JULY 27, 2024

Dear reader,

Earlier this week, the high-profile trial against former megachurch pastor Bruxy Cavey came to a screeching halt. Ontario court justice Michael Wendl ruled that Cavey’s right to a timely trial had been breached, making this the latest in a long line of cases in the province to be thrown out due to unreasonable delays. Cavey, who was charged in 2022 for abusing one of his parishioners at the Oakville-based megachurch known as the Meeting House, still faces two charges of sexual assault in a separate case. In her 2023 piece about Cavey, writer Meagan Gillmore, who was a Meeting House congregant in the late aughts, paints a disturbing picture of what can go wrong when a place of worship is driven by a cult of personality.

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—Stéphanie Verge, features editor

Bruxy Cavey was a hippie cleric who preached to the masses in T-shirts and cargo shorts. On stage, he spoke about righteousness, decency and the sanctity of marriage. In private, he was grooming young women for sex

BY MEAGAN GILLMORE | MARCH 27, 2023

In 2006, every Christian Meagan Gillmore knew seemed to be talking about a growing congregation called the Meeting House and, more specifically, its tattooed, long-haired pastor, Bruxy Cavey. The leader of a church for people who weren’t into church, Cavey preached in a newly renovated, high-tech, 1,200-seat auditorium inside a warehouse in Oakville. While Gillmore thought celebrity-led churches were shallow, her reservations melted away the first time she saw Cavey preach.

She wasn’t alone. Over the next decade, Cavey’s star rose, and the Meeting House grew to have 20 locations, an $11-million annual budget and more than 5,000 weekly attendees. But, as Gillmore writes in this chilling feature, all was not as it seemed. In December of 2021, a former member alleged that Cavey had sexually abused her for years. Then more accusations surfaced. The superstar pastor, who preached about the sanctity of marriage and the virtues of abstinence, had been violating that covenant for years.

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