The High Life: Part 1

Brother Michael missed it by 860 days. Brother Walter, by 2365. Though they would have been overjoyed at legalization, who knows how they would have viewed the commercialization of their holy sacrament in the years that have passed?

With nearly 90 licenced cannabis retailers in Hamilton, it is safe to say our market is saturated. Indeed, a common colloquialism around town goes something like this: a few years ago, there was a Tim Horton’s on every street corner in Hamilton. Now, there’s a Tim’s, dispensary, and vape store on every corner.

We’re just two days one day out from 4/20 - a cannabis enthusiast’s high holy day. Given this momentous occasion, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the state of weed in Hamilton. But any discussion about marijuana in Hamilton is woefully incomplete without a look at the city’s High Priests of Weed: Walter Tucker and Michael Baldasaro. Their Church of the Universe was the source of controversy and bemusement as it evolved from a front for open drug use into a vehicle for anti-prohibition advocacy and democratic engagement. Over some 50 years, the pair and their church captivated Hamiltonians and people around the country, with Baldasaro’s many runs for public office further intensifying the spotlight on the pot-smoking naturists who could easily be spotted around town in their brightly coloured knit bucket hats.

So on this 4/20’s eve eve (lol now it’s just 4/20 eve), I present part one of a two part look at cannabis in Hamilton. This week, we’ll be looking at the Church of the Universe and how Tucker and Baldasaro came to impact this city in a truly profound way.

Next week, we’ll consider the state of cannabis retailing in Hamilton right now. Using provincial data and a little mapping, I will run a little analysis on where cannabis retailers are located and if our local marijuana market is a little…over baked.

But first, let’s go to church.

The Assembly of ‘69

Chapter 1: The Rise and Fall of Clearwater Abbey

Walter Tucker came from an ambitious family.

His father, Walter Sr., was a lawyer who settled in northern Saskatchewan just a few short years after the province was created. He allied himself with the Liberal Party machine in the province and, by 36, was a Member of Parliament. He rose slowly in Ottawa, spending 10 years as a backbencher before being handed the consolation prize of a parliamentary assistant’s position to the Minister of Veteran’s Affairs after the war. Realizing he likely had no where to go on Parliament Hill, he entered the race to replace Saskatchewan Liberal Party leader William Patterson, who had led his party to a dramatic defeat in the province’s 1944 election. That was the election in which the Liberals lost to the young socialist trailblazer Tommy Douglas and his CCF. Tucker became party leader and immediately positioned the Saskatchewan Liberals as the only party willing to defend capitalism.1 This rightward shift failed, and Tucker could do little more than heckle Douglas and his CCF as they plowed forward, laying the foundations of our system of modern universal healthcare. After losing seats in the 1952 provincial election, he slunk back to Ottawa, serving for five more years before being swept out of office in the Diefenbaker sweep of 1958. In 1963, he was once again rewarded for his public service, this time with a judge’s position on the superior trial court of Saskatchewan, serving there until he was 75.

His daughter was equally ambitious, becoming one of the first practicing female lawyers in Canada. She entered the federal bureaucracy, jumping from department to ministry to organization before retiring to Florida. When she passed away in 2010, her obituary detailed her lengthy career, but omitted the names of two of her rebellious brothers.

One of those brothers was Walter Jr.

***

The oldest of the boys in the Tucker family, Walter had the principles of commitment and duty drilled into him from a young age by his politician father and strict Mennonite school teacher mother, Hertha. Most of the children took these lessons to heart; seven of the Tucker children became professionals, working as lawyers, teachers, accountants, and nurses.

But not Walter Jr. He dropped out of school young and, in his 20’s, turned to crime to make ends meet. One disastrous night, he held up a craps game, but was sloppy in his methods. He was quickly arrested and served a brief stint in jail. After his release, he made his way to Ottawa, got married, and enlisted in the military. But old habits die hard, and Tucker was arrested again, this time for stealing a car. After his second stint in jail, he knew he needed a fresh start. So, in 1960, he packed up his family and made his way to a place at the end of Lake Ontario where the bustling steel mills always seemed to be hiring.

But Tucker was not the sort of person who could be content just to punch in for his job as a Dofasco electrician and then trudge back home to the wife and kids on Proctor Boulevard, day in and day out. His was a restless spirit, always looking for adventure and mischief.

Only a couple of years after arriving in Hamilton, Tucker connected with some folks who spoke of a seemingly magical place - an abandoned quarry - up on the border of Flamborough and Puslinch. After mining stopped on the site, nearby streams fed cool, fresh water into the pit, creating a growing, swimmable, unique lake surrounded by pristine, untamed southern Ontario wilderness.

Tucker made a trip up the Highway 6 to check it out. From the moment he set foot on the property, he was in love. He would later call the place a “paradise”, close enough to the city to be easily accessed while also being secluded enough to allow people to do as they pleased. It didn’t take long for him to forge a deep, spiritual connection to the place.

It was never quite clear who the owner of the site was, but Tucker entered into a verbal arrangement with a man claiming to hold the title. Apparently the agreement allowed Tucker to set up a home, use and care for the property, and stay there as long as he wanted.

The rural Puslinch property wasn’t what Tucker’s wife had in mind, so the pair separated and Tucker began to seek out the company of others interested in an off-grid, unstructured life where nudity was encouraged and marijuana was abundant.

Shortly after arriving on the property, Tucker was visited by a Bible-toting missionary. Being the counterculture hippy he was, he initially ran the man off the property. But the Christian’s persistence paid off and the two eventually sat down for a chat. By Tucker’s own admission, he was converted by the end of their conversation.

The missionary could not have expected what came next.

Rather than join the flock of a conventional branch of Christianity, Tucker set off to create a new church - one that held space for free expression, complete acceptance, and ample weed.

On August 9, 1969, Tucker’s beliefs coalesced into the “Assembly of the Church of the Universe”. His rural Puslinch home would become “Clearwater Abbey”.

Clearwater Abbey was intended as a sanctuary. It soon attracted people intrigued by Tucker’s eclectic philosophy. He began inviting marijuana-aficionados from all over to join him at the Abbey and incorporated naturism into his religious philosophy. One of the signature events at Clearwater was the “Nude Olympics”, which drew plenty of people interested in an alternative lifestyle.

It all harkened back to a more radical time of free love and anti-establishment enthusiasm. There was a reason the group often referred to themselves as The Assembly of ‘69.

***

It was during that Golden Age at Clearwater that Tucker decided to get back into the family business. In 1974, Tucker registered to run for parliament as an independent in the riding of Wellington, which included Puslinch, Beverley, and Wentworth. There aren’t many details about his campaign, but, on election day, he placed a respectable fourth with 1.5% of the vote, beating candidates from the Communist, Libertarian, and Marxist-Leninist parties.

Tucker’s candidacy didn’t mean the Church was cleaning up its act. Indeed, it seemed like the party had just gotten started up at Clearwater. The Abbey’s remote location and Tucker’s fondness for marijuana attracted all sorts. But it wasn’t just hippies and kids looking for a good time. Bikers and drug runners frequented the property, and brought with them a spirit of violence that punctuated the otherwise peaceful oasis Tucker was trying to cultivate.

That reality came crashing into Tucker’s world when, on February 1, 1975, he and his son discovered a decomposing, burned, dismembered body on the property. The police would later say that the body showed the signs of a biker-style execution. The case remains cold.

One year later, a workplace injury would start a former bulldozer operator down a path toward Tucker that would change the Church of the Universe and our community forever.

***

Michael Baldasaro was, in all but the markings on his birth certificate, a Hamiltonian through-and-through. Though he wasn’t born in the city, he was in Hamilton long before he could walk.

There’s some debate over where he was actually born. All early media reports indicated he was born on Manitoulin Island. But, after his father’s passing, a more complicated story arose.

His father, Wallace (or “Wally” as he preferred) was a devout Catholic and construction worker. When Wally was discharged from the military after World War II, he made his way to Manitoulin for a job. There, he met a priest and shared with him a concern: he and his wife, Diana, were unable to have children. The priest made some inquiries and connected the couple with someone in Sudbury who was unable to take care of their newborn baby boy. In Michael’s telling, as soon as Diana laid eyes on him, she was in love, and they adopted him as soon as they could. After Wally’s contract on Manitoulin finished, the family packed up and moved to Hamilton. Not long after, Wally founded Baldasaro & MacGregor General Contractors. The firm earned a reputation for quality work and, in the 1950’s, was selected as one of the groups who would build the Kenilworth Access.

