Canada is Cooler

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 666, 18 May 1929, Page 18

Canada is Cooler

\ aimee McPherson de- ; CIDES THAT A TOUR OF i DOMINION WOULD AGREE WITH HER HEALTH SOME EMBARRASSING QUESTIONS

■RS. AIMEE SEMPLE j McPherson has not I remained loug at the Angelus Temple in Los I Angeles. Apparently she I thinks it prudent to

place lierself speedily beyond tlie reach of those officers of the law who have already started to bring to book the Judge whom she is alleged to have bribed when she was in danger of being indicted for perjury (says “John j Blunt” of London). She prefers the , hospitality of the Union Jack to that of the Stars and Stripes, because stars and stripes are unpleasantly suggestive of prison badges and uniforms. Canada is her latest hunting ground. A great deal of the information which reached England from the United States about the McPherson scandal came from ministers of religion, the chief of whom was the Rev. Bob Schuler, the fighting Methodist parson of Los Angeles. We have already related how Aimee was “drowned,” how she really ! was not drowned at all but “kid- | napped,” treated to a buggy ride to a mysterious “shack” in Mexico from which she, with “supernatural aid,” escaped across a great stretch of desert, and was found at Agua Prieta, a border town. The authorities of Mexico and Calij fornia, together with scores of newspapermen, searched the desert in vain for the shack. Aimge’s arrival from a twenty-mile trek through thorn and scrub, with her slender shoes still sound, her silken hose untorn, her face and hands unscratched, while she herself was not even thirsty, was too big a miracle for most people to swallow. Witnesses sprang up who swore they had seen her in other places, and finally she was located as having stayed in a cottage at Carmel-by-the-Sea with a man named Kenneth Ormiston, a radio engineer formerly in charge of her Temple broadcasting station. When Ormiston was employed by Mrs. McPherson his wife threatened to sue him for divorce and name Aimee as co-respondent. Judge Asa Keyes, who was recently expelled from the American Bar, admitted having received money from Mrs. McPherson. Vital evidence, in the form of letters in Aimee’s handwriting, found in the Carmel cottage, disappeared mysteriously, and the investigations were smothered at a cost which only Aim£e herself knows. It is fortunate for England that Mrs. 1 McPherson found that British newspapers could not be bought, so that her fireworks turned into a series of damp squibs. Meanwhile, it is to be hoped that Canada will find as little use for Mrs. McPherson as we had. and that the hard-headed intelligence of the great Dominion will be proof against her blandishments. Mrs. Kennedy, the mother of Aimee McPherson, was originally a member of the Salvation Army. She emigrated from Scotland to Canada, where Aimee was born. Converted at the age of 17 by a travelling evangelist named Semple, Aimee married him, and started preaching herself. It was not, however, until later in life, when she added “healing” to “saving,” that her stock began to boom. An investigator who has attended many of her meetings in Los Angeles says that Aimee’s followers are mostly elderly people, disappointed with life, diseased, neurotic, unattractive, slaves of their biological deficiencies, pitiable dupes of a clever and unscrupulous woman.