John Cotton

John Cotton

John Cotton was one of the dowsers who helped bring about the formation of Questers. He was an English Gentleman with a capital “G”. He was a sailor who had many maritime adventures. He sailed Cape Horn in unsafe boat and lived to tell the tale.

Yesterday I talked to a retired CBC Radio producer who talked to John in his tiny apartment near the Vancouver General Hospital in the 1980s. The apartment was the width of John’s arm span and he was “Happy as a clam in his shell.” The apartment was very nautical with many mementos of the sea. The producer also was a musician but had a writer’s block. John dowsed a past life trauma and released the charge on that psychic injury. Afterwards the musician was able to compose many songs and melodies.

I met John once in 2003 or 2004. That may have been his last trip to the Okanagan. He was frail yet he was still teaching dowsing and doing dowses for others.

Merlin Beltain lost track of John in his final years. He may have been moved into a senior’s home. Merlin at her presentation at the Fall Questers Conference in Salmon Arm in 2019 told us before Questers was founded in 1979 people would meet in their homes and discuss many topics. John was there teaching dowsing. The founders could have set up a branch of the Canadian Society of Dowsers but they were looking into many avenues of metaphysical research …they were questing for answers.

ZSL