August 11, 2002 - Keith Henson
The org got picketed again today. Chris Wood decided to give them one after reading about how dead the org was yesterday. The org was livelier today. He is doing a report that will either follow this one or this will follow Chris's report.
As usual I was 100 feet away on the far side of Yonge St, where I could watch out for Chris and he could see me.
No encounters with the police at all.
Scientology has not mastered "coffee tech." They have pots and such to brew, but then never seem to use it. First thing I saw after taking up my station was a sea org dude, mid 20, 5'11 or 6 feet, dark hair, glasses, black pants, keys hanging off the right pocket, white shirt, with shoulder boards, dark blue with two yellow stripes. He walked purposefully up Yonge St, crossed over and went into Starbucks.
How they buy Starbuck's coffee on sea org pay I don't know. From across the street I could tell Mario was out. More about Mario being traffic cop from Chris.
I was giving out "Parsonage" flyers today. Gave out about 130 of them, and several of the people who took them said they were going to call the number of the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation and complain about a non-religious, non-charity getting a tax break by calling an 8 story office building a "parsonage." The number is1-866-296-6722 if anyone wants to call and ask why a non-charity is getting a parsonage tax break on an 8-story office building.
A very high fraction of the people who pass by that location already know about the cult. One woman who had been to www.xenu.net was just boggled by it all. She was *so* pleased to see real minions of Xenu out picketing.
There were two scns who came by headed for the org. The first was a tall woman in her 30 (as a guess), long dark hair, slightly curly. She was wearing a blouse with a leaf design on it, and shorts. She broke in on me talking to some citizens and insisted they should ignore me, that I was full of shit. I asked her to say Xenu and of course she could not. An scn with a crew cut came by and warned me that I had to be back 100 meters when the actual order is 30 meters. It is kind of amusing. Being on the other side of the street from the org is actually a good idea since we get a chance to give flyers to *everyone* who walks on either side that stretch of Yonge St.
After an hour Chris and I took a break. Chris reported on his enturbulation, but will let him do that part of the report. After the break we put in another hour and a half or two hours.
The second part of the picket really hit pay dirt.
A guy came by who told me the most astonishing story of being a neighbour of the house at 451 Clinton St. where the Toronto staff used to live up to late December of last year. I use the term "staff" advisedly here. According to him, some new staff members from out of town showed up and sat on the porch for about two hours. It was during the day, but they about froze before someone from the org (ten minutes away) showed up to let them in. It seems they thawed out huddled over an electric heater for some time before everyone left for the org . . . and left the heater on.
After a while a bed or couch in the living room caught on fire. The fire department put out the fire with no more than a lot of smoke damage to the place and a hole burned in the floor. The neighbours told the fire marshal there were about 30 people living there . . . the fire marshal counted 47 beds being used! It's a fair sized house, but they were stacked at least 6 to a room.
The fire marshal found a couple of smoke detectors, but no batteries in them. No fire extinguishers. Of course once the situation in this house came to the attention of the fire marshal, there was no way they could stay there. All their stuff was dumped out in the street. The locals picked through it, but found very little of value. This person told us the house was still the way it was when the staff's meagre possessions were tossed out in the street because the landlord and the scns were in some kind of legal battle about who should pay for fixing the damage. The staff seems to have moved elsewhere, probably setting up something similar. I am frankly amazed that there are that many staff even counting family members in Toronto. Perhaps the sea org members are packed in with them.
Living near the staff berthing seems to have been like having a soap opera of Martians on your doorstep. At one point my informant said the landlord told him the org was at least 8 months behind in paying the $2000 a month rent, but it seems to be about impossible to evict people from a house in Canada. There were kids who were not in school, and in some cases were being kept up all night. The opinion of my informant was that a number of the staff are imports from Montreal or even France because a number of them didn't speak English.
This person expressed the opinion scns were extremely dangerous because they were equipped with supreme arrogance they could do anything no matter how much skill or technical education it took and they didn't have a clue about what they were doing. It was a long, involved, and fascinating conversation about 8 years of watching this zoo. One story was about this pile of stones they tried to get rid of by burying them. Turns out you can't do this in Toronto, so the inspectors force them to dig up the stones. They were left in a pile in the back yard.
After we called it a day, Chris and I just had to see this place. After buying a map we located it in the middle of the most confusing mess of one-way streets I have seen in ages. Sure enough, the place has not changed in the last 8 months, you can look in the front window and see the smoke damage and a chunk of plywood over what must be the hole in the floor. Chris took a picture. I might post it after I get this roll developed.
We managed to get a look at the back yard. You could not see stones for the 6-foot weeds coming up among heaps of junk.
A more interesting picket than most of them.
Keith Henson
PS, here is the map location of the former org staff house.