Category: anxiety

A little change in my plans

Okay, still waiting to hear whether or not Parliament will ask the Senate to agree to delaying the implementation of Medical Assistance in Dying for reasons of Mental Health.

So in the meantime I’m still proceeding as if March 17th, 2023 is the date that M.A.i.D. for reasons of Mental Health is allowed to proceed.

To that end I’m still planning out the arrangements for the disposal of my body.

I’ve come to the conclusion that cremation would be the easiest method to plan for. And by opting for cremation I can plan for a “one stop shopping” experience.

I’ve been in contact with a few funeral homes in the lower mainland. These homes have allowed the M.A.i.D. procedure to be carried out on their premises. They typically have a room set-up and nicely furnished where a person can undergo the procedure in the company of their close friends and family.

Once the procedure has been completed and the person is legally pronounced deceased the body is usually then prepared for disposal whether it be by burial or by cremation. And usually the funeral that the M.A.i.D. procedure occurs at will deal with the cremation or the burial.

I had wanted a green burial. Just my body in a shroud in a hole in the ground left to decompose the way bodies have done since time immemorial. The problem that I ran into with this desire is that there aren’t many cemeteries between Vancouver and Hope that allow for bodies to be buried without a casket and without a cement grave liner.

So, cremation it is.

And this really simplifies things.

I arrive at the funeral home. Get into bed. Undergo the procedure. Pass away peacefully. Be officially declared as deceased. Then my corpse is loaded into the cremator. I’m incinerated. My bone fragments and other ash residue are pulverized into a fine powder. The my ashes as put into a little plastic bag and the placed inside a container.

And that’s it.

My funeral arranger will look after filing for the required death certificate and other papers.

Except for my legacy at work and my legacy of being one of 25 children fucked up by Captain McRae and the Canadian Armed Forces, it will be as if I never existed.

The universe will continue on as if I was never here.

Within one generation I will have been forgotten like so many others that have led solitary lives.

And that’s fine.

I will finally be free of my daemons, all of my mental illnesses, all of the horrors and memories that torment me, and all of the issues that were gifted to me by my dysfunctional household, by my molester Captain Father Angus McRae and his teenage accomplice, and the mind fucking I endured at the hands of my military social worker, Captain Terry Totzke.

None of these will plague me anymore once my brain is dead.

And honestly, it’s not like I’m going to be angry or upset about being dead. I’ll be dead. Matters of the living will no longer be of ant concern to me as I will no longer exist.

All I have to do is to make sure that I remember M.A.i.D. first, cremator second. I don’t think going into the cremator alive would be too enjoyable.

January 7th, 2023

Here’s my latest video.

January 2nd 2023

One of the hard things about putting these videos together is I’m so fucking numb to what happened, how it was dealt with or more importantly how it wasn’t dealt with that it no longer really means anything to me.

But still I need to talk about it because this was such a major part of my life during my formative years and it had such a profound impact on who I am.

This isn’t a track and field meet that I lost. This isn’t a goal that I didn’t score in an overtime period in junior hockey. This shit destroyed my world.

Anyways, I’ll have a new video by tomorrow, I’ve had a couple of things swimming around inside of my skull.

‘Til next time.

The time of settlements

First, a new video.

On November 7th and 8th my first lawyer and I will have a meeting with the lawyers in the matter of Earl Ray Stevens. This meeting is to see if all sides can reach a final agreement on the matter of an “out of court” settlement.

I don’t know what to expect with this meeting. The lawyer for the defendant in this matter has postulated that by the time Earl Ray Stevens abused me at the Denison Armouries when I was in cadets that I was already “damaged” from the abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao. He even seemed to have honed in on items from my foster care records that I wasn’t even aware of.

One such thing that he honed in on came about because my lawyer had requested a fresh copy of my foster care records from the Alberta government at the start of this matter. I had never seen the quoted text that the lawyer for the defendant read during the meeting because this was redacted from the copy of the records I had obtained in 2011.

In this formerly redacted section my father had told the psychologist hired by the Canadian Armed Forces in November of 1980 that he blamed my behaviour and the behaviour of my brother on his mother, specifically stating this “his mother was frequently cruel to his children, especially when she was inebriated”.

