Category: Canadian Armed Forces

The Year I “Struggled” and Then Disappeared

In 1983, professionals wrote that my “prospects appear poor.”

They were correct.

They just weren’t talking about what most people would assume.

Chapter 1: The Child Who Was the Problem

On paper, I was the issue.

Not the base scandal.

Not the adult behaviour.

Not the military culture.

Me.

My file described:

  • regression after a Christmas trip to Ontario in which my father attempted to unload me on to his father.
  • sarcasm
  • tantrumming
  • inappropriate behaviour
  • emotional disturbance

But it also described something else that rarely gets quoted:

My parents were giving me inconsistent information about an upcoming move.

My father being noted as not being able to tell the truth.

My father’s anger and refusal to participate in family counselling

My behaviour deteriorated once that uncertainty began.

My prospects appeared poor.

They even documented that it was necessary for my teacher to ask my father to tell me we were moving — because he wasn’t going to.

Let that sink in.

Professionals had to ask my father to inform me that my entire life was about to change.

Chapter 2: The Move That Wasn’t a Move

In military families, postings are ritualized.

You put Allied Van Lines stickers on boxes.

You say goodbye to friends.

You pack carefully.

You know weeks in advance.

This time?

I came home from playing outside and my belongings were piled at the curb in a trash heap.

The TV my uncle bought me.

The stereo my grandmother gave me.

Records my uncle and my grandmother bought for me.

Personal items.

I asked why I couldn’t bring them.

I was told I had to learn that actions have consequences imply that it was my involvement with social services that was fucking with my father’s military career and my involvement with social services was the cause of this move.

That’s not how you move a child who is already in treatment.

No goodbye.

No closure meeting.

No final session.

No transition plan.

Just… gone.

The discharge summary says I “did not return after the Easter break as the family was moving to Ontario”. Easter was the first week of April. We moved the last week of April. That was almost 1 month of running feral on a military base.

Not expelled.

Not discharged successfully.

Not treatment complete.

Just relocated.

Chapter 3: The Professionals Knew

This is the part people miss.

The staff documented that once the transfer became known — though not told to me — I began “struggling.”

They saw it.

They wrote it down.

They recommended I be closely monitored in Ontario through the Armed Forces or Children’s Aid.

That is not what you write about a child who is thriving.

That is what you write when you are concerned and losing jurisdiction.

Because that’s what happened.

Jurisdiction changed.

And when jurisdiction changes, oversight evaporates.

Chapter 4: The Convenient Border

In Alberta:

  • I was in a day treatment program.
  • Case conferences were happening.
  • Placement was being discussed.
  • My father was allegedly being pressured through his commanding officer.

Then suddenly:

Transfer to Ontario.

File closed.

Suggested monitoring.

In Ontario:

My father said Alberta’s involvement was unwarranted.

Resources were thin.

The case drifted.

No emergency.

No court.

No removal.

No follow-up.

The system didn’t conclude I was safe.

It concluded I was someone else’s responsibility.

Chapter 5: The Narrative Reset

In Edmonton I was told I was expelled for trying to kiss another boy.

The paperwork does not say that.

The paperwork says:

I attended until March 25.

I did not return after Easter.

The family was moving.

There is a difference between discipline and disappearance.

I didn’t fail treatment.

Treatment lost access to me.

Chapter 6: Prospects Appear Poor

That line sits in my file like a quiet verdict.

Not because I was broken.

But because:

  • parental information was inconsistent,
  • support was unreliable,
  • and stability was collapsing.

That’s not prophecy.

That’s an observation about environment.

When a child in structured care is abruptly relocated without explanation and without closure, the prognosis isn’t about personality.

It’s about infrastructure.

Chapter 7: The Most Interesting Part

No one documented a transition meeting.

No one documented preparing me emotionally.

No one documented telling me the move date.

They documented that adults were told.

They documented that I was struggling.

They documented that I vanished after Easter.

And then they documented that I resided at home and appeared in good health.

Administrative stability achieved.

Case closed.

People sometimes ask how children “fall through the cracks.”

They don’t fall.

The floor is moved.

And when you move a child across a provincial border at precisely the moment oversight is escalating, you don’t have to win an argument.

You just have to change the map.

And once the map changes, the story resets.

Prospects appear poor.

Not because of who the child is.

But because of where the child was placed.

Chapter 8: The Custody That No One Verified

There is one detail buried beneath all of this that is almost too bureaucratic to notice.

