28              www.pgcitizen.ca | Saturday, March 27,  2010
lifestyles
Freemasonry builds on charity work, self improvement
The Canadian Press
  KITCHENER, Ont. — Raymond Daniels has never drunk blood from a skull, sacrificed a virgin or ridden a goat inside his lodge. Or so he says.
  As the top-ranking Freemason in Ontario, the retired Kitchener high-school teacher has heard just about every far-fetched accusation you can imagine: that Freemasons, one of the world’s largest “secret societies,” are devil worshippers, a Jewish front for world domination, and evil plotters who arranged the assassination of JFK.
  Yes, there are people who genuinely believe those things. Which means Daniels, the first grand master for Ontario’s 50,000 Freemasons to hail from Kitchener, spends a lot of his time dispelling the myths and conspiracy theories that have dogged his organization for centuries.
  Though Freemasons first built lodges in Galt and Kitchener some 150 years ago, the society still remains an obscure organization for
many non-members today. Daniels is trying to change that with a new openness for a group that was once very closed to outsiders.
  “Conspiracy theories sell more books than the truth,” Daniels said during a recent sit-down interview. “There are people who delight in calling us a cult ... but I’ve never attended a lodge ceremony where we sacrifice virgins or kill babies. I’m still waiting for that.”
  The truth about Freemasons may be far less exciting. What if they’re just a bunch of guys who are into brotherhood, non-satanic rituals, self-improvement and charity work?
  In its heyday in the 1960s, there were some 120,000 Freemasons in Ontario. Then, the Masons went into a long, slow decline where “no one joined anything,” Daniels said.
Today, there remain about 1,000 members in Waterloo Region.
  Daniels thinks things may finally be changing for the better. His organization inducted about 1,350 new members last year, most of them “disillusioned young men” who are “looking for something more” in their lives, he said. And they just christened a new Masonic lodge in Afghanistan, a sign that Freemasonry is growing in popularity among Canadian troops, he said.
  Though Freemasons went “underground” in the early part of the last century, Daniels said, it’s hardly a secret society anymore.
  “We’re in the phone book. I wear a ring. I have a decal on my car.
We have quite an extensive web page. We publish a magazine that anyone can see. Now, if that’s being secretive, we’re not very good at it,” he said.
  But that hasn’t stopped detractors, including religious fundamentalists, from accusing Freemasons of everything from conspiring with aliens to holding wild orgies
and occult rituals to secretly running the world - or trying to destroy it.
  Part of the conspiracy theories may be blamed on the number of important men in history who have been Freemasons. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Sir John A. Macdonald were all members. So was John Diefen-baker, and about a dozen premiers of Ontario. And so was Horatio Herbert Kitchener, the British war hero this city is named after.
  Even in the age of the Internet, Freemasonry still retains enough mystique to invite uninformed speculation. Lodges keep their doors closed to non-members, except for rare open houses, and windows are generally made of concrete, not glass. The organization places great importance on Egyptian symbols, secret passwords and hidden meanings. But even the secret Masonic handshake, once a way for Masons to identify themselves around the world, can be found in a quick Google search.
  Daniels, as grand master, carries his ceremonial clothes in a plain black briefcase. Inside, there’s a gold collar with entwined serpents and the North Star, attached to the Masonic symbol of a compass and ruler. There’s the “all-seeing” eye -yes, the same one you can find on the U.S. dollar bill - and an ornate lambskin apron decorated with lotuses, suns and pomegranate.
  Though few Freemasons actually work in stone anymore, the stonemason imagery at the centre of their organization still has meaning - the idea that like stone, the lessons of Freemasonry outlast all else.
  “As builders of character, we're trying to build lasting character in our members,” said Daniels, who was elected to a two-year term in 2009.
  He says Freemasonry has given him a good life. He joined his father’s Orillia lodge in 1959 and remained active during the 23 years he taught music and history at Eastwood Collegiate in Kitchener. In 1993, he became a worshipful master, or a Masonic teacher, and worked his way up the ranks.
DANIELS
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For S. Africa’s baboons, 2010 is a good year
The Associated Press
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JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Baboons, it seems, prefer pinot noir. They also like a nice chardonnay.
Largely undeterred by electric fences, hundreds of wild baboons in South Africa’s prized wine country are finding the vineyards of ripe, succulent grapes to be an “absolute bonanza,” said Justin O’Riain of the University of Cape Town.
Winemakers have resorted to using noisemakers and rubber snakes to try to drive the baboons off during harvest season.
“The poor baboons are driven to distraction,” said O’Riain, who works in the university’s Baboon Research Unit.
“As far as baboons are concerned, the combination of starch and sugar is very attractive - and that’s your basic grape,” he said.
Growers say the picky primates are partial to sweet pinot noir grapes, adding to the winemakers’ woe: Pinot noir sells for more than the average merlot or cabernet sauvignon.
“They choose the nicest bunches, and you will see the ones they leave on the ground. If you taste them, they are sour,” said Francois van Vuuren, farm manager at La Terra de Luc vineyards, 50 miles (80 kilometres) east of Cape Town. “They eat the sweetest ones and leave the rest.”
Baboons have raided South Africa’s vineyards in the past, but farmers say this year is worse than previous ones because the primates have lost their usual foraging areas due to wildfires and ongoing expansion of grape-growing areas.
Out of a 12-
ton harvest, 1,100 to 1,300 pounds (500 to 600 kilograms) go to waste at La Terra de Luc because of the baboons.
In the Constantia wine-producing area alone, up to $34,800 worth of the crop has been lost annually in previous years, according to the Baboon Research Unit.
One farm, La Petite Ferme, was hit particularly hard after fires in the Franschhoek wine-producing region devastated large swaths of land, burning up the baboons’ normal foraging areas. The primates then descended on its chardonnay crop, eating or destroying up to three tons of grapes.
La Petite Ferme usually produces 12 to 15 barrels of chardonnay a year, but this season only managed to produce three, said farm manager Mark Dendy-Young. “It was bad timing,” Dendy-Young said.
Sometimes the baboons even get an alcohol kick -by feasting on discarded grape skins that have fermented in the sun. After gobbling up the skins, the animals stumble around before sleeping it off in a shady spot.
During harvest season from January to March, winemakers put up serious front-line defences. Some try to scare off the baboons by blowing into horns called “vuvuzelas” that are often used by South Africa’s soccer fans.
Electric fencing often doesn’t work because baboons can dig underneath it or swing above it from trees to get to the vineyards, O’Riain said.
They also test the fence for weak spots. If they’re shocked, they’ll scream, but they’ll likely return the next day, he said.
Like other farm managers, Van Vuuren has noticed that the baboons follow a pattern, usually arriving about 10 a.m.
“Every day, they come at the same time. ... The guys chase the baboons, blowing vuvuzelas, and they chase them back up the mountain. But sometimes they only move a few meters (yards) and then they sit there, looking at you.”
 A baboon looks for grapes at a vineyard on the Constantia Uitsig wine estate situated on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa.
 AP photo