bobbiebees

Maraget Waniandy

My paternal grandmother

Margaret (**Marguerite**) Mary Anderson (nee Waniandy)
1923 – 1986
I’m pretty certain this portrait was taken before her husband Andy slipped in the bathtub.

I don’t know too much about my grandmother other than she was full Swampy Cree.

She was born in 1923. Where, I don’t know. I’m thinking that it was in the Peace Region of Alberta.

Her only school records indicate that she attended Holy Angles Indian Residential School in Fort Chipewyan in Alberta

She enrolled in school on Oct 3rd, 1935 when she would have been 12 years old. She left school on March 21st, 1938 when she was almost 16.

Not that great of an education. But then again the goal of the government back then wasn’t to educate the First Nations, it was to destroy the First Nations. So long as they could “beat the Indian” out of the kids, that was all that mattered.

I don’t know very much about her father Modesta Waniandy or her mother Caroline Coutrelle other than her father died in Uranium City, Saskatchewan around 1969. He had been a hard rock miner.

Grandma had three sons. One with a man I don’t know the name of. And two with her husband Arthur Herman Gill.
-Norman was her first son. I don’t know when he was born, but apparently he was 6 to 8 years older than my father Richard.
-Richard my father was born in April 1946. Grandma would have been 23 at the time.
-My uncle Doug was born around 1950, exact date I don’t know.

I don’t know exactly how long grandma and Arthur Gill were together. Richard was born in Peterborough, Ontario. However, by the time Richard started grade 1 grandma and Arthur had divorced and grandma moved with Norman, Richard, and Doug to Fort McMurray, Alberta.

I don’t know when she married Andy Anderson, but Richard and Doug never took Andy’s last name nor did they ever refer to Andy as their stepfather. The only time Richard ever referred to Andy as his stepfather was in 2013 when I examined Richard for Federal Court.

Grandma came to live with us in 1977 after my mother left. As I would learn in 2013, this wasn’t actually the first time grandma had flown out from Alberta to help her son Richard raise my brother and I. It’s just that when she came out to stay with us in Summerside in 1977 I was old enough to remember her. I would have been 6 years old when grandma came to live with us at CFB Summerside.

For the life of me I’ll never understand why the First Nations kids put so much faith in the Catholic Church and why they continues their belief in the Christian god into theist adult life. Grandma had an affinity for the Catholic Church.

When grandma came to live with us on Summerside I got put into Sunday school right away. I was already a prolific reader. I loved reading encyclopedias and any other type of scientific type literature we had around the house. Sunday school seemed like nothing more than a really bad Saturday morning cartoon that made absolutely no sense and seemed to require one to believe in magical fairytales. No, I didn’t appreciate Sunday school one bit.

When grandma moved into our PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Namao in August of 1978 she started taking my brother and I to Sunday service at the base chapel on CFB Namao. Every Sunday we’d get up, put on our Sunday best, go to service, and then after service was over we’d go home and put our play clothes on.

Grandma was very strict and very authoritative.

Grandma had a few maxims that she lived by:
– Children are only to speak when spoken to.
-Children are better seen than heard.
-Spare the rod and spoil the child.
I have no doubt in my mind that these were drilled into her head during her stint in residential school.

A weird phrase of hers that has always stuck with me is “Animals get mad, humans get angry”.

Grandma was also very much an alcoholic. Both her and her husband Andy Anderson drank heavily. It was their drinking that ultimately put my brother and I on a collision course with Captain Father Angus McRae and his altar boy P.S.. My stepmother said that my grandmother’s drinking served to enable my father’s drinking. My mother said that my grandmother could drink my father under the table.

After Andy’s accident in the bathtub of our PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Namao grandma hired P.S. to babysit my brother and I. No doubt P.S. came specially recommended to her by Captain Father Angus McRae, the chaplain at the base chapel where P.S. was an altar boy.

Grandma’s instructions were that my brother and I were to listen to and obey P.S. and if P.S. told her that we had misbehaved that she would deal with us when she got back and that our father would hear about our misbehaviour. What more could a teenaged child molester want than for two kids from a very fractured and dysfunctional family to be told that they have to obey his every instruction.

I’m not sure if anyone ever told grandma about my issues with beef protein and dairy. Even though my medical records indicate the doctors in Halifax told both of my parents that I was to be put on a diet that avoided beef and beef fats (dairy) I don’t think that anyone ever told grandma. The doctors in Halifax were noting that when I had beef fats or dairy that I would become very colicky and I’d exhibit rectal bleeding.

I couldn’t stand milk as a kid. I still can’t. When I drink milk it tastes very metallic and leaves a very sour taste in my mouth. If I get stupid and have ice cream, especially real ice cream with high levels of beef fats, I’ll be rushing to the toilet in about 30 to 40 minutes and it won’t be fun. I’ll spare you the graphic details.

Milk was one of grandma’s favourite food stuffs to feed my brother and I. While my brother would happily eat anything with dairy, I’d be doing everything possible to hide the stuff and flush it down the toilet or sneak it into the garbage when grandma wasn’t looking.

Grandma caught me once putting my cereal in the garbage. I had to eat all of the cereal out of the garbage bag. I tried to put my porridge down one of the air vents by the kitchen table. She made me eat the porridge out of the air vent.

It was like a game of cat and mouse with her.

Grandma was also unafraid to use corporal punishment. She never hit or slapped like Richard, but she could pinch and twist until tears resulted. She also wasn’t afraid to use the wooden soup spoon. She would even go out and grab a switch off a bush or a tree and use that.

Grandma caught me scavenging for goods out of the dumpster by the base arena around the summer of ’79. The dumpster was where the families who were being posted to different bases would dump off all of the “crap” that they didn’t want to haul off to the new base. Sometimes families would end up with a lot of crap if one or two of the kids were staying behind to live on their own in the nearest city instead of moving with their parents.

Needless to say, you could find lots of “treasures” in this bin.

Somehow grandma caught wind that I was in the bin. She came down to where the bin was. She told me to get out. She started yelling something about “self respect” and “being an animal”. She then told me to go break a branch off a small tree. I did. She started hitting me with it all the way back to the PMQ. If I started running she’d tell me to stop. Then she’d hit me more. And then there was the “wait until your father gets home”. As my father was frequently away, this meant that my father usually had three or four “wait till your father gets home” sessions to deal with.

One time, and I can’t remember exactly when but it was well after P.S. had started abusing my brother and I, my brother was laying on the couch in the living room and he had his hands inside his pants and he was touching himself. I was in the kitchen doing my homework. Grandma was cooking supper. She didn’t hear my brother making noise so she went to check on him. The kitchen and the living room were adjacent to each other. She took a few steps into the hallway, saw what my brother was doing, and yelled his name out loud and asked him “what the hell are you doing”. My brother answered “but it feels good grannie”. Holy fuck. She literally ran across the living room and with the large wooden spoon started beating the living Jesus out of my brother. She just kept hitting and hitting and he just kept crying. She called him a “filthy dirty pig”. She then turned around and saw me standing there. She yelled at me that I was a filthy bastard for teaching my brother how to do what he was doing. She chased after me over to Guthrie school. For a heavy drinker with a pack a day habit she could sure run. She caught me at the school. She beat me with the same wooden spoon all the way back home.

