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2:20

You can only get to the course see by

2:22

small Small boats like people

2:24

that live there. Everyone's got their own little boat for

2:27

people that have never been to the Gulf Islands It

2:29

exudes a tranquility. It's just

2:32

full of our beautist trees and just

2:34

beautiful vistas and little bays the

2:37

course is one of the Gulf Islands a

2:40

chain of islands that sit between Vancouver

2:42

Island and the mainland of British Columbia and

2:45

Decorsea is known for its beauty. It's

2:48

a place that has always drawn people in for

2:50

better or for worse One

2:52

of those people is Bill Miner a

2:54

playwright from British Columbia He

2:57

like many before him ended up traveling

2:59

to Decorsea Island because of a man He's

3:02

one of the most distinctive men in Canadian

3:04

history Brother 12 was

3:07

a charismatic individual

3:11

Charismatic, although a very small figure

3:14

he had these these eyes

3:16

that just seemed to draw people in a very mesmerizing

3:19

voice at a time in

3:21

society where people were maybe needing

3:25

answers Needing salvation.

3:27

He looked like a perfect person to follow

3:31

And many did follow him in the late 1920s

3:34

Spiritual seekers came to British Columbia

3:37

some traveling thousands of miles to

3:39

be close to him Together they

3:41

would build a settlement on Decorsea Island

3:44

and some of it is still standing today There's

3:47

a number of structures from

3:49

that time in 1929 to 33

3:52

or something like that that

3:54

are still there. I can imagine when

3:57

the first acolytes

3:59

came over and they were clearing

4:01

the land and they were just looking

4:04

out into these beautiful vistas of

4:06

ocean and these trees and

4:08

all this wildlife. They

4:10

must have thought, well, he's already

4:12

taken us to Paradise. This is so beautiful.

4:16

You could just look up from your toils,

4:18

I guess, as an acolyte, look up

4:20

and just see the island

4:22

mountains and the ocean, and

4:25

he just thought, this seems worth

4:27

it.

4:28

It would only take a few

4:30

years for Brother 12's acolytes

4:33

to feel very differently about their

4:35

choices. He would go on

4:37

to be called the devil of Dacoursi

4:39

Island, and for good reason. Brother 12

4:42

prophesied about the coming apocalypse,

4:45

but instead his story would presage

4:48

something different. He was

4:50

a forerunner of the strange new religions

4:53

that would sweep over the Western world.

5:05

I'm Archie Mann and this is Commons.

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7:26

Bill Miner wrote a musical called The Cult

7:28

of Brother 12 that debuted in Nanaimo

7:30

last year and what attracted him

7:32

to this character from British Columbian history

7:35

is the enduring mystery around who

7:37

he really was and why so many

7:40

people decided to follow him.

7:42

It's that Jekyll and Hyde

7:44

component where they've got that one

7:46

face to the people that they draw

7:49

in and whatever their

7:51

rhetoric is, whatever their spiel is and

7:54

however they connect with it, it's just that

7:56

openness that creates that connection

7:59

to them. And then they've

8:01

got that other place where they drop the

8:03

mask in a safer place

8:05

or just by themselves where they're covetous

8:08

and greedy and scheming

8:11

and I'm always perplexed by by

8:14

all people that join cults But particularly

8:16

the people that I would admire if someone

8:18

were just to give me a short bio and go like wow

8:21

good for them They're giving all this to charity

8:24

and they're doing this and and yet you go Oh,

8:26

yeah, by the way, they joined this cult and

8:28

lost everything and lost all their integrity

8:31

and self-respect and and

8:33

you just go What was it

8:36

that I didn't see like what is that flaw

8:38

that they are so desperate to

8:40

find? Redemption or

8:43

I don't know some some

8:45

validation that they're lacking. You

8:48

know, what is it? It's a mystery to me

8:50

Brother 12

8:50

is probably one of

8:52

the wildest figures in

8:54

British Columbia history

8:56

That's Justine Brown. She's a writer

8:58

and the author of all possible worlds Utopian

9:01

experiments in British Columbia

9:04

and to properly understand this whole story

9:06

You need to know where brother 12

9:09

came from and the strange

9:11

religious movement that he was part of that's

9:13

still Incredibly influential to this day

9:16

his real name was Edward Arthur

9:18

Wilson He was English.

