April 2023 – Beeshive

My father and the art of terror.

When I say that I was terrified of my father as a child, I’m not exaggerating.

There’s a reason why the psychologist that evaluated my family in November of 1980 found that I was terrified of men and that I was certain that I my father was going to kill me.

And it wasn’t just the physical violence that Richard could dish out. It was the outright psychological terror that he could dish out.

I had once gone and spent a weekend at a sea cadet corp in Port Hope, Ontario. Port Hope was just a little beyond Oshawa, Ontario so Richard had no problem driving me out as this was part of Richard’s and Sue’s shopping trips to Knob Hill Farms in Oshawa.

Richard came to pick me up on the Sunday evening.

When I got into the Mustang he just looked at me and wound up like he was going to backhand me, so I put my hands up to block and cover my face.

“What? You thought I was going to hit you?”

I lowered my hands a bit to look at him.

“You are so goddamn fucking lucky, do you understand that?”

“I was planning to give you the beating of your life when we got home”

I stared at him but I didn’t say anything.

“I went to use my oscilloscope today and some asshole had used one of the probes to poke fucking holes in the anti-glare screen”

“So of course I thought that it was you as you’re the only other person in the house that would dare touch the ‘scope”

I still just stared at him.

“And I was so fucking looking forward to giving you the beating of your life when we got back to the base, but then I remembered that I used the ‘scope yesterday and the fucking holes weren’t there. So it had to be your asshole brother”

I asked Richard what he was going to do to my brother.

“Nothing, what the fuck can I do to him to make him listen. He won’t listen to you and he sure as fuck won’t listen to me”.

The actual fact of the matter was that by this time my brother, who was 2-3 years younger than me (depending what time of the year it was), was larger than Richard. And I have no doubt that if Richard had tried to raise his hand against my brother that my brother would have ripped Richard’s arms from their sockets and beat him over the fucking head with them.

There were things as a kid that I was jealous of my brother for.

Richard would let him watch all the Saturday morning cartoons that he wanted to. My cartoons were too stupid and childish and I was the older kid so I was supposed to set an example for my brother.

Richard wouldn’t object to my brother listening to any music that he fancied. Twisted Sister, Poison, Motley Crue, etc. I wasn’t allowed to have a stereo in my room, and any music that I listened to such as Bruce Hornsby and the Range was utter stupid garbage.

And yes, the fact that Richard was afraid of my brother, or more than likely Richard was cautious of my brother due to my brother’s ability to fight back where as I couldn’t.

You would think that putting up with Richard’s bullshit would have taught me how to fight.

Nope.

Fighting just made things worse. Standing up for myself only made things worse.

And Richard’s temper was swift and quick and often without second thought.

I forget when exactly it happened, but it was when my bedroom was still upstairs in the PMQ on CFB Downsview, my brother had his first epileptic seizure. Actually, I don’t know if this was the first one he actually had, or if this was the first one in which someone else found him in the midst of a seizure.

I came home from wherever it was that I was. Sue, our stepmother, told me that I had to go up to my room and wait for my father to come home and that I was to sit on the floor and not touch anything.

I went upstairs and did as I was told. I sat on the floor.

For hours.

There really wasn’t anywhere else for me to sit as my room had been tossed.

Thankfully I didn’t have much to my name at the time as I have no doubt that Richard would have destroyed it.

My bed was up ended and the sheets had been torn off.

My dresser had been emptied out on the floor.

My closet had been emptied out on the floor.

The cover for my radiator had been pulled off.

So, I sat on the floor and waited for Richard to come home.

Richard came home and I heard him ask Sue, “did the little fucker come home?”

“He’s upstairs, Richard control yourself”.

Richard sprinted up the stairs, had to be 3 steps at a time.

He came into my room and with one fell swoop put both hands on my chest, picked me up, and slammed me into the wall so that our heads were at the same height?

“Where the fuck are the drugs?”

“What drugs?”

“You gave your fucking brother drugs, he’s in the fucking hospital because of you”

Slam.

“I don’t do drugs, I don’t have drugs, I don’t know what you’re talking about”.

Slam, down I went to the floor.

“If your fucking brother dies, I will fucking kill you!”

“Now, get this fucking shit cleaned up and you better think long and fucking hard about what you’ve done!”

I think it was two or three days later that the official diagnoses came in that my brother had Grand Mal Epilepsy.

Richard died in 2017 without his lips once ever uttering an apology.

In 2006 when I had my infamous blowout with Richard on the phone he remembered this, he also said that I was overreacting, and he couldn’t understand why I was holding on to this. He was a father, he was concerned, I didn’t understand what it was like for him.

“It’s obvious that your brother has epilepsy so why you’re holding on to what I said all those years ago makes no sense. Why do you insist on living in the past?”

In 2011, after I had received my social service paperwork from the Alberta Government I started seeing a counsellor named Doug.

We were discussing my father’s anger outbursts and I mentioned my brother’s first “official” seizure and how Richard accused me of giving my brother drugs.

“So, were you ever tested?”

Tested for what?

“Epilepsy, it’s genetic. Your brother is your full brother, right?”

I wouldn’t learn until 2013 when I tracked my mother down, that the epilepsy originated on her side of the family. It skipped her, though.

I had seen my brother in a couple of seizures. I knew what the seizures looked like, I knew that there would always be physical evidence, and when my brother came out of a seizure he was always disorientated and angry. I don’t honestly ever remember having any type of seizure like my brother, and I told Doug that.