The reaction she had to finding my brother doing what he had been doing kinda tells me that maybe she had been molested as a kid. Probably in Residential School. I don’t have any proof of this other than we now know that there was an extreme amount of sexual abuse in the residential schools and that victims of sexual abuse often don’t react to sexual situations like people who were never molested. For example I don’t enjoy sex with other people. I find sex to be disgusting and filthy. Was grandma the same way? I didn’t actually dare touch myself until well after my 13th birthday when I was well away from grandma.

One day after I had been found being buggered by P.S. grandma saw P.S. walking down the common sidewalk that ran behind the PMQs. She went to the back door and she called out to him ” You filthy lying little bastard!”. At the time I never knew what this was about. I had assumed that grandma never discovered what P.S. had done to me, or my brother. So I had no idea. It wouldn’t be until 2011 that I would learn that sometime in the aftermath of P.S. being caught in the act of buggering me that he spilt the beans on Captain McRae and what Captain McRae had done. Grandma, in her blind and mindless devotion to the church would have seen Captain McRae as the innocent party and that P.S. was lying.

I’m sad to say it, but I actually preferred drunk grandma over sober grandma. Just like Richard, drunk grandma was a far nicer person than sober grandma. Drunk grandma would take you into the city on the military shuttle bus and buy you toys at Army and Navy. Or even a record at the record shop in Northgate mall. Grandma would sometime go drinking at the Roslyn Hotel and she’d give my brother and I a few dollars to go bowling or to play at the malls adjacent to the Roslyn . Sober grandma wouldn’t buy you fuck all. With drunk grandma you could talk when you wanted to. With sober grandma you didn’t dare interrupt her, kinda the same as Richard.

Grandma was a heavy smoker. She didn’t buy pre-made cigarettes. She’d buy a tin of tobacco and she had one of those rolling machines. She’d get me to roll her cigarettes for her.

Even after we moved to Toronto in April of 1983 Richard unloaded my brother and I on grandma in the summer of 1984 and 1985. Once a week in the summer of 1984 we’d take her shopping cart full of empties and head down to the bottle depot at the Labatt’s Brewery and cash the bottles in. Then she’d pick up a couple of cases or a flat or two of Pilsner two-fours and we’d head back to the apartment. If she ran low on beer over the course of the week there was always the Co-op taxi service that would pick up beer for her.

Grandma was the first adult in my life to ever give me beer. And not just one bottle, but two full bottles of beer to drink. When I was 12. I don’t know if she was trying to teach me a lesson, or if she thought I was old enough to drink, but yeah.

I don’t think my father or my grandmother viewed alcohol as anything evil. Every now and again when my father would be home they’d let me have little sips of beer. Every now and again when they’d be having wine again they’d let me have the occasional little sip. One more than one occasion my father would let me have a sip or two of his rum and coke. I guess the paternal side of my family really had problems with alcohol.

In the summer of 1984, my brother had said something about P.S. to my grandmother. I don’t know what he said and he doesn’t remember saying anything. I can’t see my grandmother having asked if what my “father” said was true. I came home after working at the pizza shop in Kingsway Garden mall. Grandma kinda cornered me in the entry of her apartment suite. She demanded “Is it true what your brother said about P.S.? Tell me! Is it true!”. Sure I could have told grandma what ever my brother had told her was true about P.S., but I had just spent the previous four years being told by both my father and Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke that what happened on CFB Namao was my fault and that I had allowed P.S. to molest my younger brother. I managed to get out of the apartment. I made my way up to Canadian Forces Base Namao and tried to report P.S. to the military police. They didn’t want to hear about it because P.S. was a civilian. I went to the Edmonton Police Service, they wanted to talk to my father, the man who blamed me for what happened on CFB Namao. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t go home that evening or night. There was an old abandoned warehouse on 105th Ave and about 111th street and I’m sure that I hid in there all night. When I got home the next day grandma was drinking by herself and she never mentioned P.S. again.

Grandma died in 1986. I’m not sure if she ever got her Indian status back before she died. I know that after she started to sober up in 1985 and started going to AA that she started taking a lot of pride in her First Nations heritage. I don’t think that she was ever ashamed, like Richard had been, but she just seemed to be more open.

By marrying Arthur Herman Gill my grandmother would have lost her “Indian” status. She wouldn’t be able to reclaim her Indian status unless she married a man with Indian status. The government of Canada changed that rule in 1986. Now a First Nations woman no longer automatically loses her Indian status for marrying a non-First Nations person.

She had taken my brother and I to a couple of “sweats” when we lived on CFB Namao. I had my first taste of pemmican when we lived on CFB Namao. But as a kid I just never made the connection that my grandmother was an actual “Indian” or that my father was part “Indian”. Yeah, grandma used to buy us moccasins and she had even bought me a leather vest with the colour beading on it, but I just honestly never made the connection. But in the summer of 1985 she was more vocal about her heritage. That was the first time ever that she had told me that she was an Indian and that she was Swampy Cree.

She never talked about her time in residential school other than the topic kinda vaguely came up one day. I noticed that grandma could write with both hands. I asked her to teach me how to do that. All she said is that she’d have to beat my knuckles with a stick like the nuns had beat her.

Grandma sitting on the couch in the window bay of PMQ #11 – 12th Street
Canadian Forces Base Namao, Alberta
She use to sew her own dresses.

In retrospect she wasn’t an evil person. She was just as fucked up as everyone else in my family. She was damaged by the Government of Canada and the Catholic church and the determination of both entities to assimilate the First Nations people into “white” culture.

My Tattooing

How I spent 6 hours on Wednesday

So, I got my right leg tattooed on Wednesday.

Eduardo did the honours at “Slight of Hand Tattooing” on Granville St.

GoPro set for 1 picture every 60 seconds.

Live action of Eduardo shading in one of the bands on my leg.

So, I finally got around to getting my right leg tattooed with the matching pattern from the left leg.

Everything was going fine right up until the last section which is the lower band on my ankle.

I guess that after 6 hours in the chair I just completely ran out of stamina and we had to stop.

I’ll have to go back to finish off the section.

No big deal.

But now to plan out my other adventures in tattooing.

Definitely have to finish off my face next.

Then it’s on to my arms.

On a side note, did you know that Kristen Bell is covered in tattoos?
https://youtu.be/dKSwIuom5c8

Sitting in Emerg.

Well, went for a tattoo today and everything was going fine until right near the end.

Started getting really sweaty. My pulse was tripping along at about 125 bpm. I stood up, and promptly collapsed.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had syncope.

Never fainted while getting a tattoo before, but I am new to escitalopram.

So, I ventured off to St. Paul’s got an ECG and a bunch of blood tests just to make sure that it wasn’t the escitalopram causing me trouble.

Now I’m just sitting here in the waiting area for the results of a second round of blood tests.

The doctor doesn’t seem to think it’s anything serious from the results of the first test.

I’ve always wondered if my ease at hospitals is due to the amount of time I spent in hospitals when my father was stationed at CFB Shearwater or the amount of time I spent getting tested and checked out in Edmonton.

I don’t remember much about my stays at the IWK, but I do remember going to a park a lot as a kid.

In 2015 I went to Halifax, Nova Scotia for a visit. I hadn’t been back in Nova Scotia since when my father was posted to CFB Summerside in 1977.

