bobbiebees

The burning and mind numbing silence.

One of the issues that really causes me a lot of grief and consternation is the complete and absolute lack of interest from the media and from groups that should be interested in how the Canadian Armed Forces dealt with child sexual abuse on the bases in Canada.

There have only been two reporters that have shown any level of interest in my matter and those two reporters are David Pugliese and Nora Loreto.

Even veterans groups that support members of the Canadian Armed Forces want nothing to do with my matter.

Now, you might be saying to yourself “but Bobbie, how common could child sexual abuse have been on the bases?”.

Well, what are the odds that I would have been involved with the following:

A captain of the regular forces who admitted to molesting numerous children during his years of service and who would go on to have more convictions for molesting children after he had been booted out of the military.
An altar boy who would go on to have numerous charges and convictions for sexual crimes committed against children.
A random stranger in the sauna of a military recreation centre who was keen to receive oral sex from an 8 year old.
A major of the regular forces who himself would be investigated years later for sexually abusing a young boy on Canadian Forces Base Borden in 1974 and who would go on to pay a cash settlement with the family of a young 16 year old boy that he had improper sexual relations with.
A member of the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires who was a hebephile and no doubt had access to children on various military bases during his career in the Canadian Armed Forces.

The Military Police Complaints Commission confirmed that my babysitter, P.S., was charged and convicted in 1982 for molesting a young boy in a town just north of CFB Petawawa in Ontario. In 1984 P.S. was charged and convicted for molesting a boy in Manitoba. And then in 1985 he was charged and convicted for molesting a 9 year old boy on Canadian Forces Base Edmonton after his family had been posted back there. He was also convicted of molesting a 13 year old news paper boy in the city of Edmonton after the Canadian Forces booted him out of his family’s military housing unit on the base. How many other children did P.S. molest on Canadian Forces Base Petawawa, in Ontario as well as the unnamed base in Manitoba, as well as Canadian Forces Base Edmonton. How many children did P.S. molest in the surrounding communities and was able to escape justice because his father got transferred to different bases?

When I obtained the court martial records for captain McRae it contained a copy of his ecclesiastical trial conducted by the Catholic church. Captain McRae admitted to having molested numerous boys over the years. Captain McRae joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 1973. He was investigated for having committed “acts of homosexuality” shortly there after while he was stationed at the Royal Military College. The RMC is in Kingston, Ontario and is on Canadian Forces Base Kingston. Captain McRae was then transferred to Canadian Forces Base Portage La Prairie in Manitoba. After CFB Portage La Prairie he was transferred to Canadian Forces Station Holberg on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. After CFS Holberg he was transferred to Canadian Forces Base Namao. In May and June of 1980 the military police and the CFSIU would discover that he had molested over 25 children on the base.

This begs the question. How many children on the bases and in the communities around the bases did P.S. and Captain McRae molest?

Around the time of Lynne Harper’s murder in 1959, sergeant Alexander Kalichuk had been found driving around the back roads around Royal Canadian Air Force base Clinton. He was offering new panties to young girls. When the police caught up with him and asked him what he was doing he said he bought the box of girls panties as a birthday present for a friend’s daughter, but that the party had been cancelled and he didn’t want the panties to go to waste. How many kids did Kalichuk molest, rape, or murder before he more than likely raped and killed Lynne Harper? We’ll never know and the Canadian Armed Forces are fine with that. Don’t forget, the military offers the perfect hiding place for people like P.S., or Captain McRae, or Sgt. Alexander Kalichuk. New children delivered to the base every posting season. The kids you’ve molested get posted off the base eventually and go to another base. You get transferred to another base before you get caught. The kids you’re molesting, especially the boys, are dead terrified of being seen as weak, gay, or queer. And back in the “good ol’ days” there were no police databases that could be used by local police departments to track similar crimes that may have occurred in different geographical areas throughout Canada.

So yeah, it becomes so very tiring and so very maddening to see the Canadian media and veterans groups and military sexual assault survivor groups show absolutely no interest or no concern for the children that lived on Canadian Forces Bases.

It’s almost like the media and the veterans groups and the military sexual assault survivor groups are saying to me and the other like me that our lives are meaningless and that we are disposable.