“The reason I ask is your records indicate that you frequently had trouble paying attention in school, you often drifted off and didn’t pay attention, you were often found to be “day dreaming”, your testing indicated an auditory memory issue.”

No, I’m absolutely sure that I never had a seizure of any kind when I was a kid.

“Do you know what an absence seizure is?”

Nope.

Absence seizures, as I would find out, are often a precursor to full blown epilepsy. Epilepsy is mainly genetic and runs in families. My mother’s mother died from an epileptic seizure. Anyways, absence seizures are often exhibited by children that are genetically predisposed to epilepsy. The interesting thing about absence seizures is that children will either grow out of them by adolescence or they will progress to Grand Mal Seizures.

Absence seizures are typically brief and only last from a few seconds to maybe a minute, but they can happen numerous times a day, sometimes in rapid fire succession.

There were times as kids when my brother and I were in the back of the car. Richard would be driving somewhere. And my brother would make this face at me where he’d roll his eyes back in his head and flutter his eye lids. If I complained to Richard about the faces my brother was making he’d get pissed off at me and my brother.

Well, as it turns out, that’s a symptom of an absence seizure.

My records indicated that I would frequently interrupt the school class by making clucking / clicking noises, grunting noises, and that I would often day dream and not pay attention.

The clucking and clicking noises I honestly can’t remember them other than what the other kids would say what I sounded like or looked like while I was doing them.

The day dreaming? I don’t remember day dreaming per se, but what I do remember is that I had what I thought was a magic ability that I needed to work on. I found that if I stared hard enough at the clock that I could make the second hand jump forward in time by up to 40 seconds. I thought that this was a magic power. It wasn’t. There were times when the teacher would be explaining something, and I would zone out and miss out on what was said. And this would happen maybe about four or five times per class.

Of course my misbehaviour in school made Richard angry. Not so much the fact that this “misbehaviour” was fucking with my education, but because my “misbehaviour” was causing my teachers and my principal to frequently call Richard at work and “disturb” him while he was busy playing soldier in the military.

The number of times that I had to endure Richard’s anger when he arrived home from work is more than what I want to remember. The pants and underwear down leather belt spankings that I took from Richard fill me with pain to this day.

I remember during my time living on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach and Canadian Forces Base Downsview trying so hard to be normal in school but then realizing that I was too fucked up to be normal.

My father’s anger is something that will always be with me until my life is ended.

My counsellor Doug set me up with a neurologist for testing. I did the sleep depravation test and the strobe light test. Triggered my ocular migraine. But it didn’t trigger a seizure. When I got home I had to sleep in my bathtub covered in my blankets and duvets as this was the only room quiet and dark enough to let me sleep.

The neurologist that I went to said that at that stage in my life it would be very doubtful that any testing would show that I had absence seizures as a child. But considering that my brother has full blown epilepsy, and that description of my issues in my social services paperwork, it was more than likely that both my brother and I were having absence seizures as kids and that one of us grew out of them and the other didn’t.

Which brings me back to Richard’s anger. How would things have turned out differently for my brother and I had Richard had control of his temper and his anger?

How would things have turned out for my brother and I had Richard even tried in the most basic sense of the word to be a father and not just a sperm donor?

What if, instead of being an angry asshole, Richard had actually cared?

What have we learnt?

If you had asked me back in March of 2011 if I had any idea of what I was about to uncover and discover, I would have said no.

I’ve learnt that the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are very well insulated from any external review that they don’t agree with.

As per “An overview of Canada’s Military Justice System”, “Canada’s military justice system is a unique, self-contained system that is an integral part of the Canadian legal mosaic.”, and “As the SCC implicitly recognized in this passage, and as former Chief Justice of Canada, Brian Dickson, recognized in the separate context of an independent report on the military justice system that he completed for the Canadian Forces in 1997, the chain of command is at the heart of this system.”

In the Canadian Forces military justice system, up can be whatever the chain of command decides, and down can be whatever the chain of command decides.

What the rules are shift on a daily basis.

Does the military have jurisdiction to investigate child sexual abuse on the bases? Well, the military often points out that domestic assaults are handed off to the civilian police to avoid potential conflicts of interest and to allow the abused spouse to obtain victim services that the military can’t offer to civilians.

But when it comes to child sexual abuse on base that may implicate officers of the Canadian Forces, then it’s best that these investigations are kept in house as the military police are the only police agency capable of conducting these types of investigations.

Yeah, sure, the CFNIS gave me victims services. Basically a list of phone numbers that I could call to set up counselling services that I’d have to pay out of pocket for. Again, DND and the CAF are not responsible for civilians of any age.

In the civilian world, when one wants to complain about a police investigation, or lack thereof, they can get a civilian lawyer. And this opens up all sorts of opportunities to obtain the entire and complete investigation paperwork prior to a complaint being made.

In the military justice system this avenue does not exist, especially not for civilians. Even if I had hired a lawyer to initiate my complaint against the CFNIS, it’s still the purview of the Provost Marshal to determine what will and what won’t be released to my lawyer.

The Military Police Complaints Commission? No where near as powerful as it should be. But then again, the MPCC was created with the input of the very agency that it was supposed to oversee and nothing from the civilian world to temper the iron fist that the DND and the CAF wanted to rule over the MPCC with.