9:21

He was a theosophist and a charismatic

9:23

leader and he had a lot of contacts

9:26

like among bigwigs so he had like

9:29

film stars and Bankers

9:32

and people like this interested in him

9:34

as a leader

9:36

Theosophy is not something you hear much

9:38

about these days But much of what

9:40

we call new age thought has

9:42

its roots in this esoteric movement

9:45

And when I refer to new age thinking I'm

9:48

talking about the whole range of South Asian

9:50

and flecked Spiritual groups and

9:52

practices that became popular

9:54

in the West in the 60s and 70s Many

9:57

of which were fairly or unfairly

9:59

labeled and bold as cults. Theosophy

10:02

was founded in 1875 in

10:04

New York City and was initially led

10:06

by a Russian mystic named Madame Blavatsky.

10:09

The Theosophists took bits and pieces

10:11

of South Asian religions like reincarnation,

10:14

yoga, and karma and blended

10:16

them with European beliefs and practices.

10:19

And by the 1920s, theosophy

10:22

was all the rage among certain sets

10:24

of society.

10:28

The 1920s, they prefigured

10:31

the 1960s. There

10:33

were a lot of extremely experimental

10:35

concepts like the Age of Aquarius.

10:38

There's a song in the 60s, the Age of Aquarius.

10:40

And this is like a new age concept that

10:42

we are going into this new

10:45

phase of human history.

10:47

And there's an idea of like this

10:49

very optimistic concept of, you

10:52

know, we're moving forward, we're progressing,

10:54

we're changing, we're becoming more perfect.

10:58

All of those ideas and

11:00

very like bohemian ideas

11:03

were already present

11:04

in the 1920s. Edward

11:07

Wilson immersed himself in these new ideas.

11:10

Here's Bill Miner again. He was drawn

11:12

towards theosophy, took it and

11:15

started interpreting himself and

11:18

really started having

11:20

visions very early

11:23

on in his 20s. And he was very

11:25

peripatetic. He was sort of nomadic. He

11:28

wandered to North America

11:30

and did all sorts of different itinerant

11:33

jobs. And throughout that, he

11:35

was keeping diaries and he was writing

11:38

about what he felt were

11:41

the reasons he was having these visions

11:43

from the Masters of Wisdom. And he

11:45

truly started developing

11:48

a cohesive philosophy that

11:51

seemed to draw people in.

11:54

Edward Wilson began sending articles into theosophical

11:57

publication that became immensely popular.

11:59

And he said that he was receiving

12:02

messages from the 12th member

12:04

of the Great White Lodge, a sort

12:06

of theosophical high command that

12:08

included prophets like Jesus and Buddha.

12:11

These masters spoke to him and told

12:14

him that he was connected to these other

12:17

very ethereal presences

12:19

called the brothers and he was this incarnation

12:23

of the 12th brother and so

12:25

that's where he got the name Brother 12.

12:31

He traveled through many countries spreading his message

12:34

of a coming apocalypse that would befall the world.

12:37

He would just get groups and

12:39

the theosophy groups or other

12:41

groups that he was connected with all

12:43

through North America and certainly in England

12:46

and he would just get up and start speaking

12:49

and realize that what he had to say

12:51

was of interest to people and

12:53

I think that that

12:56

kick started his belief that

12:59

he could take this somewhere

13:01

else, he could take this somewhere larger and he

13:03

became believing of his own

13:06

abilities as a leader that he has something

13:08

to teach and so this

13:10

is the person that ended up coming

13:13

to Nanaimo.