I spent the week wandering around the city. Paid a visit over to CFB Shearwater and saw the PMQ that I had lived in.

On one of my trips downtown I visited the Halifax Public Gardens. The park just seemed so familiar. Kinda like how CFB Shearwater had a vague familiarity to it.

On my way back to Vancouver I stopped over in Calgary for a few days to see Marie. I told her about my trips around Halifax and my visits to the Citadel and CFB Shearwater. I mentioned to her my trip to the Halifax Public Gardens. I asked her how many times she had taken me there as the park had seemed really familiar to me. She said that she had never taken me to the public gardens. She said that she rarely drove to Halifax except when absolutely necessary as she hated driving over the bridges.

The answer was in my records from the IWK children’s hospital.

On each of my admissions to the hospital Richard had signed a permission for for the hospital staff to take me from the hospital for “walks”.

The IWK Children’s Hospital is one block away from the Halifax Public Gardens.

So, it wasn’t my family taking me to the IWK Children’s Hospital. It was either the staff or volunteers at the IWK Children’s Hospital. And I was in that hospital frequently.

This one always strikes one when I read it

Working in a hospital is an interesting career.

I was hired here as a 4th class power engineer in the physical plant servicing the HVAC equipment, steam systems, chilled water systems, condenser water systems, and heating hot water systems.

I still remember the first time I got called up to a ward to consult on a patient. I was over in the power house working on a regulator. The chief engineer at the time called me on the radio and asked me to head up to 7C and speak to the unit coordinator. When I got up to the ward the staff were all like “See, I told you”. I found the unit coordinator and asked them why they wanted to see me. They escorted me over to a patient room and asked me if I could show them how to remove nipple rings from a patient that needed to go for an MRI. These were segment rings. Unlike a captive bead ring, a segment ring doesn’t have a ball to pop out. The ring must be slightly stretched for the segment to release.

Over the years I’ve been called to emergency a couple of times for the same thing… how do we get this out.

Twice I’ve been called up to give advice on how to remove roofing nails from roofers. One guy had shot the roofing nail through his knuckle and the other guy had shot the nail through his safety boots and into his big toe joint. All I could say is for the ER staff to cut the head side of the nail off as close to the knuckle as possible and then use vice grips to pull the nail through. The flutes on a roofing nail make it almost impossible to pull a roofing nail in reverse without great effort and without doing damage to the bone. Yep, guess who got asked to supply and use the Dremel tool.

The funny thing about these two guys is neither of them seemed in great pain. But none the less the staff administered ketamine to the patients before removing the nails. One thing I’ll say about ketamine is that stuff acts super fast. One minute the guys are talking, the next minute their eyes roll back and their jaw goes slack.

One nightshift I had to change a control panel on an operating room table that had an open heart surgery procedure in progress.

I had to fix an HVAC mixing box in a maternity room where a delivery was in progress.

One weekend I got called up to the CCU because the code blue button didn’t work. The charge nurse directed me over to the room. When I got there I had the pleasure of watching the code blue team working on a teenager.

I’ve be on elevators when the morgue stretcher is brought on with a deceased heading to the morgue cooler.

I’ve removed hair from the garburator in the autopsy suite.

I got called into the autopsy suite one day. Pathology had called the plant office saying they had a problem with a lift. Being a lift, that was automatically assigned to mechanical. When I got to the suite there was a covered body on one of the exam tables and the battery operated lift was in the lowered position. I plugged the charger in to see if it was charging the battery. Nope, it was dead. I said that I’d go get an electrician and see if they could autopsy the charger and figure out what went wrong.

There are many more stories I could tell, but that would be a complete other blog entry.

It’s almost Tattoo Time

Won’t be too long of a post this morning. Just need to kill a bit of time before I go into my 11:30 tattoo appointment.

Should be wrapped up around 18:00

I’ll probably snooze through most of the appointment. I usually do.

Taking my GoPro in and setting the GoPro to take one photo ever 60 seconds.

At 6 hours this should give me about 360 pictures that I can then string together in a short video using iMovie.

I’ve got some designs for the tattoos I want to get on my face, so we’ll probably discuss these after he’s done.

This will be for my next appointment coming up in November.

I wish that I could ride my bicycle to and from my tattoo appointment, but alas, the rubby-dubbies can strip a bicycle of its parts in a matter of minutes. And until the city addresses this, bicycle riding will never catch on here to the extent that it has in many European cities with very similar if not colder climates than Vancouver.

So, enough for now. See you when I’m finished.

I did a thing.

I actually do function at work.

As I’ve said previously, working has probably been the only thing that’s saved my life over the years and has made my life bearable. And I don’t just mean at St. Paul’s.

I’ve always had after school jobs, or weekend jobs pretty well since I was 10 and living on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach. Richard and Sue would pretty well kick my brother and I out of the house from the time we got home after school until bedtime. I’m not sure where my brother ever buggered off to, but I’d usually head off base to the local malls.

Cleaned pet cages, cleaned pizza pans, cleaned kitchens. The money wasn’t much. But it was just being around adults who didn’t treat me like Richard and Sue did that made the difference.

Anyways………..

I spent some time working in the pharmacy today. Finally getting the alarm monitoring system installed after much delay.

This is the first monitor. There will be twelve others. They all network together on an RS-485 bus.

Nothing too fancy, but it will allow for logging of the temperatures and generating alarm messages if coolers start to get out of range.

This was me servicing a pneumatic relay for a steam valve.

I’ll probably post more things from work.

Nothing too fancy as it’s a hospital and I can’t take pictures of patients, or anything that could identify a patient. And as a rule I tend to avoid taking pictures of other employees. Much easier to not hurt feelings that way. But there are a ton of fans and pumps and heat exchangers and compressors and all sorts of other things that might look interesting.

A panorama view of a smokey Vancouver.

Opened the side of the building to insert the new 3-Tesla MRI Machine

Sometimes the dietary elevator stops on three.
You have to get out here as the elevator won’t start up again.
On the other side of the door is the ICU unit.

Remember our summer?
39.6C on the roof of St. Paul’s with a humidity level of 19.4%

Tattoos

Tomorrow I get more ink….. YAY!

Okay, tomorrow I’m getting more ink. I’ll be doing my right lower leg this time.

I’m going to take my GoPro camera and I’ll set it up for time lapse. I just have to decide how many pictures per minute I want.

I’ll probably be in the chair for 6 hours again.

You’d think that simple black tattoos would be super quick, but they’re not. Especially if they’re being done in solid blocks. Any mistakes will show up very quickly.

I have some ideas for my face. I’ll go over them with Eduardo tomorrow and see what we decide on. This I’ll probably be able to get done in November.

Of course this won’t be the last. I want ink on every limb of my body. I have some ideas for my arms and torso.

Why tattoo?

Why not.

Humans have decorated their bodies pretty well since time immemorial.

I don’t see why I can’t.

A good doctor.

Well, today I had another telephone call with my physician.

I’ve been seeing him for a while. About a year I think.

I’ll call him Dr. T.M.. I’ve kinda mentioned these blogs to him. I don’t know if he’s checked them out. If I’m not mistaken he is younger than I am.

To be honest, I’ve never had a good relationship with physicians in the past but Dr. T.M. seems quite on the ball and is actually quite involved with my care.

I’ve had massive battles with depression for all of my life. One of the unhelpful doctors I went to a while ago wanted to know what was troubling me. When I started explaining to him what I had been through he told me to stop. He said he didn’t want to hear about problems from my past. He wanted to know what was currently bothering me.

Other doctors weren’t trustworthy or honestly just didn’t seem to care, period.

When I had my heart issue back around 2012 a family doctor that I started seeing at the time was far more interested in my piercings and if they hurt, or got infected, or if I was wearing them to scare people. I didn’t see him for too long.

As far as getting psychiatric help, I’ve taken advantage of some programs at work through my employer. But not to toot my own horn, but I’m a fucking basket case.

growing up in an alcoholic household with intergenerational psychiatric issues.
growing up in a household with anger control issues.
1-1/2 years of sexual abuse at the hands of a very confused teenager who was being groomed and controlled by a Captain of the regular force of the Canadian Forces
2-1/2 years of psychological abuse at the hands of a military social worker who was determined to cure me of my apparent homosexuality that I had exhibited when I was sexually abused for 1-1/2 years.
Blamed by my father for matters that were far beyond my control or responsibility.
failure to receive proper psychiatric care when it was indicated that I had major depression and severe anxiety.
As of this date the depression and anxiety have been allowed to fester like a cancer in my brain.

One of my issues with seeking psychiatric help earlier in life is the way my father and Captain Totzke pitted me against my civilian social workers. After that, I had very little trust or faith in “professionals”.

Also, there was my father’s reactions to my mental health back then. I was an embarrassment to him. If any of my illness started to show it would be a back hand or a spanking. He drilled into my head that I was just a crybaby having breakdowns as a means to gain attention. So it should come as very little surprise that I’ve had great difficulty obtaining help.

As I said before, I don’t cry any longer not because I have nothing to cry about. I don’t cry any longer because I’ve long since run out of tears to cry.

I am so fucking numb to just about everything.

Dr. T.M. hasn’t been judgemental once. He hasn’t fussed over my piercings nor my tattoos. When I told him about my literal breakdown earlier this year he had absolutely no hesitation in putting me on sick leave, and when the rest didn’t work on its own, he put my on escitalopram right away.

He has been quite open to my request to look into M.A.i.D.. If that’s what I want, then he’s willing to work with me starting next year when the the committee currently reviewing M.A.i.D. for psychiatric issues makes their recommendations to Parliament. Whether or not Parliament accepts all of the recommendations or just cherry picks the recommendations is yet to be seen. We won’t know until March 2023 what the requirements and rules will be.

Who knows, by then maybe by the time M.A.i.D. had been approved I’ll have changed my mind. I haven’t given up on alternatives. It’s just that I’m very pragmatic and realistic. Maybe the drugs will make significant changes, maybe they won’t. The baggage and the unwanted visitors are still residing in my skull.

But it is nice having someone listen to my desires and the rational for my desires and not laugh me off as being melodramatic silly.

Writing for the sake of writing.

Tattoos. Where will I stop?
How much ink is enough?

Taking the new format for a spin.

I’ve updated the home page of this blog to something more user friendly.

I found the previous layout far too confusing. Hopefully this layout is easier to read.

In two days I’m going for a dental appointment and then a tattooing appointment.

Dental

The dental appointment will be a checkup but this will also be the first time that I’ve ever been on antidepressants. That’s not such a big thing for the appointment itself other than the antidepressants seem to drastically reduce the amount of grinding I do. I’ve already had a couple of extractions to remove damaged teeth. I’ve got a feeling that my canine teeth are going to be extracted next. There’s just too much damage to my teeth.

And yeah, the damage is all due to bruxism and to a smaller part clenching.

I don’t drink sugary pops. I rarely eat chocolate. I drink my coffee black. And I brush 2x a day and floss a few times a week.

At this point in time I have no plans to get dental implants or dentures. If I do decide at a later date to get implants they’re easy enough to get installed with minor surgery. When you crack a tooth and then it dies you risk a really bad infection.

Ask me how I know.

By the time I got to the dental surgeon the tooth was completely infected and the infection was starting to get into my jaw bone. Luckily it just took a bit of scraping to remove the infection from my jaw bone.

If you’ve never had your jawbone scraped, you don’t know what you’re missing. You should give it a try sometime.

My canines have been capped a couple of times, but my grinding just wears right trough. They are starting to get real sensitive. So I’ll get the dentist to evaluate them and see if it’s better to get them removed instead of waiting for them to crack and get infected like my molars did.

Tattooing

I’m hoping in the next while to get my body covered with as much ink as possible. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t have much in the way of an eye for faces or images. Simple geometric patterns appeal to me. Large blocks shapes appeal to me as well.

And now that I’m done dealing with the Canadian Armed Forces and their defective “justice” system I’m going to have more time for myself and more time to worry about me.

On Wednesday I’m getting my right leg covered with the same layout I have on my left leg. Then were going to spend an hour or two laying out some designs to fill in my face.

My face I’ll probably start on again in November. The lines haven’t caused any controversy at work, so I’m going to thicken them up and introduce some perpendicular lines. I might post some of the preliminary designs.

Tattooing my face was kinda sorta accidental. I only wanted to fill in the void space on my chin. And then it sort of just grew from there.

It was the strangest feeling getting my face tattooed, but it also felt exhilarating. When it was done it felt liberating. I know that some people would think that having permanent marks on my would make me scared to be seen. But having tattoos on my face has been anything but. They’re kinda like armour. To me they present who I feel like.

The first couple of days after I had my face tattooed were really odd. Every time that I would see myself in a mirror it just floored me that I had actually tattooed my face and that I was more than happy with it.

I’ll have to admit that people at work were a little taken back when I first got my facial tattoos. But now no one seems to mind.

After I get my face done, then it’s off to my upper thighs. Next I’m going to fix up my arms. And then finally my torso.

When all is said and done I’ll probably have spent about $5k to $6k putting ink on my body.

To me it’s money well worth it.

And to be really honest, the pain and the accompanying adrenaline rush numb my inner turmoil, so there’s that.

Welfare.

Just recounting my times on welfare.

Okay, so this topic came up in the last post, and I thought what the hell if I’m writing the story of my life can’t do it without mentioning this.

I have in fact collected welfare a few time in life.

I’ve also collected U.I. and E.I. a few times in life as well.

The first time that I collected welfare was in Edmonton, AB. I forget the exact dates and my tax records aren’t exactly clear, but I was on welfare from around September of 1991 until February of 1992.

The thing I remember the most about applying is (a) how fucking humiliating it was, and (b) because I had been born in Nova Scotia, Alberta was willing to buy me a plane ticket “back home”. I say “back home” as I hadn’t lived in Nova Scotia since I was 5 years old.

Why didn’t I call my father for money? There is no fucking way on Earth I would have ever called him asking for money. You just learnt as a kid to never ask him for money. You just didn’t. Most times he’d just answer that he was “broke” and didn’t have money, but if you could wait for a month he might have some money then. And this would be for amounts like $20. So asking him for $300 to cover rent for the month would have been out of the question.

Marie didn’t have much money, but she did help me out with groceries a couple of times.

Edmonton was a hell hole in the early ’90s. It was in the midst of a recession. I tried delivering Pizza, but that was super risky walking into some parts of town with money in your pocket. I did “dial-a-bottle” delivery for a while. Same risk as the pizza though, but this time not only could they steal your money, they’d steal the booze too. I worked at a car wash. Nothing better than working in a car wash in Edmonton in the winter.

I moved to Vancouver in February of 1992. The job I had come down for ended up getting moved back by a couple of months because the two mechanics that were supposed to be leaving Lions Gate Lanes stayed for longer as they were having issues getting their venture going.

I applied for welfare in BC. Only thing is at the time unless you lived in BC for sixth months you couldn’t get welfare. I was given two options. A free bus ticket back to Edmonton or I could go stay at Catholic Charities Hostel for Men on the periphery of the infamous Downtown East Side. I chose the men’s hostel.

At the hostel you got a couple of meal vouchers. One for breakfast, and one for lunch. I would use the breakfast voucher and trade the lunch voucher for singles. Singles were single cigarettes.

I started smoking around age 13. My younger brother was smoking before I was. Richard didn’t care. By the time I was 18 I was up to two packs a day. By the time I hit Vancouver in ’92 I was still at two packs a day. Singles weren’t enough. So I ended up picking up butts out of ashtrays and using the unburnt tobacco to roll smokes in rolling papers. I was able to find piecemeal work, but I was only allowed to stay at Catholic Charities for 6 weeks. After six weeks you had to get out and find smoother place to stay.

Luckily the job at Lions Gate finally opened up.

I worked at Lions Gate from June of 1992 until June of 1993. The reason why the two previous mechanics left was that the owner of the shopping mall was not going to renew the lease for Lions Gate Lanes and Brunswick was shutting the centre down at the end of the ’92 – ’93 league season. I stayed on with Brunswick for the dismantling of the centre. I then got hired on by Larco to help build the new centre. When Larco cancelled the lease for Lions Gate Lanes, they thought that they would simply walk in and operate the centre for a couple of years until the redevelopment happened. The only problem with that is Brunswick had years of experience repossessing bankrupt bowling centres. We had Lions Gate Lanes stripped to the bare walls in 12 days.

This left Larco in a lurch as they had promised the leagues that there would be bowling for the ’93 – ’94 bowling season. But Lions Gate Lanes was an empty shell.

Warren Flanagan with Brunswick Corp said that there was a job waiting for me in Mississauga if I wanted it.

Phil had been hired on by Larco to oversee the construction of the centre. Phil called me and asked me if I wanted to help build the new centre. I said sure. Larco hired a company from the states to supply lanes, pinsetters, scoring equipment, and the rest of the capital equipment. It took about six week, but we built that 36 lane centre. The only problem was the pinsetters were a mishmash of used American and Japanese Brunswick machines. Some of them even came from a flood damaged centre in the states and were super rusted. The electrics were iffy on the machines and not a single one of them had been overhauled.

The bowlers were rightfully pissed off. The lanes weren’t ready for the start of the season. In fact, the lanes weren’t ready until about 2 weeks later. But the pinsetters were in such rough condition that they were having jams and blackouts non-stop.

One of the machines couldn’t detect standing pins. And this was the lane that the League President was bowling on. He told Phil that if the machine screwed up once while he was bowling on it he was taking the entire league and they’d move to a different centre. Phil begged me to keep it running. I tried to keep it going without having it shut down or sweep standing pins. Unfortunately I got my arm crushed in the machine.

After I got my arm free of the machine I stumbled my way up to the front and I asked Phil for a ride to the hospital. He told me to take the bus. I quit then and there. The next morning I called Warren and asked him if the job was still open in Ontario.

Because I had opened an U.I. claim when Lions Gate Lanes closed and we were all laid off, my claim was still open. When I went to the U.I. office a couple of days later I explained what had happened. They considered that I had already been through the waiting period and therefore they would get my payments underway right away.

With my final cheque from Park Royal Lanes and my U.I. cheque, and my savings I moved to Toronto in late November of ’93.

The job waiting for me was at Brunswick Mississauga lanes. I went in and met the manager. The manager said that he had heard excellent things about my from both Warren and my previous centre manager Wendy. I can’t remember the manager’s name, but I can remember the head mechanic’s name. Don W. The manager got on the intercom and called to the back. As soon as Don emerged from the walkway I could tell this wasn’t going to work. “I told you, no one from the fucking West Coast is going to tell me who the fuck I have to hire”. Don and the manager went into the office and had a yelling match. Don emerged and look at me and said “get your stuff, we’re going to the back, and don’t get comfortable because the first time you fuck up I sending you out the fucking door.” I lasted at Mississauga lanes for about three weeks. U.I. reviewed my termination and determined that it wasn’t justified. As my claim was in British Columbia they’d have to transfer the paperwork over. In the meantime I was now collecting welfare in Ontario. Once the U.I. office got the paperwork sent out it was a few weeks for the the processing to take place. Once that was done I was back on U.I. again.

To keep rent down as low as possible I had been staying at the Salvation Army down by Moss Park.

Toronto wasn’t great at the time. Job interviews weren’t leading to job offers. So I ended up heading back to Vancouver. The only thing I hadn’t counted on was the 6 weeks that it was going to take to change my mailing address. They would also have to re-evaluate my claim as I had moved to a different claims jurisdiction. And of course, they’d have to transfer my paperwork back to British Columbia.

So I ended up receiving emergency welfare from the BC Government. No wait period this time, but it would be clawed back from my U.I. cheques when they started showing up.

Why didn’t I call Richard and ask Richard for money? Not worth it. Not worth the humiliation. Not worth the degradation.

I ended up getting a room at the Salvation Army Dunsmuir House for Men. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was wrong with this place. Someone broke into my room and stole my knapsack and when I called the VPD the Sgt. responding laughed at me when I said I wanted to file a report.

Most of the men in this place were angry. And I mean really angry. Fights would start over the slightest issue.

In 2011 I would learn that the Salvation Army Dunsmuir House for Men was a Federal half-way house and housed men who had just been released from prison. At the time when I moved into the Dunsmuir I just needed a cheap room. No one ever told me that this place also housed freshly released prisoners.

I’ll save this for another post, but my return to Vancouver was when I tried to work up the courage to jump off the Lions Gate Bridge. Instead of working up the courage to jump off the bridge, I worked up a case of pneumonia.

I ended up getting work at a small bowling centre in East Richmond around the end of June. I was there until 1999 when I got into commercial property management. And as they say the rest is history.

So yeah, the first part of my 20s was very, very rough.

Which is why when I read Richard’s statement that he gave to the CFNIS 2011, I choked. He made it sound as if I kept calling him non-stop for money and that he had been giving me money whenever I asked for it.

Did the CFNIS suggest to Richard what he should say?

Was Richard really so keen to play the victim that he said what he said?

Was Richard just vengeful?

This will always be one of life’s little mysteries because Richard is dead.

Yes, I’ve collected welfare. And yes I’ve collected U.I. / E.I..

But I’ve spent less that two years of my adult life collecting welfare / U.I. / E.I.

Another way of looking at this is I’m 50. My first welfare claim was when I was 19.

I’ve been working since I was 16.