But Bobbie, civilian police oversight agencies are the same.

Nope.

Not by a long shot.

The Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service do not report to the provincial Attorneys General. The CFMP and the CFNIS report to the Attorney General of Canada.

With the exception of the RCMP, the various civilian oversight agencies across Canada are created by the various provincial Attorneys General. Even though the RCMP are a federal police force and report to the Attorney General of Canada, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP does not report to the RCMP nor is it a part of the RCMP.

What is unique about the Military Police Complaints Commission is that it operates under and reports to the Minister of National Defence. As has been illustrated previously by the Military Police Complaints Commission itself, the Minister of National Defence by way of the CAF Chain of Command, is the defacto head of the Canadian Forces Military Police Group and has command authority over the Chief of Defence Staff and the Vice Chief of Defence Staff. The Vice Chief of Defence Staff is authorized under the National Defence Act to give directions or instructions to any CFNIS investigation.

When a complaint is made against a civilian police department, there are very few legal avenues available for the civilian police department to outright not comply with the investigation of a civilian complaint.

In the military world, it is the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal who will determine how much cooperation will be extended to the MPCC. It is also the Provost Marshal that will decide which documents will be released and which documents will be withheld from the MPCC.

During a “review” the MPCC cannot subpoena documents or witnesses, nor can the MPCC administer oaths. These are important issues as any statement that the members of the CFNIS give to the MPCC don’t have to be truthful as their are no consequences whatsoever for lying to the MPCC or refusing to participate with the MPCC review.

And for a person like me on the outside? Well, I’ll never have access to all of the documents from the CFNIS GO 2011-5754. I could have a team of high priced lawyers throwing lawsuit after lawsuit against the DND and the CAF and neither my lawyers or I will ever be given access to those documents. DND and the CAF are just too well insulated from the civilian world.

That’s the problem with “separate but parallel” systems. The Canadian public believe that the CFNIS work just the same as officer friendly at the Vancouver Police Department.

Officer Friendly at the VPD doesn’t face a sentence of “life in prison” for disobeying the “lawful” commands of their superior.

Officer Soldier of the CFNIS does however face a sentence of “life in prison” for disobeying the “lawful” commands of their superior. There are no exceptions in the National Defence Act that protect members of the military police and the CFNIS from vexatious prosecution by an angry superior.

Civilian police are often members of police brotherhoods. And these brotherhoods can reign terror over any civilian police department.

Members of the Canadian Forces are not members of any type of union and have very little in the way of protection from an angry chain of command.

How much faith would the citizens of Canada have in the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP if it reportedly directly to the RCMP Commissioner?

In the civilian world, police agencies do not investigate their own members for serious matters. For example when an allegation of wrongdoing is brought against a member of the VPD, an outside police agency is brought in to investigate.

Guess who investigates the military police when a member of the military police is suspected of wrong doing? That’s right, the military.

Basically what we have is a toothless Parliament that refuses to bring the DND and the CAF to heel because after almost 70 years of hyping the “heroes of Canada”, Parliament inadvertently created a spoilt child. A spoilt child that will throw temper tantrums and bawl and cry to get what it wants.

And what does the DND and the CAF want? They want to be left alone and not meddled with by the civilian authorities. The DND and the CAF want to be left alone in their own little world where the laws of common decency and common sense don’t apply.

The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are very happy to be left alone in their filthy little sandbox where victims of child sexual abuse are just as guilty, if not more guilty, than their abusers.

Depression and the art of never starting things…….

One of the hardest things about dealing with depression is the inability I have to start things that I want to do.

It’s not that I’m lazy.

It’s just that my brain keeps telling me not to bother starting because it won’t make a difference to anyone or anything.

Yes, but Bobbie, isn’t this therapeutic ?

Possibly.

But I still have to overcome the depression demons.

Sure, I’m on escitalopram, but that doesn’t stop the depression, it just turns it down a bit.

The demons and the monsters are still there.

Waiting and lurking.

Don’t forget, I’ve never had a day in my life of any type of therapy related to the events on Canadian Forces Base Namao, nor have I ever had any therapy to help me recover from my involvement with Captain Terry Totzke, nor have I ever had any therapy to help me recover from my father’s very dysfunctional household.

I’ve had tons of talking sessions with counsellors since 2011. But they can’t fix what they can’t understand.

Children don’t live on military bases.

If children did live on military bases, military bases were very safe and secure environments where nothing bad would ever happen to a child.

If bad things did happen to those children, then the military would have stepped in an put an end to it as the military protects children.

And on, and on, and on, wash-rinse-repeat.

I’m sure that the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence have gone to every extent to convince everyone of any importance in Canada that the military treated child sexual abuse as the horrific crime that it was and that it would never classify male-on-male child sexual abuse as “acts of homosexuality” and that it would never blame the victims for their own abuse.

So, until the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence come clean about historical child sexual abuse, the flaws in the National Defence Act that would allow commanding officers with no scruples to hide child sexual abuse, and their very abysmal manner in which victims of male-on-male child sexual abuse were seen as mentally ill homosexuals partially responsible for their own abuse, things will never change. I can’t keep going to counsellors, psychologists, and psychiatrists when they cast their distrust upon me.

This of course means that my depression has free reign inside of my skull.

Power Engineering

I’m a 4th class power engineer. I started off as a 5th class power engineer back in 2002.

Power engineering isn’t what I wanted, but it was what as available to me if I wanted to finally get away from wages that had me just treading above welfare.