13:15

At first British Columbia might seem

13:17

like an odd spot for a British mystic

13:20

to try to build his new society

13:22

but the province has a long history of similar

13:24

utopian experiments. There's

13:26

a stereotype that BC is

13:29

a place attractive to hippies and communalists

13:32

and according to Justine Brown there is

13:34

a lot of truth to that. Here she is

13:36

again. What

13:37

I found was

13:38

that there was quite a long history

13:40

predating the hippies

13:42

of the 60s and going fairly

13:45

well back into the 19th century and

13:48

some of these communities were fascinating.

13:50

If I were to try to define

13:52

a utopian community

13:54

it's usually a distinct

13:57

isolated community in some

13:59

way. could be in downtown

14:01

of the city, but in some respect is kind

14:03

of sent off right from the rest

14:06

of the community because by definition it's

14:09

kind of a critique of the outside community,

14:11

right? The implication is that the mainstream

14:14

community is not sufficient.

14:17

In colonies like Canada, and especially

14:19

British Columbia, were incredibly

14:21

attractive to groups that might be otherwise

14:23

persecuted in Europe.

14:25

I lately

14:26

have been thinking about colonies

14:29

as government laboratories. So,

14:31

go back to Britain in the 17th

14:33

century, there's the English Civil

14:35

War that was like fought between two

14:38

factions of Protestants, but then

14:40

there were all these other tiny Protestant

14:42

sects.

14:43

And so the question of what

14:46

was to be the official position on religion

14:48

was a very vexed question on it. It's like

14:50

this is what you build your society around.

14:53

One of the first of these attempts at utopia

14:56

was Metlakatla. Metlakatla

14:58

was a mix of colonial missionary

15:00

work and utopian community.

15:03

While many of the indigenous people were there willingly,

15:06

they had to wear Western dress and abandon

15:08

any of their traditional practices.

15:11

It was a kind of Christian

15:13

utopian community designed

15:16

for the Shimshan

15:18

tribe in Queen Charlotte

15:21

Island's

15:21

area. And there

15:24

was a missionary and he was

15:26

concerned about the fate

15:29

of the local tribe, especially

15:31

as the role of the Hudson's

15:34

Bay Company started to recede somewhat.

15:36

Eventually he had to move

15:38

and he took

15:40

the community to Alaska. So there was

15:42

new Metlakatla and I believe 80% of

15:45

the community went with him willingly.

15:47

And there's Sointula, which was a Finnish

15:49

utopian community with theosophical beliefs

15:52

on Malcolm Island, another of the Gulf Islands.

15:55

Things did not go

15:57

as well for them.

15:58

I think they initially showed up in...

15:59

Nanaimo and then they went north

16:02

to Malcolm Island and they

16:04

kind of set up their community there. Unfortunately,

16:06

their community hall burned down

16:08

and a lot of people died. They

16:11

lost dozens of people and

16:14

it wasn't that large

16:14

of a community to begin with so that

16:16

was very tough for them.

16:18

I think that over the initial period

16:20

of the first few years, something

16:23

like 2000 people cycled in and

16:25

out of the community

16:27

is quite something when you consider how far north

16:29

Malcolm Island is.

16:31

And then it gradually,

16:33

that initial kind of experimental

16:35

formal communalism

16:38

faded away and the community eventually

16:40

just became sort of a more of a conventional

16:43

fishing community, but with a lot of pride

16:45

in the history.

16:47

Other religious minorities and utopian

16:49

communities have made their homes in British Columbia,

16:51

including the Dukubors, hippie communalists

16:54

and even fundamentalist Mormons.

16:57

And then of course, there's Brother 12. But

17:00

why does British Columbia attract

17:02

these sort of groups in particular?

17:05

The simple fact is that British Columbia

17:08

was the last part of the temperate

17:10

world to be mapped. So in

17:12

a lot of the earlier maps around

17:15

the time that the explorers were mapping

17:18

as they went, well, you see like the East

17:20

Coast and you see parts of South

17:22

America, but the Northwest is just

17:24

this kind of unknown

17:25

terra incognita, right?

17:27

Essentially, it's a big question mark.

17:30

And the landscape itself often adds to

17:32

that sense.