Custody.

My father repeatedly presented himself to professionals as the custodial parent.

Schools accepted it.

Social services operated on that assumption.

Agencies coordinated through him.

But no one appears to have ever demanded documentary proof of legal custody.

Not a court order.

Not a custody agreement.

Not a legal filing.

Just verbal statements.

And a Canadian Forces uniform.

This matters more than people realize.

Because in civilian systems, custody is a legal status.

In institutional environments, custody can become a perceived status.

If a parent shows up in a Canadian Armed Forces uniform, speaks with authority, and frames himself as the decision-maker, the default institutional response — especially in the early 1980s — was often deference rather than verification.

Not maliciously.

Procedurally.

He said he had custody.

He acted like he had custody.

He wore the uniform of a federal institution.

That combination functions as a kind of bureaucratic camouflage.

And my father wasn’t the only member of the Canadian Armed Forces to use his crisply creased uniform and his spit shone boots to bamboozle civilian authorities.

This was a documented issue that flourished due to the isolated nature of the military community.

Chapter 9: The Risk No One Wanted to Touch

This becomes far more serious when viewed alongside the 1983 context.

At the time:

  • Child Welfare was considering increased intervention.
  • Residential placement was being discussed.
  • Family non-compliance with counselling was documented.
  • External pressure through the chain of command was explicitly mentioned in conference notes.

Now introduce one destabilizing variable:

What happens if a child is removed from a home where the presenting parent does not actually hold verified legal custody?

Standard procedure would not end there.

Authorities would contact relatives.

They would examine custody history.

They would identify the legally entitled guardian.

And suddenly, the entire legal landscape changes.

Not just for the child.

For the parent.

Moving a child in Canada from one province to another without the permission of the child’s legal guardians is tantamount to kidnapping.

But it wasn’t just my father that was placing himself in legal jeopardy had he allowed me to be removed by the home via Alberta Social Services, the Canadian Armed Forces would have exposed themselves to risk as well as they facilitated the move without even the most basic verification of child custody.

Chapter 10: Uniform as Institutional Shield

There is a deeply uncomfortable dynamic in military family systems of that era.

Base housing was governed under Defence Establishment regulations.

Access to housing was conditional.

Family presence on base was not an absolute right.

Which meant authority flowed in a very particular direction:

Command structure → Family life → External agencies (often secondarily).

When a uniformed member asserted something about their household, civilian professionals were often operating in parallel, not in command.

So scrutiny softened.

Verification slowed.

Assumptions hardened.

And the narrative “father has custody” became administratively sufficient.

Not legally proven.

Administratively sufficient.

Chapter 11: The Convenient Alignment

Now place that beside the relocation timeline.

A child in treatment.

Escalating conferences.

Discussion of possible apprehension.

Pressure through the commanding officer.

Documented parental resistance to counselling.

Then:

Transfer out of province.

File closed due to jurisdiction.

New agency intake based primarily on parental reporting.

And critically:

A father stating prior involvement was unwarranted.

A father presenting stability.

A father treated as the primary legal authority.

Without documented custody verification appearing in the records.

That is not just a family narrative shift.

That is an institutional reset.

Chapter 12: The Quiet Power of Assumption

What is most striking is not that systems failed dramatically.

It is that they operated exactly as designed under incomplete information.

No court activity.

No children admitted to care.

No reference to abuse.

Because the gatekeeping adult framed the situation as manageable, exaggerated, or unwarranted — and no immediate legal contradiction was triggered.

If no one asks to see the custody order, the custody claim becomes functionally real in practice.

Especially when backed by:

  • Rank
  • Institutional affiliation
  • Geographic mobility
  • Jurisdictional complexity across provinces

Final Addendum: Authority vs. Legitimacy

There is a difference between having legal custody and being treated as though you have custody.

One is a matter of law.

The other is a matter of institutional perception.

In my case, the perception appears to have travelled faster than the verification.

And when a child’s access to care, continuity of treatment, and potential protective intervention all flow through that perceived authority, the consequences are not theoretical.

They are administrative.

Quietly administrative.

A uniform does not grant legal custody.

But in practice, in that era, it could grant something almost as powerful:

Freedom from immediate scrutiny.

Psychiatry, Silence, and the Cost of Survival

Let me be very clear about something.