I was working for a property management firm in Vancouver at the time doing building maintenance. Pump repairs, chiller maintenance, building automation, etc.

I wasn’t trade qualified and I didn’t have a red seal. But what I had was an ability to read and comprehend service manuals and parts diagrams. I could read schematics and I understood electrical safety.

So, if I didn’t want to be a power engineer, why am I a power engineer.

As I’ve alluded to previously, my father didn’t give a shit about school. To my father my teachers and principals were all stunned cunts, stupid fucking cocksuckers, and fucking assholes. My teachers were forever sticking their noses into his fucking business. They were calling him at work and disturbing him. My academic problems were obviously caused by their fucking inability to teach.

When I left school at the start of grade nine, he didn’t give a fuck in the slightest. I just had to pay him $100.00 per month to stay in my room, otherwise I’d have to move out. Which I did in the winter of 1988.

Even if I had stayed in school, trade school, college, or even university would have not been options for me.

As I would discover later in life, Richard joined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1963 with a low mark grade 9 education which he had to upgrade before the RCN would admit him in 1963.

He sailed the world, he learned trade skills, he learned to fly aircraft.

Not bad for a prairie boy from a one room school house in Fort McMurray, AB.

He did all of this without a university education, nor a college degree, nor any type of trade school.

Even though I have my grade 12 GED, I’ve always downplayed what that means.

Before I was allowed to apply for the 5th class power engineer program at BCIT I was required to take a couple of tests to prove that my mathematical skills were at least at the grade 10 level.

I passed my 5th class power engineering course.

Called and let Richard know.

Didn’t give a fuck in the slightest.

I accumulated sufficient time as a 5th class power engineer to challenge the 4th class power engineer provincial exam.

I passed that with ease.

Called Richard and let him know.

Just like the last time, he didn’t give a fuck.

In September of 2005 I was hired at the physical plant at the hospital and I called Richard to let him know.

Absolutely didn’t give a fuck. He didn’t need a union in the Canadian Forces so why the hell do I need a union? He then said that I was still dumber than my younger brother who he was sure was making more money than I was and he worked in a “cardboard box factory” making more money doing far less. So it was obvious that I wasn’t the smart one.

This is what led to me leaving all of the messages with Richard in August of 2006.

Now, to be honest, power engineering has provided me with employment at a wage that wouldn’t normally be available to a “loser” like me.

So, what is a power engineer?

A power engineer is someone who has been granted a certificate of competency to operate and be in charge of a refrigeration plant or a steam plant / heating plant of up to a specific heat exchanger surface areas.

This includes inspecting the entire plant once per day, minor maintenance, adjustment of equipment, checking fluid levels, maintaining chemical levels, and ensuring that the equipment is operating at peak performance in a safe manner.

In the hospital this also involves responding to fire alarms, conducting elevator extractions, testing the generators and fire pumps, diagnosing minor refrigeration issues, filter changes on the supply fans.

And in 2019 I was promoted to chief engineer.

I go well far above and beyond what a power engineer is required to do.

Don’t forget, power engineers have a “certificate of competency”, not a “trade qualification” or an “inter-provincial red seal”.

I can troubleshoot the building automation system down to component level. I’ve installed networked temperature monitoring equipment for logging the temperatures of medical and pharmaceutical refrigeration.
I upgraded the chemical monitoring systems for all of the cooling towers.
I was responsible for having all of the major supply fans converted from variable pitch mechanisms over to fixed pitch hubs with variable speed drives.
I was responsible for replacing close to 60 older pneumatic HVAC mixing boxes in the laboratory area with newer electronic mixing boxes.
I put in the current fuel monitoring system that automatically calls in the refuelling company when certain fuel levels are attained.
I pushed to have the four main cooling tower replaced in 2016 when after 25 years of neglect the old towers were a liability to the hospital.
I just finished the upgrade of the building automation system in Phase 1 Level 4 to replace the old Honeywell Excel Plus system that could no longer be serviced.
I implemented tablets for rounds and readings software.
I implemented the Angus mobile software for the aforementioned tablets for tracking of work orders.

So, why don’t I feel happy?

I’ve known for a very long time that this isn’t the line of work that I wanted to be in. And I don’t mean being the chief engineer at work. I mean being in hands on mechanical / electronics type work.

The key to this was in my social service records.

“When asked why Robert likes computers and electronics, he said that he wants to learn this so he can be closer to his father”

Fuck was I ever a damn idiot back then.

At work I find that playing stupid is the best way. Most of the power engineers that I supervise have no mechanical, electrical, or electronic skills. And one thing that I’ve had to learn in life is that if someone doesn’t have a mechanical intuition they will never learn mechanics. If I need something done I either do it myself or I contract it out.

I liken a power engineering certificate to a driver’s licence.

A driver’s licence states that you are qualified to operate a motor vehicle. A driver’s licence does not vouch for the mechanical aptitude of the car driver. Some car drivers can drop their own blocks and rebuild the big end and press a new oil seal, while some car drivers can’t even top up their own windshield washer fluid without nearly killing themselves.

With power engineering it’s the same thing.
Some power engineers know how to weld.
Some know how to wire electric motors.
Some know how to press bearings onto shafts.
Some can understand digital logic, and understand control signal and feedback while other power engineers can’t even bring up task manager on Windows or know how to check for +15, -15, +24, +5, and -5 volts on a connector that is clearly labeled.