2 years out of 34 years is 0.058%.

I’ve spent less than 0.058% of my adult working life collecting welfare / U.I. / E.I.

Marie

In this post I talk about my mother. Not much to say as I really don’t know much about her.
But one thing I have learnt after having talked to her in 2013 to 2015 is that Richard Wayne Gill destroyed just about every life that he came in contact with.

Marie Annette Jacqueline Wudrich is my mother.

She was born in Hull, Quebec in December of 1946. The same year that Richard was.

Similar to my father, I know nothing about her really.

I know nothing about her parents other than her father died around 1974 due to a heart attack and her mother died from an epileptic seizure.

She had two brothers. Jean-Yves and Albert.

Albert Dagenais and my father had to take the same educational upgrading prior to joining the Royal Canadian Navy in 1963. In 1965 when Marie went to visit Al in Halifax that is where she met Richard. At the time Al told Marie to steer clear of Richard as Richard was a good guy, but he messed around with women. Marie didn’t listen. Richard’s skills were too good for her to resist.

Marie and Richard were married in 1968.

After the HMCS Kootenay incident in 1969 Richard became like an animal. His drinking was out of hand and his anger could be set off with little provocation.

Marie was having second thoughts about the marriage but she ended up pregnant with me around the end of December 1970. This apparently happened in a snow bank because Richard couldn’t wait until they got back to the apartment they were living in.

I don’t remember much of my childhood with her. She left around the summer of 1977 on CFB Summerside. I would have been about 5. I do remember that she used to do yoga a lot, and one of her moves was to have me stand on her feet as she was laying on her back. She would then straighten up her legs and lift me up.

She bowled in one of the 5-pin leagues at the base recreation centre.

She was the one that would read books to me, I don’t ever remember Richard reading a book to me.

I very vaguely remember the fights and the arguments between Richard and Marie. I also very vaguely remember the sleep overs and visits that I would often have.

I remember Marie driving the big black Thunderbird whereas Richard was always riding his motorcycle. I remember her always getting panicky driving over the two bridges in Halifax.

Once we arrived on CFB Summerside I do remember her crying a lot. There was a lot of door slamming and yelling.

Then one day Marie took my brother and I over to another PMQ. She said that no one loved her, that I didn’t love her, that my brother didn’t love her. And then she was gone.

I was 5. My brother would have been about 3. This is probably one reason he doesn’t have any memories of her or what Shearwater and Summerside were like.

The next time I saw Marie was just after we had moved to CFB Namao in Alberta, so this would have been after August of 1978. I’m fairly certain that this was before Andy Anderson slipped and fell in the bathtub. Grandma had told me about the visit. Grandma also said that I was never to tell Richard about the visit otherwise this would be the last time that Marie would come to see us.

Richard wasn’t living with us on base, it was just grandma and Andy. After Andy’s fall in the bathtub then it was just grandma. So, for grandma to arrange a visit with Marie wouldn’t have been an issue, but grandma knew there would be trouble if Richard found out that grandma had allowed Marie to see my brother and I.

Fr L to R: Margaret Anderson, Marie Gill, my brother, me.
I remember this picture being taken.
For obvious reasons we were never given copies of this
I got this in December of 2013.

In the late spring of 1982 Richard and Sue got married. My brother and I were given $50 each and told to go to the mall and hang out for the day and not come back until it started to get dark.

In the summer of 1982 Richard dropped my brother and I off in Calgary with Marie. I honestly have no idea how the hell this got worked out. But Richard wanted to take Sue to Banff for camping. I wouldn’t find out until after Richard picked my brother and I up that Richard and Sue had gone for their honeymoon.

The next time I would see my mother was on my birthday in 1982. We were living on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach at the time. If it wasn’t for my foster care records I would never have known the details of this.

Marie showed up to take me out for my birthday. Richard was away on a training exercise otherwise Marie would never have dared to step foot on a military base. Sue allowed Marie to take me, but Sue was not going to allow Marie to take my brother as well. Was Sue being spiteful or was Sue just worried that Marie might run off with Richard’s kids? Either is possible.

What I remember the most about the day is that Marie slammed on the brakes of her car before we drove off base. She was angry. Very angry. I could see the anger seething out of her. Her friend Karen was asking Marie to calm down. Marie threw the car in reverse and drove backwards back to the PMQ. She slammed on the brakes again and told me to get out. Then she drove off again.

The social service reports talk about this and how I had emotionally crashed and wouldn’t talk to anyone for about a week.

I wouldn’t see Marie again until the summer of 1990 when I took my father up on his invitation for me to move back to Alberta with him on his final posting so that we could “try to be a family again”.

Just after we got settled into PMQ #120 at 13711 – 102nd street uncle Doug showed up. His truck had broken down north of the city and his pregnant wife was with the truck and he needed someone to replace the water pump. Richard voluntold me to go fix it. So I took Doug over to Crappy Tire, we bought water, coolant, a new water pump, a new thermostat, gaskets, RTV Sealant, and a new belt. And when I say we, I mean me.

Doug and I drove up to Bon Accord in my Plymouth Horizon.

Two things we talked about on the way up was if I wanted to see my mother. Doug knew where my mother was but Marie wasn’t sure if I wanted to see her. So I told Doug that I was up for a meeting. This is also when Doug wanted to know if I wanted to get my metis papers. Doug said that I was not to tell my father about Marie or the metis papers as both would enrage Richard.

Marie and I met at the food court in North Gate Mall.

There were no tears, or hugs, or crying.

We were both heavily damaged and it showed.

I went to see Marie a few times at the acreage she and her husband Art owned out by Wabamum Lake.

Richard had bought a house in Morinville off of one of his airforce buddies.

I didn’t last too long in that house, maybe a week or two, before Sue and I had a row over a telephone call. There was probably more to Sue kicking me out of the house than just that phone call. I think Richard had lied to her and said that I was going to go back to school.

I ended up staying at the YMCA in downtown Edmonton for a few days. Luckily I still had my money from the Canshare job.

I ended up staying with Marie out at the acreage. Marie and her husband Art had separate bedrooms. When I came to stay Marie gave me her bedroom and she took the fold out in the living room.

Marie had poodles.

One of the first things that became apparent was that Marie was very racist as was Art. At the time Marie worked for the “Alberta Report” which was part of the lunatic right. It wasn’t uncommon for the words n***er or c**n or p**i to be said in their household.

One time Marie and I were coming back to the acreage from Edmonton. We stopped at a Dairy Queen in Stony Plain. As we were eating our food Marie started to get a look of disgust on her face. She kept nodding for me to look behind me. So I turned around and looked. There was an older East Indian couple having burgers and fries. I looked back at her and asked “what?”. She said “those people don’t belong here. They’re going to ruin this country”.

I spent the next few days after work looking for an apartment in the city.

Sometime after my brother arrived from Ontario, Sue kicked him out of the house in Morinville as well. Richard dumped my brother off at my place stating that looking after my brother was the least I could do considering how much my father had done raising my brother and I. My brother didn’t last too long at my place, three days tops.

Crazy Walter, the perverted landlord had called me at work one day at the Bronx complaining about the loud music coming from my apartment. And in three days he had eaten all of the groceries in my apartment.

