It was a beautiful Saturday as the three of us made our way to the local Church of Scientology. Temperatures would hit 30 Celsius by 4:30pm and it was near that while we walked to the Scientology Event being held over 5 days, June 14th to June 18th.

It was not to be a picket that we went to, rather, it was to be an introduction to Scientology on the cult's terms. Shane had spoken to Deborah some days before and obtained permission for himself and two other new critics to accompany him. This was to be a low key affair and we had no intention of creating a fuss.

We met for lunch at a local food court before making our way to the Church. Located opposite the Edmonton Courthouse it is located in the central downtown core of edmonton.

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*NOTE* Please take notice of the Marijuana Party's HQ located directly to the org's left. LOL!

We headed off for our guided tour of the exhibit and picked up a lonely What is Scientology handout someone had accidentally disposed of onto the street. Must have been an accident that they did not take it home with them. :)

http://members.shaw.ca/xenu/kellyshane.jpg (I'm on the right. Nice to meet ya. Sorry about the forehead glare) http://members.shaw.ca/xenu/petershane.jpg (Peter is the other new critic. Picture posted with his permission)

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We then headed off to the org. The sidewalk had several kids passing out handouts and we gladly took one each, thanking them as we did so. There was a hallway headed down into the church and we walked down to where several people milled about and a guestbook sat on a table. As we entered, Andre Jurt spotted us as well as another unidentified person and they moved like a CFL wide receiver twisting away from a tackle and dropped from sight around a corner.

We signed the book, a door to our left with the exhibit and another to our right with juice and coffee and snacks.

Deborah, the local DSA approached us and hurried us outside. She asked us, to paraphrase, "What were we planning to do."

I explained that we had come to view the exhibit in a peaceful manner.

She seemed quite concerned that we not start trouble and looked only a little assuaged by our assurances that we were only there to view the exhibit. We agreed that no cameras were to be used inside (darn) and we held to our promises.

She told us Andre would be our guide and we waited for a little bit.

(Andre is c. OT V) He was a little nervous at first but was well spoken and honest in the sense that if he did not have a pat answer for us he would simply state that he did not know the answer. Andre was selected as Deborah stated that the regular guides were not suited for us. :-)

We viewed a huge picture of a massive bookcase which contained all of Hubbard's "Church Books" Andre seemed quite surprised when I pointed out the copy of Battlefield Earth prominently displayed in the picture.

He patiently explained the reactive mind to us and I found that my reading of Dianetics was quite thorough. It was an interesting test of my own personal study of Scientology and I was quite gratified, personally, to be one step ahead of Andre as he spoke to us. I asked quite a few rhetorical questions and got the answers I expected.

Now, on to the cans. There was an e-meter on display and I and Peter accepted the offer from the lady to participate. With a light grip I held the cans, palms upwards as she pinched me. Hard enough to hurt and watched as the meter spiked an inch or so. (I will be submitting my medical bills under critic health care rule 4, subsection 3b, under e-meter related pain sub-subsection 14r.) She then asked me to recall the incident and the meter spiked once again. Again, I recalled the pinch on request and the spike was gone.

As I held the cans and we chatted I tried different pressures applied with various individual fingers and combination of same. I found that I could duplicate the same 'spike' after a few tries. Same rate of increase and decrease. Doesn't really prove anything but it was quite interesting.

We went on from there, covering the basics of dianetics. It was fairly straight forward and Andre was taking particular care to go into great detail with us. I should note, that shortly after we began the tour a few groups of people were being escorted through the tour as well. Most were pretty well over-dressed for the weather and Shane picked up on this quite quickly. Well done Shane!

After a half hour, we pretty much had the tour to ourselves save for one drunk who was hurried through and a couple other suspect group of interested wogs.

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During the tour on ABLE and its 4 main sub-groups, I asked Andre about Narconon after he stated that the Purification Rundown was used to rid the body of physical toxins. I asked him how the mental side of addiction was covered since an 80% success rate was stated to us. I asked him if auditing was used in the care of the drug addicts and he stated that he did not know but could find out with a phone call. I forgot to follow up on this...

Previous to this there was a display in regards to psychiatry and it was quite disturbing to see the large pictures of prescription drugs and pictures pertaining to how they affect people.

I must point out that we did not push any of the debatable topics very hard. This was a time to be respectful and Andre was being as honest as he could under the constraints of Scientology. There were countless openings to interject a contrary fact to one stated but once again I felt that I had to hold back and be respectful. It was not that hard to do, after all us Canadians are so bloody polite!

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After two hours of tour it came to an end. I thanked Andre for his forthrightness in the context of the situation we and Scientology had put him in. We shook hands and went off for snacks in another room.

The only other thing of note was a juice dispenser in the shape of a two tiered fountain. It was quite cool looking and off to the side in a bare corner. I asked Deborah if I could take a picture of it and she refused even after I asked her politely once more and assured her that was the only one shot I would take. She refused and it was the one sour moment in an otherwise superfluous day.

Tory, if you read this, I recalled footage of you at the Boston org when you were asking a couple Scientologists to talk to you. You knew them for a long time. One fellow in particular at the org looked very familiar... short, squat, unkempt hair. He was giving a tour that even I noted looked fake and would shoot us many glances over the course of the 2 hours we were there. He looked quite unhappy with our presence.

Al Buttnor was nowhere to be seen even though he is in Edmonton and our visit was expected. I suspect that if there had been an incident, he would have made a quick appearance.

That's it. I got my feet wet and am even more certain now that the course I have chosen for myself is a valid one. Scientology may be monolithic and perhaps immovable but the people within the cult are not.

They are human beings too and if treated with decency perhaps they will listen to me when I show up with a picket sign and flyers next time.

If I can enlighten one person who may be on the edge of entering Scientology without knowing anything about it then I have achieved something. I watched the children in the org and pictured them receiving auditing, of knowing no other way than to look at non-scientologists as being without perfection, below them. If I were religious I would pray for them. Since I am not I will make every effort to let them know that critics are not the two headed beasts that they may have been told we are, we are simply people too, people who want to share some truth with them.

Kelly Woolsey

http://members.shaw.ca/xenu/churchshanekelly.jpg http://members.shaw.ca/xenu/churchshanepeter.jpg

And now for something completely different!!!! Cats!!!! And Dogs!!!!

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