Sect’s Plan for Growth Gives Rise to Cult Phobia : Development: Soka University’s sister religious group finds no welcome mat in Canada after using tactics similar to those employed to boost Calabasas expansion.

A Japanese Buddhist sect’s plan to build a large institution in a verdant meadow has touched off a community war.

The organization is so determined that it paid above-market prices for the site and hired top lobbyists to secure government approvals.

Yet a group of neighbors and public officials is equally dedicated to blocking the project. They think it is too large for the ecologically sensitive area and are worried about allegations that the sect, an offshoot of the Soka Gakkai, is a dangerous cult.

This could be a story about Soka University, whose proposal to build a 4,400-student college in the Santa Monica Mountains is opposed by Calabasas residents and state and national park officials.

But it’s not.

Instead, the description is of a remarkably similar struggle taking place a continent away--on 134 acres outside Toronto, Canada--where the Nichiren Shoshu Sokagakkai of Canada (NSC) wants to build the Caledon Centre for Culture and Education.

“The parallels are really amazing,” said Bill Wells, spokesman for the Coalition to Preserve Las Virgenes, a group formed to fight expansion of Soka University near Calabasas.

Wells recently met his Canadian counterpart, Air Canada pilot Jim Reid, and the two men say they have learned by comparing notes. “It confirms that their tactics are just that, tactics, that they say or do whatever they think will fly,” Wells said. “They are like water flowing downhill; they change direction whenever they hit an obstacle.”

Sect members and their defenders say any similarities between the two projects are coincidental. They accuse the opponents of launching a witch hunt fueled by bigotry, religious intolerance and misinformation gleaned from the tabloid press.

“I went to a local meeting and I was embarrassed that they were comparing the NSC to Charles Manson and Sharon Tate,” said Richard Lambert, a retired police officer who lives next door to the NSC property. “I find them to be friendly, honest people.”

Centering on Caledon

Caledon is a hilly town of 33,000 people, growing rapidly as young couples move from Toronto for housing they can afford. Most of the new residents live in subdivisions or country estate lots scattered among livestock farms, apple orchards and gravel pits.

In 1989, a then-unknown group called NSC startled local residents by filing an application to build a large religious center. It was a radical departure from the community plan for the area.

The land involved was zoned for agriculture in 1987 when it was sold to developer John Edwin Allen Scott for $797,000. Scott gained approval from the Caledon Town Council to rezone the property for 10 country estate lots, which real estate agents in the area said could have been sold for about $270,000 apiece, or a total of $2.7 million.

Instead, Scott sold it to the NSC in 1988 for $5.3 million.

The NSC submitted a development proposal to town planners calling for a 37,000-square-foot center for religious activities and conferences, a nature research institute, an 80-room lodge and a caretaker’s house. A remodeled 1920s house on the property would become a temporary residence for Soka’s President Daisaku Ikeda and other visiting dignitaries.

The center would be used primarily for worldwide Soka Gakkai events several times a year, said NSC spokesman Tony Meers.

“Its significance may not be realized for another 20, 30, 50 years . . . ,” Meers said as he sat on a picnic bench near a lake on the property. “As the Soka Gakkai’s role in peace and education takes on greater significance, a lot of important events will be held here.”

Many nearby residents say such answers do not satisfy their more basic concerns, such as why the NSC chose Caledon when there are only an estimated 1,500 sect members in the area. From dinner tables to the Town Council candidate debates, they air their fears that the land might just be a foothold for a dangerous cult to seize control of their community.

The proprietor of a small antiques store in neighboring Alton poses the question: “Do they really want world peace or do they want world domination?”

Residents also fret that the sect could influence local politics, perhaps by bringing money into the country tax-free as support for the sect’s religious and educational programs.

All such fears are dismissed by Meers as unfounded.

Still, such concerns continue to grow as Reid and others share news clippings from around the world: The Japanese media reports that Komeito, a political party founded by the Soka Gakkai, continues to be controlled by Ikeda. In Los Angeles, the Herald-Examiner once reported the Nichiren Shoshu of America (NSA) had donated $2,000 to Mayor Tom Bradley’s campaigns in the mid-1980s, even though as a tax-exempt religion it was barred from making political contributions.

(Campaign finance reports show Bradley actually received $16,700 in 1985 and 1986. Bradley’s press deputy, Bill Chandler, said last week that at least part of the money was returned to the NSA following the newspaper’s disclosure, although he said he could not immediately determine how much.)

At a community meeting organized by Reid last month at the Royal Canadian Legion Hall in Alton, longtime Caledon resident John Van Beek said he thought the questions alone should be grounds for barring the project. “We don’t want the risk,” he said.

Reid, who lives with his wife and four children across the street from the NSC property, said he became alarmed about his new neighbor when he saw the NSA profiled in an episode of the tabloid television program “Inside Edition.”

