Joseph John Westaway

Joseph John Westaway was the oldest son of Roger Dart Westaway.  The following information was received from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Ottawa, found in the RCMP Quarterly of July 1960:
 
 

Ex-Constable Gave Away Fortune

                An item in one of Vancouver's dailies last spring concerning the death of an 88 year old millionaire who allegedly gave away his whole fortune of $1,500,000 (Canadian) will undoubtedly be of interest to old-time members of the Mounted Police.
            Joseph John Westaway, who died in Vancouver April 12, was head of a little-known religious society apparently called the John Westaway Society with headquarters in the West Coast metropolis.
            Joseph John Westaway, as a lad of 22, engaged in the North-West Mounted Police at Charlottetown, P.E.I., March 21, 1900, was sent west and posted to Battleford, NWT.  His regimental number was 3507.  He remained in his old 'C' Division until June 6, 1903, when he purchased his discharge.
            Not much is known of his activities until the early years of World War II when he was in Calgary, Alta., as the head of the 'I Am' movement, which incidentally at this time was receiving considerable publicity in the US.  Foundation was supposed to have began there in 1930.
            By 1950, Westaway was in Vancouver and apparently one of the leaders of the Independence Party of Canada, and two years later he became the head of a religious cult there known as 'The Society of Christ Healing and Teaching."  Around this time, he purchased an attractively large home on Granville Street, to be his headquarters, of the sum of $25,000.
            Members of the sect, all vegetarians, are opposed to doctors and medicines and believe in mental healing.  To varying degrees, they relinquish all worldly possessions.  Its founder, after leaving the Force, studied medicine and law but was unimpressed.  He then went into business, lumbering, mining, and real estate, and before he was 30, had amassed his fortune.

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