But Bobbie, if you don’t like this stuff, why do you keep doing it?

Simple.

As a kid I tried to win my father’s affection, which as it turns out was a lost cause.

When I moved out of the house when I was 16, I had two things going for me. My mechanical intuition and my skills in electronics.

These two abilities ensured that I had employment when otherwise I would have probably endured a life on the streets with my grade 8 education and my mental illnesses.

I scratched and clawed my way up through industries that I never should have worked for but they were willing to overlook my mental issues and my lack of formal education in trade for putting my mechanical and electronic skills to use.

What could I have been if Richard had just given the slightest of a fuck (and if CFB Namao hadn’t occurred)?

I liked theatre and play production at school. At Elia Jr. High and at Pierre Laporte Jr. High I worked on lighting for plays and I did sound setup and sound mixing. Pretty well the same thing at Pierre Laporte. I did sound and lighting for school productions. I repaired the old 20 channel dimming panel. Needed a whole bunch of new trials to replace the ones that had burnt out due to shorts in the fixtures.

Theatrics would have been interesting.

Theatrics would have cost a shit ton of money to get into and a lot of support from home, so realistically theatrics would never have been an option.

Working on cars? Nope, I’ve always hated cars. I’ve owned cars for 7 years of my 35 years of holding a driver’s licence.

So, I go to work everyday.

What else am I going to do?

Am I going to quit my job and retire after I win mad-mad-money in my class action? Fuck no. If I walk away with $30k from that whole fiasco I will be greatly surprised. This is the Government of Canada that I’m dealing with, not the Catholic Church.

But Bobbie…… lots of people hate their jobs.

Well, lots of people love their jobs.

Anyways…….. until next posting.

Makeup……..

Yeah, as per my previous posting, I did dabble with makeup for a few years.

I liked it.

Growing up in military communities as a child can be extremely stifling.

Back in the day “queers”, “fags”, “homos”, “lezzies”, etc. were not welcome in the Canadian Armed Forces.

This was enforced by Canadian Forces Administrative Order CFAO 19-20. Yes, CFAO 19-20 was not aimed at military dependents living on the bases, but it would have affected the attitudes of our serving parents towards anyone that appeared in the slightest to be a homosexual.

And housing communities on military bases made the boring conformity of the civilian suburbs look like outright anarchy in comparison.

Yeah, I understand that out in the civilian world, makeup and dresses on boys wouldn’t have been all that tolerated, but there were glimmers of hope.

In the defence community dresses and makeup on boys would have resulted in some pretty substantial beatings and corrective measures.

CFB Downsview was probably the closet to a tolerant base that I lived on, but that was more or less due to the fact that CFB Downsview was the base where military personnel went to finish off the last few years of their career until retirement.

So, after a childhood, adolescence, and adulthood of self loathing, why did I suddenly give in to my whims starting in 2006?

Well, first I had a union job. I wouldn’t have taken a chance with my previous employers finding out about my proclivities involving makeup and dresses.

Second, some co-workers from work from different departments invited me out to a pride event.

Now, to be honest that was the only pride event that I’ve ever been to in my life. There’s just way too much in the way of alcohol indulgence at these events for me to feel comfortable. And there’s way too much social interaction. I like to be left alone. And I don’t like to be touched. I still participate in fringe events at pride outside of the main events.

Anyways, after the party and on my way home I gave my father a few phone calls. All of these calls went to voice mail. But they must have hit a nerve as Richard called me the next morning.

The last time this fucker had called me on his own initiative was back around 1996 when he called me and told me that if I helped my brother fix his car that Richard would pay me. Richard never did.

Anyways, we talked for a long time when he called.

You have to remember that this was almost 5 years before I received my social service paperwork that contained the evaluation of Richard by the psychiatrist hired by the Canadian Armed Forces which stated that Richard took no responsibility for his family, blamed other for the problems with his family, and expected others to solve the problems with his family. This paperwork also contained evaluation from Alberta Social Services that Richard lied and Richard basically had two faces depending on the situation.

So, in 2006 I was totally unarmed in my discussion with Richard.

First, I had to understand that hiring the babysitter wasn’t his fault. It was his mother’s fault that the babysitter was hired. He told her not to hire P.S., but she wouldn’t listen to him. He knew the babysitter’s name. He blurted it out himself without any prodding.

He even managed to blame me again for the abuse by telling me that I let it go on for far too long, and that because I allowed my brother to be abused by the babysitter that I was to blame for the issues my brother was having.

Richard said that all I had to do was tell him or tell Grandma and they could have stopped the abuse. But because I had allowed the abuse to go on there were some concerns that I was a pervert like the babysitter.

Second, Grandma wouldn’t have had to come raise my brother and I if our mother wasn’t a whore that would spread her legs for anyone in uniform. Yes, he actually said that. He said that our mother ran away and she abandoned us, it wasn’t his fault. She knew he had a career in the Canadian Forces and that he wouldn’t be home a lot. He had no decision in the matter, when the Canadian Forces told him to go, he had to go.

Third, he really didn’t beat me as hard as I remembered that he did when my brother took the Pontiac Chevette for a joyride. And even if Richard did go a little to far that morning it was because he was under a lot of stress at the time from work and by me not keeping my brother under control I was just making matters worse for him.