Marie picked my brother up and took him out to the acreage. He wouldn’t be at the acreage too long before he’d be sent back to Morinville. I don’t exactly understand how that worked out other than my brother would have been 16 at the time and after all these years of claiming to have sole custody Richard couldn’t just throw a 16 year old out on the streets. I’m thinking that If my brother stayed with my mother Richard would have had to cough up child support until my brother’s 18th birthday. I was 18 when Sue kicked me out, so tough titty for me.

I worked at the Bronx Bowling centre on 127th street from August of 1990 until June of 1991. At the time I only had grade 8. But I had good skills in electronics and I could repair the circuit boards in the pinsetting equipment, so I was a good find for Sports Holdings Ltd. But the job didn’t pay much above welfare wages.

Marie embarrassed the fuck out of me when she hired an exotic signing dancer for my birthday in September of 1990. To be honest she didn’t know about what I had been through for the previous ten years. Marie also probably didn’t know that except for my 14th birthday in September of 1985 I really hadn’t had any birthday parties since she left in 1977. But it was embarrassing none the less. Marie had set this up with Kathy Forrester, the manager of the centre, and Val, the league coordinator.

One of the bowlers in one of the leagues had told me that I could become a courier and make lots of money and that this would be a great fit for someone who didn’t have technical diplomas or a strong educational background.

Art helped me to modify my car into a miniature car van by removing the rear seats and building a plywood parcel platform.

Marie asked me why I quit a job where everyone liked me. I told her that I was sick and tired of not ever being able to get above welfare wages with the exception of the Canshare Cabling job. She asked me why I didn’t just apply to technical school to get my certificates. When I told her that I only had a grade 8 education she went through the roof. “That fucking asshole Richard! What the fuck has he done? Grade 8 was good enough for him so it’s good enough for you?”.

She got me the phone number and the address of the office where I’d have to go to apply for my grade 12 G.E.D. In two months I had my grade 12 G.E.D..

Sometime after my brother had arrived in Alberta and had visited Marie a few times at the acreage I went to the acreage for a weekend. As soon as I walked in the door, she said “Sit down, we need to talk”. She was fucking pissed. She said “Tell me about this fucking babysitter”. I looked at her in shock. I never told her about P.S.. The only person who would have told her would have been my brother. I said “What babysitter?”. She said “The one who molested your brother, did this asshole touch you too?”

At that point in time it was about ten years since the abuse on CFB Namao had come to an end. At that point in time it was less than 7 years since my last session with Captain Terry Totzke who had insisted that I was a homosexual and that I had allowed P.S. to molest my younger brother. At that point in time it was less than 4 years since Richard had laid a massive beating on me because my younger brother was getting in to trouble that Richard had deemed was obviously a direct result of me having allowed the babysitter to touch my younger brother.

I got up from the kitchen table. I walked out the door. She kept yelling at me for me to come back and tell her what had happened to my younger brother.

I drove back to Edmonton. It was so fucking tempting to drive the my car into an overpass embankment or an overpass support. I pulled over to the side of the Yellowhead and I cried for a while realizing that I was never going to be free of CFB Namao, it was always going to be coming for me, and now here was my own mother blaming me for what I had obviously made the babysitter do.

I went up to CFB Namao for the final time and talked to the military police about laying charges against P.S.. Nope, he’s a civilian, blah-blah-blah…..

I didn’t talk to my mother for a while after that.

We met up somewhere, I can’t remember where, but we went out for dinner.

On the way back she asked me a very peculiar question. A question that still haunts me to this day.

As we pulled into the driveway of the acreage she said she wanted to ask me a question. She said that she didn’t want to upset me like the last time but she wanted an answer.

“Did your father ever touch you?”

It took me a bit before I answered. All I could say to Marie is that I was pretty sure that he never touched me, but that if I had been born a girl I don’t think that I would have been safe from Richard.

Marie never pushed that question again. She would never say why she had asked me that question in the first place.

I ended up on welfare not too long after I started working for the courier company. The one thing they never tell you about being a courier driving your own vehicle is that it is deadly expensive for the first couple of years until you establish yourself.

Marie helped me with the welfare applications.

She didn’t understand why I didn’t want to do a refrigeration apprenticeship with Art.

At that point in my life I still had a very low opinion of myself and I didn’t think that I would ever find meaningful employment.

Lynnwood Lanes in Edmonton was advertising for a head mechanic for their Brunswick pinsetters. I didn’t have the Brunswick factory certification required, but the centre manager who interviewed me said that he knew of a few centres in the Vancouver area that would probably hire me and send me for certification in Michigan if they liked me.

I had no money other than my welfare cheque so Marie agreed to drive to Burnaby, BC with me to go for an interview at Brentwood lanes.

On the way down and on the way back we fought like cats and dogs. I was too much like my father apparently. I wasn’t telling her the truth about the babysitter. Why wasn’t I interested in women? Was I an alcoholic like Richard?

I didn’t get the job at Brentwood, but during the interview the manager gave me the phone number for a Brunswick owned and operated bowling centre in West Vancouver. He said to call the centre in about one month as he heard that two of their mechanics were leaving to open their own bowling centre.

When I got back to Edmonton I called the phone number. I gave Phil some of my references and contacts for him to check. I called back a couple of days later. I was told that if I wanted to start at the end of the month the job was mine. So I decided to not pay rent with my last welfare cheque. I quietly cleared out and cleaned my apartment. And without telling anyone I moved to Vancouver.

When I got to Vancouver I telephoned Marie to let her know where I was.

She fucking exploded. “You goddamn little bastard, you don’t care who you walk over, you’re just like Richard”. She then told me that she never wanted to hear from me again and that I was never to contact her again.

She slammed the phone down.

I decided to wait a couple of months before trying to call her back.

The acreage where she lived was on a party line. I called her a couple of times, and after letting the phone ring for a while one of the other residents on the party line would pick up and ask me to not let the phone ring for so long.

In 2013 I had to track Marie down to ask her some questions in relation to a series of answers that I had received from my father when I examined him for my application for judicial review in the Federal Court of Canada.

I knew the company that Art had worked for and as it turns out Art’s son had purchased the company years ago and was now the president. I gave them my phone number to pass on to Terry. Terry called me and gave me Marie’s phone number.

I called Marie. I used my dead name when I spoke with her. There was no way she would have even known that I had legally changed my name and I didn’t want to confuse her. The first thing she said is “I thought you were dead”. The news that I was in fact still alive and not dead didn’t seem to impress her too much. I got the sense the she had long ago resigned herself to leaving the past in the past and never thinking about it much anymore.

She went on to explain that when she hit 65 and retired she had to prove that she had had children when she applied for CPP. When she applied for my birth certificate she was told that my certificate was sealed and unavailable.

I explained to her that I had changed my name and why I had changed my name.

She asked me if I was gay. I didn’t answer. She said that she suspected that my father was and that there had been some questionable incidents on Shearwater, but that that type of stuff happens when guys spend so much time together on the ships with no women.