Wally Baldasaro was a strong, upstanding member of the community who was never cruel or judgmental at home. As Michael Baldasaro put it, he always led by example. He was guided by his faith and a devotion to his work.

His son initially tried to follow his father’s example. After leaving Delta High School, Baldasaro worked at the steel plants, did some odd jobs, and eventually found work in construction around the city. He had a serious workplace accident in 1967, but managed to keep working until 1976, when another accident - a massive head injury - made it impossible for him to continue working in the trades.

Not long after that, Baldasaro became acquainted with Tucker, who introduced him to his church of marijuana. Baldasaro’s father was mortified, saying that his focus on weed prevented him from “making a lot of money” in construction. He prayed daily for his son to return to the Catholic Church. But there was no turning back.

Walter Tucker and Michael Baldasaro were set to become Hamilton’s dynamic duo of the dank.

***

As the 1970’s gave way to the 1980’s, the core group at Clearwater had expanded. There was Tucker, Tucker’s new wife Jo-Anne, and Baldasaro. One of Tucker’s brothers - William - briefly joined the church (and was similarly omitted from his sister’s obituary). Peter Blacklock jumped on board too. Blacklock was a former biker who spent time in jail after an armed robbery in 1964. Tucker wasn’t one to judge, given his own past. Blacklock was one of those to whom Tucker bestowed a “ministerial appointment”, allowing members to become ministers of the church in their own right and establish branches if they so chose. Branches of the church were loosely supervised and, by all accounts, just meant establishing a reliable place from which weed could be dealt.

That brought trouble. Though Tucker and Baldasaro were plenty capable of getting into their own trouble.

Baldasaro was sentenced to six months in jail in 1980 after the police found a pound of marijuana in his van. The next year, the Tucker brothers got into a scuffle with the police and refused to leave the scene of a highway accident. That was overturned in 1982, but their problems were only beginning.

***

Clearwater Abbey was becoming an issue. The kindly old man who had let Tucker camp out on the property in 1969 didn’t hold the title for the land. Steetley Industries, a pit mining company in the Dundas/Flamborough/Waterloo area did. They mostly tolerated Tucker but, when he withheld rent after a dispute, Steetley served Tucker with an eviction notice.

And then the court battles began. For years, Tucker fought Steetley in court, often unable to back up the verbal and handshake agreements he had made over the years, but more than happy to play the legal game. Tucker dug into legal texts, found obscure regulations and loopholes, and became a better defence for himself than anyone called to the bar at that time could have been. Though he may have strayed far from his familial roots, there were glimpses of his father and sister in his budding legal career.

Where there are lawyers, politicians can’t be too far behind.

It isn’t clear who thought up the idea first. Maybe Tucker was still riding the high from his 1974 run for office. Maybe someone picked up on the fact that Baldasaro had a disarming charisma that almost made some of his more outlandish ideas seem…normal. Either way, politics was back on the table for Baldasaro and Tucker. The pair managed to convince the Libertarian Party of Canada to nominate them as two of their 72 candidates across Canada for the 1984 federal election. Baldasaro faced off in Hamilton West against towering figures in the city’s political scene: Liberal Stan Hudecki, Tory Peter Peterson, and rock steady Communist Bob Mann. Tucker ran as their candidate in Guelph (which had absorbed the Wellington riding he had contested a decade prior). On election day, Tucker came in dead last with 0.67% of the vote, 29 ballots behind a candidate of the Rhinoceros Party. Baldasaro performed only slightly better, beating Mann by 143 votes and capturing fourth place. Their candidacies showed them that standing for office gives you one hell of a platform, and engaging in democracy through candidacy soon became as closely associated to the church as marijuana and nudity was.

Meanwhile, the legal action at Clearwater persisted. And, frankly, Steetley didn’t need the headache. It was a disused site that had become a hippy commune and they had other ventures to worry about. So when the Hamilton Conservation Authority (HCA) came knocking, asking to purchase the land to preserve the important waterways that ran through and adjacent to the Abbey, Steetley agreed. The HCA had one condition: get rid of the permahigh nudists of the Church of the Universe.

So in 1986, the police, decked out in tactical gear and prepared for a fight, descended on Clearwater, only to be greeted by Walter and Jo-Anne Tucker, and Michael Baldasaro, stark raving nude. They were dragged off the property and told to never come back.

Tucker’s utopia had been taken over by the state. Clearwater was no more.

***

The pair didn’t give up the fight, but had relocated with a few other church members to Baldasaro’s official residence: a semi-detached house on Wentworth Street North, sandwiched between the CN rail tracks and Shaw Street. The home became Baldasaro’s branch of the Church of the Universe, which he called the “North Point Missions of God”. More than a church, the home became a legal help centre, with church affiliated-marijuana users and others who had run-ins with the law over their dealing, possessing, or smoking cannabis popping in for advice on how to manage the court system and stints in the Barton Street Detention Centre.

That’s where Tucker came up with the idea for the church’s institute for higher education: the University of the Universe. If a church member defended their own case in court, they earned a “Master’s degree”. The only way to earn a PhD from the University of the Universe was to have a case reach appeals with the Supreme Court (which, I can say from experience, might actually be easier than the conventional method). Even the higher-ups in the church benefited from this newfound focus on legal scholarship; Baldasaro was arrested in October 1987 and charged with trafficking marijuana, but was able to stay out of detention as he compiled his case.

Sometime in 1987, the pair were introduced to a 35-year-old Dofasco worker named Daniel Morgan. While Morgan was originally from Niagara Falls, by the late 80’s, he was living on the east Mountain with his wife. In April of ‘87, Hamilton police arrested Morgan. The details get muddy, but, in addition to a series of homophobic charges such as “buggery” and “gross indecency”, Morgan was charged with a host of sexual assault offences and, of importance to the church, having hash oil in his home.

Tucker and Baldasaro jumped to Morgan’s defence, seeing that their expertise could help with the charges relating to hash. They helped whittle down the charges and keep the police off Morgan’s back while he fully embraced the church. The pair had another convert, who would soon become one of their most well-known ministers…for all the wrong reasons.

***

As the church’s legal issues persisted, their interest in electoral politics grew. Tucker and Baldasaro launched legal action against the city to stop an agreement between the Ti-Cats and the municipality, instead demanding that the team be “community owned”. This legal action was launched in the lead up to their dual candidacies in 1988: Tucker contested Hamilton West as an independent in the federal election while Baldasaro made his debut as a mayoral candidate. Tucker’s campaign - which would mark his final run for office - performed poorly; he still managed to beat Communist candidate Bill Thompson, but only earned 0.41% of the vote, falling far behind fourth-place finisher, Barry Mombourquette of the Christian Heritage Party, who earned just over 2% of the vote for one of the fledgling Christian Nationalist party’s best ever results.2

Tucker’s result might have been modest, but Baldasaro’s wasn’t. In a stroke of luck, Baldasaro was the only person to step up and challenge incumbent mayor Bob Morrow. With nowhere else for the “anti-Bob” vote to go, it went to Baldasaro, who earned over 7,500 votes and captured 9% of the popular vote. Speaking with the Spec on election night, Baldasaro was doubly prescient: “I won’t quit. Other things may come up - other positions…No matter what happens, they’re going to have to free the tree of life.”3

The beginning of Baldasaro’s local celebrity status was also the beginning of a long, dark period for the Church that would end in accusations, jail time, and murder.

Chapter 2: Big Trouble on Little Wentworth Street North

The 1990’s were not kind to the Church of the Universe. On November 9, 1990, Baldasaro was arrested again, this time for possessing and dealing hash. This wasn’t just a local affair; the RCMP set up stings to entrap Baldasaro and they were the ones to take him down that November. The burst into the Wentworth Street North home and ransacked the place looking for drugs and weapons.

Baldasaro’s arrest came just weeks after Peter Blacklock - the former biker who became one of the church’s earliest missionaries - sold a pound of weed and an illegal .38-calibre handgun to an undercover RCMP officer. Despite Blacklock’s claims that he left the church in 1984, he maintained an address with the church and was dealing from his own branch - the New Life Mission of God - which also just so happened to be on Wentworth Street North. The RCMP got to work building their case against Blacklock and arrested him in 1991.

That was the year things started getting really bad for the church.

A few days before Halloween, 1991, Terrence Dermot Pyne and his roommate, Stephen Longboat, were at their home near Bronte Creek. Pyne had been made a minister in the Church of the Universe, though was not discriminating in the substances he used. By police accounts after the fact, an argument broke out between the two men over a parking space. The verbal altercation escalated until the two were out front the home, brawling. Pyne produced a knife and stabbed Longboat four times, killing his roommate and drawing even more police attention to the unconventional “church” tied to so many drug dealers.

The murder cast a pall on an already dark municipal election in 1991. While the media attempted to poke fun at Baldasaro’s second run for mayor (the Spec headline about his run was “Pot-puffing candidate could be a spoiler”), the atmosphere in the city was bleak. The recession was dragging on, local aldermen were being threatened by members of the public, and, in late October, a distraught Hungarian immigrant self-immolated in the lobby of city hall, setting off a panic about public safety and security.

Amidst all the panic and worry, Baldasaro’s 1991 candidacy barely registered. The most coverage he got on election night came in the form of disgust from the spouse of another fringe mayoral candidate - 30-year-old independent steelworker Bill Jones. The Spec called Jones “The Invisible Man” for his subdued campaign: he skipped all-candidates debates, only distributed half of the 25,000 flyers he had printed, and put 13 of the 200 signs he had made on his own front lawn.

Even if Bill Jones’s campaign was quiet, his wife, Sue, provided plenty of opinions to the paper’s StreetBeat writer, Paul Wilson. As the results were coming in, Sue told Wilson:

Indeed, Sue’s commentary made it seem like she was the one who convinced Bill to run, in large part because of her disgust toward Baldasaro.

But Baldasaro wasn’t the only Church of the Universe candidate on the ballot. Tucker and Baldasaro’s young acolyte, Daniel Morgan, stepped up to run for alderman in Ward 6. Morgan’s campaign was right from the Church of the Universe playbook: a little populism (holding a referendum on the Red Hill Valley Expressway) and a little marijuana advocacy (creating municipal infrastructure to process weed into fuel - likely where Sue Jones’s “drive it” comment came from).5 There was one more part of his campaign that made it a true Church of the Universe campaign: Morgan placed last with only 191 votes, as one-term incumbent Tom Jackson and newcomer Bob Charters (then still working as the executive director of the decidedly more mainstream Christian group Youth for Christ) took the ward in a deeply conservative direction.

Despite their losses, Tucker and Baldasaro managed to keep themselves in local political news. In 1992, the pair took an ad out in the Spec to help Mayor Bob Morrow with a little problem. Sometime during the summer, Morrow had “lost” the chain of office, the overly ornate symbolic chain that harkens back to old English mayoral traditions. Morrow was unable to say where it had gone, only speculating that it was taken from his office or car. Plenty of salacious rumours abounded (ask a well-informed local where they think it went and you’ll get a whole array of juicy stories…my favourite involves it being at the bottom of Hamilton Harbour), but Baldasaro and Tucker made an earnest appeal for its return. Though the city ordered a replacement chain that August, Baldasaro cheekily told reporters that, if the original chain showed up, “we could either save $8,000 or have two mayors…There's enough work in this city for two.”6 He doubtless had a name in mind when speculating about a co-mayor.

By 1993, the church was in a holding pattern. The legal cases against members dragged on, Tucker and Baldasaro kept collecting trespass notices after sneaking back onto the Clearwater Abbey property, and the police kept a close watch on their every move.

Then along came a SoCred spider.

***

It is difficult to tell if John Long was merely a businessman who despised the state or was a devious conman who thought too highly of himself. Either way, by the early 90’s, he was in deep.

In business, Long threw himself at anything that seemed like it could make him money. He invented composting systems, bought disused industrial properties at a bargain, and tried to run a dump truck assembly plant. It was the latter venture that landed Long in Guelph's Wellington Detention Centre in 1991 after he made it a point of not paying $8,000 in fines levied against him for, among other things, operating a dangerous paint system and failing to provide hot and cold running water for an employee.

But Long was a kind of renaissance man who would not be limited to just business. No, Long had political aspirations that were as eclectic as his business ventures. He became deeply involved in the Social Credit (SoCred) movement, running for the party in the Kitchener/Cambridge/Waterloo region a few times in the 1970’s, even as the organization was taken over at the provincial level by neo-Nazis, including Paul Fromm.

Long wasn’t discerning about his party of choice, as he reached out to the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives to see if he could seek their nominations in those same elections as well. When his SoCred candidacies didn’t work out, he joined the Liberals and, somehow, managed to become a delegate to their 1984 leadership convention. Someone caught on when he began recruiting New Democrats and independents to join the party in a hackneyed scheme to run a joint candidate between both parties. He was expelled from the Liberals, launched a disastrous campaign for Mayor of Cambridge, then tried (and failed) to seek the PC nomination in Cambridge in 1988.

His next big venture was seeking the leadership of the federal Progressive Conservatives in 1993. His days of aisle-hopping caught up with him and, during his leadership announcement, told gathered Tories that he was excited to be running for the Liberal leadership.7 That little embarrassment aside, the PCs rejected him for his strange political past. Undeterred, he joined a fringe SoCred movement and ran as their candidate in Guelph-Wellington before jumping to the Reform Party, which quickly expelled him. Then it was another fringe SoCred movement - this one led by world’s most perennial candidate John Turmel - before seeking the leadership of the Tories again, then the Canadian Alliance leadership, then trying to seek the PC nomination in Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound in 2000. His last electoral venture came in 2002, when he got papers in order to create a new political party in Ontario. Those papers were never filed.

But let’s rewind a little to the time before his involvement with John Turmel.

In 1989, Long stumbled upon an opportunity. The former International Malleable Iron Company (IMICO) factory in the heart of Guelph had been abandoned. In operation from 1912/1913, the hulking industrial building had been closed down and its last owner, Ian Carver, had fled to the United States when he found out creditors were coming for him. It isn’t entirely clear how Long and Carver linked up, but, in August of 1989, the two struck a deal: Carver would sell Long the plant for $1 and be rid of his troublesome debts.

The community was furious. After the plant shut down, experts studied the site and realized it was rife with extremely toxic chemicals. Chromium, zinc, lead, calcium, and benzine were all beyond safe levels at IMICO. All of these, according to a University of Guelph researcher, were leaching into the ground water. When Carver first skipped town, no level of government or bank wanted to take control of it for fear of being saddled with the clean up costs, which were estimated to be in the range of $6 million - over 3 times the value of the property. This would have worked to the community’s benefit; if the plant was considered an “orphan site”, the federal government would have stepped in to provide money for a clean up. But when Long bought the plant, he stopped that process.

Long didn’t have a plan for the site. He was busy with his political career and picking up the pieces after his short time in prison for his unethical workplace practices. When he opened up a copy of the newspaper in 1993, he read a fascinating story about a bearded, marijuana-smoking hippy who had been fighting the government over his displacement from a nudist paradise called Clearwater Abbey. He was entranced. And so he picked up the phone and made a call to the Church of the Universe.

On New Year’s Eve, 1993, Long gifted the IMICO plant to the Church of the Universe, showing solidarity with a fellow crusader against government tyranny and, helpfully, offloading a property that was beginning to cause problems.

Problems or not, Tucker and his wife moved up to the plant in early 1994. He named his new digs “Hempire Village”. He planned a sprawling hippy commune on the site.

But there would be no peace for the Church of the Universe just yet.

***

If they had known what the future held, they may not have been so flamboyant. But, then again, the Church of the Universe was never really an organization that could “tone it down”.

Still, things seemed positive as they entered 1994. They had a new commune on the go in Guelph, their members were once again gearing up for an election campaign, and the 1990 charges against the Tuckers and Baldasaro were dropped when, through Walter’s self-educated legal training, he discovered the police messed up. Turns out, the police had a search warrant prepared for 329 Wentworth Street North - Baldasaro’s North Point Missions of God. But, when they rocked up, they entered the attached dwelling at 327 Wentworth Street North. While both buildings were rented by the Church of the Universe, the warrant said nothing about 327. Thanks to the mistake, a judge found the group not guilty and dismissed the charges.

The Church of the Universe was feeling giddy. So Baldasaro marched down to city hall to register for another mayoral run, this time running on a plan to legalize both marijuana and prostitution, along with his usual populist policy proposals.

Nobody expected that Hamilton’s 1994 municipal election would provide any real surprises. Every alderman opted to run for re-election, except for Ward 1’s Terry Cooke, who was seeking the post of Hamilton-Wentworth Regional Chairman. After Bob Morrow trounced Ward 3 alderman Brian Hinkley for the mayor’s chair in 1991, no significant challengers stepped up, and it seemed like Baldasaro might perform well.

Daniel Morgan, the church’s Ward 6 candidate had registered to run in Ward 3, facing off against popular incumbents Bernie Morelli and Don Drury. He revived part of his 1991 campaign, again pushing for hemp to be used as fuel, though he added a plank about putting a dome over the stadium. The church members were all ready to shake things up, bringing their message of love and weed to Hamiltonians across the city.

Then came October 19, 1994.

***

While other aldermanic candidates were likely knocking on doors or attending community meetings, it was safe to assume that Morgan put most of his energy into performing his church-related duties, supplying the sacrament to a mellowed flock.

Around a quarter to two in the afternoon, Morgan’s 19-year-old son Henry and step-son Duane went looking for their father. Things seemed unusually quiet at the church compound on Wentworth North.

When they climbed the stairs to Morgan’s apartment, they found out why. Entering his unit, they saw Morgan, bound with his hands behind his back, dead. Though they didn’t know it at the time, he had beaten to death. When the killers were done, they placed a towel over his body. The Ward 3 aldermanic candidate was dead at age 42.

Police had few clues, aside from some blood at the scene and a pair of burned out cars found at 4:30 AM the next morning near Mount Nemo in Burlington. In an interesting coincidence, the spot where the cars were found was almost due east - a 20 minute drive - from the former Clearwater Abbey. In the aftermath of Morgan’s death, his family tried to shift the conversation. “The Church of the Universe got a lot out of Danny and we don't want them to use his death as a plot to promote marijuana,” his brother John told the Spec.8

The church didn’t need to use Morgan’s death for that; a few days later, Baldasaro was sentenced to a year in jail for trafficking. He managed to launch an appeal and bail himself out, but a few weeks after that, he was found guilty again, this time for dealing hash.

Morgan’s death hung over the church, casting bitter shadows on their otherwise peaceful message. Tucker may have had his encounters with bikers, and one of their ministers may have murdered his roommate, but it always seemed like the church’s core message - do not hurt yourself and do not hurt anyone else - would prevail. That seemed naïve after Morgan was killed.

Days after the election (in which Baldasaro earned 4.4% of the vote and came within 78 votes of again placing second against Morrow), the Spec ran a two-page expose on the Church of the Universe.

The profiles detailed Tucker’s troubled past, his embrace of violent bikers, the Blacklock arrest and Longboat murder. Reporters spoke with disillusioned members who spoke of brainwashing and a creepy religious “sect”. And then it veered into darker territory.

The Spec spoke with two women - Brenda Smith and Brenda Davies - about their involvement with the church. Smith was Baldasaro’s former partner and the mother of his child. As she told the Spec, she was an addict whose addictions were ignored or encouraged by church members. She admitted to using crack cocaine in the Wentworth Street North house for years and that church members engaged in rampant sexual exploitation. Smith took issue with the fees charged by Tucker for his legal help, saying they were exploitative.

That was a complaint echoed by Davies, who was initially introduced to the church through Tucker’s help with a custody matter. There, she became acquainted with Morgan, and the two eventually started a relationship. After a few years in an apartment on Steven Street (from which Morgan launched his second aldermanic campaign), the pair split mere weeks before his murder. “I watched them [the church] suck every last cent he had,” she told the Spec.9

Morgan’s brother, Charles, challenged this, telling the Spec that the church helped him quit drinking and work to help other addicts. It became apparent that Morgan’s involvement in the church divided his family as much as it had done to Tucker’s.

When pressed by the Spec, Tucker admitted to some unsavoury details. He said that oral sex was deeply important to the church and admitted to, at different times in the past few years, using cocaine, morphine, and heroin. But he did so in his own, unique way. “Someone would come in and say 'Would you like to share this with me' and because I respected them, I would,” he told the Spec.10 He defended his legal fees, saying that the money the church raised went toward filing papers and defending clients.

The accusations of the Brendas never resulted in charges, but the bad press lowered the Church of the Universe’s standing in the community.

***

It took two years before the Hamilton police found Morgan’s killers. DNA left at the scene and on the burned out cars in Burlington, a tip from an informant, and, after a search warrant was executed, pieces of church property all led them to the pair who murdered the minister and gave them a clear picture of what happened that day at 329 Wentworth Street North.

A relative of Brenda Davies, William Davies, was not doing well. He was on disability after a workplace injury left his arm in constant pain. It isn’t clear when or how, but at some point, Davies had a conversation with his friend, Christopher Bank, about Brenda’s odd, marijuana priest ex-partner. It wasn’t simply a social chat about an oddball in the community. They had designs on his stash. All this makes sense when one considers that both Davies and Bank were hardly upstanding citizens; Davies would eventually go away for another theft, while Bank had previously spent time in jail for his role in someone’s death (though the sentence was only for “criminal negligence causing death”).

After Brenda and Morgan split, the two started cooking up a concrete plan. Put simply, they thought it would be easy to sneak into his apartment, grab some weed, and make a break for it.

On October 19, 1994, they attempted to do just that. They tried to be quiet, but the state of the apartment and the two men’s lumbering awoke Morgan. He saw what was going on and tried to fight back. The pair were able to subdue him and tie him up before going back to their search. But Morgan was a fighter. He broke free and grabbed a nearby guitar. Swinging wildly, he smashed it over Bank’s head. Davies jumped on his back and pinned him to the ground, hog-tying him as he struggled.

Bank was mad. This was supposed to be easy. Knocking over a hippy pot priest shouldn’t have been this hard. So he started stomping. And kicking. And stomping. And kicking. And he didn’t stop.

Davies stumbled back and watched as Bank kicked Morgan to death. The court records don’t go into detail, but it is hard not to imagine being in the room as Bank and Davies realize what they’ve done. The eerie stillness. The skunky smell in the air. The clatter from the train tracks just a few meters away. The low din of the Industrial Sector. The feeling of the room closing in.

They needed to move fast. They grabbed whatever they could, snatching Morgan’s computer, microwave, and some money. Just to make it look less targeted, they quickly broke into Jo-Anne Tucker’s apartment and grabbed more computers and a church medallion.

They bolted down the stairs, found Morgan’s beater of an ‘86 Honda Civic, and split up, one taking Morgan’s car, the other in the car they came in. They ditched the cars and Davies quickly made his way back to Hamilton to be with Brenda. Around 3:00 PM, Brenda and William Davies were back at 329 Wentworth Street North, making a statement to police. William acted as though nothing happened.

Less than two years later, William Davies would be speaking to police again. He secured a deal that ensured he would not be charged in Morgan’s murder. All he had to do was help with the case against Bank. In September of 1996, Davies was sentenced to four years for the robbery. Four months later, Bank was sentenced to 11 years, having been convicted of the robbery and the lesser charge of manslaughter. The Crown had asked for around 8 years, but the judge considered Bank’s past record and the startling violence of the murder. Morgan’s family said 11 wasn’t nearly enough.

There’s no record of the two following their sentencing.

Morgan’s family mostly stayed out of the news as well. All except for Morgan’s daughter, Lynne. Around the time police were closing in on her father’s killer, they were also interviewing her in relation to another murder. Lynne was married to a small-time criminal who was friends with the prime suspect in the murder of a Hamiltonian icon: scrap dealer Morris Lax. It is thanks to Lax’s shoddy business practices and poor management of his harbourfront properties that we have Bayfront Park as it exists today. When questioning Lynne, the police tried to appeal to her sense of justice after her father’s murder. But they eventually found her unreliable. They chalked it up to the trauma of her father’s murder clouding her judgement. Lax’s murder remains unsolved.

***

Less than a year after Morgan was murdered, a fire broke out at Baldasaro’s North Point Missions of God on Wentworth North. The Hamilton Fire Department suspected arson, but Tucker and other church members said they had no idea who could have started the fire. After a brief pilgrimage to the site, the church packed up Baldasaro’s remaining belongings, and spirited him up to Hempire Village.

It was the start of a multi-year sabbatical that took Baldasaro away from the city he loved for his own good.

In January of 1997, after years of battling the City of Guelph over the contamination at the site and unpaid taxes the church assumed responsibility for after being gifted the IMICO plant and turning it into Hempire Village, the group was finally evicted. A series of devastating fires on the site didn’t help the situation, as each blaze released more and more toxins into the air, water, and soil. The church seemed content to stay as long as they were allowed, poisons and all. But Guelph expropriated the troublesome factory and the Church of the Universe was out in the cold.

Long was waiting with another contaminated industrial site for Tucker and Baldasaro. This time, he moved the group into the abandoned Kanmet foundry in Cambridge, though only as tenants, rather than owners. At the time, Baldasaro even said the unthinkable: that he was considering a move to Cambridge.

But Cambridge City Council wasn’t willing to let the Church of the Universe cause the same problems there as they did in Guelph. The local government made a deal with Long: we’ll forgive the back taxes on the property and pay you $58,000 for the foundry, on the condition that you evict the hippies on Halloween night, 1998.

Long felt bad and started working out a deal to buy a half acre in east Hamilton on which the church could settle. Baldasaro and Tucker weren’t interested in that plan and tried to work out a deal where they’d take over a long-shuddered school for “delinquent girls” in Galt. Upsettingly, the school was the Grandview Training School for Girls, long the subject of controversy for the rampant abuse at the facility. Worse still, Brenda Smith, Baldasaro’s former partner and anti-Church of the Universe advocate, was a survivor of Grandview.

It is possible Baldasaro and Tucker’s focus on the tri-cities area was because of a feeling of dejection when it came to Hamilton. Their friend had been murdered, their electoral efforts had gone nowhere, and the regional conservation authority had taken away their Abbey. Adding to their woes, just before their eviction from Cambridge in 1998, the Hamilton Conservation Authority drew up plans to fill in the quarry-turned-lake at the beloved Clearwater Abbey. Just because the Church of the Universe had been evicted didn’t mean that people stopped using the spot for swimming. After a summer heat wave caused traffic issues and worries about people using the unsupervised pit for swimming.

The HCA had concerns about safety, traffic, and water quality. But Tucker dismissed all that outright. When contacted by Paul Wilson at the Spec, he said the decision was “Sheer stupidity…If the conservation authority can't handle that land, it should be turned back to the church.”11

After they were finally exiled from Cambridge, the Church didn’t end up in downtown Cambridge or in an abandoned school in Galt or back at Clearwater.

They ended up at 544 Barton Street East, across from today’s 541 Eatery and Exchange. Tucker and Baldasaro made their way back to Hamilton, where they always belonged. The church was giving Hamilton another chance.

Chapter 3: Barton ‘til the end

Something changed. They seemed to have put the troubles of the past behind them. Sure, they were still being hounded by the police, but Tucker and Baldasaro weren’t focused on the murders and bad press and shady businessmen.

Well, the latter isn’t strictly true. Long ended up in jail for what the Record called “an unspecified number of infractions of the Highway Traffic Act”. In March, 1999, he was back in court, this time pleading guilty to failing to file any tax returns from 1990 to 1995. Because he was broke, the court sentenced him to 219 days in jail to be served concurrently with the sentence he was already serving. As the Kitchener-Waterloo paper noted, “Tucker and Baldasaro sat quietly in court in Cambridge on Tuesday to provide moral support.”12

After Long was behind bars, the pair set their sights on getting back in the news.

In June of 1999, Tucker and Baldasaro marched down to city hall to present a new idea to the city’s parks and recreation committee: a nude beach at Van Wagner’s. Since Toronto had just initiated a pilot project to legalize nude bathing at the historically-queer Hanlan’s Point, Tucker and Baldasaro wanted Hamilton to follow suit(less) and designate the northern portion of Hamilton Beach a clothing-optional zone. They offered to clean it up themselves, maintain it, and promote it through their networks. As the Spec reported, councillors simply watched their presentation, stone-faced, and, in the end, voted to “receive” it, rather than act on it. Ward 3 councillor Bernie Morelli, thinking he was being clever, said that the committee saw no need for such a beach, but that “I did ask them respectfully to keep their clothes on for the presentation and they complied.”13

A few weeks later, they planned a 30th anniversary party to celebrate the Church of the Universe. And where else would they hold it but at Clearwater Abbey? The Conservation Authority knew of their plans and indicated they would do what was necessary to keep church members from entering the ecologically sensitive area. So Baldasaro and Tucker wrote to Premier Mike Harris a week before the planned party, asking him to “Help us prevent bloodshed, injury or death…Please call off your hounds of war.”14

The party was subdued. Rather than Harris’s “hounds of war”, a few local police and conservation officials were on hand to watch the event. Tucker and Baldasaro, along with three other church members, were issued trespass tickets, which sparked a testy exchange between Tucker and then-HCA chair Russ Powers. “You deny people who want to worship here, who have to sneak onto the property and hide when your men come…As soon as you go away today, we'll be back. We will never stop coming back and we'll confront you in the courts because what you're doing is a violation of our rights,” Tucker told Powers, who, during the exchange, kept his arms crossed, glowering at the troublesome nudists.15

In between fights with the Conservation Authority over Clearwater, Baldasaro picked his political career back up in earnest. In early April, 2000, he made headlines by declaring himself a candidate for the leadership of the ultraconservative Canadian Alliance. At first glance, there was little in common between the Baldasaro and the Alliance, save for the former’s penchant for populism. His campaign was going to focus on marijuana legalization, promoting corporal punishment in schools (“…they've been taking drugs [Prozac] to control a child all day instead of the teacher's boot like I used to get?”), and abolishing political parties. Before he could register, though, he needed the party to waive the $25,000 nomination fee, telling the Spec: “Impecuniosity must not be made a barrier to serving our country.”16

The Canadian Alliance dismissed Baldasaro’s request. But it didn’t matter; there were two other elections he could focus on instead and, as luck would have it, simultaneously. The Marijuana Party didn’t mind Baldasaro’s flirtation with the hard right and nominated him to run for parliament in Hamilton East. At the same time, having missed the 1997 mayoral election, he was able to put his name forward to be the first mayor of the New City of Hamilton. His platform was full of populism and that trademark Baldasaro charm: 2 hour free parking on major streets, building a waterfront rec centre, holding more town halls, lowering taxes, and (of course), “Growing, processing & distributing medicinal marijuana.”

His defeat in the mayoral election came first, earning just 1.1% of the vote and placing 5th behind Johnny Munro, Fred Eisenberger, Bob Morrow, and the winner, former Ancaster Mayor Bob Wade. Two weeks later, another defeat in Hamilton East. Sheila Copps sailed to victory with Baldasaro in a respectable 5th place again. This time, at least he beat his old Communist rival Bob Mann, earning 3 times the vote than the stalwart Stalinist.

But Baldasaro’s defeat ended up earning the church a little money. While wandering around Eastgate Square two days before the election, Baldasaro and Tucker were roughed up by mall security. A local author was in the mall, signing copies of their new book, which Baldasaro and Tucker were both buying. As they were completing their purchase, mall security informed the pair they were trespassing and began shaking Tucker. Baldasaro was then thrown to the floor and handcuffed. Security detained the pair for a half hour before throwing them off the property. The pair quickly launched a $3 million lawsuit against Cadillac Fairview, the mall’s owner. It took two years, but a court actually agreed with them…in part. Tucker was awarded $15,000 after a jury agreed he was assaulted by security guards. Baldasaro, on the other hand, was deemed to have been “campaigning” in the mall, meaning the arrest was considered reasonable.

As with everything associated with the Church of the Universe, there were ups and downs. While Tucker earned a cool $15,000, the loss that year was far greater. The destruction of Clearwater Abbey was slated to move forward, though the HCA certainly wouldn’t have framed it that way. The area was to be returned to a natural wetland and the water in the quarry was to be reduced from six metres to one in an effort to protect water quality and deter swimmers. The plan to create a marsh for wetland creatures and water preservation was vigourously opposed by Tucker, who said it was the equivalent of desecrating the Mona Lisa.

“We will do everything we can to prevent the desecration of our holy place. It's our holy place. Where else will we go? We worship God in the nude. We will continue to go there and worship in the nude,” he told the Spec.17

As Baldasaro was gearing up for a 2003 mayoral run, he and Tucker were robbed in their home during a deal gone bad. Tucker tried to stop the robbery, but relented when one of the suspects fired a gun. Police later said it was likely just a pellet gun. That encounter did nothing to stop Baldasaro’s 5th mayoral run.

Ten years prior, a robbery like that would have seen skepticism, outrage, and accusations leveled at the Church of the Universe. But, in 2003, the tone had shifted. Yes, there was a criminal element around marijuana, but Tucker and Baldasaro were seen as friendly local oddball celebrities, not the biker priests they had been portrayed as in the past.

Case in point: the cheeky, yet earnest, profile of Baldasaro in the Spec before the 2003 election. The paper outlined his plans to play Elvis music in the mayor’s office, encourage public nudity, pay voters $25 to cast ballots, and, obviously, legalize marijuana. “People are tired, they want change…I have change. I'm the only one who's different,” he told the Spec.18

Baldasaro didn’t win that election. He improved on his vote total - picking up 1.85% - but slipped to 6th place. He didn’t win both elections he contested the next year, either. His 2004 federal run was without a party label and he only picked up 345 votes. His candidacy in the Ward 2 vacancy created when Andrea Horwath jumped to provincial politics was his worst showing ever, earning just 52 votes downtown and doing little to stop Bob Bratina’s ascension to office.

His 2006 mayoral candidacy - his sixth run for the office - was capped off with tragedy. Days after the election (in which he placed fourth with a near-record of 3.6% of the vote), his 92-year-old father passed away. Baldasaro gave a eulogy for Wally, speaking about how his father, until his dying day, prayed for his son to rejoin the Catholic faith and give up the weed. Baldasaro made it clear that, while he respected his father, he had his own path to blaze. At the service held at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Stoney Creek, Baldasaro told the assembled crowd how proud he was of his father, saying “I wish every kid had a father like him.”19

***

It would be four years before Baldasaro ran for office again. Not that he wasn’t busy. There were court appearances relating to years-old RCMP raids on church property, sentencing hearings, and more public advocacy. In 2007, Tucker and Baldasaro launched the Committee to Save the Centre Mall in a effort to stop the conversion of the Ottawa North/Barton East mall into a power centre. That effort was, ultimately, unsuccessful.

There were a few years during which Tucker and Baldasaro were out of the spotlight. But 2010 was an election year, and they weren’t willing to forego that chance to make themselves known again.

For a short while after nominations opened, Baldasaro was the only registered candidate for mayor. While the city’s punditry was throwing around names of candidates they expected to see and hoped would run - Ancaster councillor Lloyd Ferguson, east mountain councillor Tom Jackson, brewery CEO Teresa Cascioli (whom the city’s right-wing establishment practically begged to run prior to the shock decision by Lakeport owner InBev to close the Burlington Street East brewery that spring) - Baldasaro stood alone. Spec columnist Andrew Dreschel even speculated that the October election could be a repeat of 1988: Baldasaro vs. an incumbent mayor, alone together on the ballot.

Of course, it was Bob Bratina who eventually led the pack of 15 mayoral contenders. But Baldasaro led the “also rans”, placing 4th with nearly 3,000 votes.

That was a campaign nearly bookended with stays in jail. Tucker was released from Barton Street in October of 2009. Baldasaro left the jail in Penetanguishene right before nominations opened. During the campaign, Canada’s supreme court dismissed an appeal of an earlier ruling sentencing Tucker to a year and Baldasaro to two years for selling weed to an undercover RCMP officer.

The appeals dragged on long enough for Baldasaro to launch two more campaigns for office, running for MP in Hamilton Centre with the Marijuana Party in 2011 and as an independent candidate for MPP in the same riding in the same year. Baldasaro beat an array of candidates from the right and left, earning 268 votes in his only provincial contest. It was a result that he could have been proud of. A result he could have celebrated with Tucker.

Because it was the beginning of the end.

***

In late April of 2012, Tucker was rushed to the General Hospital. Through his 79 years, he had experienced more than most could ever hope to. But he was hard on his body. Jail was hard on his body. The robberies and scuffles and traumas were hard on his body. And there’s only so much the body can take.

At 5:00 PM on Thursday, April 26, 2012, Walter Tucker’s heart stopped beating and he slipped away.

The usually boisterous Church of the Universe was subdued in their response. Their founder and one of the pillars of their institution was gone. They released a short statement that evening that read, in part: “Reverend Tucker would have been pleased that he just fell asleep, quietly with no pain…He recently told us he would be happy to pass away, anytime, because he loved what he had accomplished in life and lived a peaceful and contented existence among loving friends and family. He will be greatly missed.”20

There were no press events. No comments from Baldasaro. Just quiet.

It was almost a year before Baldasaro spoke to the media in any real capacity again, and that was just to speak out against synthetic weed being sold at corner stores in the city.

A sign that things were returning to normal was Baldasaro’s early registration for the city’s 2014 mayoral campaign. Facing off against heavyweights Fred Eisenberger, Brad Clark, and Brian McHattie, Baldasaro ran one of his most coherent and plausible campaigns for mayor ever.

His unfortunately titled op-ed in the Spec (“I am for austerity and accountability”) outlined a mostly reasonable platform: end urban sprawl, charge developers more, legislate absentee landlords and give tenants more rights, improve the HSR, fill potholes, reduce police funding, cut the mayoral salary, and improve the city’s alleys. And then, for good measure, some less reasonable platform points, like licencing cyclists, hold a referendum on water fluoridation, and allow parents to cast ballots for their children in local elections.

For his more polished run, he came in a respectable fourth, earning more than the bottom six candidates combined. He beat Ejaz Butt and Crystal Lavigne, both candidates deemed by local commentators to be “serious-adjacent”.

And, more importantly, he earned far more votes than I did in my disastrous run for Wards One and Two HWDSB trustee. Over 2.5 times more than I earned, actually. It was also one of the only times we met in person, exchanging polite hellos at the Durand Neighbourhood Association all-candidates meeting. I voted for McHattie (obviously), but on a ranked ballot, I’d have placed him respectably high.

The following fall, he was back on the ballot, once again carrying the Marijuana Party’s banner in Hamilton Centre. Amid the Liberal surge, he lost half his 2011 support, placing 5th with 348 votes.

Even during that campaign, there were signs he was slowing down. He was in pain, dealing with an enlarged prostate that caused him considerable discomfort. Despite that, he still made time to appear in a local documentary about the Gibson and Landsdale neighbourhoods, providing his insights after a lifetime in the community.

But then, in 2016, he was diagnosed with cancer.

In a few short months, Baldasaro was gone. After a short stay in a hospice, Michael Baldasaro died in the early hours of the morning on Thursday, June 9, 2016 at age 67.

Reflecting on his impact on the city, Spec columnist Andrew Dreschel fondly remembered the number of times he tried to gift edibles to the Spec staff and how he earned both admonishment and admiration from a public that grew to look forward to his outlandish mayoral campaigns. He was a reliable protest vote, a hardened populist, and a committed servant of those in need.

Dreschel concluded his column with these words:

The king, indeed, was dead. Michael Baldasaro had left the building.

Epilogue: Small change

I got a job at McMaster’s student newspaper, The Silhouette, in 2010. As a news editor, it was my job to help select stories that we’d focus on and assign reporters to cover those events. Being the Hamiltonian I am, I insisted we do in-depth coverage of the 2010 municipal election. I attended Brian McHattie’s campaign launch, sent reporters to cover debates, and worked with other editors to profile the top mayoral candidates in the city.

My colleagues interviewed Bob Bratina and Larry Di Ianni. I opted to interview Fred Eisenberger who, through the campus Liberal club, was holding a “pints with Fred” event at the grad bar. I got approval from his campaign and joined the group, asking Fred a series of questions about his platform. I kept pausing to allow other attendees to participate, but they all sat awkwardly, either staring intently at the mayor or into their lagers. After long, uncomfortable pauses, I would ask more questions, earning ample side-eye from the mayor. At the end of the interview, Fred said something to the effect of “well, you just took up all of my time now, didn’t you?” It was cold and accusatory. I was taken aback and apologized, slinking off to the Sil offices in the basement of the student centre.

I met up with a good friend of mine - another editor at the paper - whom I had sent to interview Baldasaro. In contrast to my glum interaction with Fred, they were absolutely enthralled at Baldasaro’s charisma, his down-to-earth style, and his kind spirit. We ran all of the profiles and encouraged students to cast ballots for the candidate that most spoke to them.

In my first municipal ballot, I filled in the bubble beside Eisenberger’s name, not entirely happy with my choice. He was for LRT and modest change, but, I was mainly voting against Di Ianni and Bratina. His platform didn’t inspire, his messaging wasn’t exciting, and he had, you know, dressed me down for doing my job.

When I spoke with my friend from the paper after they cast a ballot, they proudly told me Baldasaro earned their vote after their positive chat. I was struck by how happy they were to have made that choice, contrasted with how unimpressed I was with mine. I had performed my civic duty with an eye to the least worst choice, even if that choice had humiliated me in front of a bunch of campus Liberals. They had done the same, but voted for the person who most impressed them.

Had Michael Baldasaro been given the chance to meet with each voter, one-on-one, his results would have been much better. I have no doubt that countless Hamiltonians would have been swayed to the cannabis cause by Brother Baldasaro, if they had only each had a half hour conversation with Hamilton’s high priest of pot.

***

At the beginning of this piece, I mentioned that Tucker and Baldasaro came to impact this city in a truly profound way.

It might be hard to see what that is from just a casual glance. Much of their physical legacy is gone. Clearwater Abbey is now the Fletcher Creek Ecological Preserve. There’s a small hiking trail, but no more Nude Olympics or naturist smokeouts under the stars. Both Hempire Village sites have changed considerably; the IMICO property in Guelph remains the source of controversy, with local residents pushing the province to clean it up and stop the flow of contaminants into the water and soil, while the former Kanmet Foundry in Cambridge is now a residential community with townhomes and condos.

327 and 329 Wentworth Street North were demolished after the fire in the mid 90’s, and the storefronts at 544 Barton Street East, where marijuana-emblazoned Canada flags once graced the front windows, appear vacant.

Few Church of the Universe ministers make the news these days. Barely any run for office. One of the exceptions is Kornelis Klevering, a Guelph-based political activist who ran for parliament in the Guelph riding four times from 2008 to 2019, three times with the Marijuana Party and once as an independent. Even then, Klevering hasn’t been identified with the church since the mid-1990’s and, during his most recent run for office, ran on an independent platform advocating for a global socialist response to the climate crisis, recognizing that there was no need for a specific “marijuana party” after legalization.

So what, then, was Tucker and Baldasaro’s impact on the city?

It isn’t necessarily something tangible. It isn’t a piece of legislation or a nude beach or a bridge or a public building or a specific policy we can point to. It’s something deeper than that.

Walter Tucker and Michael Baldasaro showed us that democracy isn’t a spectator sport.

Both men believed that, if you had something to contribute to the place you lived, if you had ideas about how to improve your surroundings, if you cared about your neighbours and your community and your place in our society, then it was your duty to participate in the system in whatever way made the most sense to you. For Tucker and Baldasaro, that meant putting themselves on the ballot to champion the rights of marijuana users, sex workers, people experiencing homelessness, and people in need. The people traditional politicians ignored or demonized. To them, politics meant campaigning for office on a platform you believed in. It meant delegating to council and committees, even if the elected officials sitting across from you laughed you out of the room. It meant being unapologetically you even if you stood for office.

The pair weren’t always prepared for their campaigns. Baldasaro’s proposals often required federal approval or, in some cases, changes to the constitution. His scattershot ideas crossed jurisdictional boundaries, his approach to campaigning was limited to random conversations and appearances at debates, and his campaign spending was often only in the tens of dollars.

And there’s no sugar coating their pasts. Tucker had a violent past and associated with violent people. Both had complicated relationships with partners and associates. Both men sometimes sought out publicity, even in inappropriate ways.

But they never shied away from who they were. And they held true to their beliefs until the very end. They sat down with an editor from a student paper and so impressed them with their earnestness and honesty and humanity that they earned their vote.

Tucker and Baldasaro reminded us, every election, that any person, big or small, could and should participate in our electoral democracy. We all have something to say. We all have perspectives. And we all need to take advantage of this system of government that gives anyone - even a pot-puffing, bucket hat-clad, unemployed nudist construction worker - a voice.

Those individual voices are gone, but the spirit still remains.

The Church of the Universe’s core teaching was simple: “Don't hurt yourself and Don't hurt anyone else!”

But Tucker and Baldasaro gave us another message (though not in so many words) that we should heed: This is your democracy. Use it to the fullest. And don’t let anyone, ever, try and stop you. Because it doesn’t matter who you are or what your interests may be. Your voice matters. You matter.

And for those who celebrate, Happy 4/20.22

For a look at the Church of the Universe’s website, check out these archives from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

Public LRT, coming Spring 2055(ish)

It should be no surprise that I’m ideologically opposed to privatizing public services. Important parts of our public infrastructure need to be in public hands because private entities focus on profit over service, every time. Maintaining public ownership of public assets allows us to make changes when needed, ensures democratic oversight, and provides residents some connection to the services on which they rely.

It was beyond disappointing to see council’s General Issues Committee vote in favour of a “compromise” motion advanced by Mayor Horwath and Ward 15 councillor Ted McMeekin that indicates the city’s preference for an arrangement that temporarily privatizes the operation of LRT with the option to bring it into public ownership after a moderately determined amount of time.

The GIC vote was to send a recommendation to Metrolinx, the provincial body that will have complete control over the system, rather than a direction that will necessarily be implemented. There’s the very, very slight possibility that Metrolinx will opt for public operation of the LRT, but there’s also the much larger possibility that Metrolinx will want the whole thing to be privately run in perpetuity.

Staff presented four different options that represented a sliding scale of privatization from 1 (the most private) to 4 (the most public). The initial push was to approve Option 2, which has the HSR or another public entity do fare enforcement and “customer relations”, while the bulk of the operation would be done privately.

Rather than go with any of those as presented, Horwath and McMeekin cooked up a “compromise” that would start off with Option 2 but, after 5 years, begin working on a plan to transfer operational power to a public entity at around the 10 year mark. This allows a future council to possibly extend that timeframe or abandon it altogether. As friend-of-the-newsletter Karl Andrus told the Spec, all this does is “kicks the can down the road.”23

The resulting vote was…wild. This is a one-off, so don’t read too much into it, but damn did this vote make some strange bedfellows. Two of the most passionate defenders of a public LRT? Brad Clark and Cameron Kroetsch. It’s like a Star Wars spin-off where Darth Vader and Han Solo team up to stop the Empire from outsourcing production of TIE fighters.

In the end, the motion passed 9 to 6, with Councillor Nann out for a medical issue.

Three things to note on this: first is how this further undermines the project, second is the mayor’s role in this, and third is the long-term outlook here.

Right off the bat, the optics around this have been terrible. JP Danko’s X/Twitter fights with union leaders and his strange, ideologically-grounded comments during the meeting (accusing presenters of misinformation) are just the most visible indication of the problem. Councillors should have sat back and considered the political math here. A segment of the population already hates LRT and are going to oppose it no matter how it is run. That segment is around 30% of the population, based on the vote totals earned by anti-LRT mayoral candidates in 2014 and 2018. Now, organized labour is threatening a boycott of the system. Progressives and environmentalists are worried about the impact of private operation on the efficiency and reliability of the system. So now we have around half the city’s population somewhere between militantly opposed to deeply skeptical before shovels are even in the ground. This whole decision reads like it was made by ideologically stubborn politicians, for ideologically stubborn politicians, in service of ideologically stubborn politicians.

This isn’t about me at all, but GIC passing this motion has done the unthinkable: it has made me ambivalent toward LRT. A few years ago, I would have gone to the ramparts to defend the system. But, now, it will be a struggle to get me back into it. I won’t actively oppose it, but my interest in the project has been cranked down from an 11/10 to a 2.5/10.

And what about the mayor? If Mayor Horwath voted for Option 2 as presented, that would be her way of signaling she is not running for a second term in 2026. The former leader of the provincial labour party can’t vote for what appears to be the privatization of a public service and then rely on her core base of supporters to back her up in a re-election campaign. Organized labour would throw all their energy into making the next two years hell and then doing everything they could to run a candidate against her. Because she’s so entirely associated with the NDP brand, she would lose her base and not be able to pick up any moderates or right-wingers who would otherwise be drawn to her newfound small government credentials. She’d place a distant third, or worse, in 2026 if that were the case.

If she mounted a vigourous defence of public transit, that would be the opening salvos in a re-election campaign and an attempt to recapture her image as the Steeltown Scrapper, ready to duke it out for the little guy. She’d be able to go back to labour and progressives, say she had finally got her footing, and was ready to be the mayor for working people.

But, as seems to be the case with the Horwath mayoralty, I can’t get a good read on what this compromise motion was about. She teamed up with McMeekin, a man who has been sleepwalking around the city trying to undermine confidence in the mayor’s leadership since the Lake Avenue South parking lot incident, to push a motion that kinda sorta maybe keeps the door open for public operation of the system eventually while still allowing a private company to swoop in and run part of our transit system.

Like, I know everything can’t be so obvious, but does it all have to be so opaque?

There’s a reason that left-wing commentator Nora Loreto’s response to Horwath’s motion and vote was simply: “Lmao Andrea Horwath sucks so hard.” Slightly less crass was the reply from the Hamilton and District Labour Council, which reminded Mayor Horwath, and councillors Craig Cassar and Esther Pauls, of their commitment to public LRT during the last municipal election. Safe to say it will take a long time to rebuild trust on this, if it can be rebuilt at all.

Regardless of Horwath’s (or anyone else’s) 2026 intentions, this motion gives us no closure. Hamiltonians have been waiting for LRT for 15-odd years. Construction won’t even start until 2025, possibly later. If we look to another Metrolinx project - the Eglinton Crosstown (Line 5) in Toronto - it was started in 2011 and will be fully complete by 2031. If, magically, LRT is started next year and they run into Line 5-style problems, we’re looking at a ribbon cutting in 2045.

When I’m 55 years old…

Even if LRT construction is wrapped up in 10 years, that’s still an opening date of 2035.

This decision passes the responsibility to, at minimum, two councils from now and, at worst, five councils from now. It is policy for another time. It is shirking responsibility now to allow another generation to pick up the slack.

Yes, the door has been left open for the eventual public operation of LRT. But leaving a door open for 20-odd years is unsettling. Not all is lost: there’s still time for council to change direction when it comes to another vote (it was only ratified at GIC, it now needs to move to council for full approval).

Then again, with Metrolinx in the driver’s seat, the most we can do is just suggest where we go. We made one bad call, but there’s still enough road for us to course correct. Whether the people driving the…uhhh…train care to listen is another matter.

Woof, what a clunky metaphor.

#WeNeedPublicLRT

Innovation in the encampment market

The Minister of Environment, Conservation, and Parks is in hot water after her office referred people at risk of homelessness to a private encampment run by a conspiracy-minded former Sunshine Girl who goes by “DIYQueen Asian Goddess”.

There’s a lot to unpack here. Like…a lot.

Back on April 5, InnisfilToday published a story about Barrie-Innisfil MPP and current Environment Minister Andrea Khanjin’s office directing residents in need toward a “for-profit homeless encampment” off Innisfil’s 25th Sideroad near Lake Simcoe. Evidently, the private encampment was already on InnisfilToday’s radar, as they had been tipped off by local residents about an ad on Kijiji saying interested people could, for $500, set up tent on a cottage property owned by Amparo Araneta. The ad indicated there was kitchen space, a washroom, an electrical hookup, and a beach nearby, but interested applicants needed to provide personal information and “confirmation they’re receiving Ontario Works”.24

Araneta is a character. Her X/Twitter (which is mildly NSFW) is a mishmash of beauty influencer content, girlboss hashtags, and references to her appearance in the Toronto Sun’s problematic “Sunshine Girl” segment back in 2000.

Let’s just get this out there right now: there is absolutely nothing wrong with modeling, posting any kind of consensually-derived photos of yourself on the internet (nude, seminude, or otherwise), or even engaging with “hustle culture” content on the web. I’m not a fan of the last one, but you do you and all that. All those aspects of her online persona would just be sidenotes, if not for what she does with her clout.

Araneta engages with odd things through these accounts and, all too often, tacks things onto her wellness/beauty content that signal a melding of worlds. She’s reposted a few COVID-19/anti-vaxx conspiracies, encouraged followers to “Check out Rebel News”, and has included hashtags on almost all of her posts directing people to her crypto scams, her private encampment gig, and the far-right Falun Gong cult (the group behind those creepy Shen Yun performances). These hashtags could be to “drive engagement”, but that’s still signaling what kind of engagement one might want online.

Araneta has been connected to some unsavoury business practices in the past. In 2018, the Better Business Bureau issued a press release warning business owners to “exercise caution” if contacted by “Your Local 411”, a company for which Araneta was listed as director. Your Local 411 would apparently call businesses in central Ontario, ask to confirm their contact information, and then send them an invoice for $499 saying that providing that confirmation amounted to a “verbal contract” to advertise with Your Local 411. When businesses would try to contest the invoice, Your Local 411 would say they could get out of the contract, but they’d have to pay for services already provided. If they didn’t pay, they would start getting collection notices from a fake collection agency tied to Your Local 411.

While Araneta was the “director”, the business was really run by her husband, Terry Croteau, a dual US/Canadian citizen. Croteau has actually pled guilty in 2006 to doing the exact same thing south of the border, and served 5 years and 3 months in prison. After being released, he moved to Canada and started up the same scam. To throw people off the scent of the scam, it seems like Araneta became the face of the company and, when law enforcement started closing in, Croteau started using a bunch of aliases. The whole scam was super illegal, so Croteau was sentenced to 30 months in prison and was handed a fine of $1.3 million last April.25

Araneta and Croteau own property on the Bruce Peninsula which, in 2020, was given approval for a “Trailer Agreement”, allowing the couple one year to keep and live in trailers on the property while a permanent structure was being built (thanks to an investigative Redditor for finding this, as well as posting some of the Your Local 411 stuff which I wish I would have found before doing the above research on it). Araneta’s LinkedIn, though, indicates she’s still “semi off grid” on the property and encourages “solo van women” to stay there with her. Disturbingly, she talks about “rescuing” women in need in language that can only be described as dehumanizing. Beyond that, there’s plenty of weird and uncomfortable things on her social media, like this post from her LinkedIn: “I also want to share my ideas and empower women to Minimalist and be successful in DIY sweat equity & Income properties.”

yikes.

When asked why her office was directing people toward Araneta’s secondary property, which she appears to be running as the “for-profit encampment”, MPP Khanjin indicated the referral was done in error and wouldn’t be happening again.

Jennifer van Gennip of the Barrie Homelessness and Housing Justice Network told InnifilToday that, while Araneta’s effort might have been “well-meaning”, there are serious issues about the lack of legal protection for anyone who might “rent” from her:

Given Araneta’s past with unethical and illegal business practices, it is safe to say that’s a fairly valid concern.

Of course, there’s also the broader concern about private, for-profit encampments. That just seems like a whole new level of bleak. But, as state institutions fail to provide social, affordable, and/or low-cost housing to people while simultaneously pulling supports from mental health care, social work, addictions treatment, physical health care, and community services, more and more people will start to experience homelessness. If inaction persists and more people realize they can start exploiting the situation, we might start seeing more private encampments, work camps, and other holding facilities on private land.

Pair this dystopic picture with Monday’s report from the CBC about how home prices are high and people are into that. As the article noted, “The Bank of Canada found that investors were responsible for 30 per cent of home purchases in the first three months of 2023.”27 Almost 1 in 3 home purchases were done by investors around this time last year. This is a two-fold problem: 1) people are, according to the article, “conditioned to see our homes as financial assets,” and 2) people realize they can make some money from this financialization by scooping up properties and renting them out at excessively high rates to cover all their costs and skim a little off the top. And now we’re in a position where the ownership costs of an average home eat up over 62% of a household’s income.

So get ready for more “innovative” solutions like for-profit encampments. Hell, they almost seem inevitable at this point, given the federal and provincial governments’ fixation on minor changes that don’t disrupt the cash flow to developers, real estate investors, and unethical landlords.

If all this doesn’t make more people question the fundamental building blocks of the system, then there really might not be any hope.

Cool facts for cool people

• Here’s a good meme from Victoria about rezoning.

• It’s been a long week, so sit back, relax, and enjoy the weekend!