He on his own brought up the matter of the Vectrex and the laser. Said that he couldn’t understand why I got so worked up about that. School was meant to go to, sit down, shut up, and look at the blackboard, not to be a show-off, who the fuck did I honestly think that I was trying to impress.

And of course he railed on and on about how he sacrificed everything for my brother and I and that we didn’t show him the least about of respect or appreciation.

It was at that time that I had begun to realize what an asshole my father really was and how I had wanted my entire life trying to make amends with a man who only cared about himself.

Even though I realized in 2006 just how horrific Richard really was, this didn’t (and never will) erase the memories of everything that I had lived through under his roof.

The more I wore makeup and the more I switched from “men’s” clothing to “women’s” clothing and went against the conventions that society considered “normal” for the genders, the more what my father and Terry had told me as a kid came back to haunt me.

I generally stopped wearing makeup around 2012. The whole previous year of dealing with the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service and the Military Police Complaints Commission sucked the fucking life right out of me.

And this was before I received a copy of the certified tribunal records in February of 2013 for my Application for Judicial Review.

Dealing with all of the stress and the lies and the intentional obfuscation pretty well killed any joy that I had with wearing makeup. I still get my nails done on occasion, but not to the extent that I used to before.

Maybe in a way my facial tattoos make up for the loss of my desire to wear makeup.

Wearing dresses and make up and my weird fashion sense have made me wonder what exactly I could have been in life had I not grown up in the circumstances that I grew up in.

I thought that everyone knew

When did Bobbie start wearing dresses?

I didn’t realize until December of 2013 when I tracked my mother down and went to see her in Calgary that I had slipped into my friend’s dresses once or twice on CFB Shearwater.

My father wasn’t around, so he never found out. Which was probably a very good thing.

The next time I wore dresses was actually on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach. I had a female friend. Her parents were very traditional in the sense that girls had to wear dresses. So she and I would slip off base, swap clothes, and hang around for a while. This of course was during the time I was in the care of military social worker Captain Terry Totzke for my “homosexuality”. So this would have been in the period of 1981 to 1983. Again, I don’t think my father ever knew.

There was an incident on CFB Griesbach that caused me a lot of conflict though. I knew it would have been after I was placed into the Westfield program by Alberta Social Services. Sue, my stepmother, was going to take my younger brother to Dairy Queen for ice cream. I asked Sue if I could come. Sue, who was only about 12 years older than me, looked at me and said “Retards don’t get ice cream”. She was obviously referring to my involvement with Westfield and the problems that my untreated depression, anxiety, and other issues were causing for my father and her. Anyways I started crying. She came over and grabbed me and looked me straight in the face and said that if I didn’t stop crying like a little girl that she was going to take me to Sears and buy me a dress and that I could cry like a little girl all I wanted too.

This caused me great conflict for three reasons. 1) I hated being called a retard. I was getting teased and taunted enough on base having to take the short yellow bus to school, but now my own stepmother was calling me a retard. 2) I despised [brother] for how he could cause all sorts of shit in the house but it was always my fault for not looking after him. 3) I really wanted a dress. I was kinda hooked on Alice’s dress from Alice in Wonderland.

As things had become way out of control at home with Richard and Sue and as Richard was blaming me for “fucking with his military career” and dishing out the physical abuse to go along with that, my desires for dresses took a back seat.

The only type of glimmer that I had in my teenage years of the fascination I had with dresses as a kid was when I went to see Ridley Scott’s Legend in the theatres. I wanted Lilli’s “Black Evil Dress”.

It wouldn’t be until I had my first apartment in New Westminster around 1995 that I started to buy dresses on the sly and wear them in my apartment.

Because of my time with Captain Totzke and my father’s attitude I knew that this was probably due to my “homosexual perversion”.

It wouldn’t be until I got my union job at St. Paul’s in 2005 that I really got into dresses. First it was skirts. Skirts that could conceivably pass as “kilts”.

But by 2008 I was mainly wearing dresses.

My wardrobe at this point is mainly dresses and skirts. I do own a couple “utilikilts” and one pair of jeans.

Why do I wear dresses?

I think that on CFB Shearwater it was just childhood curiosity. When you’re under 5 I don’t think that you have a clear understanding of societal gender roles. Don’t forget, it was very common up until the early 1900s for boys under the age of 7 or 8 to wear dresses. When a boy turned 7 or 8 they were “breeched” and given their first pair of trousers / pants as well as their first haircut. Toilet training and the lack of mass produced clothing would account for this.

This is Franklin Delano Roosevelt wearing a dress.

Historians have had to go back and reevaluate paintings from the Medieval and Early Modern Eras as a lot of the paintings depicting girls in dresses may have actually been both boys and girls in dresses. To tell the two apart boys tended to wear plain dresses while girl’s dresses tended to have small amounts of finery attached to the dress.

But I think that from CFB Griesbach and onwards my desire for wearing dresses had more to do with my gender identity having been destroyed by my sexual abuse on CFB Namao along with the “conversion therapy” that I was receiving from Captain Terry Totzke on CFB Griesbach.

At the time my IQ was evaluated using a professional psychiatric test. I was evaluated to have an IQ of 136 +/- 6.

Maybe this figured into my desire to wear dresses. Dresses don’t have genders. They’re clothing.

As Richard would often say, maybe I was too fucking smart for my own fucking good.

You don’t become a woman by wearing a dress anymore than a woman becomes a man by wearing pants.

