Category: anxiety

Beyond help.

The Nurse Practitioner that I’ve been seeing since May of last year has been wonderful to date. He set me up with the escitalopram. Which I am thankful for.

But he’s nearly fallen into the same trap that some of my previous counsellors have fallen into.

He thinks that counselling will help me with my demons.

Sadly, he couldn’t be further from the truth.

The rot and malignancy in my brain is toxic and it was left untreated, ignored, and minimized for so very long and it is killing me on a daily basis.

One of the problem that I encounter with getting help is my previous experience of having been caught in between Captain Terry Totzke, my military social worker from Canadian Forces Base Namao, and my civilian counsellors from Alberta Social Services.

Now, of course at the time back in 1980 through 1983 I had absolutely no idea that Terry was actually Captain Terry Totzke.

But still.

That fucker hurt me, he destroyed me, he killed me.

I was 9 to 11 years old when I was in that asshole’s care.

That’s a pretty critical time in a child’s development life.

I had been sexually abused for 1-1/2 years at the hands of my babysitter. I had been taken over to the base chapel and given alcohol.
And as we now know, Captain McRae admitted to the military police to giving the children wine and beer before “fooling around” with them in the bedroom of the rectory.

Not only was I caught being buggered in P.S.’s bedroom, but I got the shit beat out of me before I got back home which was literally across the street.

I spend the rest of the summer hiding in my house. I didn’t dare step foot outside ’cause of the other kids.

But then school started up and I was beat up almost non-stop every day.

My family was relocated from CFB Namao to CFB Griesbach and as soon as I start going to the school on CFB Griesbach I start seeing a guy name Terry who was concerned that I was a homosexual and that homosexuality was a mental illness.

He even went so far as to tell me that the military police were watching me and if they reported back to him that I had kissed another boy, I was going to be sent off to the Alberta Hospital.

My own father started blaming me for what P.S. did to my younger brother. And I have absolutely no doubt that as my father was a master corporal and that Terry was a captain that my father was placing undue emphasis on Terry’s words.

As I’ve learnt, my father had a backbone made of jello. Sure, he could beat the shit out of me and my brother. But when the chain of command gave him an order he was as firm as milquetoast.

Then I start going to a special school off base. A place that Terry says that I’m going because I’m attracted to boys and I won’t stop trying to kiss boys. My father echoes Terry with the constant refrain that if I stop trying to kiss and touch other boys that I can go back to normal school.

Pat and Wayne, my civilian social workers are always trying to be my friend. They’re always trying to get me to talk about my father and what things are like at home. They want me to express my feelings. They want me to talk about what’s going on in my head.

I remember every morning at Westfield having to do “Temperature Check” which was basically you telling the class how high or low your emotions were and what was making you happy or sad. Fuck did I ever hate temperature check. I couldn’t express my emotions.

Terry and my father would tell me to be very careful with what I said to these “head shrinkers”. That I need to be careful. That Pat and Wayne will twist my words and make me say things that I didn’t really say. That if I’m not careful I’ll be taken away from my father. And considering that my mother had “run away with a man named Gus” because I didn’t love her enough, the last thing I wanted was to be taken away from my father.

Being caught in a war between the Canadian Armed Forces and Alberta Social Services was not a pleasant experience.

Living in the household of Richard who was drilling into my head that he was sick and fucking tired of me fucking around with his military career was not a pleasant experience.

There was no one to help.

So I learnt to keep my mouth shut. To keep the tears inside. To smile even though my fucking brain was on fire.

What else could I do?

I have attempted to go to counselling over the years, but one thing always seems to pop up. That is the ignorance the general public have towards the Canadian Forces and what life was like on the bases.

Most of the counsellors that I’ve seen over the years have no idea that children lived on the bases. The idea of children living on military bases is a very foreign idea.

When I tell people that what probably affected me more and harmed me more than the sexual abuse was the way in which Terry and my father reacted to the sexual abuse.

“There’s no way that your father would have blamed you”.

Sure there is.

At the time the Canadian Armed Forces had viewed male-on-male sexual assault as homosexuality. And the Canadian Armed Forces viewed homosexuality as a mental illness. That’s just the way things were. Sure, this was a policy towards military personnel, but in military families the serving member didn’t check their military attitudes at the door. Their military attitudes and the attitudes of the Canadian Armed Forces came right into the PMQ.

I know why my father told people what he thought they wanted to hear. It’s much easier that way.

When I was much younger I would often tell people that I was happy when I was on the verge of a complete mental breakdown.

With absolutely no family for support in my late teens, my twenties, my thirties, or my forties, there was absolutely no way that I was going to tell anyone that I was having mental crises. I couldn’t afford to miss time from work, no could I afford to lose my employment. It’s one thing to hide mental illness, it’s another thing to be mentally ill and living on the streets. When you’re mentally ill and living on the streets you’re even more invisible to society than a sexually abused military dependent.

As my foster care records indicate, in the aftermath of the sexual abuse on CFB Namao, I had no ability to make friends. I couldn’t express emotions. I could’t express happiness or sadness. I was terrified of men.

Those issues have affected me into my adult life. I still have no friends. I have co-workers, but that’s it. I have had two partners in my adult life. And both of those, one male and one female, were absolute disasters.

I have absolutely no idea of what I am. Gay? Bi? Straight? Not a fucking clue. I’ve had gay sex. Don’t like it. All I can think of is P.S.. I’ve had straight sex, but all I can visualize is what P.S. was doing to the little girl who was about six years old. Bi? Well, if I don’t like gay sex and I don’t like straight sex, bi isn’t going to be an option.

Asexual? Don’t know. More than likely I’ve just got way too much fucking trauma from Canadian Forces Base Namao in my head to ever be able to have a “normal” relationship. And in our society you need to belong to one team or the other.

I don’t really belong to any team, which is why I don’t have a problem with things like wearing dresses. To me a dress is a comfortable piece of clothing. I don’t associate it with being male clothing or female clothing. It’s just clothing. And I like it. And it doesn’t touch my body.

All these years later and I still don’t like people or things touching my body.

That’s honestly one of those things that make any type of relationship impossible is I don’t like being touched.

That, and I think that sex is disgusting and perverse.

It’s something that only sick people do, or something that you do if you want something from somebody else, or you allow someone else to do to you if you’re trying to make them happy.

And this is the hardest thing to make doctors and counsellors understand. I’m not okay. I’m not a fucking “warrior” or what ever sappy feel good terms are being thrown around these day.

I’m fucking damaged.

I have my father’s depression. I have my mother’s anxiety. I have the memories of what P.S. did to me, to my brother, to the little blonde haired girl, to some of the other kids I watched him molest.

I have Terry permanently burnt into my brain, and he’s not going anywhere.

I have my father constantly telling me that I can’t go swimming at the Kinsmen Sports Centre in Edmonton when I was 11 because there’d be other naked boys in the change room and that I wouldn’t be able to control myself.

I have the beatings at Richard’s hands that would get so extreme that I’d try to hide under my captain’s bed to get away from Richard burnt into my brain.

I have Richard’s sarcasm and putdowns burnt into my head.

I have the memories of opportunities taken away from me because Richard wanted to “teach me a lesson” and get me to “stop showing off”.

I know now that my father was identified by a psychologist hired by the Canadian Armed Forces of not taking any responsibility for his family. But that doesn’t lessen the memories of the beating Richard laid on my when my brother took the Pontiac for a joyride.

Yes, Richard was ill equipped to be a father, his own mother had issues which no doubt were handed down to Richard, but that doesn’t erase the memories of Richard’s anger from my brain. Nor does it lessen the effects of the damage from all those years ago.

There’s so much more.

And I can’t get any help with these issues.

  • Mr. Bees, we can’t move on if you’re stuck in the past.
  • Mr. Bees, children were never in the military
  • Mr. Bees, I’ve never heard of children living on military bases
  • Mr. Bees, why didn’t you tell your father
  • Mr. Bees, if you were a victim, surely the military police would have done something.
  • Mr. Bees, you’re talking about the military. Surely there’s no safer place for a child than being on a military base.

It’s all of these ill conceived notions about the reality of the life of a military dependent that have conspired against me receiving help.

My greatest fear right now is that due to my reluctance to not seek psychiatric counselling in the past that this might harm my attempts to obtain medical assistance in dying.

Outside of me wanting to clear my name in the CFB Namao fiasco I really don’t have a reason to continue living.

I am tormented non-stop by the memories of CFB Namao, CFB Griesbach, Terry, Richard, Earl, and all of the other horseshit that went on in my life before I had even turned sixteen.

These don’t go away. These won’t go away.

Even on the escitalopram I still get brain fog, although the escitalopram does help with the frustration that used to come with the fog. I can feel the anxiety there, below the surface.

It’s not like I’m griping about a dead goldfish from when I was 12, or that I haven’t gotten over a glass of spilt milk when I was 10.