17:34

Partly the largeness and

17:36

the mysteriousness, but also just the quality

17:38

of the actual landscape

17:40

and the mountains and the

17:43

mists and the way things shift

17:45

all the time and the creatures and

17:48

the sense that you don't quite understand

17:50

all that's contained there.

17:52

You can imagine the awe that Brother 12's

17:54

many followers must have felt when they

17:56

arrived to that land. Here's Bill

17:59

Miner again. calling his visit to Dacorsie

18:01

Island.

18:02

And even the tree that he

18:04

used to proselytize to

18:07

the Acolytes is still there. They

18:09

used to just surround it, and

18:11

then Brother 12 would just give

18:13

his talks. You could see

18:16

really why people

18:18

that would come there looking for

18:20

something that actually

18:22

Dacorsie Island itself really

18:26

added another layer of that to draw

18:28

them.

18:29

Brother 12 preached at the end of the

18:31

world was just around the corner.

18:33

And considering that this was the 1920s, he

18:36

wasn't entirely wrong. After

18:39

all the Great Depression, World War II, Adam

18:42

bombs, they were all only a few

18:44

years away. And Brother 12

18:46

preached with a conviction that

18:49

led many to be enthralled by him. By 1927,

18:53

Edward Wilson had fully become Brother 12.

18:56

But then how did he end up becoming the

18:58

so-called Devil of Dacorsie Island? To

19:01

help tell that part of the story, we're

19:03

gonna bring in Commons producer Jordan

19:05

Cornish. So who exactly

19:07

were the people who were following Brother 12 all

19:09

this way?

19:10

These are largely well-to-do people, professional types,

19:13

doctors, authors, scholars, lawyers.

19:15

These were the kind of people reading and interacting with Wilson's

19:17

work when he was starting to kind of

19:20

come up. And tell me a little bit about

19:22

their first community.

19:24

Well,

19:25

sometime when Wilson was still

19:27

in England, he writes of something called

19:29

the, quote, special

19:31

urgent letter, unquote. Honestly,

19:33

the letter reads like a pretty dire call to action

19:35

that really just kind of hinges on the idea that

19:38

everyone who stays behind is

19:40

going to die in fire and brimstone. And

19:42

you have to come with him for salvation.

19:44

You know, not a large group of people, under 10,

19:46

a small group of folks take him up on this.

19:49

So eventually him and his followers, they end up in

19:51

BC and they start looking at a few

19:53

different places. They end up settling in

19:55

a place called Cedar by the Sea, this like beautiful

19:58

area. It's a small logging town that's like a.

20:00

a few miles south of the Naimo.

20:02

And of course, like, you know, they have to pay for that land, they

20:05

have to pay for the travel. Everything is paid for by

20:07

his followers, by these sort of well-to-do,

20:10

decently wealthy donors who just

20:12

support the whole venture.

20:14

But what was it actually like for

20:16

these people to live there when they arrived

20:18

at Cedar by the Sea?

20:20

I mean, those first few months would have just been felt with

20:22

construction, like from framing

20:24

up houses to clearing the land. One

20:26

of the first things they did was they built a couple of sailboats.

20:31

They bought a car. This was also a time that membership was increasing

20:33

quite a bit, not just in BC, but

20:35

like across North America. About 125

20:38

groups formed across Canada and the US. Most

20:40

of these groups had around like 10 members or less, but

20:43

it was still like a pretty significant amount of people

20:45

that were involved and interested in what

20:47

he had to say. This was one of the fastest

20:49

growing spiritual movements of that day.

20:52

They started publishing a monthly magazine in 1927. It

20:55

was called The Chalice. That's

20:57

a good name, honestly. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

20:59

problems with the name. But

21:02

its first issue ended up causing a bit of a

21:04

stir. This issue

21:06

revealed that he was quite anti-Semitic.

21:08

He

21:09

ardently believed in like that newly popular

21:12

in the 1920s conspiracy that a

21:14

small group of Jewish people were controlling the banks.

