June 2024 – Page 2

DNA test is in.

My results from my DNA test finally became available today.

An interesting makeup.

I’m not surprised about the England, Northwestern Europe, Scottish, and Irish.

The England & Northwestern Europe group also contains the French, so that’s where the Dagenais would have originated from before settling in Eastern Canada as the Acadians.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Northwestern_Europe

The fact that Germany, France, England, and other regions are all lumped together really isn’t that surprising.

For the last 10 thousand or so years the people that lived in these regions would invade and conquer their neighbours on a never ending rotating manner.

For example the people know as the Brittons today only share a tiny bit of DNA with their original ancestors from just 5,000 years ago.

The Brittons got bred out.

The Indigenous Americas would be from my paternal grandmother.

I received a bunch of notifications about potential relations, most from the Dagenais and Waniandy side of my family tree. Nothing from the Gill side.

It does look as if my grandmother might actually have only been 1/2 Cree and not full Cree. Her mother’s maiden name seems to originate from Albania. Have to do some more digging.

Anyways, that’s enough for now.

Ignored, written off, and talked-over.

One of the things that I’ve had to endure over the years is the constant talking over

I’ve had many instances of being written off and ignored.

In the past I had always hoped that I was just misunderstanding.

But often it’s not.

People have said that I don’t exert myself enough.

One of the most startling episodes of this was when we had an outside management company managing the physical plant at the hospital where I work.

When I started working at the hospital in 2005 I re-opened the welding shop. No one had the ability to weld since the last person with welding experience left. So I started welding. One of the managers would absolutely refuse to ask me to do any type of welding work for him even though there were lots of projects. The other manager blamed this on my “flamboyance” and that I was flaunting it too much?

I was thinking to myself “what the fuck?”

I wasn’t yet out of the closet.

But then again at that point in time it was almost 10 years since a Vancouver Police Department officer wrote my mugging off as a “gay trick gone bad”.

And then I started to realize that a lot of what I had been through in life up to that point in life was due to some sort of “queer vibe” that I had exhibited.

To this date I’ve never figured out what this “vibe” was. But it must have been noticeable.

Was this the same vibe that put me in the sights of Captain McRae and his teenaged accomplice?

Was this the same “vibe” that got the shit beat out of me numerous times at school because I “walked like a girl”, “didn’t have a girlfriend”, “looked like a faggot”?

Was this the same vibe that attracted numerous adult men to me for sexual favours while I was under 16?

Was this the same vibe that caused another manager that I worked for to constantly refer to me as “Freddie Mercury” and to constantly remind me that gay sex leads to AIDs.

Was this the same vibe that caused the son of a company in St. Albert, Alberta to exclaim that there’s no place for fags at his father’s company?

Was this the same vibe that caused Ed from Classic Billiards to poke and prod me to admit that I had a same sex attraction?

Is this the same vibe that allows service contractors and vendors to ignore me even when I’m the one who called them in for service?

It’s so much fun at work dealing with contractors who ignore you and instead start talking to someone else who has no idea of what’s going on or what the service call is about.

But Bobbie, you’re the Chief Engineer!

Surely people have to take you seriously?

No.

Things are great when I’m communicating via email.

Things go off the rails when I deal with people face to face.

It’s those “queer vibes” apparently.

And in the macho “trades” field that I find myself in, these “queer vibes” are an outright turn-off to a lot of guys.

The only reason that I’m at where I’m at is my knowledge, my skills, and my abilities.

There are numerous people over the years who would have gladly destroyed me because of my “vibe”.

And I know it’s that “vibe”.

The was one guy at the hospital that used to turn to me for advice and knowledge and help with getting projects done.

But after management was brought back in house an I was promoted to the non-management position of Chief Engineer which allowed me to dress more appropriately for my gender identity, his opinion of me soured to the point where he was sticking a knife in my back on almost a weekly basis.

And I have absolutely no doubts that if I were to meet some of my previous co-workers and employers that their opinions of me and their attitudes towards me would change drastically from what they were before.

Yeah, okay, fine.

In the last couple of years I’ve switched over to dresses, I do my nails, and I’m more often than not in heels.