The events on CFB Namao have driven a couple of the other victims to suicide.

And yes, I have tried suicide myself before.

Two things have pulled me back at the last minute.

I hate pain, I really do. Death doesn’t frighten me. Not existing any longer doesn’t scare me or frighten me. Dying scares the fuck out of me. Not being successful scares me even more than the pain of dying. Being a gimped out vegetable after a botched attempt really doesn’t appeal to me.

M.A.i.D. is my ticket out of here. I don’t want to live until I’m 70 with the crap from Namao playing non-stop in my skull. I don’t want Terry in my head anymore. I don’t want P.S. in my head anymore. I don’t want to constantly be caught in the endless loop of wondering if I would have been half the fuck-up that I currently am if I had told someone about what P.S. was doing to me and my brother or the other kids.

I’ve rarely talked about any of my suicide attempts out of fear of losing employment or being locked up. Don’t forget it wasn’t until 1972 that the criminal offence of attempting suicide was removed from the criminal code. The stigmatism against suicide and those who attempt suicide is still very prevalent in society. Those who attempt suicide or commit suicide are seen as losers, or mentally disturbed, or just weak.

What’s kept me going since 2011 is the faint hope that I will be able to clear my name and that CFB Namao would no longer be my fault.

And now, to be so close, but yet so far away is maddening.

Medical Assistance in Dying for psychiatric issues is supposed to be legalized in March of 2023.

One of the accepted mental illnesses is “depression”.

And to be so close only to find out that the fact that I stayed away from counsellors and therapy over the years due to my experience with Terry back in 1980 through 1983 might prevent me from receiving M.A.i.D. just doesn’t seem right or fair.

The fact that I’ve kept my suicide attempts to myself out of fear of losing employment opportunities and that this secrecy may keep me from my goal of M.A.i.D. also doesn’t seem right or fair.

I know that I’m probably reading too much into this.

But M.A.i.D. is what I really want, and I don’t want to be denied this procedure all because of issues that Captain Totzke set into motion years ago.

My Brain.

Yes, as fucked up as it is, it still fascinates me.

I am hoping that after I die that my brain is removed and sent off to one of the many institutions in Canada that study human brains to try and decipher mental illness and addictions.

I’ve suffered from major depression and anxiety for the majority of my life. I endured sexual assaults for over 1-1/2 years. I endured what would be tantamount to “conversion therapy”. I endured more sexual assaults before I turned 16. I grew up in a dysfunctional household.

So my brain should be interesting.

What I have always found to be very interesting is that I am not addicted to anything. Nor am I living on the streets.

Where I work, we have various programs to help addicts. One of the things that becomes apparent to me is that addiction and mental illness go hand in hand.

I’d say that most of the clients of these programs started off with mental illness first, found themselves on the streets, and then ended up with addictions.

It’s stunning how many mentally ill people are just discarded by society like trash.

The problem there I think is that unless you’re talking to the chinaware or unless you believe that everyone is a lizard person from the future out to kidnap you no one believes that you’re mentally ill.

My father would often rail on to no end that “my moods could be whatever I wanted them to be” and that “I was just doing this to get his attention”. And there are a lot of people like my father in the world. People who believe that mental illness is a scam, that people who claim to be mentally ill are liars, that people with depression are just weak wimpy cry babies who want to take the easy way out.

But even if you are one of the “lucky ones” with a “real” mental illness, you too are at an elevated risk of being tossed to the street when those close to you get tired of your “drama” and your “bullshit”.

At an early age I found myself with mental illness, diagnosed but untreated mental illness.

I found myself homeless for a number of months for most of 1992 and then the early part of 1994.

For the first few years of my adult life, I was always one or two pay cheques away from losing it all.

Help from home was out of the question, so I knew even better than to ask.

As the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months at the Catholic Charities men’s hostel numerous of my fellow bunk mates would offer drugs. Wasn’t interested. Didn’t want drugs. Didn’t want booze.

I didn’t consider myself superior to my bunk mates. I just wasn’t tied up in making friends with them.

Maybe my inability to make friends actually saved me from a life of addiction. Nobody becomes addicted on their own. There is always an enabler involved.

I was flagged by social services both in Alberta and Ontario as not having the ability to make friends or to associate with others. Also, I really despised being touched. And that is still the way things are to this day. Don’t touch me.

To tell you the truth, I just find it so hard to trust people. I’m not paranoid. I think that after CFB Namao and CFB Griesbach, I just learnt that there was no one there for me, that I was always going to be on my own.

If you ask my brother, he’ll tell you that I was just a stuck up little asshole who thought himself better than anyone else. But that’s not my brother talking. That’s Richard speaking. Richard had a million and one opinions on my mental health issues, none of them helpful.

But yeah, I assure you that I wasn’t “stuck up”.

So was it the inability to form friendships that allowed me to stay off drugs?

My self worth has always been lower than shit, so it’s not that I considered myself too good for drugs.

So there has to be something else going on in my brain. Something that researchers may find of interest.

I haven’t cried since I was about 30. I’m too emotionally numb on the inside to cry anymore.

I used to cry a lot trying to figure out what the fuck was wrong with my brain and why I couldn’t fit in no matter how hard I tried and why I was always susceptible to days on end of feeling completely unmotivated and unable to think.

Employers were always impressed with my technical skills and my dedication to work, but I just lacked the “people skills” to deal with people therefore I was always going to be the guy behind the scenes who just wasn’t presentable to the public.

At the time I didn’t have access to my Foster Care records from the Alberta Government so I had absolutely no idea that I had already been diagnosed with depression and anxiety so bad that I was supposed to have been institutionalized.

I wouldn’t get my hands on those records until August of 2011. Almost 30 years after the fact. 30 years I was allowed to participate in society as some sort of experiment to see if I would succeed or fail.

And no, there was no going to “head shrinkers” or talking to a doctor about my issues. Not after my experiences with Terry and my father and the various psychologists that I had seen while we lived on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach from October 1980 until April 1983.

The fact that Terry and my father would both get me to say lies and bullshit to my civilian counsellors means that I don’t think that I could ever be honest with these people. My emotions and my inner turmoil were always something that I was taught to be ashamed of and to hide behind a wall of lies.

My father had told me during those years that I was making up all of my problems, that I was only “acting up” to get attention.

With no family support, no professional support, no community supports, here I am at 50 years of age.

My brain is fried and burnt out.

I don’t really have anything much to offer other than my brain for research.

The brain is a fascinating organ.

It is who we are. It is what we are.

It’s where our thoughts, our memories, and our dreams live and die.

The more researchers learn about the brain, the more it becomes apparent that it functions similar to a computer in the sense that it has specialized portions of the brain that do specific tasks.

I view my brain as a biological computer with over 250,000 years of innovation behind it. I view myself as the operating system. Unfortunately my operating system was corrupted by various hacks over the years that led to irreparable hardware damage.

Sure, there are patches that could sorta maybe kinda work, but an operating system that is held together by patches is unstable.

That’s one of the reasons I have no issue facing my death. As long as my brain is rendered unconscious and is denied oxygen I won’t experience my death. It will literally be like turning off the power switch on your computer. A power switch that can never be turned back on.

Still, it is very interesting how the brain processes information.

One thing that I’ve always found interesting is that you don’t actually live in the real world. Yes you and your body are present in the real world, but what your consciousness “sees”, “hears”,”tastes”, “touches”, and “smells” is AFTER the various cortexes have processed the information presented to them. What you are experiencing are the outputs of your cortexes. This is why hallucinations and dreams can appear so lifelike and vivid. The brain can’t tell the difference. To it everything is real.

But this apparently is the best way for the brain to function because if your brain had to process the raw information from your senses by itself without the automated processes of the cortexes your brain would become severely overwhelmed.

For instance how the brain processes visual information. One part of the visual cortex looks for shapes, another part isolates written languages or symbols even if we’ve never seen that language or symbol before, another part looks for faces and the emotions on those faces, another part looks for movements, and yet another part uses our stereo vision to calculate distances between objects. Our brains rely on contrast between light and dark for depth perception, even though we see in colour. We perceive all of these processes happening all at once. But they’re being processed by different parts of the visual cortex.

Car makers know that the visual cortex can be easily manipulated to elicit emotions. This is why car makers now spend so much time putting anthropomorphic features on to car and truck grilles and head lights. By making the car or truck appear happy or angry they can sell vehicles to people based upon their primary emotion.

Our hearing has many different sub processes as well. One part of the auditory cortex is listening for speech. One part has something similar to a comb-filter that is designed to be sensitive to certain frequencies. One part seems to love music. Another part gets triggered by rhythm. A different part of the auditory cortex is used to pinpoint the location of a sound in 3-dimensions even though we only have two ears. I was diagnosed at a young age with an auditory memory problem. And it’s true. I have a very hard time remembering things that are verbally told to me in a specific sequence. However I can easily remember written phrases, concepts, and details. This is one of the reasons I don’t do telephone calls unless I absolutely have to.