If you want to know what it feels like to be human garbage, just ask, I can let you know.

For 42 years I’ve dealt with severe sexual trauma, the fallout of being dealt with by military social worker Captain Terry Totzke, being caught between Captain Totzke and my civilian social workers, despised by my own father for having “fucked with his military career” and for “allowing” the babysitter, P.S., to abuse my younger brother.

So yeah.

That’s why I’m tired.

And that’s why I’m numb.

And that’s one of the reasons that I really want to go to sleep.

November 6th 2021

Well, fall is obviously starting to set in.

The rain is more frequent

The leaves are dropping off the trees

The sun goes down much earlier in the day

The sun comes up much later in the morning

Another year about to end

Another year closer to the end

The grey and cloudy skies just seem to suck the energy right out of me

But I guess in the natural world we’d be slowing down and getting ready for the winter months

Kinda hard to believe that even though things are slowing down that the Earth is still zipping through the universe at 23,400 kilometres per hour.

Anyways….. gonna go out for a walk.

An Interesting Development

That didn’t take long.

Canada has a brand new Minister of National Defence, The Honourable Anita Anand from Oakville, Ontario.

In one of her first moves as the Minister of National Defence she instructed the Canadian Forces to hand over all matters of sexual misconduct investigations to the civilian authorities.

https://twitter.com/AnitaOakville/status/1456281149806944260?s=20

There is no word yet if this also encompasses sexual misconduct matters involving civilian victims or civilian perpetrators.

Sadly, this is about 10 years too late for my complaint against P.S. which would eventually encompass Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae.

From Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Anand

Anita has a background in law. Yes her expertise is in the field of corporate law, however lawyers must have a grasp of legal principles common to all fields of law. As a lawyer, Anita would have enough understanding of the Criminal Code of Canada and the various acts of Parliament to understand that while the National Defence Act has holes large enough to fly a C-17 Globemaster through, the Canadian Forces military police and the CFNIS actually do have limitations on their ability to investigate and prosecute Criminal Code matters in the military justice system.

As a lawyer, Anita would have to take into account previous rulings of the Supreme Court of Canada such as Regina vs. Nolan which set very definite limitations on the powers of Military Police and the CFSIU / CFNIS.

Anita has only been in power for one week and she has already made a change that would never have been possible under Minister Sajjan.

Sajjan unfortunately turned out to be one of the “old boys”. And one of the problems with the “old boys” is that they won’t do anything that will put their cherished organization at risk of being tarnished.

I had so much faith in Sajjan when he was first elected in 2015, but that all went down the toilet when I met with Minister Sajjan in February of 2016 and he accused me of having an angle and that I was playing games.

We’ll have to see how Anita works out as the Minister of National Defence and how long she’s able to fly free before the “old boys club” starts squawking and demands that the Prime Minister clips her wings. I’ve already written a letter to Anita asking for her to request that the Canadian Forces Ombudsman conduct an inquiry to look at historical child sexual abuse in the Canadian Forces from 1950 until 1998. I’ve also asked Anita to ask Parliament to pass the required legislation that would nullify the effects of the 3-year-time-bar and pre-1998 decisions of the summary-investigation-flaw in matters that could be considered to be child sexual abuse.

Psychiatric Help

I’m not everyone’s cup of tea.

So, I often get asked “Bobbie, if you’re having such problems, why don’t you get help?”

Well, truth be told I have tried to get help in the past. I honestly have.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been turned down, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this won’t be the last time that I am turned down.

My current nurse practitioner had arranged for me to see someone on the north shore. But once this counsellor found out about my history and my issues, they suddenly weren’t taking bookings until next year.

My nurse practitioner has actually been the only one so far who has shown an interest in my issues. When I started having severe problems back in May of this year he had no reservations about getting me on escitalopram.

I’ve had counsellors over the years. Some were good, a few were bad, but most were indifferent.

The problem that we run into is not a single counsellor has ever run into a high functioning person with so many issues.

