The Story of J-C Bertrand
My full legal name is Joseph Marcel Jean-Claude Bertrand. ‘Joseph’ because I was baptized Catholic at birth and the custom in Quebec at the time was to add Joseph to boys’ names and Marie to girls’, for obvious reasons. ‘Marcel’ is my middle name given to me by my godfather then the given name my parent chose for me ‘Jean-Claude’. Most people especially English-speaking people know me as J-C – so much easier. I reside at #3-1949 Beach Avenue, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6G 1Z2. My email address is jcbdesigninc@gmail.com and my cell phone number is 604-700-4569, for anyone interested in contacting me to ask me questions about my story. For my part, I am very happy to be given the opportunity to write, in our own words and of my own Free Will, how and in what ways the Marvellous Work and A Wonder ® and The Humanity Party® have affected my current life. I look forward to reading all the various and varied stories. I am writing my personal MWAW story and testimony March2023.
My entire life, I always felt I would discover or find something fundamental about this Earth, this life; it was just a feeling and I had no idea what that ‘fundamental thing’ was going to be. I was born in religion and immediately hated it. I was exposed to many of them (Catholic, Baptist, weird sect we called the ‘two by twos’ & then @ 16, the Mormons) throughout my growing up years but, deep down, I also knew I was gay and would never be accepted by religion or by the religious. I was Mormon for a year or two but left at eighteen to do my own thing. I didn’t come out to my family or anything. I didn’t even really come out to myself. I just stopped going to church and started smoking and drinking. That lasted a couple of years and I still wasn’t out. At twenty, I decided to go to Ricks College for awhile but could only last four months (one fall semester in ’78) before returning home to Quebec. It was too difficult living in the dorms, communal showers – arghhhh, I was horny all the time. I went back home and that’s when I officially came out to myself. Not long after I came out, at 23 y.o., I moved to Vancouver to get away from my nosey, religious mother (that was just one of the reasons).
Now, I say ‘I officially came out to myself’. I actually came out 99.99% to myself; leaving that .01% of unfulfilled Realization because of stupid leftover baggage from fucking Religion! Most of my adult life was a battle between my fuzzy logic and this leftover baggage of religious garbage that wouldn’t go away, bequeathed to me by a religious upbringing.
Science & science fiction became my new religion and also became my best bet to try to figure out what this ‘fundamental thing’ – this feeling I had – was. I read all kinds of science fact & science fiction books voraciously (in my teens years, I could read an entire book in one day, often reading till the wee hours, not able to put the book down, drinking in the words like from a fireman’s hose). I watched every science program I could throughout my twenties, thirties & forties, on PBS and on other knowledge-based channels and then on the Internet. All this knowledge made me think and imagine all sorts of possibilities for what this ‘fundamental thing’ could be. My imagination sure could run wild. It was exciting and a lot of fun to explore all the different avenues and possibilities. I won’t share all the ridiculous theories I came up with – all of them ideas from other people anyways – because it would be a waste of time.
In my mid forties until my fifties, I went into a midlife crisis. I wasn’t working much, had lost a fairly good but otherwise very boring job (on purpose, through apathy), I was doing painting jobs, other odd jobs in the movie industry, here and there, when I could find them. The work was sparse and Vancouver is a very expensive city to exist in. In order to survive, I needed to also collect income assistance without the government knowing about my odd jobs, to pay for my living expenses. So things were bleak.
At this time, I also started feeling disillusioned with my religion – Science. It felt like I knew and understood everything there was to know, after decades of ‘studying’ Nature and the Universe through TV shows, that there was very little left as a challenge for me (what a dork, eh? – eye roll emoticon). My interest was fading in so many things that previously had so raptly captured my attention. Thank goodness I was able escape into my digital artwork, at that time, otherwise I would have probably lost it (in 2003 as part of my midlife crisis, I wanted to learn new skills in the digital media so I was able to enrol at British Columbia Institute of Technology as a full-time adult student of 44 y.o. and took a full year of New Media courses, which included the entire Adobe Suite of creative software).
In 2014 around May, I received an email from my brother back east in Quebec. He was encouraging me to read a book he thought I might find interesting due to my interest in the Sciences. The book titled ‘Human Reality’ was online, free of charge to download and to read. Now, I trust and respect my brother very much. I know that he doesn’t take actions or make requests like these frivolously and lightly so I downloaded the book and started reading it. Well, I got into it for just a few pages. It started out interestingly enough but then ….
… at this point, it’s important to mention that my brother did not say one thing to me about the mortal filters we acquire from our parents and from our environment at a young age. He was truly just tentatively sending out a ‘feeler’ to me to see if I would bite. Of course, my filters, being mostly scientific in nature, kicked in around the pages where the book’s author stated that there was no such thing as evolution or the Big Bang. And, okay, THAT WAS IT – I was outta there. And that was it for one year (it bears mentioning that my brother did not realize at that time that he was ‘sinning’ by asking me to read a book on Human Reality against my Free Will – it was only later that we both learned how important it is to NOT do that).