Then there’s the interconnection between all of these different processes. Your steady eyesight comes because the inner ear also coordinates your eye movement so that as your head moves your eyes are able to move in a direction to counter the movement of your head. Without this communication you eyesight would be very blurry.

Your ability to turn your head in the direction of a sound comes from the ability of your auditory cortex to direct your head muscles and your eye muscles towards the direction of the sound.

Your visual cortex processes you central vision and your peripheral vision in two different process, but presents this to your brain as one image. You visual cortex fills in the blind spot in each of your eyes with made up data so that you don’t see two black spots in your vision. These black spots are where your optic nerve connects to your retina. You can’t see there. Your peripheral vision sucks at detail, but it is really great at detecting motion. Your peripheral vision can direct your eyeballs and your head into the direction of motion.

Your ability to listen to music on headphones without constantly turning your head in every direction is because your auditory system has realized that what you are hearing is not a threat.

Emotions are another interesting part of the brain. Your brain can control its emotions by releasing or not releasing certain chemicals. And it has been discovered that your brain can damage itself if it releases to many of these chemicals for a prolonged period, or doesn’t release enough chemicals for a prolonged period.

Sadly, when these chemicals go out of whack, the brain often isn’t able to bring itself back to “normal” without external help. The longer the brain is without help, the more substantial the damage will be.

So yes, you can suffer actual physical brain damage due to traumatic events such as emotional trauma, psychological trauma, or physical trauma.

The brain is plastic in the sense that it can try to overcome the damage by using different portions of the brain.

I’ve never seen the actual removal of a human brain from the skull during an autopsy, but there are hundreds of autopsy videos available on the net. And I’ve seen quite a few. All you really need to remember is that the body is dead and feels no pain.

Once the skull is removed and then the dura mater is cut open, the brain is ripe for the picking so to say. Gently tilt the brain outwards from the skull, sever the olfactory nerves, the optic nerves, the facial nerves, the auditory nerves, the neck and throat nerves, and the spinal cord, and out pops your brain. Do Not Try This At Home, especially not on yourself.

It’s a good thing that you’re typically dead when this happens otherwise might be a little on the painful side. Plus might also cause a panic attack.

Now, I don’t know what exactly can be learnt from my brain. Probably nothing substantial. But maybe something incremental. And incremental would be far better than nothing, eh?

I would imagine that having a somewhat fresh brain would be beneficial to the researchers.

I would much rather prefer that my brain go to somewhere where it can be of some use rather than just tossed into an unmarked grave, or a crematorium, or a resomation chamber.

Then at least my suffering will be over and something beneficial will have come of my life.

And I’ll be able to say that “I’m going to medical school!”

I really wish that I could donate my skull to whomever I wanted to.

I have a few people in mind that I would love to give my skull to.

If you’ve ever wondered

For most of my life I’ve been outright lied to.

I wasn’t a victim in 1980.

I was a homosexual monster.

My father wasn’t a drunk asshole with rage issues, I was just too sensitive.

I wasn’t having psychiatric issues due to the abuse and the conversion therapy, I was just acting up to get attention.

Later in life, when I tried to receive justice for what had occurred on Canadian Forces Base Namao I was accused of lying. I was accused of making things up, of blowing things out or proportion. The Minister of National Defence himself accused me of playing games and having angles.

Throughout the CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754 I was told time and time again that P.S. couldn’t have done what I accused him of, I was told time and time again that there was no fire at PMQ #26 on 12th Street. I was told that the base chapel was in a different location. I was told that I couldn’t have been molested in the base chapel by Captain McRae as the chapel didn’t have a rectory.

On May 3rd, 2011 and May 4th 2011 I sent Master Corporal Christian Cyr some emails that detailed the chapel and other places on the base. Not a single one of these fucking emails was included in the investigation. It’s like they magically disappeared. But I know that Cyr received these emails as he used a certain phrase from one of my emails in one of his reports.

When I got my hands on the Certified Tribunal Records from the Military Police Complaints Commission, I was fucking horrified.

I had submitted my foster care records to the CFNIS in August of 2011 to bolster the fact that there was no on at home that my brother or I could have told about the abuse.

Instead the CFNIS focused on a paragraph or two that said that I was emotionally disturbed and causing trouble.

The CFNIS ignored the fact that my foster care records said that it was our grandmother raising my brother and I on base and that grandma was invited to live with us in 1977 and didn’t move out until 1981.

This was important as my father denied ever hiring a babysitter. Of course he’d deny it, it wasn’t him that hired the babysitter, it was his mother.

I just can’t figure out if it was Richard that erased his mother from our house or if the CFNIS suggested that he not mention his mother as that would help ensure that P.S. could not be indicated as our babysitter, thereby casting further doubt on my allegations against P.S.

The CFNIS ignored the part of my foster care records that said that my brother and I viewed grandma as far too authoritarian and strict. They completely skipped the part where I told the psychologist that I was going to kill myself if grandma didn’t leave the house.

The CFNIS ignored the psychological report of the psychologist hired by the Canadian Forces that said that my father accepted no responsibility for his family, blamed others for the problems with his family, expected others to solve the problems with his family, that he denied any knowledge of his kids having problems, blamed his mother for hiding those problems from him.

So, in the end, Richard died in 2017 without ever having to own up to the horrific fucking hell he put me through to cover for his own irresponsibility that led to my brother and I being sexually abused for 1-1/2 years on CFB Namao.

What’s even worse is that the CFNIS had in its possession the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the Court Martial transcripts which indicated that the Military Police in 1980 knew that P.S. was molesting children on the base.

What’s even worse is that the CFNIS had done CPIC checks on P.S. and found that he was charged and convicted in 1x in 1982, 1x in 1984, 2x in 1985 for the sexual abuse of children.

“Mr. Bees, we just couldn’t find anything that would indicate that P.S. was capable of what you accused him of”

Why did the CFNIS spin the investigation the way they did?

Why did the Canadian Forces, the Provost Marshal, and the CFNIS go out of their way to protect a multi-time convicted child molested?

Liability.

Someone up the Chain of Command made the decision that I was never to be linked to Captain Father Angus McRae via P.S.

If P.S. abused my brother and I as a result of the abuse, the grooming, or the instructions that P.S. received from Captain Father Angus McRae, there would be the possibility of compensation.

After all, Captain McRae was a member of the regular force, he was living on a secure defence establishment in housing provided to him by the Canadian Armed Forces, as he was a regular force member he was subject to the Code of Service discipline 24/7, and I lived on the same defence establishment that the Canadian Forces were supposed to provide security for.

If my matter had made it to court and through discovery it was learnt that Captain McRae had molested many other children on CFB Namao, CFS Holberg, CFB Portage La Prairie, and CFB Kingston, where would the liability end?

If my matter had made ripples in the media, how many other kids that had been abused on the bases across Canada would start coming forward.

BOBBIE YOU’RE FULL OF SHIT!
THE CFNIS CANNOT BE COMPROMISED!
THE CFNIS INVESTIGATORS ARE OUTSIDE OF CHAIN OF COMMAND INFLUENCE!

Yeah?

You sure about that?

Well, as it turns out a Commanding Officer outside of the CFNIS ordered the CFNIS to destroy evidence and the fucking CFNIS complied. It has to. It has no fucking choice. Section 83 of the National Defence Act says that every person subject to the Code of Service Discipline WILL obey the LAWFUL command of a superior officer. There are no fucking exceptions for the investigators within the CFNIS.

Section 18.5 says that the Vice Chief of Defence Staff can direct the Provost Marshal and the CFNIS.

Let’s quit fucking pretending that the CFNIS are real police.

They’re not.

They’re soldiers first and police officer second.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/commanding-officers-shouldnt-be-allowed-to-order-destruction-of-evidence-after-trials-military-sex-assault-survivor-says

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/commanding-officers-shouldnt-be-allowed-to-order-destruction-of-evidence-after-trials-military-sex-assault-survivor-says

Jesus Fucking H. Christ.

You do not destroy evidence.

Especially not on the order of some fucking jerk-off commanding officer.

The Canadian Fucking Forces just keep getting worse and worse as the days go by as more shit floats to the top of the swamp.

But Bobbie, doesn’t this make you happy?

Why the fuck would it make me happy?

I counted on these fucking assholes to keep me safe as a child when I lived on their fucking defence establishments.

I counted on these fucking assholes to ensure that justice was carried out and that every attempt was made to make me whole again after the fucking abuse. Instead I got 2-1/2 years of psychological abuse at the hands of military social worker Captain Totzke.

When it became apparent that my father was incapable of looking after me due to his issues, I counted on the Canadian Forces to assist Alberta Social Services with my care, not help my fucking father skip to a different province.

In 2011, when the CFNIS took my matter away from the civilian police, I was counting on the CFNIS to help me escape from a lifetime of being blamed for allowing the babysitter to have molested my younger brother. Instead the fucking worthless CFNIS acted to protect the DND and the CF from civil actions and potential public humiliation had the truth about CFB Namao been made public.

I was told by the Military Police Complaints Commission that there was no way possible for the Canadian Forces to interfere with a CFNIS investigation, that the CFNIS were free from Chain of Command influence.

Well, as it turns out, this is all bullshit and fucking lies.

Bullshit and fucking lies is all the Canadian Armed Forces seem to be good at.

Telling the fucking truth seems to be far beyond the abilities of the Canadian Armed Forces.

So, if you’re still trying to grasp why I want to die via M.A.i.D. after M.A.i.D. for psychiatric issues becomes law in 2023, this is why.

My whole fucking life has been one horrific fucking joke. Everything I knew as a kid was absolute fucking lies. My sexuality was destroyed by Captain Totzke. My mental health and well-being was destroyed by my own father and the Canadia Armed Forces. All for the sake of keeping a fucking secret.

Even if the Minister of National Defence, Anita Anand ekes out a meagre apology, what the fuck is that going to do. It’s not going to bring my father back so that he can apologize and eat humble fucking pie for what he did. It’s not going to undo the abuse at the hands of P.S. or Captain McRae. It’s not going to undo the psychological abuse I suffered under Captain Totzke.

Knowing what I’ve learnt about the Canadian Armed Forces and their knack for bald-faced lying and duplicity makes anything the Canadian Forces, the Department of National Defence, or the Minister of National Defence absolutely worthless.

Why would any person in their right mind want to willingly live in complete torment knowing what I know and seeing what I’ve seen.

This is the reason why M.A.i.D. has such a powerful allure for me.

I’ve already been through enough in life.

Suicide will never be an answer for me. Why should I have to suffer more in the end? Why should I have to risk surviving a botched attempt?

No amount of counselling, talking, arts therapy, magical healing crystals, or chakras will undo what was done.

My bed has been made. Now I have to lay in it. Sucks that the housekeeper making my bed was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces.

The peaceful exit of M.A.i.D. is what I look forward to.

No pain. No suffering. No more depression. No more anxiety. No more torment. No more lies.

Just nothing.

And believe me, I’m okay with that.

It’s far better than what I live with now.

What comes after this?

That’s the big question, isn’t it?

What comes after this life. For as long as humans have been able to question what the future holds humans have obviously wondered what happens after death.

No one has survived death.

Yes, there are those who have “come back” from “death” but upon closer examination they were declared dead before they actually were. As no human has ever survived death, living humans have no idea of what happens after death and decomposition.

I honestly don’t believe that anything happens. Other than irreversible decomposition.

Who you are goes away when your brain dies.

There’s no magical kingdom in the sky where everyone goes and hangs out with their best buddies from high school.

There’s no burning pit of fire for those who go against the wishes of the magical sky daddy.

The human brain is very inquisitive. It has an innate need for knowledge.

And when the human brain can’t come up with answer that satisfies its thirst for knowledge, it has a tendency to make up answers that quenched this thirst. God. Heaven. Angels. Hell.

Humans created god.

Humans created heaven.

Humans created angels.

Humans created hell.

Humans created the afterlife because the human brain can not comprehend its non-existence after its death.

At least that’s my take on it.

And it only makes sense really.

The human brain spends almost the entirety of its existence learning, and observing, and calculating, and dreaming, and plotting, and scheming.

It can create beautiful wonders out of nothing, it can take basic minerals and make electronic devices that border on absolute magic. The human brain has launched probes into space that are still communicating with the Earth as they pass through the heliosphere.

The human brain can create music, and numbers, and mathematical formulas, and spoken language, and written language, and poetry, and literature.

So for the brain to be able to do all of this, and then at the end simply die and turn into a congealed blob of fat cells and dead neurones indistinguishable from the dead nerves in the body’s feet is quite insulting and unimaginable for the brain.

Hence why we have an afterlife. Our brain needs the afterlife. Even though the afterlife doesn’t exist, our brain still needs it to exist. Lulling itself into a false sense of security with the fairytale of an afterlife allows the brain to function on a daily basis without going insane at the prospect of realizing that it’s all for naught.

How well did I know Richard?

I honestly didn’t know Richard all that well.

And that’s probably for the better. Peering too deep into the black pit of his soul would probably drive anyone insane.

I don’t remember Richard very much from CFB Shearwater. I vaguely remember a motorcycle ride.

I remember some sort of string controlled model airplane that he had.

I remember him walking to work once in the fog.

But that’s it.

I remember him on CFB Summerside, but again, not that much.

I know that Marie drove him to the airfield at the base a couple of times when he had to go away on training exercises.

I remember my grandmother, and Kimberly Wood, and even my mother before she left, but I don’t ever remember Richard except for when he picked me up from the hospital after my bicycle incident in July of 1978.

I remember he almost set the PMQ on fire once when he left the kettle on the stove and he fell asleep. The kettle melted and the handle started burning.

I remember him wanting to build me a wooden go-cart but that came to an end the night he came home drunk and went to the basement.

CFB Namao, he was rarely around. Just like on Summerside, it was his mother raising us, not him. He would occasionally stop in and take my brother and I down to Wetaskiwin to visit his girlfriend Vicki. When Richard started seeing Sue around the summer of 1979 he would occasionally pick my brother and I up and we’d go over and stay at Sue’s place for the weekend.

But again, I didn’t see much of Richard until he moved back in to the house in August / September of 1980. He brought Sue to live with him as well at this point.

I remember thinking after Richard had moved back in with us that my real father had died in a military exercise and that the Canadian Forces had replaced my real father with an imposter hoping that I wouldn’t notice.

He was so very different from what I had remembered before. Also, he was around a lot more now than he had ever been before.

In October of 1980 we were moved 10km down the road from CFB Namao to CFB Griesbach at taxpayer expense .

By the summer of 1981 Grandma had moved off base and moved into her own apartment on 107th Ave and 111th street.

Richard still was going away on training exercises and dumping my brother and I on Sue’s lap.

Things under Richard’s domain were not all that pleasant.

Richard was the ultimate control freak. And as my brother was 7 and I was 10, nothing was ever going to be as perfect as he wanted it.

It got to the point that Richard put my brother and I in the base daycare centre before we’d go to school. Richard would wake us up in the morning, we’d get dressed, have breakfast, and then we’d have to go sit in the day care centre until it was time to go to school.

If you ever want to get tormented and teased and get the shit beaten out of you, try being a 10 year old military dependent living on a military base and going to a day care centre for toddlers on a military base.

After school was just as bad. We weren’t allowed to have keys for the house. So after school we’d have to stand on the front porch of the PMQ and wait. School would get out at 15:00. Richard would get off work at around 16:30. Winter time in Edmonton could get really fucking cold. And no, we could’t go over to other people’s PMQs and wait there. We had to be standing on the porch when he got home.

One winter day my brother decided that he had enough of freezing, so he went and kicked one of the basement windows in and then climbed down into the PMQ. Richard went through the fucking roof. I can’t remember what he did to my brother, but it was my fault for not keeping an eye on my brother and letting my brother do something that he could have hurt himself doing.

“The boys did not seem to show fear”
Yeah, that’s always a good thing.
Yep. Mr. Gill sure didn’t have any problem disciplining me or my brother.
And yes, when Richard made a decision YOU DID NOT question it.

Yeah, it was funny but in a sad funny way how Richard was. Other kids on base could “whine” or “cry” and usually get “their way” with their parents. But when it came to Richard. His decisions were final. And any questioning his decisions were taken as a direct challenge to his authority. And you did not challenge his authority. Period.

Not overly warm.

Yeah, that was Richard. “Not overly warm”.

When I tried to track down my Uncle Doug in 2011 I made contact with his widow Yvonne. She said almost exactly thing this social service worker had to say. Richard could appear to be friendly. And he would help out. But you had to stay out of his way while he was helping or he would explode in anger.

Bob Becker said the same thing. Ed Blaha said the same thing.
Almost anyone who met my father would say the same thing.

He was “pleasant”, he “seemed nice”, but he seemed to be troubled by something.

In 2011 he told the CFNIS that I was nothing but trouble in school. But in 1982 he told Alberta Social Services that he wasn’t aware of my brother or I having any trouble in school as the school never tells him anything.

More than likely it was he didn’t want to hear what the schools had to say.

Richard kept my brother and I not out of love but out of a desire to “control the costs”. His friends were always asking him why if having kids was so upsetting to him why he didn’t ship us off to live with our mother. His answer was always that as long as we lived under his roof, he could control the costs, but if we went to live with our mother he’d have to sign his paycheque over to her, and that was not going to happen.

You’ll also notice that it’s not my imagination. It’s right there in black and white. Richard had abdicated his parenting role for my brother and dropped my brother in my lap.