Modern psychiatry is not primarily about repairing damaged minds. In practice, it is far more often about teaching damaged people how to function quietly—how to mask distress, suppress history, and remain acceptable to everyone else. Recovery is measured less by relief from suffering than by how little discomfort one causes others.

If you’ve followed my story, you’ll know that my first sustained contact with psychiatry and social services came in 1980 during the aftermath of the Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse scandal on Canadian Forces Base Namao.

Three Systems, One Child

During that period, I was trapped between three systems, each with competing priorities:

  • the military social work system,
  • the civilian child welfare system, and
  • a deeply dysfunctional family, headed by a low-ranking CAF member struggling with untreated psychiatric issues, alcoholism, anger, and fear for his own career.

My civilian social workers recognized that my home environment was harmful and attempted to remove me from it. My military social worker, however, worked just as hard to prevent that outcome—not because civilian foster care was inherently worse, but because civilian intervention threatened military control of the situation.

This distinction matters.

Because my family lived in military housing on CFB Griesbach, Alberta Social Services could not simply enter the base and remove me. Civilian court orders had little practical force on base. Jurisdictional ambiguity worked entirely in the military’s favour.

Containing the McRae Scandal

At the same time, the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence were doing everything possible to keep the McRae scandal minimized and out of public view. The decision to move McRae’s court martial in camera—despite the general rule that courts martial are public—was not incidental.

From an institutional perspective, it was far more convenient to present the case as involving a single fourteen-year-old boy, the then-legal age of consent in 1980, framed as “homosexual activity,” than to acknowledge the reality: more than twenty-five children, some as young as four.

Under military law, sentences were served concurrently. Whether McRae abused one child or twenty-five, the maximum punishment remained the same. The difference lay only in public perception.

Blame as a Containment Strategy

This context explains much of what followed.

Captain Totzke, the military psychiatrist assigned to me, appeared deeply invested in ensuring that I—not the system, not the institution—was framed as the source of dysfunction. Civilian social workers were treated as adversaries. The unspoken fear was that if I were removed from my father’s care and placed into foster or residential care, I might stabilize, improve, and begin speaking openly about what had happened on CFB Namao.

Instead of being treated for trauma-induced depression, I was told—explicitly—that I suffered from a mental illness called “homosexuality.” I was warned that I would end up in jail. I was told I was a pervert for having “allowed” my brother to be abused.

I was informed by Captain Totzke that he had the military police watching me, and that any expression of affection toward another boy would result in confinement at a psychiatric hospital. I was barred from change rooms, removed from team sports, and excluded from normal childhood activities under the justification that I could not be trusted to control myself even though I had been the victim of the abuse and not the abuser. In the military’s lens at the time, any sexual encounter between two males, no matter the age difference or the lack of consent, was treated as an indication of homosexuality. The victim was just as guilty as the perpetrator.

Age and Diagnosis

I was six years old when my family arrived on CFB Namao. I was eight when the abuse was discovered. Psychiatric intervention began about four months later just after my 9th birthday. By that point I was diagnosed with major depression, severe anxiety, haphephobia, and an intense fear of men. My father was so angry with me for having been found being abused that I was terrified that he was going to kill me.

None of these conditions were meaningfully treated.

What I did learn was how to perform wellness—how to mask distress just well enough to avoid punishment. That skill would define my later interactions with mental health professionals and the world in general. When I’d go for counselling with my civilian social workers, my father and Totzke would often warn me to watch what I said to the civilian social workers as they’d “twist my words” to make it sound as if I had said things that I didn’t say.

The Mask Never Comes Off

For decades afterward, my attempts at counselling followed a familiar pattern. My history was unwelcome. My symptoms were reframed as resistance. The stock phrases appeared reliably:

  • “Stop living in the past.”
  • “Move on.”
  • “You don’t want to change.”
  • “You’re playing the victim.”

It was not until 2011, when I finally received my own records, that I understood how early—and how thoroughly—my life had been derailed.

Group therapy or one-on-one it didn’t matter. Especially back in the days before I had obtained my social services paperwork. My inability to get out of bed on consistently was just because I’d stay up too late. My ability to sleep for days on end and miss work was just because I was a lazy asshole. My preference to be left alone was nothing more than my superiority complex. My debilitating fear of courses and exams wasn’t due to low self esteem, hell no, it was that I thought that I was too good.

Medical Assistance in Dying

For a while now I have been very open about my desire to access Medical Assistance in Dying.