Does that make my knowledge worth any less?

Apparently so.

VPD Constable Gil Puder

VPD constable Gil Puder was the investigator assigned to my mugging.

I was working the Tuesday through Saturday 14:00 to 22:00 shift at the bowling centre that I worked at.

If I left work at 22:00 sharp, I could make it downtown to watch the late shows at either the Famous Players Capitol 6 or the Cineplex Granville 7.

This fateful weekend I went to see a movie called “Congo” at the Capitol 6. I’ve covered the mugging elsewhere, so I won’t get into the details.

But, the end result is even though I had located a video tape that showed me, my two assailants, and what triggered the mugging, VPD constable Gil Puder refused to pick up the video tape or to even just go and view the video tape and speak to the theatre manager.

Gil Puder told me right to my face that until I admitted the “truth”, that I had picked this guy up in a bar and that this was a “trick gone bad”, that he wasn’t going to help.

So, there never was an investigation.

Puder defended.

A few years later when I had moved into commercial property management one of the plumbers that worked for us knew Gil Puder.

This plumber and I were having coffee at a local coffee shop discussing some upcoming projects that I had for him.

This revelation only came up because the plumber used to play ice hockey with Puder and Puder had just died due to a brain tumour.

I asked the plumber if this Gil Puder that he played hockey with had been a VPD officer, the plumber said that yes, Gil had been a VPD officer.

I gave the plumber my opinion of Puder and explained to him what caused me to have this opinion of Puder.

The plumber seemed quite taken aback and then the plumber started to justify what Puder had opined.

“Bob, you gotta admit, you don’t have a girlfriend or a wife, and you don’t exactly come across as a ladies man”, and “Look at it from Gil’s point of view, you got mugged on Burrard at Georgia, the gays are down on Burrard and Davie, so what else what Gil supposed to conclude?”

There was also a general contractor that was used frequently that did tenant and building renovations.

I was the first power engineer that had ever worked for this employer, as such there was now a requirement to adhere to provincial and municipal codes. And this caused quite a row between the contractors and I. They were now required to pull permits for electrical, plumbing, construction, demolition, and asbestos abatement.

The general contractor would often wait until it was just him and I with no one else around and then he’d unleash on me with every homophobic slur and stereotype.

When I’d go talk to the general manager about this, the GM would talk to the contractor, and the contractor would profusely deny that he had said anything.

Thick skin.

It took me years to grow a thick enough skin to ignore these opinions of my worth.

And as much as I am able to ignore them in the modern day, the problem is they still have the ability to cause me to endure significant issues.

Employment is something that I can’t just up and change if I wanted to.

Do you have any idea how long it took to work up the confidence to start dressing the way that I wanted to and to even start on hormone therapy?

Do you realize how severely I have limited my future?

In 1980 the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service investigated Captain McRae for having committed “Acts of Homosexuality” with young children on Canadian Forces Base Namao. At the time “homosexuality” was viewed as a “victimless crime”. That tarred and feathered everyone involved with Captain McRae as a “homosexual”.

This is why I spent time in the care of Captain Terry Totzke receiving “help” with my “homosexuality” that I had exhibited.

In 2011 the CFNIS conducted an investigation into the actions of the babysitter.

As I’ve said elsewhere, the CFNIS had in their possession both the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the courts martial transcripts. The existence of which the CFNIS withheld from the MPCC and the Federal Court of Canada.

They knew what Captain McRae had been charged with, and they knew that it was the investigation of the babysitter for molesting numerous young children on base that triggered the investigation of Captain McRae.

But the CFNIS in 2011 would have been exposed to a report that was written back in 1980 when the attitude was that Captain McRae, the babysitter, and all of the other kids involved were “homosexuals” with perverted minds willingly participating in the victimless crime of homosexual sex.

Is this why the 2011 CFNIS investigation was such an abysmal failure?

They had the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the court martial transcripts that implicated the babysitter in the direct molestation of young children, but the CFNIS still had the audacity to call me a liar.

Anyways, enough for now.

Gotta get ready to catch my bus back to Vancouver.

