Death

Why am I so fascinated with death?

I want to make it very clear. And I need you dear reader to understand this.

This blog will detail my journey towards my death.

I am creating this blog specifically as a way to explain myself, even though really I don’t owe anyone an explanation.

My life will end long before what it would have had I never gone through the hell I went through as a child.

I will be availing myself to Medical Assistance in Dying for psychiatric reasons.

If you don’t like the topics of dying or death, or if you feel that I am only being melodramatic or only playing for attention you should probably find a different blog to follow.

This blog will be my testament. It will be around long after I am gone. I have no family or friends to explain to others why I’ve done what I’ve done. So I’m going to explain it myself. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the Canadian Forces get the last fucking word on my life and my death.

For as long as I live I will never understand the fear of death.

Dying, yeah I can understand being afraid to die. Will it be painful? Will it be slow? Will it linger for weeks? Or will it be over quick? Will you have your affairs in order? Or will there be things left undone?

Being dead?

Nope.

We will all be dead one day. Being dead is nothing to be afraid of.

Being dead is very natural.

You didn’t exist prior to your conception. And you’ll go back to not existing when you’re dead.

You honestly only get one life to live. There is no coming back for a “do over”.

I only had one chance at experiencing what my live could have been.

Anyone who tells me that others had to give up their dreams as well are being very disingenuous and shallow.

My dreams, hopes, and aspirations were taken away from me long before I even knew that I was allowed to have dreams, hopes, and aspirations.

Age 40, or 50, or 60 is not the time to start dreaming about what one could be in life.

When I say that I’m tired, I mean it.

I lived through 1-1/2 years of horror on Canadian Forces Base Namao.

I lived through 2-1/2 years of horror on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach.

On Canadian Forces Base Downsview, Earl Stevens dragged me right back into hell.

There were more incidents after Earl, but these men I don’t remember enough about to even bother going to the police about.

Sure, I fully understand now that sexually abused and neglected children tend to be very easy targets for pedophiles, but that doesn’t make my past any easier.

I remember being frequently late for school staring on CFB Griesbach and on CFB Downsview. I couldn’t sleep. I’d always wake up in terror. And when the morning came I didn’t want to get out of bed.

There were half hearted suicide attempts on CFB Griesbach and CFB Downsview. But in an environment like the Canadian Forces, especially back in the ’80s, attempting suicide or even just voicing your desire to attempt suicide is often met with mockery and derision.

Sure, what kid wants to get out of bed in the morning.

But my reluctance to get out of bed was different.

I had diagnosed, but untreated major depression.

Was it my father’s decision to not have my depression treated, or was it Captain Terry Totzke’s decision? I’ll never know. And at this juncture I don’t care.

Untreated major depression is a bitch.

It’s not sexy or cool lie it is on TV or in the movies.

Untreated depression is a fucking killer in the literal sense.

Depression, treated or otherwise is the leading cause of suicide.

There were time in my life both as a teen and as an adult where I’d break down and cry. Literally for days sometimes.

And this was suffering in silence.

My father, in addition to having his own demons, was being told by the likes of Captain Terry Totzke that my issues weren’t depression, or anxiety, or the fallout from child sexual abuse. Terry’s concern was homosexuality.

So no, there was no treatment for my depression or anxiety or anything else while I was living under Richard’s roof.

See, depression is an illness that only tends to get diagnosed if others complain to your doctor about it. If you go to your doctor and complain about the symptoms of depression without the support of family or other you get brushed off as being a hypochondriac.

Depression rots your brain. It’s toxic. It changes the way your brain behaves and operates. It changes the way your brain responds to stimulation.

If I cried or if I acted as any other emotionally disturbed child with untreated major depression or severe anxiety could be expected to that would be rectified with a backhand or a belt.

I would miss days and weeks from work with mystery illnesses.

There were other suicide attempts over the years. 1994, 2000, 2006, 2011, 2012.

The closest I came was the 1994 event.

I legally changed my name in 2008. I thought that with a new name I could escape my past and reinvent myself and leave Peter, the chapel, the man in the sauna, Terry, Pat, Wayne, Earl, Allan, the man who tried to strangle me in his car, my father, my grandmother, my mother, and my stepmother all in the past.

Yes, I had my new name. But all the shit from my past was still there. And now my father was beyond fucking pissed that I changed my name. He never did talk to me after that.

And reinventing oneself is impossible unless the past is reconciled.

