William Herbert Karl Schlatter was installed as Worshipful Master of Mississauga Lodge No. 524, Toronto 1 District on December 13 2001.

William Herbert Karl Schlatter was installed as Worshipful Master Orono Lodge No. 325, Ontario District, on January 10, 2002, a month later.

The Grand Lodge Constitution Section 221 states , "No member — shall hold office in more than one lodge at the same time without prior written permission of the Grand Master."

Since the Grand Master did not give dispensation for William Herbert K. Schlatter to be Worshipful Master in two lodges (separated by a two hour drive), how do we account for this, which at first view, appears to be a paradox?

"Why do you leave the west and travel towards the east?" The Traveller asked the Master of Mississauga Lodge .

"To assist a Board of Installed Master install my father," was the reply, the answer that opened this story. "After all, he left the East and traveled to the West to install me last month."

Both Mississauga and Orono meet on the same night. That presented the father and son with challenges. As early as the Annual Communication of Grand Lodge last July, both Willies were trying, as Senior Wardens, to figure a way around that problem. "I’d tried to have him spend another year in the chairs before going to the East," confided Willie I. "That way I could have been his installing Master." But Willie II looked at the needs of his own lodge. Mississauga was on the move. It had a number of younger brethren in the chairs, and "when things are working well, you don’t mark time." So he was placed in the East a month before his father.

That meant the Master-elect of Orono Lodge had to forgo his last meeting as a senior warden to make the trip to Mississauga. Under ideal conditions, Willie I would be on the Board for his son. But alas, not being an installed Master, he was not admitted to part of the ceremony. His part in the ritual was presenting his son with the working tools in the First Degree. This was particularly pleasing because, he admits, he missed this the first time when Willie II was initiated into Parkwood Lodge in Oshawa in 1988. "A navigational error," he explains, "en route from Toronto to downtown Oshawa." To make it more of a family affair, Tony Fischer of Orono Lodge presented the gavel on behalf of the family to his step-brother Willie II. The delegation from Orono was led by the Ontario DDGM Ron Wallace.

The return trip on January 10 was Willie II’s first night as master of Mississauga, and the first meeting he missed since installation. His dream was opening in Mississauga, calling off, and having all his brethren car-pool it to Orono for his father’s installation. Logistics and demographics interfered.. Instead he left his own lodge in capable hands, and made his way to Orono to return his father’s visit with a delegation from Toronto District One in tow, including Douglas Roberts, his DDGM.

The lecture on the signs and secrets of the Masters degree are indelibly etched in Willie II’s mind, because a month after being given them himself, he passed them to his father as an installed master.

The history of the Mississauga temple is outlined in a previous "Traveller" (see Lodge Preserves Heritage Site). The building was the original Methodist Church built in 1838 by settlers and Mississauga tribal members. It’s a Port Credit historic site.

So, by coincidence is the lodge in Orono. The Orono Presbyterian Church was built by pioneers in 1860 on solid stone foundations---so solid, that when the church was abandoned in 1926 and stood empty for 15 years, it was still in good shape when the lodge bought it in 1941 for less than $1,000. That price included all the contents.

Restoration involved as much volunteer labor as money. The pews had vanished (no one knows where) but the altar remained and was re-commissioned. Lodge Historian, Tom Henderson, said members of the old congregation returned for a brief period. When the equally old Methodist Church burned down many years later, the United Church Congregation met in the lodge during the rebuilding. Tom is particularly fond of the old furnishings. The original wooden working tools are in a display case in the anteroom, but the senior warden’s column is still in use. The date of the first meeting, December 1874, was pencilled on the bottom marking the occasion.

No one goes through life being called "Willie I" or "Willie II". The younger master of Mississauga is indeed called "Willie", but his father, the Master of Orono, is called "Bill" by his friends. They will be marching side-by-side again at the Annual Communication this July at the Royal York, this time as installed masters. You can’t miss them. Tall and bearded, they have the stiff backs and sure steps of a retired police officer and former soldier.

And when it comes time to vote, there will be no confusion. Bill will claim his ballot under "Wilhelm", the way he was registered on initiation, and just another way of saying "Willie".

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