What continues to astonish me is how many people believe this wish can be dissolved through optimism, pharmacology, or spiritual novelty. Ketamine infusions, microdosing, mantras—anything except acknowledging that some damage is permanent, and that survival itself can be a form of ongoing harm.

Don’t forget, in my case it wasn’t that the sexual abuse was unknown and no one ever knew about the issues I was facing. The CFB Namao child sexual abuse scandal was well known about in the military community. My diagnoses were known to my father and to Captain Totzke. But I wasn’t allowed to receive any help due to the desire to keep the proverbial “lid on things”.

Statistics and Comforting Fictions

This is why much of the anti-MAiD commentary rings hollow.

Recent opinion pieces lean heavily on selective statistics about suicide attempts and “recovery,” while ignoring the realities of under-reporting, stigma, misclassification of deaths, and survivorship bias.

Suicide statistics rely on narrow definitions: notes, explicit intent, immediate death. Overdoses are coded as accidental. Single-vehicle crashes are ambiguous. Deaths occurring months or years after catastrophic attempts are often excluded entirely.

The result is a comforting fiction.

A failed suicide attempt is not a victory. Often, it is survival driven by fear—not of death, but of catastrophic impairment. That fear should not be celebrated as evidence of restored hope or desire to live.

What Psychiatry Refuses to Admit

If psychiatry were being honest, it would admit what it does not know: the precise causes of depression, why some people do not recover, why treatment sometimes merely dulls experience rather than alleviating suffering.

It would also acknowledge the role of compliance and performance—the pressure to appear “better” so as not to be labeled the problem.

Instead, responsibility is quietly transferred back onto the patient.

And that, more than anything, is what I am unwilling to accept anymore.

Recently in the Toronto Star was an opinion piece

M.A.i.D. really isn’t an issue that requires “both sidesing”, but that’s what this opinion piece strives to do. It tries to mush a person’s right to self determination with personal opinions. And sadly the writer of the opinion piece concludes that if Canada could only fix its mental health system, then everyone would live happily ever after

Dr. Maher is dead set against M.A.i.D., to him any psychiatric illness can be easily treated, and if it can’t then the person should simply hold on and wait for a treatment that might possibly eventually work.

Dr. Maher was interviewed for an article published by the Canadian Mental Health Association.

https://cmhastarttalking.ca/from-pallbearer-to-psychiatrist-how-childhood-loss-propels-one-of-canadas-leading-medical-ethicists/

I have some questions for Dr. Maher.

23% of what? What is the number of Canadians that attempt suicide? 10 people, 100 people, 1,000 people, 100,000 people? How many people are we talking about?

Do we even know how many people attempt to commit suicide every year?

How many overdoses or single vehicle collisions are actually suicides?

How many people killed during risk taking activities are actually suicides?

How many work place “accidents” are actually suicides?

How many times does the coroner resist calling a death a suicide to spare the family the stigma of a suicide death?

How many times does the lack of a note cause the police and others to overlook a suicide?

How many people attempt suicide only to back away at the last moment, not out of the fear of dying, but out of the fear of fucking it up and ending up living for 20 years as a vegetable in a nursing home?

How many people that have attempted suicide never try to commit suicide again, not because they don’t want to take another attempt, but because their first attempt left them either physically or cognitively unable to make another attempt?

I guess we’ll never know.

And that’s sad.

This lack of understanding allows suicide to be pawned off as some random irrational behaviour that is driven by temporary bouts of sadness that some people just get too hysterical about instead of admitting that the human brain has an actual breaking point that once crossed can never be uncrossed.

Chatty chat.

I’ve used chatGPT for a while.

It’s interesting to use when you’re looking for random ideas or work arounds for working with Raspberry Pis or other electronics issues. When it comes to mathematics and electronics theory that’s where chat shines for me.

Chat also seems to be able to reason and learn, but in very limited means.

When I was working on a blog posting a while ago, just for shits ‘n’ giggles I asked chat if someone who was sexually abused on a Canadian military base prior to 1998 could bring charges against their abuser today.

Chat replied that yes, this was possible, Canada has no statute of limitation on criminal code offences.

So, I fed Chat the entire 1970 National Defence Act.

I asked Chat the same question again.

Chat then replied that the Canadian Armed Forces had a 3-year-time-bar on Criminal Code offences, but people who were sexually abused on base prior to 1998 could still get justice as the Canadian Forces were prohibited from conducting service tribunals for Murder, Manslaughter, or Rape.

