionary in [unintelligible]. In 1905, Wilson was working as a baggage clerk for the Dominion Express Company in Victoria, British Columbia. Little is known of his movements for the next 20 years. He did [unintelligible] stating he had visited the Mediterranean countries, the Caribbean, and the Orient. He became a student of [?]
[The rest of the introduction is unintelligible; transcription is resumed with Mr. Harrison speaking].
Harrison: speak on the Brother XII, a very notorious character who came here to Nanaimo. He first landed in Northfield and rented a house from Mrs. Reynolds if I remember, no relation to the newspaper family of Reynolds who lived in Nanaimo. I think her name was Peggy Reynolds. The first I ever heard of him was this lady Mrs. Reynolds, Peggy Reynolds, came into my office one day and told me about the Brother XII. His real name was Edward Arthur Wilson. He was born in England, the son of a clergyman in the Catholic Apostolic Church. He had married a princess from India, from Kashmir, India. However, to continue the story of the Brother XII.
She said, “He owes me some rent and I’d like you to collect it”.
I forget the amount; it wasn’t very much.
She said, “He keeps on promising to pay me this money, he’s writing all the time, he’s writing ..there’s a quantity of paper all over; he’s constantly writing”, she says, “there’s an enormous amount of written material”.
And he said “ ‘ I’ll pay you someday, I’ll pay you every dollar’ “ he said “ ‘ I have no money just now’ “ but he says “ ‘I’m starting a new religion’ “ so she said, “ ‘then I’ll have plenty of money’ “.
So I wrote a letter to him and she came in a few days after, or a week or two and said
“This Reverend Wilson, the tenant, paid this rent to me “ she said “and I appreciate you getting after him” and so forth so she said “what do I owe you?”
I forget what I told her I think the collection was 8% or 10%. I forget. So I heard no more of this man except stories came into me from time to time that he had bought 145 acres at what they called Cedar by the Sea and had tried to buy an area about the same size from the Bakers who owned at one time the Dewdrop Hotel on Halliburton Street. That deal did not come off but he did buy the 145 acres so the story came in and these peculiar people were in town. He was forming a new religion it seems. And I heard many queer stories about this group of people. I got acquainted with some of them because they used to come to a little restaurant, which was over the tobacco store on the corner of Commercial and Wharf Street. Billy Gray’s tobacco store. There was a two-story building on the corner there and it stretched quite a way back and Mrs. Reed ran the tearooms there and I used to go there. I went there on several occasions and that way I got to know them all by sight and some of them got acquainted with me and [intelligible]. It seems a rather bad lawsuit had commenced because there was a man called [Ireland?] who had at one time been on the detective force, the Pinkerton’s in the United States and he had joined the group. And he was in the big central building out on Cedar by the Sea and he complained that he wasn’t getting his salary. He was the bookkeeper for the concern. And he put in a slip it seems on the books to show he was getting his salary, he put a correct entry in to arrears and took the $10,000 arrears of salary as the result the Brother XII or Amiel de Valdes as he was afterwards called arrested him for embezzlement or fraud or something of that kind. And he was being tried before the then police magistrate at [unintelligible] he held court at that time in the City Hall building at the corner of Bastion and Skinner Street and my office was right across Skinner Street right opposite this police court and the police station was next door to that and there was an alley running through. I heard funny stories about this affair in the police court but I didn’t see much of it actually. One day I heard, of course, what it was about. And Mr. Cunliffe, F.S. Cunliffe, he was a lawyer who has now passed away, was acting for the Brother XII and Ireland to get back at the Brother XII he brought an action against the Brother XII for obtaining some $25,000 from Mrs. Connally, Mrs. Mary Connally.
Barraclough: Yes I remember Mrs. Connally.
Harrison: Her family came from Virginia, she was a very wealthy person it seems and he had met her in a hotel in Toronto and got $25,000 out of her on the representation that he required, he required this money to build a place called Greystone, a stone building on the De Courcy group of islands, which he had obtained from I think the Flewett estate; I just forget who he bought it from. There were very nice islands and there were two islands north and south of it, Ruxton and Pylades. He owned one, I think Ruxton but I think Pylades was bought some people called Roberts. However, this action came for trial, I think it was adjourned and tried several times, and I wanted to see Sergeant Russell, who was then in charge of the then Provincial Police. So I walked in through this alleyway by the old police station and came in the side door into the police court. The police court was jammed with all people of different kinds just to see what was going on and there was Beevor-Potts sitting up on the bench and here was the lawyer for the prosecution, a man who has now passed away, by the name of Morton; and he was a man who had no belief in these mysterious things that Brother Xll was dealing with. He said he had no fear of spirits or ghosts or anything of that kind. So I was just watching trying to get Sergeant Russell’s eye to tell him what I wanted, and I saw Mr. Morton, the lawyer, collapse on the bench and four or five people collapse and fall to the floor. I thought this was a very extraordinary performance; and from out of the audience came Brother Xll, strode across the police court floor and held out his hand to shake hands with me and he said:
“This is an awful state of affairs,” he said, “they’re trying to prosecute me,” he said, “ but there’s nothing in it and you’re going to be appointed by the Crown to prosecute this case.”