Fears……

What fears have you overcome and how?

WordPress sometimes prompts me to write about a certain topic. It’s geared towards “family” type events.

There are very few that actually seem to apply to me.

Today’s prompt was somewhat interesting.

I think the biggest fear that I had in my life was my father.

I overcame that fear somewhat in 2006 during a series of phone calls that I had with him.

Then there was his death in January of 2017.

That was a major relief.

My brother thinks that I’m over exaggerating my fear of Richard, but as Dr. Gabor Maté observed, “no two children have the same parents”.

The most significant fear that I had of Richard was his temper. Richard had very poor impulse control and very poor control of his anger. He also couldn’t take into account the difference in physical strength between himself and the person he was lashing out at.

My fear of Richard only grew more intense when I became involved with military social worker Captain Terry Totzke.

Richard is dead and gone. And the world is probably better off for this. But his effects still haunt me and have left their traces upon me.

My grandmother was another person that I feared as a kid.

Her anger and her impulse control were worse than Richard’s, but at least she lacked the physical strength of Richard.

Alcohol. I’ve always feared being an alcoholic.

Both my father and my grandmother were intense alcoholics. Both were happy drunks for the most part. Conversely both were intensely angry people when they were sobering up.

I’ve had so little alcohol in my life I can almost remember every exact time.

The last time that I had a drink was back in July of 2011.

Before that it was January of 2010

Before that it was August of 2006

Before that it was September of 2005

Before that it was May of 1994

Before that it was sometime in the winter of 1990 in Gagetown, New Brunswick.

Before that it was sometime around 1986.

I can’t remember all of the “sips” that my father or my grandmother would give me when they were drunk.

I do remember the beer that grandma made me drink in the summer of 1984.

Most of these were just casual get-togethers when I was changing jobs and moving up the so called ladder.

But becoming an alcoholic has always been one of my fears.

Growing up on military bases I was exposed to a significant amount of alcoholism. It was as if being an alcoholic was a requirement to join the Canadian Forces back in the ’50s through the ’90s.

Being a “homosexual” and subsequently growing up to be like the babysitter was always a major fear of mine. Both Captain Totzke and my father would keep telling me that if I didn’t stop kissing, hugging, and being interested in other boys that I would grow up to be just like the babysitter and the priest from Namao.

Imagine the type of fear that would instil into a 9 to 11 year old.

Being told that you’d be going to a psychiatric hospital or jail for “allowing” the babysitter to do what he had done.

A little hint

Okay, so I had a little bit of a learning curve with my estrogen patches.

Yes, they’re supposed to stick you your skin. But I found for the first couple of days my patches kept falling off.

And not really wanting to miss out on any of my meds, I had to think of something to do to keep these from coming off.

If I could put them on my upper arms like a nicotine patch, that would have worked, but the estrogen patches have to go on either my butt or my lower belly for the best effect.

So I turned to Tegaderm.

I put the patch on, then I put a Tegaderm dressing over top of the patch. And the patches don’t fall off. which is nice.

I don’t want to miss out on any of the meds.

Coming up this Friday I have my first blood test to make sure that my body is handling the estrogen properly.

Hopefully my body is.

Mentally I like the difference in mood.

It’s almost like androgens are a toxin.

Happy Pride Month?

As I’ve said, I’ve never really taken part in pride, and I really don’t identify with it.

I guess part of it has to do with the environment that I grew up in.

Military communities were isolated. And by isolated I mean that the Canadian Armed Forces had control over the types of people that were allowed to live in the military communities on base.

By way of filtering recruits, the Canadian Armed Forces could control the political leanings of those living on the bases. And it should be of no surprise that these military communities were very conservative and right leaning.

The thing is, when you’re living within these communities, especially if your exposure to the outside world is very limited, you come to see the political leanings of these communities as being “normal”.

Yes, Canadian Forces Administrative Order CFAO 19-20 did no apply to children living on base, it only applied to members of the Canadian Armed Forces. But as has been indicated through various studies, members of the Canadian Armed Forces often had a problems with separating their military careers from their home lives.