Dysfunctional household – check
Intergenerational issues – check
Abandonment issues – check
Sexual abuse – check
Prolonged sexual abuse – check
Multiple perpetrators of the sexual abuse – check
Graphic and depraved sexual abuse – check
Blaming the victim for their own abuse – check
Blaming the victim for someone else’s abuse – check
Receiving unwarranted “conversion therapy” – check
Parent threatening the victim with physical harm or death – check
Untreated major depression – check
Untreated severe anxiety – check
Untreated CPTSD – check
Inability to form relationships- check

So, it’s obvious that I’m not going to be a case that any counsellor is going to want to engage with. Counsellors, just like everyone else, want the cases that will end in success. Nobody wants to take on cases that are almost certain to end in failure.

People like me are not supposed to hold down employment or keep our noses clean. We’re supposed to be barely functional wrecks.

People like me are supposed to be dead from suicide. I know of three from the CFB Namao matter who meet that criteria. I know others who have had a very rough run at life as well.

And if we’re not dead from suicide we’re supposed to be alcoholics, or heroin junkies, or on crack, self medicating ourselves into an early grave. I’m still amazed in all honesty that I’m not pushing a shopping cart down the alleys collecting bottles and junk to trade for money.

I would guess that another issue that prevented me from receiving counselling is that I’ve never had anyone advocating for me.

My father should have advocated for me back in 80 – 83, but he couldn’t take responsibility for his family and would often insist to me that I was only acting up in order to get out of what I had allowed the babysitter to do to my younger brother. In other words I was faking “major depression”, “severe anxiety” and a host of other issues as a way to shed the blame I deserved for what had happened to my younger brother.

My mother couldn’t advocate as I don’t think she knew bugger sweet all about CFB Namao or my life thereafter.

My stepmother? I don’t think she honestly knew what was going on as I don’t think that Richard had ever been truthful with her about the events of CFB Namao, or why Marie left in 1977, or just about anything else.

So as I stumbled and bumbled through life from one breakdown to another, there was never anyone there for me ensuring that I was getting the help that I needed.

And I’ll bet you that most of these counsellors, upon hearing my issues, can’t help but wonder what it is I expect to accomplish at the age of 50.

It’s not like I’m 15, or 20, or even 30. I’m 50.

I’m not suddenly going to find a boyfriend and get married and live happily ever after.

I’m not suddenly going to find a girlfriend and get married and live happily ever after.

I’m not going to become less disgusted by sex and sexual intercourse and start having sex.

I’m not all of a sudden going to become everyone’s best friend and start drinking and hanging out in bars with them.

I’m not suddenly going to stop having recurring nightmares about the abuse on CFB Namao or my father’s own anger outbursts.

These counsellors must be thinking to themselves “WTF? Why Me? I’m not a fucking miracle worker”.

So, my journey for a counsellor continues.

And please no, I don’t need healing crystals, or magical chants.

Lawyers and Coppers

I received a telephone call from one of my lawyers today.

This one is for my case involving Earl Ray Stevens.

My lawyer informed me that the Ontario Crown is taking a little longer than promised to release their records to my lawyer. The Crown is telling my lawyer that the police are taking longer than they should in handing their investigation file over to the Ontario Crown.

My lawyer has said that the counsel for the defendants have agreed to proceed to discovery without the Crown documents.

I really don’t know at this point how this case will work out.

Sure, Earl wasn’t found guilty in a court of law. But both the Toronto Police Service and the Ontario Crown thought that the case was strong enough to proceed to trial. Even the justice presiding over the preliminary hearing thought that this case was strong enough to go to trial.

Earl died of bladder cancer before the trial could commence.

Earl was a retired member of the Canadian Armed Forces. Earl was very smooth and Earl knew what he was doing. One can only wonder how many children Earl molested on the various Canadian Forces Bases while he was enlisted.

Earl’s career in the Canadian Forces more than likely explains why he knew that I would be terrified if either my father or the military police found out what I was doing with Earl and why Earl was able to use this as leverage to get me to keep my mouth shut about what he was doing. He knew from his time in the Canadian Forces that no military dependent would want anyone to know that they were “gay” or “homosexual”.

I wonder how many other military dependent children Earl was able to abuse in silence by threatening them with the revelation of their “secret”.

On another note I also received an email from the victim services coordinator with the CFNIS Western Region. They inform me that the investigation into the “man in the sauna” is still ongoing.

It’ll be interesting to see how this one works out.

The military police are taking such a trashing in the public eye these days. The military police and the CFNIS just don’t seem to be able to get convictions on anything.

The primary witness in this investigation is P.S., the babysitter from CFNIS investigation 2011-5754. The investigation which the CFNIS actually determined was “Founded – Not Cleared”.

The Military Police Complaints Commission in their final report that was released in 2020 stated that the CFNIS knew in 2011 that the charges against P.S. were founded.

Why the CFNIS told me in 2011 that they couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that P.S. was capable of the crimes I had accused him of will forever be a mystery. I have some plausible ideas.

How willing P.S. will be to talk to the CFNIS in this matter is anyone’s guess. And how willing the CFNIS will be to push P.S. to talk is again anyone’s guess. P.S. provided me to the man in the sauna. P.S. was the only witness to what had happened. And P.S. obviously knew what the man in the sauna was going to want from me.

At this time I only have a guess as to who the man in the sauna was. I know it wasn’t Captain McRae. There was an officer of the Canadian Forces who had been sent out from Ottawa to assist Captain McRae with McRae’s affairs during the lead up to his court martial. This officer, who was a major at the time, had been charged in the 2010s with molesting a young boy on Canadian Forces Base Borden in 1974. This is the same man, who after he retired from the Canadian Forces, had made a cash settlement with a family in Ontario for having improper sexual relations with a 16 year old boy.

Again, the major flaw with this whole investigation is that if it turns out that the man in the sauna was an officer of the Canadian Armed Forces and if this officer was responsible for directing P.S. to bring me to the sauna, a sauna that was owned by the Canadian Forces and was located on a secure Defence Establishment, to perform oral sex on this man, this would expose the Minister of National Defence to civil actions for the actions and behaviours of their officer.

Two problems exist with this scenario though.

First is that the 3-year-time-bar which existed in the National Defence Act prior to 1998 would prevent the Canadian Forces from being able to charge this man with Gross Indecency or Indecent Assault.

Second, the Minister of National Defence is in fact the “Chief of Police” as the minister via the Vice Chief of Defence Staff can direct any CFNIS investigation. The Supreme Court of Canada and the Military Police Complaints Commission have both said that this is improper. The Supreme Court of Canada has specifically ruled that it is improper for a police agency to conduct police investigations that could subject its parent agency to civil actions based on the outcome of the police investigation. This is why almost every police agency in Canada will always call in an outside police agency to conduct investigations when it suspects its own officers of serious wrongdoing.

Anyways, enough for now.

A lonely existence.

Yeah, my childhood after CFB Namao was a very lonely existence.

I guess the trauma and the shock of what I had been through on Canadian Forces Base Namao at the hands of P.S, along with the dysfunctional household that I was growing up in really fucked with my emotional well-being.

Being involved with Captain Totzke couldn’t have really helped with my self worth very much.

My father had convinced anyone that would listen that I was how I was because it was all an act so that I could shirk the responsibility of allowing the babysitter to molest my younger brother.

The fact that most of the kids on CFB Griesbach knew who I was and what I had done didn’t help the situation very much.

The nice thing is that most people who got to know me saw that there were problems and they weren’t all mine.

And at age 50 I can see why people like Captain Totzke and my father did what they did.

As a child you simply can’t understand the biases, the prejudices, or the politics at play.

Even still, I find myself at age 50 completely unable to make friends. Sure, I’ve got co-workers and superiors and subordinates at work. I also deal with contractors, trades, and suppliers at work. But these are professional relationships.

I’ve met many people on my journey to receive justice and acknowledgment for what happened on CFB Namao. But other than the fact that we were all sexually abused on Canadian Forces Base Namao by the same two people, I can’t relate to anyone.

It’s not that I’m a loner by any definition. I like being out and about. I like going to coffee shops, and malls, and events.

I still can’t properly read or express emotions properly. When people appear to be upset or angry I get scared and afraid. That’s probably one of the reasons I hate any type of conflict at work. Maybe that makes me too accommodating, I don’t know.

I take no pride in my work. And by this I don’t mean that I don’t take care with my work. It’s just that no matter what I do all I can hear is my father yelling and screaming that I have to stop showing off, that I’m a stupid worthless piece of shit, and that anyone could do what I do, that I’m not special in any sense of the word.

So yeah, at age 50, what is going to be fixed?

The time for fixing these issues was 30 to 40 years ago.

The time for banishing Captain McRae, P.S., Captain Totzke, Colonel Munro, Richard Gill from my skull was years ago. Trying to evict these fuckers at the age of 50 is almost pointless.

And that’s the thing, my whole life has been nothing but enduring the self doubt and self hatred caused by these people.

If I didn’t listen to Richard’s negativity for the majority of my adult life, could things have been better. Probably not as there would have still been lots of issues given to me by the others.

If I didn’t listen to Captain Totzke’s thoughts on the apparent homosexuality I had exhibited when I had been molested by P.S. and Captain McRae, would my gender identity and sexual orientation been less fucked up? Possibly, but there were still a shit load of other issues fucking me up.

And that’s one of the problems. There wasn’t just one thing fucking with my psyche. There were numerous issues fucking me up and robbing me of a future that could have or should have been mine.

Dealing with these issues in the here and now may unleash fresh new self doubt, self hatred, and regret.

In other words I think I just have to make peace with these issues.

I’ve got my dresses, my tattoos, and my bicycle to keep me company.

Speaking of tattoos, I finally got my right ankle finished.

My goal is to have all parts of my body covered with ink by the time 2023 / 2024 rolls around.

Dying.

“If you want to die, how can you be afraid of dying?”

As I’ve said, I don’t fear death.

Once you are dead you are free of the senses, you do not feel pain, you no longer exist.

It’s the dying part that scares me. It always has.

And I don’t mean in the sense of heaven or hell or gods or the such.

What I fear is the pain or the terror that would fill my last minutes, or hours, or even days.

I actually don’t like being inside automobiles due to my father’s penchant for aggressive driving and drunk driving. I don’t relish the idea of dying in an automobile collision. There was a pile-up on the Q.E.W. in Southern Ontario back in the ’90s. A young girl got trapped inside one of the cars and slowly burned to death. That is not a death that I would wish on anyone.

Yeah, I understand that dying by my own hand would only last for so long, but I’ve never been a big fan of panic and terror.

It’s fairly obvious that I’ve never bled to death before, but the idea of slicing an artery and bleeding out doesn’t appeal to me due to the shock and panic that would set in as the volume of blood in my body decreased. The nausea that would come with the shock would be very unpleasant.

Asphyxiation would be the same thing

Asphyxiation, choking, etc…… no thank you.

You hear about the successful cases. What you never hear about are the unsuccessful cases which often lead to permanent brain damage.

Drugs? Yeah, no. There’s just something about ingesting copious amounts of drugs that doesn’t appeal to me. Maybe it’s the vomiting and the retching. Maybe it’s that you actually stand a good chance of inhaling your own vomit and dying a very prolonged and painful death.

Unless you manage to get things right your last moments on Earth will be filled with pain and misery. Sure, eventually everything will be over. But as I said I don’t want to tack on more suffering to the suffering that I’ve already endured.

And I can tell you one thing, you never want to die in a hospital hooked up to a ventilator in the ICU in a drug induced coma. That’s probably the worst way to go that I can think of.

Dying is not an easy thing to do. It’s honestly not as easy as you’d think it would be. It’s definitely not as easy nor as romantic as it’s made out to be in the movies or literature. One part of the brain wants to die while another part of the brain wants to survive.

This is why I am really intrigued with Medical Assistance in Dying.

If the protocol is adhered to and if the proper doses are followed one shouldn’t be aware in the slightest that they have stopped breathing and that their heart has stopped beating. There’s no choking. There’s no gaging. There should be no violent convulsions or spasms. Just a complete loss of consciousness and then nothing.

Sure, the anxiety may be something to contend with in the months, and weeks, and days, and then hours leading up to one’s demise under M.A.i.D.. But I think with the proper mindset that one should be able to make it right to the end without too much of a problem.

