The World of Uncle Bill

Marylie Roy, 17, appeared amply qualified to enter the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She was a high school graduate and had an IQ rating of 137 (in the top 2%). But last week the frail, bright girl pondered bitter news. Not only is she unqualified for U.B.C., but if she wants to continue her education, she must start over again in the tenth grade.

Marylie is the first graduate of Canadian Temple Collegiate School to seek university admission, and the results are not surprising. A school in name only, Temple Collegiate (70 students) taught Marylie such weird humbug as 1) meals must never be served on blue plates because the color affects the food, 2) teachers wear beards as antennas to receive the vibrations of the universe, 3) it is useless to learn anything from books because "you can always look it up," 4) two and two make four-plus (plus being "the experience the numbers go through").

"Abundant Life." This balderdash was devised by Temple Collegiate's proprietor, William Franklyn Wolsey, 56, who calls himself Archbishop John I of Vancouver. Born in Saskatchewan, where he quit school after the sixth grade, the bearded divine once served two years in a Milwaukee jail for abandoning his four children, later beat a rap for embezzlement. Wolsey's degree as a "biopsychologist" comes from Taylor University of Biopsycho-Dynamic Science, a Chattanooga diploma mill. After serving in the Canadian army during World War II, he was "ordained" in London as a "Christian minister" by a former waiter at the Savoy Hotel.

For 16 years in Vancouver, "His Grace, the Most Reverend Monsignor" Wolsey has operated a ramshackle edifice called the "Temple of the More Abundant Life." For Wolsey, the abundant life has been worth an estimated $1,500,000. Sources: a tithe on the faithful, and a supply of pretyped wills for the signatures of elderly women. When anyone threatens desertion, the "Master of This Age" simply thunders: "If you leave, you goddamned fool, both of your children will be dead within a month."

To set up his school, Wolsey bought a former Roman Catholic seminary outside Vancouver, where as "the living Christ" he performs marriages, buries the dead, and prescribes medical treatment, e.g., keep newborn babies in a dark room with a small green light. The school's teachings are imparted by three apostles, one of them a former logger, who train the young in such arts as standing on their index fingers and making valentines for "Uncle Bill" Wolsey. The archbishop himself handles a course in sex education.

"Fantastic Situation." All of this was reported last summer in a blistering expose by the Vancouver Sun. But British Columbia's minister of education, Leslie Peterson, said he could not act unless parents complained that Temple Collegiate's students were not getting a "proper education." The parents did not complain.

Last week the case of Marylie Roy shocked British Columbia. "An educational tragedy," fumed one U.B.C. official. "A fantastic situation," said a legislator, who called for stiffer laws to police private schools, force Temple Collegiate out of business. Said disillusioned Marylie Roy : "I thought Uncle Bill was the leader of the world, and everything his teachers said was right."

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