This by the way is the same mother that Richard wrote out of our family history when he gave his statement to the CFNIS in 2011.

So I’ll have to see what the future holds so far as this settlement goes.

I received an interesting telephone call from my other lawyer on Friday. It seems that the Department of Justice is curious to whether or not I would entertain the possibility of an out of court settlement. As this matter is a class action this would affect all members of the class. we don’t have anything to lose on this.

The DOJ and DND may insist that if we take the out of court settlement that we’d have to agree to be bound by an NDA. This is something that I would have to discuss with my lawyer.

That said, an out of court settlement in the Captain McRae matter from Canadian Forces Base Namao would resolve the matter in a fairly quick time unlike the 10 to 15 years that the DOJ had warned me they would drag this matter out for.

Questions that I would have are would there be any payments towards the families of the victims of Captain McRae and his 14 year old accomplice who committed suicide over the years as a result of the abuse and the failure of DND and the CF to look after the victims properly?

Would all of the surviving victims receive equal payments?

Would DND and the CF reveal the names of all of the children involved and ensure that these victims are made aware of the cash settlement being offered?

Would I be gagged by a Non-Disclosure Agreement much like the 14 year old accomplice agreed to in December of 2008?

I sure those details will be worked out.

The one thing that settlements in both matters allows be to do is to obtain medical assistance in dying in much my original time frame.

It was always my intention to die either in 2023 or 2024.

By going with settlements in both matters I can now rest assured that I won’t be spending the next 10 to 15 years dealing with this crap.

If I apply for medical assistance in dying on March 20th, 2023, it will probably take about 4 to 6 months for me to undergo the psychiatric review that would be required.

There would be a 90 day “cooling-off period”.

Then I would be given my prescription for medical assistance in dying. From what I understand the prescription would be valid for up to one year.

This would put my death into 2024. I’m okay with that. I’ve suffered 40 years so far, another year or two isn’t going to kill me.

Anyways, enough for now.

It’s bed time.

Saturday October 15th 2022

Why didn’t you tell anyone?

Why didn’t you report the abuse sooner?

The problem is the military police, the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit, and numerous other “adults” such as Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke were well aware of the abuse.

Good Guys vs Bad Guys

Here’s an interesting video.

Sorry about the length, but I do talk about good guys and bad guys.

Why am I doing this?

In this video I explain why I am hoping to under the process of Medical Assistance in Dying.

Sunday video

Some truths about M.A.i.D.

“Has he been on pharmaceuticals all his life to control his emotions”?
-NO-
“Sorry then, he’s far too happy to qualify to die”

Please don’t fuck this up for me.

Recently in the media there has been a story circulating around how a woman requested Medical Assistance in Dying because she couldn’t find a place to live.

I’ll say this once and once only, YOU CANNOT REQUEST M.A.i.D. because you are homeless. If all it took was being homeless to request M.A.i.D. it would be simple for me in the Vancouver area housing market. All I’d have to do is move out of my apartment without having a place to move to, then I too could apply for M.A.i.D. instead of having to wait until March of 2023. But it doesn’t work that way.

Currently to obtain M.A.i.D. you currently have to have a terminal disease that will result in your natural death in the foreseeable future, or you need to have a condition that affects and impairs your quality of life.

You cannot request M.A.i.D. if you have genetic cognitive developmental issues, or other types of cognitive impairments that would prevent informed consent.

You and only you can request M.A.i.D.. You cannot take your 98 year old granny into the vet and have them put down like a house cat. You cannot have your child with Down Syndrome put down. You cannot have your wife with Tourette’s syndrome put down.

You, AND ONLY YOU, can make the request for M.A.i.D.. No one else can.

As the law is now, you cannot even make a request for M.A.i.D. for use in the future if you should become cognitively impaired at a later date.

Even when the rules are changed in March of 2023 to allow M.A.i.D. for mental illness, the person requesting M.A.i.D. will have to be able to comprehend what it is that they are requesting. You will not be able to simply show up at your doctor and say that you want M.A.i.D. because you’re feeling a little sad at the moment. You need the approval of two separate physicians and then there is a mandatory 90 day cooling off period. And then even with the approvals and the passing of the 90 day cooling off period, you still have to find a physician will to carry out the procedure. This is nothing like taking your elderly cat into the vet and having them put down because you’ve grown tired of the cat.

I’m fucking dreading the process for requesting M.A.i.D. as I’m worried that the bar is going to be too fucking high for me to pass.

“Is he a cutter”?

-no-

“has he ended up in hospital due to previous suicide attempts”?

-no-

“Has he been going to non-stop therapy since 1980”?

-no-

“Has he been on pharmaceuticals all his life to control his emotions”?

-no-

“Sorry then, he’s far too happy to qualify to die”.

There appears to be a whole fucking cottage industry of these people who throw around terms like “ableism” and “eugenics” and who seem to indicate that if you’re not willing to commit suicide then you really don’t deserve an “easy way out”.

One account that I came across claims that an assisted living home in Northern Ontario is handing out M.A.i.D. request forms to all of the residents. THIS IS NOT HOW M.A.i.D. works for fucks sake.

I heard from a friend, who heard it from a friend, who heard if from a friend……
blah, fucking blah, fucking blah.
The “Anti- M.A.i.D.” crowd sounds like a Faberge commercial from the ’80s
Some random Assisted Living home that doesn’t have a name is just up and killing its patient population.

I would like to think that the media in Canada was better than this, but here we have https://twitter.com/CTVW5 and https://twitter.com/Avis_Favaro running a series entitled “CTVW5 DEATH WISH”……. yeah, that sure sounds like it’s going to be fair and balanced reporting, doesn’t it?

https://beta.ctvnews.ca/national/health/2022/4/26/1_5877288.amp.html

Won’t go too far into the story, but it seems that a mentally competent woman requested M.A.i.D., and was granted M.A.i.D.. I still can’t fathom what the story is here. Yes, she had to shop around to find sympathetic doctors, but as someone who has encountered doctors who thought that I was telling lies and exaggerations about my childhood abuse and trauma, I can see the need to shop around. Some doctors will let their personal biases and opinions become part of their diagnoses. I can see some doctors outright refusing to prescribe the procedure for religious or spiritual reasons. And those are two reasons that should never be allowed to be considered in any medical decision.

And the whole “Anti-MAiD” crowd doesn’t get any better from there.

If they’re not screaming about “eugenics” or “ableism” then they’re running on and on about how the government has concluded that it’s easier to kill the disabled than it is to feed, or house them.

I don’t follow the religious “anti-MAiD” crowd as I don’t really care what their imaginary friend has to say. If their imaginary friend tells them that MAiD is bad, then they’re welcome to not undergo MAiD.

What concerns me about the “Anti-MAiD” crowd is that they’ve seem to have attracted various psychologists and psychiatrists into their fold.

And what concerns me even more about these psychologists and psychiatrists is that some of them actually believe in the invisible sky daddy or other deities from ancient folklore and they take the “teachings” of these imaginary friends into consideration.

And this would be okay, but these good doctors should really know fantasy from reality.

I have yet to meet a psychologist or a psychiatrist who actually gave a sweet fuck about the war going on in my brain. If they can’t medicate a problem away, and if they can’t convince the patient that the patient is responsible for their own pain and suffering, then they don’t want anything to do with that patient and they’ll simply bump the patient off to someone else.

Outside of pharmaceuticals to numb and blunt emotions, there really isn’t anything that modern psychiatry can do to “fix the brain”. And Psychiatrists and psychologists will do anything possible to hide that fact. Other parts of the body can be fixed or replaced. But the brain is very unique in the sense that unless it learns emotions properly while it is growing in the most plastic stages of its development, it will never learn those emotions properly later in life.

I suffer from Major Depression, Severe Anxiety, lack of confidence, lack of interests, the inability to form relationships, and a multitude of other issues brought on by family genetics, living conditions as a child, sexual abuse as a child, the complete mishandling of that sexual abuse by the Canadian Armed Forces when I was a child, and a life time of shouldering the blame for what happened on Canadian Forces Base Namao.