I think that one of the things that terrifies most people about death is the lack of control of the where and when. Death typically comes randomly. It follows no schedule. It generally doesn’t take into consideration what your plans are or if your affairs are in order. You could be at work, you could be on the subway, you could be out for a bicycle ride. You death can be quick, or it can be lingering. You could slowly die on the cold pavement while gawkers stare at you. And I think this is what frightens most people about death, the general lack of control around the circumstances of one’s demise.

The gender bias of sexual assault

I’ve often wondered if the fact that I am male has a had an impact on how my abuse at the hands of P.S. and Captain McRae has been viewed by the authorities.

Society expects girls and women to be the victims of sexual assault.

Society also expects that boys and men will be the perpetrators of sexual assault.

Things get really turned upside down when boys or men are the victims of sexual assault.

And things really get turned upside down when males are the victims of other males.

When I was receiving my counselling from Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke the area of concern wasn’t so much that I had been sexually abused but was that I had been caught having sex with another boy.

In the aftermath of being caught in P.S.’s bedroom I had often wondered if I would have gotten in trouble if I had been a girl instead of a boy. Even at age 8 I understood the gender bias that existed.

When I used to swap clothes with Megan on CFB Griesbach, it wasn’t so much that I wanted to be a girl. It’s just that I couldn’t understand why boys couldn’t wear dresses. I’d like to think that I was ahead of the curve with understanding that artificial society enforced gender roles were harmful and toxic. But more than likely it was just that I couldn’t understand why it was wrong for boys to wear dresses. And still no one has been able to explain this to me.

I remember girls on base who got touched by same age boys during episodes of “doctor”. The father of the girl would often unleash a can of whoop-ass on the boy who touched his daughter. The father of the boy would often give his son an “understanding wink” as if to say “good job son!”. The daughter never received any type of admonishment for the game of doctor as there was no way possible that the girl could have instigated it. But again, that’s just one of society’s biases, “girls are weak and can only be victims, boys are strong and can only be perpetrators”.

While living on CFB Griesbach I had developed feelings for a boy my age. He lived two doors down from me in PMQ #68. Nothing sexual at all. But we did kiss one day. His father was furious. Mine was even more so telling me that if he ever heard reports from another parent on base that I had kissed their son that he would “break my fucking neck” and that I would never have to worry about kissing another boy again.

Now, I realize that male-on-male child sexual abuse also existed out in the civilian world and that in the civilian world the victims of male-on-male child sexual abuse weren’t treated all that fairly. I still have a copy of an actual educational film from the ’60s called “Boys Beware” in which a teenage boy is groomed by a hebephile and coerced into sex. The hebephile is arrested and the boy is sentenced to juvenile detention. But there was possibly something else at play in the Canadian Armed Forces.

In 2014 when the French magazine L’actualité published its bombshell stories about sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces, one of the stories it ran was about male-on-male sexual assault. The writer of the article was told that male-on-male sexual assault in the military was all about control, humiliation, and punishment, and not about sexual gratification.

Is this why male-on-male sexual abuse was not taken all that serious in the Canadian Armed Forces? Obviously the victim must have done something wrong and deserved to be sexually abused, right? Don’t forget, the men sexually abusing other members of the Canadian Forces often had children at home. If these men participated in the sexual humiliation of other male members, how likely were they to take the sexual abuse of their sons as a serious offence. If these men participated in the sexual humiliation of other members, how likely were they to abuse their own children as a form of punishment or to exert control over an out of control child?

Let’s say that a soldier of the Canadian Forces had an out of control teenage boy at home, and if this member of the Canadian Forces had been involved with episodes of male-on-male sexual abuse in the military as a form of humiliation or punishment, would it be feasible that this member might also make use of male-on-male sexual abuse in an attempt to reign his son in and bring his son under control?

Oddly, when Maclean’s ran the English versions of the L’Actulaite stories they dropped the entire article about male-on-male sexual assault. Is French society that much more advanced that it can handle topics like male-on-male sexual abuse? Are the Anglophones of such delicate sensibilities that Maclean’s was worried about causing their English readers to faint, and swoon, and need PTSD counselling?

How cold is it…….

So, I spent some time today verifying the Dixell temperature monitors that I’m installing in the Pharmacy department .