She asked me why I hadn’t tried to call her before. I told her that I had tried to call their acreage in the summer of 1992 after I thought she would have calmed down but there was never any answer. She explained that Art and her sold the acreage that spring. They went off to Regina and stayed in one of Terry’s houses there while Art was working on a gas compressor. After that they moved to Kelowna and stayed at another one of Terry’s houses while Art was working on an ammonia refrigeration plant. Then they moved to Calgary and stayed in one of Terry’s houses again. Then they moved up to Edmonton and stayed in another one of Terry’s houses while Art was doing a refrigeration job for Labatt’s. Then they were off to Peachland, and a few other places before both Marie and Art retired and moved into another one of Terry’s houses in Calgary.

I told her about the judicial review and that I wanted to ask her some question and that I’d like to come out to visit her.

I saw her over the xmas holidays of 2013.

Art and Marie were living in one of Terry’s houses. Terry had purchased various houses in cities throughout western Canada for the technicians with his refrigeration company to stay at when they were in town servicing equipment. And I should clarify, Terry’s company didn’t service refrigerators or air conditioners. They serviced ammonia refrigeration plants in hockey rinks and breweries, they also serviced natural gas compressors at natural gas plants. Big ticket items. So having these houses made sense.

Anyways, the house was barren. Not too much in the way of furnishings. Marie had a stockpile of pictures that I never knew existed which we took to Staples and had scanned.

Sadly Art and Marie were even more racist than the last time I had seen them in the early ’90s.

I think that old age and resentment had turned her into a bitter person.

Marie didn’t really venture out anywhere except to smoke on the front porch.

Marie and Art were content to watch Fox News and COPS all day long. It was fucking weird. When COPS was on Marie would make the obvious comments that n***ers weren’t as advanced as whites and that’s why they’re always being arrested. Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi was apparently a muslim terrorist who had no business being the mayor of a Canadian city.

Art hauled out some cassettes that he was proud of. David Allen Coe and a bunch of other overtly racist “novelty country and western signers” that were so racist in their lyrics that even the profoundly deaf could hear the dog whistles.

I got the answers that I needed of the past that I needed. But there were many more that Marie feigned ignorance about. It wasn’t until after I showed her the conversations that I had with Pat Longmore that she had admitted that Richard got physically violent with not only her, but with my brother and I as well. She admitted that we had gone to stay with various people until Richard would cool down.

I showed her the email I had received from the PEI government stating that Richard had never been granted custody of my brother and I. She said that it was because it wasn’t the civilian courts that had granted Richard custody. It had been the Canadian Forces Judge Advocate General that had issued Richard custody of my brother and I. I explained to her that the Judge Advocate General never became involved with civilian matters in Canada, especially not matters of child custody.

She explained that Richard started drinking hard on Summerside. The posting to Summerside wasn’t one that Richard really wanted, but he was wearing out his welcome on Shearwater with his antics. Richard had started getting even more physical on Summerside with Marie as Marie’s brother Al was no longer around to serve as a deterrent to Richard. After Richard had come home one night after drinking and smashed up everything in the basement out of frustration she decided that she needed to get my brother and I away from Richard. She was going to take my brother and I to stay with Uncle Al in Dartmouth. She told Richard that she was leaving for a while and that she was taking my brother and I. She said that a couple of days later the military police from CFB Summerside attended the PMQ and told Marie that if she attempted to leave the island with my brother and I that the military police from CFB Halifax would be waiting for her on the other side and that she would be charged with child endangerment and kidnapping. Marie said that a few days later that an officer from the Judge Advocate General’s office had come to the PMQ and served her with papers that showed that the office of the JAG had just granted Richard sole custody and that she was to vacate the PMQ and that if she ever came back that she’d be charged with trespassing on a defence establishment.

I should clarify something peculiar about the house we lived in while my father was stationed at CFB Summerside. The house, which is at 353 High Street in the City of Summerside is not on what was Canadian Forces Base Summerside. So how could the military police have had jurisdiction? The housing development that we lived in was part of the Hillcrest Housing Development. It was built in the late ’50s by a private company specifically for the Canadian Armed Forces. The housing development was then leased to the Department of National Defence on a perpetual lease which ended when CFB Summerside shut down in the ’90s. Due to language contained in both the National Defence Act and the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations any property that the Department of National Defence leases is then considered to be a defence establishment and the military has jurisdiction.

The famous story Richard used to regale everyone with about how I hated my brother so much that I pushed him and his walker down the basement stairs in Shearwater was a wee bit of an exaggeration on Richard’s part. Richard was getting drunk and watching hockey on TV. Marie was in the basement doing washing. Richard was yelling at me to get my mother to come get my brother as my brother was bothering Richard while Richard was watching his hockey. Being that I was 3 years old at the time I opened the door to the basement to go tell my mother that my father wanted her to come get my brother. According to Marie, before I even got two steps down the basement stairs the walker came crashing down the stairs. Richard was furious because now his hockey game was interrupted for a trip to the hospital. She knew who was to blame, but Richard would never own up to it.

Another story she laid to waste was the crashing of the Thunderbird. First, she corrected me with the fact that the T-bird belonged to Richard and not her. Then she said that the crash was not caused by another driver like Richard had told me. No one ran a red light. No one rear ended him and pushed him into the intersection. No one had cut him off. He had been drinking at the mess and wanted her to come pick him up. When she got to the mess Richard insisted that he was going to drive home. The crash happened on the base. Richard got off the base proper and onto the PMQ patch. He was speeding and he missed a curve in the living quarters area. He totalled the T-bird in an area where the speed limit was 10 km/h. I didn’t go to IWK Hospital for stitches. I went to the base infirmary for stitches. Bill Parker and Bob Wrightson took the car over to a garage that Richard, Bill, and Bob owned out in Western Passage. The car was scrapped as Richard couldn’t afford to fix it.

I asked her if she had ever heard about the fight between Sue and Richard in the summer of 1985. She said no. But she also said that her and Richard had finally signed their divorce papers that summer. Apparently Richard was refusing to sign the papers until Marie agreed to not make a claim against the land he owned in Nova Scotia. Marie never did say what agreement her and Richard ever came to over this land. But apparently in the summer of 1985 the divorce papers were signed. This one has always caused me to laugh a little. Was Richard a bigamist? In Canada it’s illegal to be married to two persons at once. The courts had never nullified Richard’s marriage. Richard married Sue in a private ceremony on base in our PMQ. Did Sue, who was on the verge of giving birth to her own son, discover in the summer of 1985 that Richard had never in fact divorced Marie? This of course would mean that Richard and Sue’s marriage was illegal. Yeah, I could see this launching a massive domestic dispute.

When I started asking Marie about her family life she wasn’t too forthcoming.

Marie wouldn’t talk too much about her past.

I’ve found out more about her family from others related to the Dagenais clan who knew her than I’ve ever found out from her.

After CFB Summerside she had very little relationship with her siblings. Her parents were both dead by the time she was 28. And her extended family wasn’t great. The Dagenais’ had a lot of baggage in that branch of the Dagenais family tree.

When uncle Al died, Marie wasn’t even mentioned in his obituary.

I would visit her two more times. But both time she really didn’t want to leave the house. And she didn’t really want to talk. So I’d go exploring Calgary on my own.

I haven’t spoken to her since the summer of 2017.

There is no relationship there. There is nothing to salvage. Sure, I came out of her body, but I was nothing more than a removed appendix.

It’s like anyone who was ever related to Richard has ended up extremely emotionally traumatized and mentally unwell.

There’s just something toxic and evil in the Gill DNA.