21:17

And he also heavily criticized the Roman Catholic

21:19

Church. And it actually was his concerns around the

21:21

Roman Catholic Church that got him even

21:23

more involved in politics. And he became weirdly

21:25

involved in the 1928 presidential

21:28

election in the US. At this time,

21:30

Al Smith, who is a Catholic, has

21:33

won the Democratic nomination.

21:35

Franklin D. Roosevelt took the stage to

21:37

praise as only he could do, the

21:39

man for whom he has always had such affection and

21:41

respect. Naming him again, the

21:44

happy warrior, his friend, Alfred

21:46

E. Smith, the governor of

21:48

New York.

21:49

And Wilson is an extremely

21:51

anti-Catholic bigot. He decides he's going

21:53

to try and fund a third party that

21:56

he expects will become the dominant political

21:58

force in the United States. actually very, very

22:01

convinced of this. And this

22:03

spectacularly does not work out

22:05

for him, but it does take a lot of his time

22:07

and energy. And I

22:09

think it's like a good example of where his

22:11

ambitions lied at the level

22:13

of maybe delusion that he was at at this

22:16

point. Like he really thought

22:17

that this was going to be a thing.

22:20

But then it's right around this time that he makes

22:22

the claim that kind of changes everything

22:24

for him and his followers. While

22:27

he's traveling in the United States, Brother 12

22:29

then comes home and he tells his

22:31

followers that he is the reincarnation

22:34

of the Egyptian god Osiris.

22:37

If you're at all acquainted with Egyptian mythology, Osiris

22:39

is one of the one of the big gods in

22:42

the Egyptian pantheon. This

22:44

is a lot of time that I think it's important to know this

22:46

is like Indiana Jones era, right? Like King Tut's

22:48

tomb was just discovered in 1922. There's

22:50

a lot of ways this is

22:51

like the golden age of Egyptology. I

22:54

suppose most excavators

22:57

would confess to a feeling of awe

23:00

almost embarrassment when

23:03

they break into what true clothes and

23:05

seals by

23:06

pious fans

23:08

so many centuries ago.

23:12

So Brother 12 either has convinced

23:14

himself at this point or it's part

23:16

of the narrative that he's going with at

23:18

that time that he's Osiris. And what

23:21

I love about this story is that it

23:23

happens while he's on a train.

23:25

There's potentially a ritual

23:27

involved that he had to do and he

23:30

does it with a fellow passenger that he meets

23:32

on this train. It's a woman who just

23:34

happened to be

23:35

the reincarnation of the

23:37

Egyptian goddess. Osiris's

23:40

concert.

23:41

Even more convenient, they were of course

23:43

destined to have a baby together and

23:46

that would be

23:46

Horus reborn. And Horus

23:49

of course is another important figure in Egyptian

23:51

mythology but let me ask you, did

23:53

Horus end up being reborn? It's

23:55

actually a pretty sad story.

23:57

Both she and Wilson were already married when they were born. they

24:00

got together when they met on the train and found

24:03

out that they were these reincarnated

24:05

Egyptian gods. But they

24:08

had, by all accounts, a love

24:10

affair. And she got pregnant fairly

24:12

quickly and Wilson brought her back

24:15

to the colony. He kept her

24:17

presence secret for a little

24:19

bit. And Wilson's wife, of

24:21

course, lived there. And

24:23

when word ultimately got out, you know, people were pretty

24:26

shocked about it. It's

24:28

a scandal.

24:29

Critics who are already starting to get a little bit

24:31

louder start to accuse him of advocating

24:33

for things like free love and they're just generally

24:35

upset with this behavior. But

24:38

then Myrtle, which is the name of

24:40

the woman that is Isis, miscarries

24:43

the child and has a number of

24:45

additional miscarriages

24:46

and eventually has a nervous breakdown.

24:48

And we don't know much more about her life after that.

24:51

That's awful.

24:52

Yeah, there were a number of things going

24:54

on that started alienating

24:57

his followers from from Wilson.