As the civilian social worker that dealt with my family noted during various home visits to our PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach, Mr. Gill orders his children with simple commands and answers their questions with yes or no replies and the children don’t question these decisions.

Being in the Canadian Armed Forces, Richard was nothing more than a cog in a machine that demanded his servile obedience. His was not a position to question. His was a position to do as he was told. And like many men who are stripped of the authority in their lives, he made up for this lack of authority by exerting his authority on those he could.

When it came to me and my issues from Canadian Forces Base Namao he was not going to question the authority of Captain Terry Totzke. If Captain Totzke said that I was a homosexual, that I was exhibiting signs of homosexuality, who was master corporal Gill to question this?

When I’ve talked to other base brats about how things were on base I get this Pollyannish rose coloured view of what things were like on base. This usually comes from former brats that didn’t have “issues” and therefore weren’t exposed to the underbelly of life in the “company town”.

I have encountered a few former brats that don’t participate in any of the social media groups for base brats. They want nothing to do with acknowledging their past. And I have an inkling that the brats who don’t want anything to do with remembering their pasts as base brats vastly outnumber the number of brats that celebrate their past as base brats.

The number of broken and dysfunctional families that lived on the bases was probably a high percentage, especially when you look at how the recruiting process would naturally filter out more liberal minded recruits. The military communities were rife with homophobia, racism, misogyny, victim blaming, victim shaming.

Another matter that played into the sterility of the military community was the fact that military housing could only be rented to members of the Canadian Armed Forces, and that these members had the ability to decide who could live in these houses and who couldn’t. If a service member wanted his spouse out of “his” PMQ, she was booted off the base by the military police. Same thing for his kids. As long as provincial law allowed for it, the serving member could give his kid the boot. The age that a child can live on their own varies from province to province. In Ontario a 16 year old can move out on their own.

I’m not sure what the rules are any more, but in my day living on the bases, 18 was the absolute oldest a base brat could be. Once you hit 19 you were expected to get off the base. There were exceptions to this rule, care givers could live in military housing so long as it was to look after military dependents, persons with disabilities could live on base past their 19th birthday, and students obtaining a higher education could continue to live on base until their 24th birthday.

As you can imaging, there wasn’t a lot of diversity. Everything was sterile. Everything was the military mindset.

Queer kids just learnt to stay in the closet.

Queer kids learnt that they were defective and a national security threat.

Kids on base learnt that there were no victims, that it always took two to tango.

Kids on base learnt that compassion was a liability.

Living on base there were no “others” like us.

Living on base we only had exposure to adults that passed the requirements of the Canadian Armed Forces recruiting agents.

Our view of the world was shaped by the monochromatic views of the world espoused by these serving soldiers that passed the conformity tests.

You know all of those soldier that have been implicated in hazing rituals over the years? Yeah we grew up amongst those people.

I lived on the base that was the home of the Canadian Airborne Regiment. We grew up amongst the mindset and the racism that lead to the death of Shidane Arone in Somalia.

All those sexual assaults that occurred in the Canadian Armed Forces? Those were committed by men of the Canadian Forces, many of whom were our fathers.

The misogyny and homophobia that were rampant in the Canadian Armed Forces back in the day? The men espousing these views were often our fathers.

I grew up in a community that allowed everyone up the chain of command to escape responsibility for the murder of Shidane Arone and allowed a lowly private, private Kyle Brown, to be made the scape goat for the whole sordid affair.

I grew up in a community that allowed sexually abused children to be blamed for the abuse they suffered at the hand of members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

I grew up in a community where the chain of command could determine who was a victim and who wasn’t a victim.

I grew up in a community that had the legal power to investigate itself and its members for sexual assaults against children.

I grew up in a community in which officers with no legal training and no legal background could summarily dismiss service offence charges that had been brought against their subordinates.

I grew up in a community in which a 3-year-time-bar applied to all service offences, including service offences of a purely civilian nature.

I grew up in a community which claimed criminal code offences related to children as service offences to be dealt with solely through the military justice system.

I grew up in a community served by such a compromised justice system that it was dismantled and restructured due to horrific miscarriages of justice.

So no, in the end I have nothing to be proud of.