Don’t forget, but society heavily frowned upon women wearing pants right up until WWII when women were then required to work on the assembly lines to build weapons and aircraft.

Dresses are comfortable and easy to wear.

And the less things I have touching my body, the happier I am.

I think the destruction of my gender identity also figures into my desire to wear dresses.

I don’t identify as male or female.

I have no desire to be a woman.

But I also don’t fit into society’s definition of a man.

Therefore I’ve never felt locked into society’s demands that I wear specific clothing.

I have no attraction to women, but I also have no attraction to men.

I have had sex with both earlier on in my life.

During the late ‘80s and into the ‘90s I was mainly with men, but it always felt mechanical.

But don’t let this sound like I was involved with 1,000s or partners.

Maybe about 10 guys total.

Maybe about 2 or 3 women.

And I haven’t been with anyone since the early 2000’s

My attraction to men is stymied by the fact that I’ve lived all my life with the knowledge that homosexuality is a mental illness and that it is inherently evil. Having sex with men always brings back memories of my father, of Terry, and of [baby sitter / accomplice]. This cannot be escaped.

My attraction to women is stymied by the fact that I’m not really attracted to women.

What am I?

I identify as “queer”. Not gay. Not bi. Not straight. Not trans.

Just queer.

Maybe I am gay, but unfortunately that was taken away from me back in ’78 through ’83.

When I legally changed my name in 2008 I chose Bobbie specifically because this is the unisex spelling of this name.

Bobby = male

Bobbi = female

Bobbie = unisex.

I hated the name Robert as this is a boy’s / man’s name.

Anyways……………..

The fact is I wear dresses ‘cause I like dresses and I don’t identify with either gender.

A train trip.

Well, it was last week that I arrived back in Vancouver after my Vancouver to Toronto and back train trip on VIA.

Twas an interesting four days out and four days back.

I stayed in Toronto one night.

As I said before, this trip was supposed to be to allow me to reflect on my application for Medical Assistance in Dying that I was originally going to apply for on March 20th, 2023 before the government caved into the demands of astroturf campaigns funded by American evangelical dark money.

I turned this trip into a chance to get some writing done on my book.

There were two spots that I could sit down and write.

Between 2nd breakfast and 2nd supper I could use my berth as it was configured during the day as two seats and I could ask for the portable “games” table to be set up.

My other favourite location to write was up front in the “economy class” “games” room. This was an area in the starlight dome car that was set up with six tables.

I actually managed to get the layout of the book figured out along with how I want the chapters to work. Whether I have time to publish this book before I take my leave is the unknown. I’d like to at least see this book in print, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

I’ve always had bladder issues with difficulty getting to sleep due to a constant “not empty” feeling, so I took the lower berth which as it turned out had the advantage of having the window.

This is what the berths look like converted to “sleeping mode”

There’s a very heavy curtain that covers both openings. The top berth has a ladder.

The berths are actually quite roomy considering that they only exist between 2nd supper and 2nd breakfast.

The porters on each sleeping car have to assemble and disassemble these berths twice per day and convert them between sleeping berths and the dual chairs. Make sure you tip these people at the end of the ride.

I didn’t spend as much time taking pictures as I thought that I would. I didn’t even spend all that much time in the dome of the Park at the end of the train where the Sleeper + class were supposed to hang out and mingle.

There are three classes on the train.

Economy class is basically just regular seats with no sleeping accommodations.

Sleeper class has two different types of sleeping arrangements. Berths, semi-private rooms, or private rooms.

And then there is the Prestige class in which the rooms are like private hotel rooms.

Berths in sleeper class is what I could afford, so it’s what I got.

Not too bad of a deal either as you get three really good meals per day.

But yeah, writing is what I did.

And it was enjoyable.

No interruptions

No distractions.

Nothing but me and my keyboard.

I felt more at home in the economy class as everyone up there more or less kept to themselves. I never felt welcome back in the park car, not due to my tattoos or my dresses, but because I didn’t partake in “small talk” and I didn’t share their politics.

Riding VIA rail you discover just how bad the politicians have fucked this country. There are thousands of towns along the rail lines with no passenger bus service and absolutely no low fare air service. Key markets for rail passenger service.

The problem is that companies like CN Rail, albeit Canadian in name, are heavily owned by foreign shareholders that really don’t give a rat’s ass about allowing VIA to have access to the rails for passenger service.

You often hear the argument that Canada is just too large for rail passenger service.

Canada is smaller than Northern Africa. Canada is roughly a little larger than Australia. Over 75% of Canada’s population exists between Hamilton ON and Montreal, PQ. Over 95% of Canada’s population lives within 100 km of the US Border.

Yes, on a Mercator projection map, Canada looks like a very large landmass. But the Earth is a sphere, not an 11×17 sheet of paper. When you take a sphere and flatten in out, everything at the equator of that sphere will somewhat be correct in size, but the close you get to the poles of that now flattened sphere everything gains massive errors in horizontal distances. Vertical distances stay correct, horizontal distances become more wrong the further away from the equator they are. A proper globe projection will show you just how small Canada actually is.

Try this: https://www.thetruesize.com/

If politicians wanted passenger rail service from one side of the country to the other they could easily implement it. But then they’d have to endure the ire of the automobile industry, the petroleum industry, and the aviation industries. All three of which wouldn’t exist without massive tax payer subsidies to make their operations and their products affordable.