25:00

There was the money being spent on the American presidential

25:02

election, which was weird. And

25:05

his followers soon discovered that a

25:07

lot of the money that they thought they had donated to

25:10

the Aquarian Foundation was actually just in

25:12

Wilson's name. And then some of them

25:14

eventually went to the police and pressed charges.

25:17

So it was sex and money that ended up

25:19

being his downfall that that seems a bit

25:21

on the nose.

25:22

This wasn't actually his downfall.

25:24

He was charged. He was charged with embezzlement.

25:26

And then what happened was just like one of the weirder scenes

25:29

that's probably ever taking place in British

25:31

Columbia Court.

25:36

So first, the grounds case basically

25:38

fell apart immediately. One

25:40

of Wilson's followers was this wealthy socialite

25:42

from Toronto, and she had already donated over $25,000 to

25:44

Wilson. She

25:48

donated to him personally. And she said

25:50

that she was fine. She wanted him to do whatever he

25:52

wanted with it. And then right there

25:54

in the courtroom, she writes a check for another

25:57

$28,000, hands it to him, does it for him.

25:59

this in front of the judge just basically to

26:01

prove the point that

26:03

it's fun.

26:04

That's quite the set piece.

26:06

Honestly that's like not even half of it. There were numerous

26:09

reports from this time that claimed lawyers,

26:11

multiple witnesses, began blubbering

26:14

in the courts, they couldn't get out their words,

26:17

and people were blacking out,

26:19

pausing mid-sentence. You know, there was just

26:21

all sorts of strangeness going on in this courtroom.

26:23

It became kind of like a media sensation

26:25

because the claim was that Brother

26:28

Swells, Edward Wilson, was using

26:30

black magic in court. A

26:32

guy named Victor Harrison

26:33

who was in the court that day, he had

26:35

been the mayor of the NIMO for like a few years and

26:37

he would serve again after this trial, but

26:40

this is him talking

26:40

in an old documentary about what happened.

26:42

He had some papers in his hand, and all

26:46

of a sudden he collapsed, had a shape,

26:48

and he collapsed on the floor and lay there

26:50

if he had been knocked out. In

26:53

a moment or two later, three or four people

26:56

sitting on the low bed collapsed. So

26:58

there were three people who were down with

27:00

some sort of nettle problem

27:02

like this, you know, hypnodism or whatever

27:04

you might want to call

27:06

it. So other people would go on to claim

27:08

that individuals in the gallery had been mass hypnotized.

27:11

As you can imagine, the trial

27:14

of a strange religious leader like this

27:15

was just like a huge deal across

27:17

Canada.

27:17

So all of these accusations

27:20

just kind of made him like a bigger sensation.

27:23

And so what happened with the verdict? Oh,

27:25

the charges were dropped.

27:30

He ended up moving his community from Cedar by the

27:32

Sea to D'Corseau Island, and basically

27:34

things felt weirder from there.

27:36

Partially because this is where he meets a woman who

27:39

is known as Madame Z. She was married

27:41

and I don't know much of her background

27:44

prior, but she seemed easily

27:46

persuaded to do

27:49

Brother 12's bidding. I mean, you know, she

27:52

made up excuses to her husband

27:55

and then sort of forsook the

27:57

mayor's completely.

27:59

Madame Z was... Brother 12's enforcer.

28:01

She was

28:02

making all the other acolytes, all the followers,

28:05

kind of work all day, all night, punishing

28:07

them when they fell out of line. She was making them

28:09

two increasingly observed things, and

28:11

all of this was kind of in that name of proving their devotion

28:14

to Wilson, to Brother 12. Madam Z

28:16

was a dominatrix of some

28:18

sort, and she

28:19

became known for mistreating

28:22

the inhabitants, like whipping them while

28:24

they were trying to garden, or whipping

28:26

them as they were gardening to get them gardening

28:28

faster.

28:29

I'm guessing that this doesn't end up

28:31

well for Brother 12?