This isn’t stuff that is going to go away if I simply wish it away.

This isn’t stuff that I can simply work on for the next 20 or 30 years of my life.

And I think that’s where psychiatrists and psychologists who are involved with the “anti-MAiD” movement have secret agendas. They don’t want to admit to the public that people like me are retirement funds, or monthly payments on the brand new Lexus.

If I undergo MAiD, then there are no more $300.00 sessions.

If I undergo MAiD, then there are no pharmaceuticals to push.

If I undergo MAiD, then there are no prestigious write-ups in the psychology magazines.

I’ll be very blunt and honest. If you want to keep people like me from requesting MAiD for childhood traumas and neglect, then as a society you better be willing to ensure that people like me don’t endure childhood traumas and neglect.

Who knew that it would be this hard.

Disposing of a body is harder than one could imagine.

So……

It doesn’t look as if I will be able to donate my brain after my death.

And this kinda saddens me a bit.

I had always envisioned that my brain would serve some useful purpose.

After all I survived:
– sexual abuse
-mental abuse
-physical abuse
-neglect

I have lived with and coped with:
-CPTSD
-Major Depression
-Severe Anxiety
-The effects of military conversion therapy

The thought of death has never been very far.

Depression runs in my family.

And yet not once have I stuck a needle in my arm or snorted anything up my nose or toked on anything. The last time I had a drink was in July of 2011 and even then I was a very infrequent drinker.

I’ve had to deal with personality issues caused no doubt by the various traumas and abuses.

And yet I’ve somewhat navigated life and ended up with stable employment even if it is not at the level of employment that I could have risen to.

This rise is something that I’ve done on my own with absolutely no help from my father or my family. During all of the times I was unemployed in the early ’90s Richard was of no use. Even when I was on Skid Row in Vancouver and Toronto my father was of no assistance.

I did this all on my own.

You would think that research labs would want to know what it was inside my brain that allowed me to go from basically non-functional and requiring psychiatric institutionalization at age 10 to being the Chief Engineer of a hospital at 47.

Nope.

It’s like the field of depression research is oblivious to confirmation bias. By this I mean that researches are obviously looking for answers where they expect to find them, in the brains of depressed people who have not fared well in life. Or the researches go looking for the answers to drug addiction in the brains of those who were abused and who succumbed to drugs and other forms of self medication. They often use the brains of those who have never suffered from depression in their lives as a reference point. And that’s great if you’re only concerned about the two extremes, but it gives you absolutely no data about those in between the two extremes.

Where my body goes after my death? Don’t know really. So long as it isn’t cremated or buried, I’m cool with that.

Medical school would be nice.

But medical schools like UBC pose a problem in the sense that they only take “whole body” donations for their medical students to dissect. If my brain were to be removed immediately after my death, then UBC wouldn’t take my body.

Conversely, no brain research program would take my brain after it had been removed from my skull by medical students.

Now, of course this is all really silly when you think about it isn’t it?

After I’m dead they could launch by body into space and I wouldn’t have the foggiest clue, would I. What they do with my corpse and my brain after I’m dead and gone is really a matter of trust. But still…….


Death

Why am I so fascinated with death?

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

This blog will detail my journey towards my death.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being dead?

Nope.

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

Being dead is very natural.

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

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

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

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

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

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

When I say that I’m tired, I mean it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But my reluctance to get out of bed was different.

I had diagnosed, but untreated major depression.

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

Untreated major depression is a bitch.

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

Untreated depression is a fucking killer in the literal sense.

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

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

And this was suffering in silence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The closest I came was the 1994 event.

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

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

And reinventing oneself is impossible unless the past is reconciled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Me?

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

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

See the difference?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So death it is.

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

Life is about quality over quantity.

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

I can promise you that is absofuckinglutely not the case.

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

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

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

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

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

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

What the actual fuck?

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

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

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

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

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

You want to know what’s evil?

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

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

I don’t believe in god.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it is my journey.

You’re more than welcome to come along.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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