In addition to the shit I had gone through as a child, I was now about to encounter a fresh new shit show from an organization that was more about keeping the past a secret.

I had investigators from the CFNIS call me an outright liar. I had investigators from the CFNIS suggest to me that I was making stories up. I had investigators from the CFNIS tell me that I was exaggerating things and confusing incidents that happened on other bases with incidents that I remembered happening on the bases I lived on.

Sure, obtaining Captain McRae’s court martial records and the CFSIU investigation paperwork in 2018 and 2020 respectively ultimately proved that I was right. But it also amplified the pain and the anguish knowing that the Canadian Armed Forces fucking knew what Peter had been doing on Canadian Forces Base Namao from 1978n until 1980. And the Canadian Forces knew that I wasn’t lying when I said that Captain McRae had given me a “sickly sweet grape juice” on the visits that Peter would take me on to the rectory at the chapel. It was in the court martial transcripts, right in fucking black and white. The military police knew in 1980 that Captain McRae was bringing children to the rectory and was giving them beer or wine before moving them into the bedroom of the rectory to “fool around with them”.

In August of 2011 I obtained my social services records that absolutely shattered my reality as I knew it and made me realize that I was a pawn in someone else’s game, a game that I never even realized that I was playing in.

All I really want from this is to clean my name.

Peter was allowed to grow up as the victim of Captain McRae.

When I spoke with his father Jack back in 2015. Jack loved and adored Peter.

Jack would have moved the fucking world for Peter, whom Jack viewed as an innocent victim of Captain McRae.

Jack even blamed himself for letting Peter become involved with Captain McRae.

This was even though Peter had gone on to have criminal convictions for criminal offences involving children.

I’d learn from the MPCC in 2013 that Peter’s entire family had gone to the wall in his defence and did everything possible to cover for Peter.

For instance Peter’s sister told the CFNIS in 2011 that she never heard of anything involving her brother sexually abusing children. But that’s how the whole fucking investigation into Captain McRae started, the base military police had received numerous complaints from various parents on the base that Peter was touching their child inappropriately.

Me?

I was always the filthy homosexual that made Peter touch my younger brother.

I was the filthy homosexual that enjoyed what Peter was doing so much that I never told anyone what he had been doing for almost 1-1/2 years.

See the difference?

Suicide amongst childhood sexual abuse isn’t unheard of. Even if that victim receives justice.

Child sexual abuse fucks with the brain in so many horrific ways its not funny.

Am I gay? Am I straight? Will I be a pervert like Peter? If I have sex with someone, will they use it against me? If I have sex with someone, do I owe them something?

Is my viewing of sex as being something dirty and disgusting a result of Peter, or was it a result of Captain Terry Totzke, or was it the way my father reacted?

So no, there will be no “normal” for me.

There will always be this gnawing in the back of my brain telling me that I will be a pervert like Peter.

There will always be this battle in my head “Am I gay”, “Am I straight”, “Am I just fucked up?”.

I know that I didn’t force Peter to molest my younger brother. But that scar is deep into my brain.

So death it is.

And I don’t understand why this is so controversial.

Life is about quality over quantity.

For some reason we look at life in the sense that the longer you live, the better life you have.

I can promise you that is absofuckinglutely not the case.

In my books, someone who had a happy well adjusted life and who died prematurely in their 20’s is far off better than someone who had a tormented life that lived well into their 70’s.

We willingly accept the high death toll on our public streets because car culture is just too damn convenient. Little Sally would still be alive is she looked both ways and made eye contract with the driver operating the 5000kg vehicle. Silly Sally!

We tolerate starvation and disease in the world because the free market will solve it. If we feed them or if we cure them they’ll just expect more free handouts.

We tolerate death in extreme sports because at least they died doing what they loved. Yeah, sure, he died because he jumped his motorcycle and crashed, but fuck was it awesome!

Guys drive race cars around a track at ridiculously high speeds and kill themselves doing something that was easily preventable, and we honour them as heroes.

But yet someone like me says that they intend to seek Medical Assistance in Dying to escape the horrors of a dysfunctional childhood, childhood sexual abuse, and inappropriate conversion therapy, as well as the constant and never ending torment and loneliness that goes along with those horrors and suddenly premature death is wrong and evil.

What the actual fuck?

Why is society so intent with the idea that I have to live to a ripe old age of 80 or 90 with the horseshit from CFB Namao, CFB Griesbach, and CFB Downsview playing non-stop randomly in my brain?

