Pubdate: Sun, 08 Jan 2006
Source: Toronto Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2006, Canoe Limited Partnership.
Contact:  http://torontosun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/457
Author: Thane Burnett
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)

PASS THE POLICY, MAN

Election results tell us the collective decision of a nation. But in 
the results, and the din and clamour of a campaign leading to the 
vote, it's often the voices of individual Canadians that are left out 
of the debate. Leading up to the Jan. 23 federal election, Toronto 
Sun columnist Thane Burnett is travelling the country, to gauge the 
pulse of ordinary and extraordinary Canadians alike.

HAMILTON -- Inside this temple, church and state have always mixed.

In fact, they've long relaxed -- sometimes even nude -- and passed 
around a joint.

I am beyond the purple door of the Church of the Universe.

Call in advance, because the bell doesn't work, and church officials 
have to take down the many barriers that have thwarted recent 
break-ins. It's the price of religious freedom when your particular 
sacrament is cannabis.

We are inside the temple -- what was once the waiting area of a 
tattoo parlour on a tough stretch of Steel Town's Barton St. -- and 
church elders are preaching the wisdom of voting the Liberals back into office.

A cultural curiosity or not, these men spend more time considering 
politics and the laws we all live under more than do many voters.

Son of former MP

Mirrors are stacked against one wall, reflecting their views on 
everything from national unity to global nudity.

The large display windows onto the street have been blocked by white 
Styrofoam insulation. From the knob of a nearby door, motion 
detectors dangle like leftover holiday decorations.

A small upright organ is the only real hint of a traditional place of worship.

Rev. Brother Michael Baldasaro is passing a shared smoke to the 
church's founder, 73-year-old Walter Tucker, the son of a -- 50 years 
ago -- Saskatchewan Liberal MP and appeals court justice. The two 
friends are breathing back in the glory days of the Church of the Universe.

Tucker is a slight, quick man with an elfish, bearded face torn from 
the pages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth.

His smiling eyes, tucked under a hemp-woven hat, could carry the 
front of a birthday card.

Tired of a seasonal life as an electrician, he started this church in 
1969. It was born at a water-filled quarry in Wellington County, 
which he named Clearwater Abbey.

His religion draws on everything from a variation of the Golden Rule 
- -- do not hurt yourself or anyone else -- to a grab-bag of 
inspirations, including pagan holidays, the Knights Templar, 
Desiderata and even Canada Day. But most of all, it deeply and 
constantly draws on their sacrament -- pot.

"I remember 1,000 naked bodies -- it was beautiful," recalls 
Baldasaro of the start of the church.

Not everyone looks back so fondly. The days of Clearwater Abbey -- 
the Woodstock of Canada, these men will tell you -- were sometimes a 
controversial affair, with biker parties, disputes with police and 
reportedly the discovery of a corpse on the vast property in the mid-'70s.

The church later moved to an abandoned foundry in Guelph but, like 
Clearwater Abbey, members were given a push out by local officials 
who could not see beyond the smoke.

Now the aging church hippies bide their time here -- when they're not 
on the campaign trail or in court. Tucker and Baldasaro have spent 
more years challenging laws or fighting busts than most lawyers have 
spent wearing socks.

Their names are associated with some interesting, even obscure, case 
law, including what's legally needed to kick someone out of a shopping mall.

They will again go to court in November over a pot bust here more 
than a year ago. Police came with a battering ram. Tucker said he'd 
open any door, if the men asked politely.

Baldasaro, who, at 56 years old, looks like a larger and younger 
version of his mentor, ran in the last federal election. He can't 
remember just how many votes he ended up with, but it was enough to 
have him now running, again, for the mayor's chair in Hamilton.

Federally, the two men will vote Liberal come the 23rd.

The NDP is ineffective and the Conservatives can't be trusted, the 
brothers reason. They point to everything from Conservative prime 
minister John Diefenbaker's dismantling of the Avro Arrow to the 
conception of the GST under the Tory government of Brian Mulroney in 1991.

"(The Conservatives) would just put more police on the streets ... 
that wouldn't solve our gun problem," Tucker says.

'A lack of opportunity'

"(They) have to understand where the violence is coming from -- a 
lack of opportunity and respect (for young people)."

Baldasaro chimes in: "We now have super jails but not super schools."

They know the public isn't interested in the pot laws this election. 
An average person would have to be gunned down in Toronto or 
Vancouver to find themselves in the election headlines, Tucker complains.

They wish the marijuana possession laws would have long been retired 
by now, and they look back with fondness to three years ago when pot 
laws were unclear and, for a short time, largely unenforced in this country.

"I only know that the laws on marijuana will not be changed in the 
next five years if we vote Conservative," says Tucker. "They're 
draconian," he adds as he clips his roach clip back on to his leather vest.

Baldasaro had hoped the years since 1969 would have seen their 
particular sacrament available to everyone who wanted it. That their 
stoned temple would have moved out beyond the many locks and onto the 
streets by now.

Which is why, the cheerful elders of the Church of the Universe are 
somewhat pessimistic about the future, beyond the coming election.

They believe we are on a slow slide into becoming Americans. That 
we're losing ourselves in habits far more threatening than pot. That 
we were once individuals and romantic free thinkers, but are now 
becoming sheep.

He once met with a police chief who proudly displayed a small copy of 
Rodin's The Thinker in his office yet apparently had no clue who the 
artist was who created it.

"If we want to remain Canadian, we'll vote Liberal," Baldasaro tells 
me as we walk through the many rooms and levels of this unusual sanctuary.

"Otherwise, they'll soon have to stuff a Canadian to remember what we 
looked like."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman