Edward Arthur Wilson, aka Brother XII

Even though he’s been dead for almost a century, one of British Columbia’s most infamous con men is back in the news.

Edward Arthur Wilson, aka Brother XII, may be long gone but the legends of the religious cult he founded at Cedar-by-the-Sea (Cedar) and on DeCourcy and Cortez Islands in the 1920s, and of their tales of buried gold, black magic, slave labour, sadism, torture—even murder—live on.

The latest development is the advertised sale, for the second time in five years, of his Cortez Island acreage, described as his “headquarters”: 99.6 sylvan and waterfront acres for $2,795,000 CD.

Currently owned by press mogul David Black the historic property has been “getting lots of calls” according to Mark Lester of Colliers International. He attributes the widespread interest not just to the buoyant realty market but to the property’s exotic provenance.

I’ll leave the sales promotion to Mr. Lester (who needs no help from me, I’m sure) and tell you the fabulous story, in full, of the former professional mariner cum messiah who (mis)led his devoted and naive followers to a state of mental, physical and financial ruin. When he fled the country, just ahead of the police, leaving human and physical devastation in his wake, he and his whip-wielding mistress Madame Zee took with them a fortune in gold coins.

It’s the prospect that he didn’t have time to empty all his caches of their jars filled with $20 U.S. gold pieces that helps to keep his legend alive for many.

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Photo caption: In the 1920s, through his Aquarian Society, the spiky-bearded mystic Edward Arthur Wilson enriched himself at the expense of his deluded followers. —Dictionary of Canadian Biography photo