Wife of Canadian businessman has apocalyptic vision of valley

By Miro Cernetig
The Globe and Mail

LA BACA, Colo. – When Hanne Strong wants to know if a dinner companion has an untrue heart, she grabs her guest’s hand, flips it over and starts reading the palm aloud.
   “Oh, yes,” She says as the other guests watch intently. “You’ve got a good heart. You’re all right. You never quite know unless you check because people often run psychic interference.”
   It does not take much imagination to understand why Mrs. Strong, who believes that she has lived thousands of years in previous lives, might be a tad unsettling to the dyed-in-the-wool businessmen who her husband, Canadian multimillionaire and UN diplomat Maurice Strong, deals with daily.
   While he believes in profits, she believes in prophets.
   A few days at her La Baca property with Mrs. Strong, who plans to accompany her husband as he meets world leaders while organizing a United Nations conference on the environment in Brazil, is dizzying.
   She drives along mountain roads (which she had custom-made) in a gleaming white Jeep, pointing out details of her unique dream. She says it was given to her by Glen Anderson, a prophet who lived in the mountains and arrived one day on the Strong’s’ doorsteps to say he had been waiting for them.
   The mysterious Mr. Anderson, who is now dead though his writings have been carefully preserved by some of La Baca’s residents, then proceeded to map out the future of the area and Mrs. Strong has followed the plan.
   On one hilltop is a massive dome where she foresees world religious leaders gathering in silent meditation. It is designed to reflect the 60-year cycle of the planets, she says, and was built with no nails but weaved “from the top down.”
   Beside an old gold mine honey-combing an entire mountain will be a conference centre for world leaders, who Mrs. Strong is sure will come to La Baca, though she is not sure when.
   Tailings from the mine, still speckled with gold, will be used to pave the streets. “Here, you really will be able to walk on streets paved with gold,” Mrs. Strong says.
   Then she waves down toward the desert floor that has turned purple in the afternoon’s heat haze. “That’s where Shirley MacLaine’s place will be,” she says, referring to the actress now as famous for her New Age bestsellers as her movie roles. Ms MacLaine also has plans for a haven for world leaders and bought land from the Strongs.
   For years, Mrs. Strong agonized over whether to allow Ms MacLaine into La Baca, fearing that her fame would bring a wave of annoying tourists and fans.
   But she says she went on a three-day fast in the mountains and had a vision. “I saw Shirley flying through the sky like a ballerina, with her legs outstretched, and I knew she was going to crash,” she says. “So I caught her in my arms and that was the sign Shirley should be here.”
   Visions are everything at La Baca, and Mrs. Strong even has one for the billions of dollars worth of water under the sand, water which her husband and Vancouver billionaire Sam Belzberg have plans to extract.
   She believes that a giant lake with a bottom of crystals is under the desert. Crystals and water combine to make a powerful “energy field” that protects the valley, even from the evil channelers from Vancouver she says are trying to take over La Baca with a massive “psychic attack.