I said “Don’t talk to me, go away. I don’t want to be bothered by you.” And he then retired and went back into the audience. Beevor-Potts was very much disturbed and in a rather shaky voice he managed to say, “This court is adjourned”.
Barraclough: Mr. Harrison, just before you go any further, could you give us a little more detail of why people fainted or passed out in the court there?
Harrison: Well that was some mysterious… they claim it was a mysterious power to the Brother Xll. He was the son of a hypnotist or what you might call him, I don’t know.
Barraclough: You think he really hypnotised them?
Harrison: Well, I think some people are subject to hypnotism, there’s not a doubt about that. Though I don’t think Mr. Morton would be, but still he went down. He was the first man to collapse and however, the next thing I heard if I remember rightly, it may have been before that time or after, I cannot remember, they came to my house - a delegation -from the followers of Brother Xll. The leader of the delegation was a mystery-man, they called him, from Florida and several others. They came into my office and said: “We want to put a proposition to you” and they explained to me the various things that had happened there while they lived under the influence of this Brother Xll, who was the leader of this colony. They pointed out that he had a new religion, which they had joined and in which they had placed great confidence. It was to the effect that all people born in this world must be born under the correct signs of the zodiac and they must not only be born themselves under the correct signs but their parents must be also born under the same signs, and the houses, as they call them, must be in conformity with the requirements of astrology. And unless you were born under these signs you would never amount to anything. You would be an [astrobrat?] and once an [astrobrat?], always an [astrobrat?].You could not help yourself, you’d live and die in this world and they’d bury you and they might speak well of you as the case may be, but you’d never get anywhere. But those who were born under the right signs as given from astrology would become leading people of the world. And they pointed out that all the leading people in the world had been checked on and they found they conform with that theory of the Brother Xll. I might say I had heard of this before and I had visited Mrs. Phillips who had rented from me what they call Hedley Park. I was one of the executives of Hedley Park with George E. Church of 55 Wall Street, New York and we were both executives of the estate of old General Faulkener-Dickenson who died out there and he left this and he put me in charge of the building to dispose of it.
Barraclough: This Hedley Park, where was that?
Harrison: Hedley Park was at Nanoose Bay, a very nice place and I had been out there as Mrs. Phillips had called my office to talk to me and had given me a cordial invitation to come and hear something of this extraordinary belief connected of course with the Brother Xll who I hadn’t had anything to do with at that time, and who had this colony at Cedar-by-the-Sea and she had been there and she was a member of the organization and that she before that had been ..eh she wrote the column on astrology for the San Francisco Examiner, one of the Hearst papers in San Francisco, and she had been a graduate of one of the colleges down there and she was a very learned, able person I thought. So I went out to visit her and I came to the house and she rented this house from me and I chatted to her about the rent because we weren’t worried about renting the places because we were going to sell up the estate and dispose of the thing. And I hadn’t done that just yet because Mr. & Mrs. Church were coming out from New York, which they did later on. But in the meantime, I had rented this to this lady and she had this large room, when I came in, with round tables…. I suppose there were half a dozen in this large room, at the house on Hedley Park, and there were maps and signs of the zodiac and all this kind of thing in this room (the tape quality is very poor again) and this was her study. And she went over the whole theory and talked to me about what I have already mentioned and the signs of the zodiac and people being born under them and if they were not they were [unintelligible] and would get nowhere and she pointed out the great people in the world and named a lot of them including Caesar, and one of the great favourites was Pythagoras, the ancient Greek, and a number of other ancient Greeks they [unintelligible] and George Washington and I don’t know….[unintelligible] and Thomas Edison and all these people and they were all born correctly according to the signs of the zodiac and their parents were in line with the same proposition and were born according to the houses, as they call it in the heavens and that’s [unintelligible] and their children would be great people if they were born according to the signs of the zodiac, if not they would be [astrobrats?] like the rest of mankind. Now, there’s the theory of his religion as was explained to me. So when this delegation from the Aquarian Foundation came to my law office in Nanaimo to see me, I knew something about the activities of that organization and I knew of Mrs. Phillips and the theory of their religion. They roughly said:
“We are in revolution against the Brother Xll, we are here to have … to get your advice to see what we are to do. We’ve considered all the lawyers here and in other places and have decided you’re the man that will fight. Now will you act for us?”
I said “Certainly I will if you have anything to fight about”.
“Yes we have”.