28:33

The community in Dacorce island certainly doesn't

28:35

end well. There's an uprising against

28:38

him by his followers, who eventually

28:39

are sick and tired of

28:41

being worked

28:42

like dogs by Madam Z,

28:45

are sick of the kind of like interpretation

28:47

of theosophy that isn't going

28:50

the way that they thought it would. And

28:53

then in like just a fit of rage,

28:55

as the colony is beginning to collapse, Brother 12

28:58

starts just indiscriminately destroying

28:59

buildings and things that

29:01

they have. This includes farming equipment,

29:04

a number of buildings, he even sinks one of his own ships.

29:07

And what ended up happening to him?

29:10

Well, the story we know is that Brother 12

29:12

and Madam Z flee the island. They

29:14

take a small boat that he'd hidden away,

29:16

and eventually they flee to Europe,

29:19

where Brother 12 is said to have died

29:21

in 1935.

29:24

The story of Brother 12 has remained

29:26

an object of fascination for the last

29:28

century. Much of the interest

29:30

revolves around a cache of gold that

29:32

he was supposed to have hidden away, though

29:35

so far, all the treasure hunters

29:37

have come up empty-handed.

29:39

But to me, what

29:40

I find so fascinating about Brother 12 is

29:43

how strangely modern his story is.

29:45

You can find the vestiges of theosophical

29:48

thought everywhere in modern Western culture,

29:50

from yoga to wicca and everything

29:53

else in between. And the way

29:55

in which Brother 12 combined Eastern

29:57

spirituality with anti-Semitism,

30:00

and religious bigotry feels reminiscent

30:03

of the way many wellness influencers

30:06

eventually go on to become QAnon

30:08

conspiracists. There's still debate

30:11

as to whether Brother 12 actually thought

30:13

of himself as a reincarnated God

30:15

or if he was simply a grifter,

30:17

but I have to wonder, does it even

30:19

matter? I think that there were times

30:22

when he truly believed.

30:24

He believed that he heard voices. He truly

30:27

believed he had something to offer these people

30:30

to wrench them from this horrible

30:32

life, but I think his

30:35

lecherousness, he was a womanizer and

30:38

he was greedy and manipulative

30:41

and perhaps a little imbalanced,

30:45

aren't we all?

30:53

The story of Brother 12 still

30:55

fascinates and even frightens some

30:57

people in and around Anaimo, and

31:00

the families of people who lived through

31:02

his short, strange commune are

31:04

still around. Bill Miner

31:06

remembers one conversation he had when

31:08

he visited Dacorsi. He'd run into

31:11

some long-time residents, and they

31:13

had a story to tell him.

31:15

They'd been in California and coincidentally

31:17

they'd been on a dock in San Francisco

31:19

and they were just chatting with someone

31:21

that was there. The person

31:23

just got around to asking them where they're from and

31:25

they said, well, from Anaimo, they go,

31:28

oh, did you ever know about the Brother 12? He

31:30

says, of course. They said, well, I

31:32

was a child. My

31:35

parents brought me to Dacorsi. We

31:38

weren't there that long, but we were there about a year.

31:41

The person went, wow, so did

31:44

you ever give that much thought? What was that

31:46

like? And they said, you know, for

31:49

me, I really enjoyed

31:51

the experience. I loved the farm

31:53

animals and, you know, we

31:55

had all this freedom that we never had back

31:58

home.

31:59

It

32:01

was great. I've

32:03

always meant to go back and just nostalgically,

32:05

you know, have a look around. And

32:08

then they said, but you know, my

32:10

brother and sister, I guess

32:12

they had a different experience because they won't even

32:14

talk about it.

32:28

He cast powers the world's

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best spot. Here's

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the show that we recommend.

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last moments of life, nobody

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33:49

That's your episode of Commons. If

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33:57

This episode relied on work done by Justine

33:59

Brown. Bill Miner, John Oliphant,

34:02

and many others. If you want to get in touch

34:04

with us, you can tweet us at commonspod.

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You can also email me, arsheyatcanadalan.com.

34:11

This episode was produced by me, Noor

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