Why is slamming your F1 race car into a barrier at 260km/h seen as a noble death, whereas laying down in the comfort of your own bed and taking an IV solution seen as being the “loser’s way”?

Why is skiing out of bounds seen as an acceptable way to die, “he died doing what he loved”. Where as taking four prescription drugs is seen as being evil?

We send soldiers off to meaningless conflicts. We don’t treat the loss of their lives as a travesty.

Stunt performers die in the creation of movies. Movies for fuck sake. And no one cares. It’s just the cost of doing business.

You want to know what’s evil?

Evil is forcing someone to live longer than they wish to because it will make you feel better.

Evil is forcing someone to live longer than they wish to because death make you feel scared.

I don’t believe in god.

I don’t believe in heaven or hell or purgatory.

As I’ve said on other postings, once the blood flow stops to my brain, and once my brain depletes the oxygen it has, I am gone. Me, Bobbie Garnet Bees, will no longer exist.

I won’t be sitting on a cloud crying about not being alive.

I won’t be wandering around on the Earth in purgatory because I ended my own life.

I will be gone. Free of Peter. Free of my father. Free of Angus McRae. Free of Captain Terry Totzke. Free of everything.

And I think this is what drives the other survivors of child sexual abuse to commit suicide or seek to end their lives.

You can’t undo what the brain has been through, especially not 40 or 50 years later.

And “coping” and “thinking happy thoughts” isn’t the answer.

Martin Kruze, the man who exposed the child sexual abuse that had been rampant at Maple Leaf Gardens in the 1970s and 1980s committed suicide at age 35 by jumping off the Bloor Street viaduct and onto the Don Valley Parkway in Toronto in 1997. This even though his perseverance and overcoming the resistance within the Toronto Police Service led to the sentencing of Gordon Stuckless for numerous cases of child sexual abuse.

But even though Martin had been victorious and had been compensated, the years of living with this secret and then the anguish of dealing with a police force that didn’t believe Martin’s claims of sexual abuse ultimately proved too much for Martin.

I have no doubt that there are many other military dependents who have committed suicide over the years due to abuses they endured on the bases in Canada. The Canadian Forces are lucky in the sense that the adult deaths of military dependents are not linked back to their time as children living in the private married quarters on the bases in Canada. Actually I don’t even think the suicide death of a child in the PMQs on the bases in Canada will ever be linked back to abuses in the bases.

Again, that’s why I’m doing this blog.

This is so that when I draw my last breath and my heart ceases to beat my death will forever be linked to:
The Canadian Armed Forces
The Department of National Defence
The Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit
The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service
<discharged with disgrace> Captain Father Angus McRae
<retired>Warrant Officer Richard Gill
<retired> Brigadier General Daniel Edward Munro
<retired> Captain Terry Totzke
<retired> Colonel J.B. Fay
<retired> Lt.Gen. K.E.Lewis
<retired> Col I.H. Firth
<retired> Lt. Col. M.M. Nash
<retired> Lt. Col. J.D. O’Blenis
<retired> Major R.G. Parks
<retired> Major M.M. Lehmann
<retired> Warrant Officer Frederick Cunningham
<retired> Major D.J. Boan
<retired> Major G.L. Brais
Minister of National Defence Joseph-Georges-Gilles-Claude Lamontagne (1980 – 1983)
Minister of National Defence Peter MacKay (2007 – 2013)
Minister of National Defence Rob Nicholson (2013 – 2015)
Minister of National Defence Jason Kenney (2015)
Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan (2015 – 2021)
Minister of National Defence Anita Anand ( 2021 to present)

I can’t promise you that this will be a thrilling ride.

I can’t even promise you that it will be an interesting ride.

But it is my journey.

You’re more than welcome to come along.

Maybe you have a morbid curiosity, don’t be ashamed, death is a curious thing.

Maybe you’ll learn some things along the way, maybe you won’t.

I don’t think my death will offer any insights as to how to prevent other deaths due to child sexual abuse.

But maybe you’ll understand the devastating effects that child sexual abuse and inappropriate therapies have on the victims of child sexual abuse.

And maybe my death will compel you to seek to treat the victims of child sexual abuse better than they have been treated in the past.

And maybe, just maybe you’ll be inclined to pester the government to acknowledge child sexual abuse within the Canadian Armed Forces and to help those victims get assistance.

I case you’re wondering, in the next post I will talk about the process of M.A.i.D. and the procedure that I wish to obtain.