This is how Richard was. Richard wasn’t going to wear my brother. Any issues that my brother had obviously weren’t due to Richard’s complete lack of parenting skills. No, it was painfully obvious that any issues that my brother had were due to me not looking after or raising my brother properly.

Swimming, bowling, hockey, cubs, beavers

When I examined Richard for Federal Court in 2013 he said the reason that my brother and I were never involved in activities after we moved from CFB Griesbach was because I showed no interest.

Again, here I am showing absolutely no interest and it’s obvious that I not getting anything.

Here he is telling social services that we were involved with “swimming, bowling, hockey, cubs, beavers” but that we aren’t involved with these any longer as he “doesn’t feel the boys get enough from them”.

What a fucking load of shit.

When I lived on CFB Namao, Grandma had me in bowling, beavers, swimming, basketball, and hockey. The fees for military dependents on base were minimal, but the parents still had to buy the equipment. My grandmother would use her CPP cheques to pay the fees and buy some of the equipment. She would force Richard to pay for the rest.

Grandma is the one who took me swimming. She’d take me to bowling. She’d take me to basket ball. She’d take me to hockey. She would always coax one of the other fathers to tie up my skates for me as her hands were too arthritic.

The reason why we didn’t do these sports on CFB Griesbach was twofold.

First, the arena, the pool, and the bowling centre were up on CFB Namao. Richard was not going to waste his time driving up to the other base and then waiting around.

And as Richard had told me in the fall of 1982 when Westfield was going on a swimming trip to the Kinsmen Sports Centre for a swimming trip and he refused to sign the permission slip “There will be other naked boys around and you won’t be able to control yourself”.

That’s why there were no more sports activities like swimming, or bowling, or hockey……. Richard didn’t want me becoming aroused around other naked boys like I had done with P.S. on CFB Namao.

Which make it even more painful every time I look at his 2011 statement that he gave to the CFNIS when he professed he knew nothing about the babysitter P.S. from CFB Namao.

Richard made my life a living fucking hell because of what P.S. had done to me and my brother on CFB Namao. Or more specifically, what I had enjoyed doing with the babysitter and what I had allowed the babysitter to do to my younger brother.

Yeah. As a kid I had no fucking idea of what was going on. If I did something wrong I’d get a spanking, or sent to my room without supper, or grounded. And if my brother did something wrong I’d get a spanking, or sent to my room without supper, or grounded. There was absolutely no fucking winning no matter what.

P.S. was twice my age. There was nothing I could do to stop P.S.. But that’s not the way that Richard saw things.

As I said in a previous post. I was Richard’s scapegoat. Anything that went wrong with my brother or with me was obviously my fault. And he needed a scapegoat as he sure as he couldn’t take responsibility.

All I need are horns and a red ribbon in my hair.

When it was his responsibility to look after us, school wasn’t telling him anything, his mother wasn’t telling him anything, social services wasn’t telling him anything, the psychiatrists and psychologists weren’t telling him anything.

When my brother got into to trouble. It wasn’t Richard’s responsibility. Richard couldn’t take responsibility. So the responsibility had to become someone else’s responsibility.

I fully understand this now. Fuck, I fully understood this when I got my social service / foster care paperwork in 2011.

But understanding this does nothing to erase the memories of the beltings, the backhands, the open handed slaps, the shoves to the ground, the hours and hours of frustrated crying not understanding what the fuck it was that I was doing wrong.

From Home Visit in November of 1981

Yeah, this would be an understatement. My brother and I didn’t like each other much. And I don’t think Richard really cared.

I was suffering from major depression and severe anxiety and receiving no treatment for either. I was still dealing with the fallout from CFB Namao. And here I am at age 10 being held responsible to raise a 6 year old who was having his own issues due to CFB Namao and the dysfunctional household that we were living in.

The rivalry between us had become so extreme that the North York Board of Education had to separate us and send us to other school.

In the school year of 1983-1984 my brother and I went to Sheppard Public.
We had to be separated. I stayed at Sheppard, my brother went to Downsview Public.
This report was written in September of 1984 when I started Gr. 7 at Elia Jr. High.

And Richard gave not the single slightest fuck whatsoever.

Richard was controlling the costs.

Richard wasn’t signing his paycheque over to “that bitch”.

That’s all that mattered to Richard.

“I like responsibility”

It’s not so much that I liked responsibility. I just liked being away from Richard. I liked not being anywhere near Sue. I liked not having to be in their house. I liked the fact that the owner of the pet shop appreciated the work I was doing. I liked the fact that the owner of the store never once yelled at me or hit me. I liked having little animals to play with. I liked being able to buy a hot dog at the Julius stand in the mall or go over and get a cheese burger and fries at the McDonalds in the parking lot. I liked being able to play arcade games at the Wizard’s Castle in the mall.

It’s not that I liked responsibility. It’s that I found somethings that were sorely missing from my life at home. Respect. Trust. Admiration.

I guess that’s one thing that always irked Richard, ’cause he sure mentions it a lot in the social service records. I “admire” my mother. Fuck, this must have made him absolutely sick. After everything that he was doing for me that I still had the audacity to “admire” or “adore” my mother, the women who in his words was a “miserable bitch” that “ran away” and “abandoned” him and left him with her kids to raise.

When Sue first moved in with us she did a few good things. We stopped going to church with Grandma on Sundays. Sue said that if we didn’t want to go to church we didn’t have to. The Dutch have never been very religious. The Netherlands has always been a highly irreligious country.

Sue also put her foot down with Grandma’s drinking and Richard’s drinking. I know that Grandma’s drinking caused a lot of tension between her and Sue.

Sue also said at the start that she was going to get Richard to stop hitting us. In the end Richard’s ability to play the victim and to blame the actual victims got Sue hitting my brother and I. To be very clear, she was never anywhere near as violent as Richard could be.

She was more of the flyswatter type. And she was also good with pinching.

I think the only reason that Sue started hitting my brother and I was out of frustration and inexperience. At the time she would have been in her very early twenties. I had always joked that she was the older sister that I had never asked for.

Her and I were so close in age that one day Sue had me on the ground on my back in the front yard and she was slapping me. The female military police officer that lived in PMQ #69 came over and grabbed Sue and pulled her off of me. The female MP told Sue that if she ever caught her fighting with her little brother that she was going to tell our father. Yeah, the MP thought that Sue was my older sister.

On more than one time Sue referred to me as a “retard”.

And due to my untreated major depression I was prone to fits of crying. On more than one occasion she would tell me that if I didn’t stop crying like a little girl that she was going to take me to Sears and buy me a dress.

I don’t hold any grudges against her.

She was a kid herself back in the early ’80s.

She had fallen in love with a man that had some very major psychological issues.

The man she fell in love with had children that he refused to accept responsibility for.

Both of the kids that she was expected to look after had “secrets” that Richard and the Canadian Armed Forces were doing everything they could to keep hidden. I often wonder what she would have done if she had known that my brother and I had been sexually abused by our babysitter P.S. and at least in my case Captain Father Angus McRae for 1-1/2 years.

The only person that I blame for back then is Richard.

He could have looked after these issues had he been 1/4 of the man he pretended to be.

But to be honest, it wasn’t just Richard that was to blame.

The Canadian Armed Forces also share a lot of the blame.

Men like my father were a dime-a-dozen in the Canadian Forces. Men who couldn’t fit into society anywhere else. They fit into the military. As long as guys like my father were willing to put their lives on the line for the country, the Canadian Forces was more than willing to turn a blind eye to what went on in the PMQ patches. A guy like my father could never have survived out on civvy street. He needed to be amongst other guys like him. Other guys who maybe drank too much, or hit their wives a little too often, or who maybe disciplined their kids a little too frequently.

My father wasn’t the only alky with rage issues and some form of untreated military related psychological trauma.

There were others.

There were many others.

In the end, there is no fixing or undoing the damage that Richard created.

Yet another New Year

Well, just completed another 365 day orbit around the sun.

So far I’ve been on this planet 18,358 days

Or 50 years, 3 months, 4 days. 

Or 603 months, 4 days.

Or 1,586,131,200 seconds 

Or 26,435,520 minutes 

Or 440,592 hours 

Or 18,358 days 

Or 2622 weeks and 4 days

It has been an interesting existence. Definitely hasn’t been short on the surprises.

From start to finish we move in one direction, and that’s from birth to grave.

On that journey we encounter different branches along the tangent.

Where those branches go is anyone’s guess.

I don’t know what the next year will have to offer me.

I’ll find out what the recommendations are from the committee reviewing the further amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada to legalize medical assistance in dying for psychiatric issues. Their recommendations are supposed to be ready for Parliament in March 2022. If the government survives and approves the recommendations then they should be passed into law by March 2023. To be honest, it will probably take a year or two to navigate the system to get my prescription.

In the coming year I don’t really expect much in the way of interest from the media. And that’s fine. Just have to face the fact that the DND and the CF have much larger PR budgets than I do and that the DND and the CF can tell the media what the truth will be.