So what you end up with is the VIA trains sitting on sidings waiting for freight trains to go past. The rule used to be, and it still actually is, that passenger service had the right-of-way, but with lack of enforcement and freight trains becoming far too long for the siding, the passenger trains are stuck waiting.

But enough about politics.

I had time to reflect upon the irony that even though I am the representative plaintiff in my class action against the DND and the CAF over the Captain Father Angus McRae affair that I stand a very good chance of not collecting a single red cent from the action.

This comes down to the fact that in 1980 the “brass” within the Canadian Armed Forces didn’t want the babysitter handed over to the RCMP, nor did the CAF JAG want the CFSIU to spend any time truly investigating the babysitter for what he had done.

What that means is that even though most of the 25 children that Captain McRae was suspected of molesting were also being molested by Captain McRae’s teenaged accomplice, and most of the children being molested by Captain McRae were being supplied to Captain McRae by his teenaged accomplice, the Department of Justice and the Canadian Armed Forces are only willing to compensate victims of Captain McRae himself.

Does this mean that in all of my persistence for justice I’ve just set the babysitter up as being the only person to receive any type of settlement from my class action?

And there’s no doubt in my mind that the DOJ and the DND will point to the 2011 CFNIS investigation to show that there was no connection between the babysitter and I, therefore there could be no possible connection between Captain McRae and myself.

This even though the CFNIS in 2011 had the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the 1980 Court Martial transcripts that heavily implicated the babysitter with molesting numerous children on the base and it was the investigation of the babysitter by the base military police that uncovered the Captain Father Angus McRae military child sexual abuse scandal which DND quickly moved out of the public eye.

Yes, sure, the CFNIS should never have been involved with investigating my complaint against the babysitter.

Yes, sure, two independent reviews by retired supreme court judges found that the CFNIS are incompetent and out of their league when it comes to sexual assault investigations.

That doesn’t matter.

The DOJ and the DND need to prove that I wasn’t connected to Captain McRae so that they can show the public that if I am making things up about being involved with the babysitter and Captain McRae, then what else am I making up? Maybe everything that I’ve said about the “Summary Investigation Flaw”, and the “3-year-time-bar flaw” is also a lie.

When no one believes.

Well, it looks as if one of the aspects of the CFB Namao child sexual abuse scandal that the DOJ and the DND aren’t willing to look after is the psychological harm done to the victims of Captain Father Angus McRae and his teenaged accomplice.

And I’m not referring to the psychological harm done as a direct result of the sexual abuse. I’m talking about the psychological malpractice that came from being dealt with by military social workers.

It’s very clear from my involvement with the military social worker that his goal was to keep the civilian authorities from discovering what had occurred on Canadian Forces Base Namao from 1978 until 1980.

How many other kids were dealt with by military social workers in the aftermath of the Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse scandal?

No one knows.

I’ve tried to retrieve my medical records from Captain Terry Totzke, but the Department of National Defence says that these records cannot be found unless I myself tell DND where these records currently are and who currently has them.

If it wasn’t for my Alberta Social Service records and my Children’s Aid Society of Toronto records, I would never have know that I had been in the care of military social workers in Alberta and in Ontario.

And no doubt there are others like me.

Others who were dealt with by the military social workers.

Others who were blamed by the military social workers for wanting what happened.

Other who were blamed for their younger siblings having been abused by the babysitter and Captain McRae.

How many kids from Canadian Forces Base Namao went on to commit suicide?

Not only as a result of the sexual abuse in a military environment that viewed such abuse as nothing more than homosexuality.

How many kids involved with the CFB Namao child sexual abuse scandal went on to commit suicide due to their involvement with the military social workers and their serving parent’s refusal to disobey the directions of the military social workers.

The DOJ and the DND will do anything to keep the public from ever discovering that not only were children sexually abused on military bases, but children were often mindfucked and gaslit by the military.

This means that my application for M.A.i.D. is going to be one hell of a battle.

One of the complication my nurse practitioner says that I might still face in my request for Medical Assistance in Dying is that I haven’t sought or participated in treatment for my mental illnesses.

In May of 2021 I had to take time off from work. I was in crisis. The stress of dealing with my past along with the stress of dealing with a major hospital that was trying to become COVID proof using ventilation systems that were designed long before viruses like SARS or COVID pushed me over the edge.

I went to see a psychiatrists at Vancouver General Hospital at their Access and Assessment Program.

I had a talk with one of the psychiatrists.

As I listed off to him what I was going through and what I had been through, I could see his eyes glaze over. He must have literally been wondering what fucking rock I crawled out from under and why I wasn’t wearing my tinfoil hat.

It’s the same look I’ve had from counsellors and psychiatrists before.

A look of complete disbelief.

A look that says that they think I am unloading 100 percent horseshit on them.

Military child sexual abuse?

Get the fuck outta here!

Military hiding child sexual abuse?

Get the fuck outta here!

Children with Military Social Workers?

Get the fuck outta here!

Children being gaslit by military social workers into believing that they’re to blame for being sexually abused?

Get the fuck outta here!

So yeah, it’s hard to get help when those offering the help don’t believe 1/10th of what you’re telling them.

And it’s absolutely maddening to think that I won’t be able to obtain M.A.i.D. because everyone who should have helped instead wanted to pass me off as some tinfoil hat lunatic.

So, it looks like I might be left with taking care of things by myself.

But that’s the way it has always been all of my life.