In December, 2014, I went to Quebec for a visit and stayed with my staunchly LDS sister. While I was there an incident happened with my sister that forced me to make a mental plea, a request to know what ‘IT’ was all about. It was a silent plea made with intense emotions of anger, sadness and despair. It was also a very honest mental request (a mental shout, really). The shout was to Whoever or Whatever controlled this screwed up Universe of ours. This silent prayer inside my head went something like this – “What the fuck is this all about?”
The incident that happened with my sister had to do with the fact that the Ontario School Board was going to expand the Sex Education curriculum to include teaching not only heterosexual sex education but would also include the teaching of homosexual sex education to teenagers starting in grade six. My sister was under the erroneous impression that they were going to start teaching this information to kids SIX years old in grade one. And she said, in that haughty, stiff-necked way of hers, “They’re not going to teach about anal sex to my little six y.o. grandchild!” (at the time, her son and daughter in law were living in Ontario and had two small boys). Then she said, “GOD DID NOT MAKE THAT HOLE FOR THAT PURPOSE!” Now I’m sure she didn’t mean to but that statement hurt me right down to the core of my being and I realized that she was just as homophobic as my late religious mother. She fell in that instant from that pedestal I had put her on. And that’s when I made my silent plea (or prayer or whatever).
Then at end of April, 2015, I received another email from my brother. He wrote, in jest & I’m paraphrasing because I don’t remember the exact contents of the email, “Hey, J-C. Christopher sent a letter to the Mormon leadership saying that he was starting his own Church of JC of LDS and that he was going to perform eternal marriages for anyone who wanted them, including gay people.” I thought, who the hell is this Christopher guy, anyways? I thought, I don’t even want to get married in this life for even a few short years, why would I want to marry anyone for Eternity? Anyways, I have always seen ‘marriage’ as just an opportunity for divorce lawyers. But my curiosity for this strange fellow made me desirous to start reading the Human Reality book again. And this time, even though I still had strong filters that closed my mind, my mind was much more open to the marvelous and wonderful ideas contained in it. I do believe, though, that my more open mindedness had something to do with the request I had mentally shouted out the previous December when I was visiting my family in Quebec.
For the entire month of May, 2015 and into the beginning of June, I was reading Human Reality. Many parts I had to read and reread over and over again to truly & fully understand. When I reached portions of the book that directly attacked and destroyed my most preciously-held ‘scientifical’ ideas and theories, like the Big Bang and Evolution, my Ego would bristle and rebel (cognitive dissonance). But I would soldier through and, amazingly enough, the next few paragraphs would methodically and almost with surgical precision explain why & how such theories weren’t Real Truth and, damn it, the various explanations would always make perfect sense. This kept happening over and over throughout my read of this most amazing tome (filters were starting to fall). First my Ego would bristle at a section I had just read – second, I would read the next few paragraphs of explanation in that section – then boom, everything would fall into place and make perfect sense.
Okay, so by early June, I was starting to get really excited – no, I mean euphoric , no, I mean I felt like a helium balloon on a tether. I was giddy, I was weepy, I felt lightheaded and I could barely think about anything else except the information I had just ingested about Human Reality. I felt like my brain’s old software was being overwritten in real time by new, better software. I’m not kidding and it’s not an exaggeration, it felt like I was being reprogrammed (with Truth). Now I’m not saying that it was a transfiguration like what happened to Christopher but for weeks and weeks after finishing the book, I felt like I was high on the best drugs one could ever take or imagine. The best part was that this Real Truth drug I was experiencing had absolutely no downer nor side effects (and I know from where I speak from – as a gay man who has enjoyed partying most of his adult life, I’ve done my fair share of all kinds of drugs. Nothing, nada, not one synthetic drug comes even close to the high I experienced when Human Reality engulfed my being).
That was also when the remaining ‘.01% of unfulfilled Realization because of stupid leftover baggage from religion’ evaporated into thin air, being the ridiculous notion that it always was from the start. When this realization washed over me, I felt gloriously liberated, I felt vindicated – having always known and having always felt deep down that being a homosexual is not evil nor is it wrong; never was & never will be. In the end, it brought me great pleasure to know that I was right in trusting my own, inner gut feeling and that all the judgmental religions out there were wrong. After so many years of guilt, I released it all. It was cathartic and a very, very satisfying feeling.
One particular experience comes to mind, when one afternoon in mid-June, I went out for a rollerblade around the Stanley Park seawall. The book was just finished and my mind was reeling as I went flying around the park’s perimeter – it’s about a 10 kilometre ride – on my blades. I was feeling such intense joy, such contentment, such happiness that I wasn’t sure if my mortal vessel was going to be able to contain all the intense feelings/energies I was feeling at the moment; I felt like I was going to burst.
It was such a beautiful sunny day, the kind of day that only Vancouver can deliver in all its’ grace. The warmth of the sun, so strong on my face and the music from my buds only intensified the emotions I was feeling and suddenly I found myself crying, sobbing big racking sobs, that tripped over themselves trying to get out. The release felt good but at the same time, I was embarrassed and tried to hide my face, thankful for my sunglasses. Finally, I got the sobs under control only to start laughing uncontrollably because I’d start thinking about how silly I was. Waves of Realizations (from the book, various pieces I would internalize, right there and then as I was blading and suddenly the pieces would become Real, I would suddenly ‘realize’ them) and with the waves would come another flood of energies so intense and I would think, how come I’ve never ‘realized’ these things before? And now that I do ‘realize’ them, why do these new concepts make such wonderful sense deep down in my being, in my self? It was so much fun. It was amazing (I don’t really have the correct nouns and adjectives to describe it all or all the energies I was feeling and experiencing during that time).
Now, suddenly as I’m blading, I’m realizing what that feeling was about ‘the fundamental thing about the Earth’ that I was going to be privy to; it was this book and it was this guy, Anonymous. And oh, how different it was from all the imagined sci-fi, ‘scientifical’ scenarios that my puny little mortal brain could come up with or could imagine. Human Reality explained everything (or so I thought) and I knew that from now on my life was going to be about ‘Before I knew Real Truth and After I knew Real Truth’. I knew (know) that, barring any accident that were to damaged my mortal brain and make it rationalize differently, this Real Truth was (is) going to be the ONLY thing that would (will) be mattering to me for the rest of this mortal life, plain and simple.
This all happened June 2015 around MWAW SLC conference time. I wanted to go so much but just couldn’t afford it due to my not having a F/T job, money and all. Bummer! During all this time, I was communicating with my two brothers back east (who also know who they are and why they exist and one of them is the one who sent me the two emails, the one who persisted – thank goodness!!) about how excited I was finding this Truth, discussing it with them, finding out there was more (first estate), etc. when I said to them – we have to make plans to go to SLC next June, 2016. Which was, of course, when the political arm of Real Truth – The Humanity Party – was officially released to the world to such high expectation and anticipation. That year, I received a huge tax refund from the Feds which allowed me to go to SLC for the 2016 MWAW conference.
The Humanity Party resonated deeply within me. Having read so much sci-fi in my life, many of the book had storylines of successful one world governments. So a worldwide government has always made sense to me; a benevolent one, of course. It’s always been my belief that the time has come for such a world government to exist since our population and our tech are growing so exponentially, it seems an inevitability. I just had no idea how to do it.
Fortunately, there are people in this world with much more intelligence, who have much more wisdom and experience than me and who are capable of coming up with the perfect plan. I do, however, have the wherewithal to recognize a perfect plan when I see one and The Humanity Party is the perfect plan guaranteed to eliminate poverty, child prostitution, want and need, with the end result, to equalize the playing field throughout the world for EveryOne. Why more people don’t recognize it as such, baffles me?
Now it’s been eight years since my Enlightenment to the Real Truth. Most everything ‘scientifical’ I knew, understood and loved from before, has been destroyed; Human Reality said that would happen but I did not believe it at the time of reading it. I believe it now. No, actually, I know it as Reality now; I’ve Realized it, internalized it. I mourned for the many broken, scattered and destroyed pieces of my previous life but then I moved on. Real Truth is so much more satisfying, uncomplicated and whole; it’s plain and simple. There is not one day that goes by that I don’t feel for, think about, use something from, access some portion of, the Real Truth to help myself go through my day. My entire life revolves around this new information about myself and in turn about everyone else. Up until my age of 57, I knew nothing. Everything I know today, I’ve realized through the Message and owe to the Messenger.
In Vancouver, I am the only person in the entire city who truly understands who he is and why he exists. Sometimes I get very lonely but just for a bit. In all honesty, the Real Truth truly ruined my life – as it was supposed to, since we are not supposed to know the Real Truth. But then, the Real Truth turned around and gave me Something back so special, so precious, so fundamental, so Marvelous and Wonderful – Real Truth gave me (back my) Eternal Life. Wow!
Now, I can’t have it any other way – I will continue to drink from the fountain for as long as I am allowed. And I never, ever forget that I DESIRED this, with all my heart and all my mind from the day I was born, and so it was given to me. No regrets.
(And just to add a funny little bit at the end) I say these things in the name of my True Self. Amen (So Be It, in Hebrew)
J-C Bertrand
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