I do expect much more calmness in the coming year. 40 years of untreated major depression and severe anxiety have taken their toll. But the escitalopram has somewhat tamed the depression and the anxiety. And the fact that I now have a road map for my future means that I no longer have to worry about any uncertainty. And it was this uncertainty I think that was driving so much of my anxiety.

I honestly don’t mind anyone knowing that I’m on medications. It is what it is. Absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. It’s like the fact that after a lifetime of “eagle eyes” I now find myself requiring strong glasses to read anything small than 30 point text.

It doesn’t look as if COVID is going to let up any time soon. But after having been alone for my entire life, being isolated has been easy to deal with. They often say that “base brats” have a certain resiliency to adverse conditions due to the conditions and environment that we grew up in. And it’s not like I’ve been locked in my room. I still go for bike rides and go for long walks. But by myself.

My civil action against the former commissionaire is proceeding. There will be a preliminary hearing for discovery coming up in March. This is a good sign.

My civil action against the Canadian Forces is proceeding slow and steady. We’ll see if I’ll hang around for the end of this.

My doctor is still urging me to go see a head shrinker. But as I’ve told him, due to the environment I grew up in, and my previous experiences with military and civilian head shrinkers I honestly don’t think that anything productive will come of any counselling.

It’s been an interesting couple of years being the Chief Engineer at work.

I have absolutely no plans of going to the new hospital.

I’ve had in depth consultations with the designers, the architects, and the Professional Engineers designing the power plant of the new hospital, so in a way my contributions will be around long after I’m gone.

The dedicated fibre optic network for the HVAC and Building Automation was put in at my insistence. This network will be completely separate from the hospital IT network and as such it will be easier for the hospital to allow contractors on to the network from the outside as the network won’t have patient records, personal information, or medical diagnostic equipment on it.

I pushed for a dedicated freight elevator from the plant workshops and offices on the P2 level, up to the energy centre on the 4 & 5 floors, and then up to the roof. I pushed for this so that moving chemicals and large motors and pumps and anything else wouldn’t hinder the patient and staff elevators.

The new hospital will be ready in about 6 or 7 years.

The current hospital is probably about 7 to 10 years away from shutting down.

7 to 10 years is far too long for me.

But at least I know that I’ll have secure employment right up to the end.

Snow

It snowed and now Vancouver is shut down.

Well, it snowed yesterday. Apparently this is only the 4th time in the last 100 years that Vancouver has had a “white xmas”.

Davie and Burrard
Jervis and Pacific
This morning at Pacific and Jervis
The “Barge on the Beach” is still here.

All I can say is that I am so happy that I haven’t driven in Vancouver since back in the ’90s. It’s bad enough that due to a general lack of traffic enforcement car driving skills have gone down the drain, but now you have everyone driving around on snow with summer tires.

Walking around in Vancouver in the snow is interesting.

While it looks nice, we never get too cold. Vancouver, except for the rare cold snap, seems to hover around 0C. Daytime the temps will go up to about +5C, but come night time the temps will drop to about -5C

So that means that while the snow might stick around for a few days, more often than not it starts turning into a slushy mess that freezes overnight when the temperatures dip.

There was one year, around 2015 I think, where the snow turned to slush in the daytime and then froze into ice when the temps dropped to about -10C. Everyone in the Westend who live at the bottoms of the steep hills was having to take the long way around to walk up the less steep hills. Jervis, Bute, and Thurlow were almost impossible to walk up. Everyone was heading over to Burrard and even Hornby to walk up to Davie.

Another Vancouver phenomenon is that using an umbrella is required during the snow. Here in Vancouver it never really gets cold enough for the outer layer of jackets to really get cold. So what ends up happening is you get soaked just as if it was raining because the snow melts as soon as it touches your jacket. In Edmonton, or Toronto, or even the Maritimes, when it snows it’s usually cold enough outside that the snow stays frozen when it hits your jacket. So yes, while it may seem odd to someone from Alberta that Vancouverites use umbrellas when it snows, we do it because our snow is literally just sub freezing rain.

I’m thinking that I might actually try to get up Grouse Mountain in the next year or two now that my anti-anxiety meds seem to be working. Last time I was up was in the early 2000s. I thought I was going to die of a heart attack in the gondola. Things might be more relaxed this time around.

It would be kinda a bucket list thing.

Yeah, last time I was up there I was in a hurry to “see” things and get back down. I guess that was still the effect of Richard in my head. Doing the “touristy” thing was never something Richard was good at. He’d take us places as kids, and we’d have to race through it as quick as possible because time was too important and he had too many important things to do.

Anyways, time to head off and pick up my prescription refill.

The Canadian Forces, Suicide, and Military Dependents.

I honestly don’t believe that at any point in time the mental health wellbeing of military dependents has ever been a concern of the Canadian Armed Forces or the Department of National Defence.

Sure, the DND, the CF, and the Minister of National Defence will bloviate about the Military Family Resource Centre and other meaningless programs that the DND and the CF have instituted over the years.

But if they really cared, why does the CF and the DND draw such a hard line in the sand as to which dependents they will support, and which dependents can piss off and go get bent?

In my day as a military dependent the maximum age for a dependent to live in a PMQ on base was 18. The only way you could remain living in the PMQ after your 19th birthday was if you were mentally disabled or if you were attending an institution of higher learning. But even if you were attending an institution of higher learning 24 was the maximum age that you could live in a PMQ on base.

In my day dependents were officially referred to as “D.F.& E.” which means “Dependents, Furniture, and Effects”. The Office of the Ombudsman for the Canadian Forces, which only existed as of 1999, was so taken back by this callousness that they kept asking DND to stop dehumanizing the military dependents and to stop referring to them as D.F.& E. which implied that military dependents were of no more worth than the service member’s furniture.

As a kid, there were times when kids would just stop coming to school. Or kids would just one day leave the base. Never to be seen again. And this wasn’t due to postings. If it was a posting nine times out of ten the posting would occur between late June and early September. These absences were often due to their serving parent dying. Training exercise, workplace incident, health issue, it didn’t matter. PMQs could only be rented to active service members. Deceased persons cannot serve in the military. So off the base the family went.

It was rare that a base commander would intervene and make an exception, because once you’ve made one exception how can you not make another? And allowing the deceased member’s family to remain on base in a PMQ could prove to be an issue for DND and the CF. DND and the CF had fought numerous court battles over the PMQs with regard to civilian family courts granting the non-serving spouse possession of the PMQ in which to raise their children. DND would obviously have an issue on their hands if non-serving spouses were suddenly taking possession of PMQs in the PMQ patches. And schools on base prior to 1994 were run by DND and the CF. These schools were exclusively for the children of active service members. How long was the DND and the CF supposed to support the education of a deceased member’s children?

So, back in my day once a service member died, that was it, the DND and the CF washed their hands of the service member’s dependents.

There was no support.

There was no aftercare.

There was nothing.

We weren’t eligible for social programs from the provinces related to a serving parent’s death as the provinces considered that the be the responsibility of the DND and the CF.

Living on base wasn’t as easy as it’s often portrayed.

The children of dysfunctional families were often tormented and ostracized by their peers. When you live in a regimented community like a military PMQ patch you either conform or you will have trouble.

Dysfunctional parents, like my father, could easily use the Canadian Forces to stay one step ahead of civilian social services. Sure civilian parents could move to a different town, but at great expense. In the Canadian Forces your dysfunctional parent’s moving and travel expenses were covered.

Back in my day the military social workers were more concerned with containing problems. But again, that’s the way the military functioned back then and still functions to this day.

The rank of your serving parent had its privilege, especially if your serving parent was an officer or above. Anybody who says that this wasn’t the case is absolutely full of shit.

There was no way that the base military police were going to go after the son of a Lt. Col. for beating the crap out of the son of a Corporal. No Warrant Officer MP is going to risk getting transferred to CFS Alert over two kids having a donnybrook out behind the rec centre. And yes, this still holds true to today. The provost marshal himself even said that he would never investigate a senior officer of the military.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2021/12/03/publicly-the-head-of-canadas-military-police-said-hed-investigate-any-officer-privately-he-said-that-didnt-include-his-boss.html

Sure, Simon Trudeau was talking about investigating his commanding officer. However, if his commanding officer is good buddies with a lower ranking officer, and the Trudeau’s commander doesn’t want the PM to investigate the other lower ranking officer who is the Trudeau to argue with a lawful command from his superior?

Don’t forget, the Canadian Forces didn’t have a Provost Marshal from about 1968 until the office of the Provost Marshal was stood up again in 1998. Prior to that, the base military police and even the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit were under the influence of the local chain of command. Yes, when the CFNIS was created in 1998 along with the Provost Marshal being stood back up, the idea was that the CFNIS and the base military police would operate without chain of command influence. That’s all fine and dandy, but someone forget to rewrite the National Defence Act and the Queen’s Regulations and Orders to exempt members of the CFNIS and the base military police from section 83 of the National Defence Act.