I then fed chat the 1970 Criminal Code of Canada.

I asked Chat again, could a person today that was sexually abused as a 8 year old child on a defence establishment prior to 1985 (the year rape was removed from the criminal code) by a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, bring charges against their abuser.

Chat replied that it did not appear so as the crime of Rape was a very specific charge that could not be applied to cases involving girls under the age of 16.

I asked Chat what crimes could apply, Chat listed off:
Sexual intercourse with female 14 to 16
Sexual intercourse with female under 14
Sexual intercourse with step daughter
Sexual intercourse with foster child or ward
Incest.
(Notice how Chat seems to be assuming that only females can be victims of sexual assault)


I then asked Chat what the most disturbing thing related to the criminal code offence of Rape was. Chat replied that a husband could never be charged with raping his wife (true).

I then asked Chat what the most disturbing thing was related to the criminal code charge of Sexual Intercourse with Female under the age of 14 was. Chat replied that this charge didn’t apply to anyone if the female under the age of 14 was their wife.(again true)

It should be noted that when the criminal code refers to an age like “under 14” it means that person’s 14th birthday. The charge of “Sexual intercourse with female 14 to 16” meant sexual intercourse with a female from the day she turned 14 until the day she turned 16. Sexual intercourse with female under 14 meant sexual intercourse with any female up to the day she turned 14.

I asked chat if this meant that the Canadian Armed Forces could conduct a service tribunal (courts martial) for these crimes. Chat replied that the Canadian Forces were only barred from conducting service tribunals for Murder, Manslaughter, and Rape.

I then asked Chat how likely it was if an investigation was undertaken prior to 1998 for charges laid by the military police or the CFSIU to just simply vanish?

Chat said that this was very unlikely as the provincial crown prosecutor would be approving criminal code charges and unless there was a lack of evidence, the crown prosecutors didn’t simply dismiss charges.

I fed Chat a copy of Legislative Summary LS-311E(1998) and Bill C-25(1998) and asked Chat to digest both documents.

I asked Chat again, who decided if criminal code charges could proceed or if they’d be dismissed. Chat replied that it was the commanding officer of the accused.

I asked Chat if the Crown Prosecutor ever had any say on Code of Service Discipline matters. Chat replied that there was no mechanism for the crown prosecutor to be involved.

I asked Chat if service offences also included all criminal code offences, Chat replied that yes, according to the 1970 National Defence Act, the 1985 National Defence Act, Bill C-25(1998) and LS-311E(1998) service offences also included all criminal code offences.

I then asked Chat, could a commanding office dismiss any murder charge, and manslaughter charge, or any rape charge that had been brought against their subordinate prior to 1998.

Chat replied that there was no language in the National Defence Acts prior to 1998 to prevent this that LS-311E(1998) made it very clear that the commanding officer could dismiss all charges including charges that were purely civilian in nature.

I then asked Chat why it replied to me the way that it did when I first asked it about the ability of someone to lay charges against their abuser.

Chat replied that it can only base its answers on official documents that it has been trained upon. And these official documents it is trained on come from data that the foundation that oversees ChatGPT has approved.

When I asked it my original question, Chat was basing its responses on the current Criminal Code of Canada that was in effect when the training model was put together as well as the current National Defence Act that was in effect when the current training model was assembled.

Chat had no access to the 1970 National Defence Act, nor did it have access to the 1970 Criminal Code of Canada, the 1970 Juvenile Delinquents Act, the original 1985 Criminal Code of Canada, Bill C-25(1998) or Legislative Summary LS-311E(1998) authored by government lawyer David Goetz. Even though I was asking questions about a very specific period of time, Chat could only reason by using the data that it had been given. It’s not going to go trolling the internet to discover new models to train itself off of.

Disappointing though was the answer that I received when I asked Chat if it could use the information that I had just given it when other people ask about civilians and criminal code issues prior to 19980.

Chat replied that the documents that I gave to it cannot be verified for authenticity as they are not part of the learning model. Chat said that it treats any document that is given to it by any user them same way. Chat said that as long as as I am a registered user and my account is active, then it will remember these documents and take them into consideration when formulating responses to my questions, but that the documents and the responses they provide are only for use in my account and will never be accessible to any other user unless they input the same documents.

I asked Chat if there was any way for the Foundation overseeing chat to be asked to include these types of documents in its learning models. Not really. The Foundation avoids all outside influence. And so the truth dies on the hill of nobility.