And Mrs. Connally said how she had given $25,000 to the Brother [unintelligible] after seeing him for about an hour or less than that in a hotel in Toronto and old Barley, Alfred Barley, who had graduated from Oxford and was born in England and knew the Brother Xll and his father when he was a boy there, and had given him $18,000 odd and his wife had given him some money, she had been an English schoolteacher and how he bought the de Courcy group of islands and this land, the 145 acres at Cedar-by-the-Sea, and built these large buildings and put in an awful lot of money. And he had raised this money from various of his followers including one of his followers a big powerful man by the name of Davis or Davies, he had been a sparring partner for Jack Dempsey at one time and he looked the part. To my surprise, he was more under the influence of these mysterious carryings on of Brother Xll than most of them. Then there was Mrs. Phillips, er.. Mrs. Phillips wasn’t there, but there was Mrs. Sarah Tuckett, she was an old lady of about 80. She had been a schoolteacher in the states of Oregon and Washington all her life practically. She had been born in New York State I think it was, in New Jersey and had been very clever in her schoolwork and at a very early age had graduated with proper degrees for teaching in the public schools in the United States and had moved out to the West Coast and had spent her life teaching and had got a very good salary and she had money that she kept from her teaching days. She had been injured in an accident in San Francisco and was quite lame. This happened when she was a young person and the doctors had not made a very good job of her broken leg and she was still lame and would remain so, she said. There was the story of Rudy they told me, we just called him Rudy, that wasn’t his name we’ll just say his name was Rudy. Now these stories were something like this: here was Mrs. Sarah Tuckett, she said:
“I joined the colony, I had been a great teacher not only in the public schools all my life but I firmly believed in religion and I taught Sunday School almost all my life” and she said “when I heard of this wonderful man, the Brother Xll who had been down in California” she said “ I decided I should join his colony up in British Columbia and turn my money over to him”.
Which she did and she then made an agreement to turn over her monthly income from the school board or school authorities of the United States. This was her life pension. I don’t know how much it was but it was a fairly good pension. Now I said:
“What is your story, what is your complaint?”
“Well” she said, “it’s rather bad. You know this money and I turned it all over to the Brother and then just lately” she said, “just a short while ago my relations in New Jersey” I think she said or Connecticut, “wrote to make enquiries in regard to me and I found or I heard of this letter at the colony, the letter had been coming out to our organization at the head office, Cedar-by-the-Sea”.
And she said, “Then quite a time went on, and I heard nothing more but at last word got through that they had been writing again to enquire about me and if there was such a person to hear something”. And she said, “Then what happened was this. The Brother came to me one day and said:
“Now, Sarah, do you still want to help the great cause?’ “
She said, “I most certainly do”.
“ Would you give your life for the cause?”
“I most certainly would.”
“Would you be prepared to pass away and pass into the next world to give us the information that is required?”
“Oh most certainly I would. I would do anything to help this great cause on and the great work you are doing. The great work you are doing for mankind in general in this world” she said “because we’ll all belong to you some day, everyone.”
So he said, “ ‘ Well what you’re to do is to have a little cottage we’ve built up on that little hill,” she said “and every evening the boys will come and bring your food there and you will live in that cottage, no-one will bother you and your to live there. You can live and sleep there and you’ll get fed there and whatever you want to eat will be brought to you in a basket and put on the front verandah of the little cottage.’ “ And he said “ ‘ at the right time you are to go down to the harbour, right to the waterfront, and the boy will take you down and put you in a small rowboat and you will sit in the back of the boat and he’s to row you up and down, up and down just outside the lagoon and at the right moment, throw yourself backwards right into the water. Just throw both hands up and down you go.” “
[unintelligible] drown will they?”
“ ‘ No you will immediately rise, your spirit will rise, immediately, from the water. Your body’s nothing, what is your body? And then when your spirit arises it will go across into the heavens way beyond the clouds and when you get there you’re to look into heaven and see what’s going on and all about it and come back and tell the Brother. Are you willing to do it?’ “
“I most certainly will” she says “and all that will be just as you say?”
“It most certainly will, I know that”.
So they took her up and showed her this room, this nice little cottage built there and then later on, towards the evening was coming, Zee, Zura de Valdes, one of the wives, the second or third wife, I don’t know which, of the Brother Xll, came up and spoke to her and after a long while speaking together about all kinds of religious subjects and what not, she said:
“Now remember, you are ready to do what the great Brother has told us?”
“Oh certainly, yes”.
“The boy will come in a few minutes, he’ll be up here and he’ll guide you down”.
She was very lame so you always had to guide her, she had difficulty walking up and down the hill; she virtually couldn’t do it without assistance.
“Then you are to get in the boat and remember at the right time throw yourself backwards, have no fear, down you go.”
“But I’ll drown, the Brother said I would”.
“Well of course you’ll drown, but you’ll immediately rise and your spirit…. and away you’ll go off into the heavens, away beyond the great white clouds and look in and see, see what is going on in Heaven and then you’ll immediately come back and tell all about it, explain the whole thing to the Brother and everything will be grand. That’s your great service. Are you willing to do it?”
“Oh, I most certainly will” she said, “I’ll do it most decidedly. I’m only too anxious to do it. You know I’ve been a religious teacher all my life”.