The Provost Marshal was stood up in 1998 as a result of the findings of the Somalia Inquiry. The Inquiry found that the base military police and the CFSIU were ripe for interference from the local chain of command and that superior officers would often put their own parochial interests above any semblance of justice. So it was suggested that the command of the base military police and the new CFNIS be transferred to the command of the freshly stood up Provost Marshal who would be of significant enough rank that they would be immune from chain of command influence. That hasn’t worked out.

How many wife beatings or child beatings were the base MPs and the CFSIU told to ignore and look away from?

And as I said, things were far worse back in my day as a military dependent.

As retired Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham told the CFNIS in 2016 when he was interviewed, the Assistant Judge Advocate General threw Cunningham and the CFSIU “to the dogs” in 1980 during the Captain Father Angus McRae Investigation and subsequent court martial.

When I spoke with retired Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham on November 27th, 2011 he said that it was the “brass” that made the decision to limit the number of charges brought against Captain McRae and that the military police had “many, many more” charges ready to go against McRae but that the “brass” wasn’t going for it, and that the military police tried to move the Captain McRae matter into the civilian system, but again the brass wasn’t going for it.

Most of Captain McRae’s victims were under 14 years of age. In 1980 the age of consent at which a child could agree to have sex with an adult was 14. P.S. was the only boy over the age of 14. If the Canadian Forces had insisted on prosecuting Captain McRae for abusing the children under the age of consent, this whole matter would have had to have been moved into the civilian courts. For obvious reasons the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces were not going to ever agree to this as in the civilian courts the DND and the CF would be hard pressed to “throw a veil of secrecy” over the trial and the evidence. A trial and evidence that would have shown that Captain McRae sexually abused over 25 children on Canadian Forces Base Namao and an untold number of children on Canadian Forces Station Holberg, Canadian Forces Base Portage La Prairie, and Canadian Forces Base Kingston.

So the fact that the “brass” and the “AJAG” were able to insert themselves into a criminal matter again shows that rank in the Canadian Armed Forces carries a significant amount of weight.

And according to retired Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham it was also the Assistant Judge Advocate General that made the decision to not call in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to deal with P.S. under the false assumption that P.S. was only 12 years old in 1980. P.S. was born on June 20th, 1965. P.S. turned 15 on June 20th, 1980. And as the court martial transcripts and the CFSIU paperwork indicate, it was the abuse of young children on base that brought P.S. to the attention of the base military police and it was that attention that brought Captin McRae to the attention of the CFSIU.

Again, the base military police and the CFSIU were not independent. They followed the whims and desires of the chain of command.

That’s why spousal abuse was grossly under reported on the bases.

That’s why child sexual abuse was grossly under reported on the bases.

That’s why child physical and mental abuse was grossly under reported on the bases.

Far too much chain of command influence and far too many parochial decisions.

Most of the children from CFB Namao never received any form of meaningful help. Some went on to have troubled lives. Some have attempted suicide. Some have committed suicide. And that’s only on CFB Namao. What about the other bases that McRae was at?

In 2010 retired Brigadier General Roger Bazin was investigated by the CFSIU for having sexually abused a young boy on Canadian Forces Base Borden in 1974. How many other kids, now adults, are out there that may have been abused on Canadian Forces Base Borden who have never come forward due to not knowing their abuser’s name? How many other former military dependents have never come forward because they were posted around so many times that they can’t remember on which base the abuse occurred on?

Our attempts at suicide and our suicides will never be recorded as being military related. Our deaths and our psychological trauma will always be written off as having been due to something unrelated to our time living on base as children.

When I die it won’t be recorded as being the end result of untreated childhood sexual trauma.

My death will simply be recorded as someone who sought Medical Assistance in Dying due to psychological issues caused by childhood trauma.

And that’s it.

There will be no mention of Captain Father Angus McRae;

There will be no mention of Captain Terry Totzke;

There will be no mention of Colonel Dan Munro

There will be no mention of AJAG J.D. Boan.

The media won’t really show any interest, because what’s interesting about one person seeking M.A.i.D. to get away from their demons?

Between 1950 and today, how many military dependents have attempted suicide, committed suicide, or have wound up with profound psychological issues due to the childhood spent living on military bases?

No one knows.

And the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces would love for it to stay this way.

https://www.thestar.com/amp/news/canada/2021/12/09/suicide-risk-is-higher-not-only-for-military-but-also-their-families-new-research-shows.html
https://twitter.com/HeidiCramm/status/1469308730797920261?s=20
https://veteransmentalhealth.ca/about-us/events/families-matter/

In the past there have been murmurs and burbles of organizations noticing that children of service members or adult who once were children living on base are committing suicide.

However, sadly this latest research falls well short of other research projects in the past.

The common flaw being that these researchers overlook events that occurred on base and how these events impacted the children living on the bases. This current research looks at how events that impacted service members might lead to family members of the service member committing suicide. For example, if a serving member of the Canadian Forces commits suicide and then their parent commits suicide.

However, what this research seems to completely overlook and omit are suicides or attempted suicides that came about due to events that occurred on the base that the military dependent endured first hand and received little or no support after the event or received inappropriate support.

Like it or not, children were sexually abused on base, children were physically abused on base, children were neglected on base, children were ostracized on base, children couldn’t cope with postings, children couldn’t cope with constantly losing friends, children had to deal with serving parents that had issues made worse by military service such as excessive drinking, anger outbursts, and untreated PTSD.

Persons who lived on base between the 1950s and the 2000’s grew up in a very homophobic, LGBTQ phobic, misogynistic, environment in which psychological issues were to be hidden away and not discussed.

Is it any wonder that no one in the DND, the CF, or even the media really wants to tackle this subject.

Kids who committed suicide already will forever be silent, so the DND and the CF don’t have to worry about them ever talking.

Kids who were 8 years old on base in 1950 are now in their late 70s. They won’t be around for much longer.

Kids who were 8 years old on the bases in 1970 are now pushing 58. Even if the CF and the DND were serious about tackling issues that may have effected these persons, by the time DND and the CF have finished the requisite number of committee meetings these people will easily be in their late 60s and early 70s.

So far as the Government of Canada, the DND, and the CF are concerned, military dependents were never the responsibility of the DND or the CF. As such, they’re more than willing to play the waiting game until we’re all gone.

I’ll be gone in about 2 years. And that’ll be one less issue for the DND and the CF to worry about.

Richard the gaslighter.

I saw this yesterday. And it really sums up Richard to a “T”.

Richard was a master manipulator.

Richard loved playing people against others.

Richard could “rage out” and beat the fuck out of you or spank you hard enough with his leather belt to leave bruises and scratches, but yet he never once remembered spanking me with the belt. He backhanded me one day and chipped my tooth and drew blood. The next day he claimed that he didn’t remember anything and that even if he did hit me that he wouldn’t have hit me in the mouth and that if I didn’t want to get hit that I shouldn’t talk back to him.

When I was about 10 years old, I fell off the roof of Tim’s camper that he had loaned to Richard for Richard and Sue’s 1982 honeymoon trip to Jasper. My brother had stuffed leaves into the air vent and I knew that Richard would have killed me if he came home and found the vent stuffed with leaves.

Richard was like that though. Richard couldn’t or wouldn’t accept responsibility for his family. He always blamed the problems of his family on others. Quite early on he had decided that it was my responsibility to raise my younger brother. He had even told Alberta Social Services that he considered it to be my responsibility to raise my younger brother. And once my younger brother noticed that I’d get the blame for anything he had done, it was game on.

So, I fell off the roof of the camper. It was one of those pickup truck mounted campers. And the pickup truck was a real 4X4 off-road truck, so it was quite the distance to the ground. I fractured both wrists. I also had the wind knocked out of me. One of the neighbours came over and helped me. Richard got called home from the squadron. When he got home he wanted to know what the fuck I was doing on top of the camper. I told him. His response was that it was my own damn fault for not keeping an eye on my brother. If I had watched my brother like I was supposed to then he would have never been able to get on top of the camper. And Richard said that I should consider myself lucky that my brother didn’t fall off the camper, because if he did Richard was going to beat me so hard that I’d wish that I had never been born.

I got sent to my room. I was told to stop my whining and just “get the fuck to bed” or he’d “give me something to cry about”.

I guess that Sue was finally able to convince Richard the next day that I needed to go to the hospital to get my wrists looked at.

My casts were supposed to stay on for six weeks.

They stayed on for longer than that.

Richard’s reasoning was that he wanted me to “learn my fucking lesson” and not be so “fucking stupid” the next time.