“When I first heard ‘destructive cult’ I have to admit I didn’t even know what it meant,” he said. “But it didn’t sound too good and I thought as a neighbor I ought to look into it a little.”

Now the sunlit office in Reid’s remodeled 1860s farmhouse is cult research central. In a deadpan tone he free-associates--a discussion about Soka President Ikeda’s power flowing into accounts of the horrors perpetrated by Manson and the Rev. Jim Jones, and the mind-control of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

Reid has become increasingly frustrated with the Caledon Town Council’s unwillingness to deal with the cult-related issues. But sorting fact from phobia is a monumental challenge for any politician, especially when religious freedoms are at issue.

“The word cult has got in there now but to get the facts and try to prove that seems to be very difficult,” said Caledon Mayor Emil Kolb. “The question is, does it bring difficulties with it if it comes to your community? That’s very hard to put your finger on.”

Faced with a November election and mounting public pressure to oppose the project, the Town Council in mid-October unanimously voted down the NSC’s rezoning application, leaving the ultimate decision to the Ontario Municipal Board, where local issues go on appeal.

Days before that vote, Town Councilor Lorraine Alexander talked of her anger about the rising community ire. “I wasn’t sure if I was in Salem, Mass., or Alton,” Alexander said of a meeting that Reid had held. “If you tell a story long enough and loud enough, people believe it’s true.”

Alexander and others blame the Chicago-based Cult Awareness Network for legitimizing the opponents’ most irrational fears. The network is a nonprofit organization of parents and friends of cult members and former members themselves, formed in the wake of the 1978 mass suicide at Jonestown, Guyana.

Reid contacted the network after learning through Canadian cult watchers that it considered the Soka Gakkai a dangerous cult because of its charismatic leader--Ikeda--its coercive recruitment techniques, and its emphasis on chanting for material gain, which the network describes as brainwashing.

In the United States, Soka Gakkai spokesmen flatly deny most of the cult network’s charges and they say recruitment efforts were toned down last year following complaints from members. In Canada, the NSC blames the U.S. wing of the group for some of the bad publicity.

“They were really kind of overdoing it,” Meers said, describing the U.S. recruitment techniques as overzealous.

Determined to Stay

Even some of those who side with Reid think he has gone overboard because they believe his approach may not be effective. Sonia and Paul Circa, who also oppose the NSC development, said they split away from Reid’s group when they sensed town officials were not taking them seriously.

The Circas, who live in Toronto but hope to build a house on a lot they own next to the NSC property, found that their efforts to expose the environmental hazards of the project turned up little of consequence.

Most of the problems they identified were quickly addressed by the NSC, which had hired two private environmental consultants who previously held positions with a government conservation agency charged with protecting the region.

The hiring of a third consultant, attorney Neil Davis, led the Circas and others to raise conflict-of-interest questions, which are currently under review by the Law Society of Upper Canada. Davis does legal work for the city of Caledon and his former partner, J. David Ostler, is the town’s staff attorney.

Davis denied any conflict exists, saying he has “given the city no advice on this application.” But John Minns, an assistant to a member of the Ontario Provincial Parliament, disagreed. He produced documents indicating that Ostler notified Davis when the town had sent letters to various government agencies requesting criminal files on the NSC and its leaders.

“That’s an incredible position to be in, when we have the town lawyer notifying the other side of a search for their alleged improprieties,” Minns said.

The Ontario Provincial Police is looking into concerns about the NSC and the Soka Gakkai, but is somewhat hamstrung by the country’s constitution, the Charter of Rights, which largely prevents investigation of religions.

“These are not criminal things, so we cannot go get search warrants,” said one of the investigators, who asked not to be named. “In many ways these are questions about what are the social implications of this. . . . And every question leads to other questions.”

One charge made by the NSC opponents initially perplexed the police investigators. NSC defender Alexander was appointed to the Caledon Town Council after the death of her councilor husband, John, a year ago.

The Reids and others charged that the NSC bought Lorraine Alexander’s allegiance through two donations of more than $1,000 made to memorial funds for her husband.

John Alexander, a strong environmentalist, had raised numerous questions about the project, but no vote was taken before he died. Lorraine Alexander frequently defended the NSC, but ultimately voted against the project.

Although the investigation into that situation continues, the police investigators interviewed said they are nearly sure that no illegal activity took place because Alexander received the money before she accepted the council seat.

Regardless of the outcome of the investigations, it is increasingly clear that the NSC will never be welcomed to Caledon. But it is equally clear that the group is determined to stay.

Meers said they are waiting until after this week’s Town Council election to announce whether they will appeal the council’s decision, but he indicated that they have no intention of selling their land.

“I really feel it will eventually all be worked out,” Meers said. “We’re being patient because even if it does take time, this is something we believe in.”