This project came about after I had upgraded all of the walk-in coolers and freezers in the dietary kitchens. The old system was mechanical thermostats, time clocks for defrost cycles, and simple mechanic thermostats for monitoring for high temperatures. Needless to say there were a lot of false alarms and evaporator freeze ups.

When I saw how easy it was to install the Dixell controllers, network them, and program them I knew that I had a viable solution for the clinical and pharmacy departments to upgrade their monitoring.

Guess I’ll have to see where this goes.

I have a sneaking suspicion that other health authorities and other hospitals may have questions that I may need to answer.

My dentist

So, today I was in to see my dentist for some filling / bonding work on my canine teeth.

My teeth are in bad shape from years of grinding. And recently my canine teeth started to get sensitive which meant that they were not far away from getting cavities or worse.

My dentist bugged me again about getting root canals and caps, both of which my insurance would cover 100%.

I told her again that I wasn’t interested, that I only wanted to do the work that was required to keep my teeth from getting worse, but that I wasn’t interested in spending $20k to $30k to fix all of my teeth.

“But why not?”

So I said to her that if everything goes as planned, I won’t be around in two to three years.

“You’re moving somewhere?”

No, I’m applying for medical assistance in dying for psychiatric reasons.

“But I thought that your escitalopram was working, I thought you were feeling better”.

Escitalopram is like a pain killer, it numbs the pain, but it doesn’t fix it.

“What about therapy?”

Won’t fix the issues, and I don’t want to continue living with the damage in my head. If I was younger, maybe, but not at this stage in my life.

She just looked at me for a bit. Then she said “Do you want to get started?”.

I said sure, and she reclined the chair, and we started on my fillings / bondings.

Money isn’t the issue. I’m not poor. And I have good medical / dental coverage at work. I just don’t see the point.

I had my first dentist when I worked for the Elashi family in East Richmond.

Prior to that I had never had a real dentist. My dentists were usually from public health programs for disadvantaged children. I remember going to the dentist in a trailer that would pull up outside the school I was attending in Summerside, PEI. I think those were my first fillings.

The next time I went to a dentist was when we lived on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach in Edmonton. This was a program for low income families run out of the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology “N.A.I.T.”. Kids that went to this program had their teeth worked on by dental students.

I don’t remember going to a dentist once while we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario.

Richard had promised me that he’d enroll me into the Young Driver’s program on my 16th birthday. Of course he lied. He had no intention. He gave me some excuse about his insurance going up if anyone under 18 had their driver’s licence in his house. When he saw that I wasn’t buying this he started justifying his lying by saying that his Mustang was too powerful for me to learn in. Young drivers had their own cars. I told him that he was a liar, that he had absolutely no plan of letting me take driver’s training, that this was more of his bullshit. I didn’t duck fast enough and I caught his wedding ring in the front of my mouth. He chipped my front tooth.

I didn’t start working for the Elashis until 1994. I don’t think my insurance kicked in until late ’94, so it was around 1995 when I finally got the chipped tooth fixed. So yeah, about 8 years.

I had all of my wisdom teeth yanked around 1995 as well.

So, it’s not that I’m afraid of the dentist, or dental work.

I just don’t see the point of it.

Not now.

Maybe 30 years ago.

Maybe even 20 years ago.

Even if I had been on anti-depressants / anti-anxiety medications 20 or 30 years ago my teeth would be in far better condition than they are today.

But 30 years ago was just 12 years removed from the CFB Namao fiasco and my father’s anger at how I had fucked with his military career and how I had allowed the babysitter to molest my younger brother was still very fresh in my mind. Captain Totzke’s lectures at how I exhibited homosexual tendencies because the abuse went on for so long was still rattling around in my skull.

20 years ago was 22 years removed from CFB Namao. And again all of the horseshit from CFB Namao and the subsequent fallout was still fresh in my mind.

It really wasn’t until I started learning the truth about CFB Namao 10 years ago in 2011 that I begun to realize that the issues I was living with were not of my own creation. These issues had been gifted to me. The Canadian Forces anointed my abuser as the “sole” victim of Captain McRae and chucked about 25 children under the bus.

Maybe if I had known the truth 20 or 30 years ago I would have wasted my time fixing my teeth.

Not now.

Just not worth it at this point in my life.