When we lived on CFB Griesbach in the time after grandma moved out of the house, Richard and Sue wouldn’t allow us into the house when they weren’t home. So that meant that after school my brother and I had to wait outside of the PMQ for them to get home from work. School was out at 15:00 Richard and Sue got off work around 16:30. In the summer and fall this wasn’t too bad. In the winter this was fucking stupid. We weren’t allowed to go anywhere, we had to stand on the porch and wait. Well, one cold day my brother decided that he wasn’t going to wait, so he kicked in one of the basement windows and got into the house that way. When Richard and Sue got home Richard was fucking furious. Again it was my fault for not watching my brother. If I had been watching my brother he never would have kicked the window in. Never mind that it could get down to -10 on a typical Edmonton winter day. No, the big problem was that someone kicked a window in to seek warmth.

It’s no wonder that by the time we moved to Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Toronto in April of 1983 my brother and I despised each other so much that the school board had to send us to separate schools due to intense sibling rivalry.

But that’s the way that gas-lighters work.

I worked for a man like this once. His way of keeping anyone from noticing that he didn’t have managerial skills was to keep everyone at each other’s throats. He had the admin assistants fighting amongst themselves. He had subordinate managers fighting with each other. He had the building operators distrusting each other. Even after the board of directors wised up and fired him and his assistant the damage was done.

And that’s the same with Richard. He was a fuckup. He knew he was a fuckup. Social services in three provinces knew that he was a fuckup. A psychologist hired by the Canadian Armed Forces knew that he was a fuckup. And what do fuckups do when they don’t want people knowing how much of a fuckup they are? They gaslight everyone around them. They have to. It’s the only way they can keep from having to admit that they’re fuckups.

My mother? Did she get kicked off the base? Nope, she “abandoned” her children.

Did she leave because she couldn’t take his drinking and his abuse? Nope, according to Richard she was a “slut” that would spread her legs for any man.

Was my brother getting into trouble because my father was a shitty parent? Nope, I wasn’t raising my brother correctly.

Did my brother start getting into trouble on CFB Downsview because my father was a neglectful parent. Fuck no, if only I had raised my brother right he wouldn’t be getting into trouble.

Was I having psychiatric problems due to sexual abuse, physical abuse, and neglect? Nope, I was just acting up to get attention.

Were my brother and I having issues because of Richard’s psychiatric issues? Hell no, it was his mother’s fault. She was the reason my brother and I were acting up.

There was one time that Richard had to pick me up after a weekend cadet camp out in a town near Kingston, Ontario. Richard pulled up in his Mustang. I put my dufflebag in the back of the car and I got into the passenger seat. As soon as I sat down Richard made a slapping motion towards me. I recoiled. But Richard stopped short of slapping me. He laughed and chuckled. Then he said that I was so fucking lucky. I asked what for. He said that he was so looking forward to slapping my fucking face when he came to pick me up. I asked again “for what?”. He said that earlier in the day he used his oscilloscope to work on something electronic and someone had poked holes in the anti-glare screen. I said “Wasn’t me”. He said “I know. I remember using the oscilloscope on Saturday morning and it was okay, so that means it was your fucking brother that did it”. He then continued on ” Why the fuck can’t you look after him. He’s your brother, you should be teaching him how to respect my equipment. Older brothers are supposed to look after their younger brothers. I guess that your just too fucking self-centred to give a shit about anyone else other than yourself”

This tendency for Richard to blame me for everything resulted in my younger brother remarking that he knew that all he had to do to get Richard to punish me was to take a screw out of something of Richard’s and to leave the screwdriver and the screw beside the equipment so that Richard couldn’t help but notice.

Sure, I can look back now at laugh. But it doesn’t really undo all of the psychiatric pain and suffering that was inflicted.

The damage that Richard did was fucking astounding. But the sad thing about gaslighters is that they do so much fucking damage that there often is no recovery.

The problem that a person like Richard causes for a person like me is that when you’re dealing with major depression and severe anxiety, the bullshit and the lies deliver a much more devastating blow. If I wasn’t suffering from CPTSD, major depression, and severe anxiety I probably could have weathered Richard’s gaslighting and victim blaming. But it wouldn’t be until I was 40 years old that I would learn the truth about Richard. By that time Richard’s gaslighting had a lot of time to cement itself and fix itself into my brain.

Even though I now know the truth, the damage can’t be undone. And even if it could be undone the problem is that the majority of my life was wasted away with Richard’s gaslighting being my only frame of reference.

I’m tired.

I’m broken.

I’m defeated.

I’m at peace with the way things were and the way things are.

I know that I can’t rewrite the past. The past will always be the past.

The future doesn’t really hold anything for me.

I know that my depression, my anxiety, my CPTSD, and my distrust of others, my crippling self doubt and my intense self hatred will plague me to the end of my days.

There is nothing that can be prescribed that will undo what was done.

ECT could erase some of the memories, but it also stands a good chance at obliterating the few good memories that I have.

The gaslighter made damn sure that if he couldn’t enjoy his life that no one else would enjoy theirs.

“in the end it isn’t the gods that cause us so much suffering, but those closest to us” – Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice.

A song that I’ve liked for a while.

I forget when I first hear this song, it was before I started working at the hospital, but I’ve loved it since first hearing it.

And yes, while the song is apparently about bipolar disorder, I think it can easily apply to good ol’ fashioned depression.

I’m fairly certain that I am not bipolar as I don’t get the manias.

I only get stomach turning brain spinning depression.

My father used to call me a “lazy ass” for not getting out of bed in the morning. But between waking up at least once a night with nightmares, and the crushing realization that I didn’t die in my sleep, it was so hard to muster the energy to get out of bed. I still have that to this day. Sure, the nightmares of my father, of P.S., and of all of the other shit from my childhood have faded over the years, but it’s still such a bear to get out of bed in the morning. So much so that I have to have two alarm clocks set for three alarms each as well as automated lights to come on.

Being that my depression is caused by trauma and genetics I don’t think that I will ever be free of this demon.

It’s “A Better Son/Daughter” by Rilo Kiley

Sometimes in the morning I am petrified and can’t move 
Awake but cannot open my eyes 
And the weight is crushing down on my lungs 
I know I can’t breathe 
And I hope someone will help me this time 
And your mother’s still calling you insane and high
Swearing it’s different this time 
And you tell her you give in to the demons that possess her 
And that God never blessed her insides 
Then you hang up the phone 
And feel badly for upsetting things 
Crawl back into bed to dream of a time 
When your heart was open wide 
And you loved things just because 
Like the sick and the dying 
And sometimes when you’re on 
You’re really fucking on 
And your friends they sing along 
And they love you 
But the lows are so extreme 
That the good seems fucking cheap 
And it teases you for weeks in its absence 
But you’ll fight and you’ll make it through 
You’ll fake it if you have to 
And you’ll show up for work with a smile 
And you’ll be better 
And you’ll be smarter 
And more grown up 
And a better daughter or son 
And a real good friend 
And you’ll be awake 
You’ll be alert 
You’ll be positive though it hurts 
And you’ll laugh and embrace all your friends 
And you’ll be a real good listener 
You’ll be honest 
You’ll be brave 
You’ll be handsome and you’ll be beautiful 
You’ll be happy 

Your ship may be coming in 
You’re weak but not giving in 
To the cries and the wails of the valley below 
And your ship may be coming in 
You’re weak but not giving in 
And you’ll fight it 
You’ll go out fighting all of them

Depression sucks.

Major depression is a killer.

Severe anxiety doesn’t help.

The pills kinda help though.

And I mean the legal pills.

I think that one of the things that has really hindered me so far as receiving treatment for my major depression and CPTDS is that I’ve never self medicated. No booze, no needles, no illegal pills, nothing.

And I think this is what’s kept me from being taken as serious.

As a kid, the doctors and the psychiatrists were telling my father and Captain Terry Totzke that I was having serious problems and that I should be institutionalized. My father didn’t care as he “knew” that it was all an act. Captain Totzke didn’t care as he had his orders.

And now as an adult no one takes me serious because I don’t push a shopping cart up and down the alleys and scream at telephone poles.

Not having anyone “on my team” i.e. friends (I don’t have any), family ( don’t have that either), there’s been no one there to alert my health care professionals or to vouch for what I’ve told my health care professionals.

So here I am at 50. Everyone who knows me and the issues that I am going through and the trauma that I’ve suffered are wandering around telling me to “Don’t worry, be happy”. As if I were to just smile then my life would be all fucking happiness and sunshine and rainbows.

All I can do is reflect upon what was taken from me, what was stolen from me, what was denied to me. This is shit that I’ve never getting back.

Everybody has an easy fix for my life…..

Bobbie, why don’t you find a boyfriend / girlfriend?

Bobbie, why don’t you just go out for drinks with the boys?

Bobbie, why don’t you go to a sportsball game?

Bobbie, why don’t you take trade training?

Bobbie, if you like electronics why don’t you take a course?

None of these things have ever been an interest to me before, and they’re sure not going to be an interest to me now. Especially the drinking. With the way that my father and my paternal grandmother were both raging alcoholics, drinking alcohol is the last thing I need.