Dysfunctional – Page 3

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.

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.

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.

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.

My Brother’s statement to the CFNIS

When I made my complaint about the babysitter in March of 2011 I had mentioned that I had witnessed my brother being abused numerous times by P.S. as P.S. would sometimes abuse us each on our own, but would more often than not abuse the two of us together in the basement of my family’s PMQ on babysitting days.

The CFNIS asked if I knew how to contact my brother. I told the CFNIS that the last time that I spoke with my brother was in 2003 when I had ridden my motorcycle up to Edmonton to see Richard.

I suggested to the CFNIS that they could talk to Richard and Richard could put them in contact with my brother. What I didn’t know at the time is that my brother had a falling out of sorts with Richard and Sue and hadn’t spoken with them since around 2007.

I wasn’t too optimistic that Richard would give the CFNIS my brother’s contact information as I was certain that Richard was going to take a very dim view of the fact that I was trying to shirk my responsibility for what I had done on CFB Namao by allowing P.S. to abuse my younger brother.

In August of 2012 on Facebook I was able to track down my brother’s wife at the time, and I asked her to pass my contact information.

My brother contacted me and we talked a bit about things from back then (1978 to 1980).

I even went up to Edmonton for a few days from June 30th, 2013 to July 5, 2013 to see him.

It was during this visit that he had explained to me that he hadn’t spoke with either Richard or Sue since about 2007 due to a funeral that he didn’t want to attend.

At the time I was going through my first go-round with the Military Police Complaints Commission. And up to this point I had not seen a single document from the CFNIS investigation. I was literally flying blind with my complaint against the CFNIS.

My complaint against the CFNIS failed. Basically it came down to:
-Did the CFNIS take my complaint?
-Did the CFNIS contact other victims?
-Did the CFNIS try to contact the accused?
-Did the CFNIS submit anything to the Alberta Crown?
As the CFNIS did this, the MPCC blessed the investigation.
See, the MPCC, like most police review agencies can only look at the mechanics of the investigation. The MPCC cannot judge or second guess the findings of the CFNIS. That’s why in 2020 the MPCC had to bend the rules a little bit and included documents related to my investigation from a parallel investigation.

I decided to file an Application for Judicial Review in the Federal Court of Canada. One thing that I hadn’t anticipated was that the Military Police Complaints Commission would have to provide me with copies of all of the documents that the Canadian Forces and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service had denied to me during my initial complaint to the MPCC.

I know for a fact that the Alberta Crown was upset and devastated that the MPCC and the CFNIS had given me a copy of the Alberta Crown’s decision to me. Documents like this are “privileged” and are never supposed to end up in the hands of the victims.

Contained within these documents were copies of my brother’s “Will Say” statement as well as the investigator’s notes from the interview.

The following are the interview notes taken by
Petty Officer 1st Class Steve Morris.

Much as I did with my father, I gave my brother a written examination for Federal Court.

The following are the questions that I asked my brother

The following are my brother’s answers to my questions.

Two things stand out for me in this mess.

The first thing that stands out is that it’s almost as if the investigators with the CFNIS are taught to ask vague non-specific questions and worse, to transcribe vague and really open-to-interpretation notes of the interview. Who is “he”. Who is “him”. Who is “they”. That was one thing my grandmother used to get furious with me about when I was learning to write in grades 1, 2, and 3. “Only dogs get MAD, humans get ANGRY” and “NEVER use ‘He’, ‘She’,’They’,’Them’ when you know their names”. For a woman that only had two years of formal education, she sure was very fussy about the proper use of language.

The second thing that stands out is that my brother mentions to the CFNIS that it was Richard that told him about my motorcycle.

In early 2002 I bought a demo motorcycle from a dealer. Paid in full. The first vehicle I ever owned that didn’t have financing attached. Came to about $11k all said and done.

In late 2002 I got cut off by a taxi cab that ran a stop sign. The motorcycle went down on the left hand side, which due to the layout of the crankcase breather sent oil up into the air intake box and hydrolocked #1 piston. ICBC found the driver 100% at fault. ICBC paid the dealer to return the motorcycle to like new condition.

Just outside of the 1 year ICBC warranty period the #1 piston and connecting rod failed at highway speeds just outside of Chilliwack. I got the motorcycle towed back to Vancouver. I went back to the dealer and spoke to the mechanic that had rebuilt the bike. I told him about the engine failure. I asked him if they had torn down the engine and checked the #1 piston and connecting rod for damage. He said that the owner of the motorcycle shop wouldn’t allow the mechanics to tear down the engine even though the engine was obviously hydrolocked. The mechanic removed the spark plug, which due to the hydraulic pressure behind it shot up. There was also a squirt of oil that came out of the spark plug hole. The mechanic said that he did start the engine and it sounded rough for a bit, but then as the oil burned up the engine went back to sounding okay. The cost of labour for tearing down the engine and then rebuilding the engine would have put the bike well over ICBC’s limit for writing the motorcycle off. The mechanic explained that by rebuilding the bike the shop stood to make far more money off the rebuild job than if ICBC had simply written off the motorcycle and had given me a cheque to buy a new motorcycle.

So yeah, I nearly lost my life because someone got greedy. But that’s life I guess.

I contacted a couple of lawyers. They both wanted a $10k retainer (standard from what I understand). I had about $6k in the bank. So I called Richard. This did not go over too well. Richard started ranting about the fact that I couldn’t look after my stuff, that I was always breaking anything that had ever been given to me, that I was obviously too fucking stupid to ride a motorcycle and that I was going to kill someone. He then suggested that I contact my mother and ask “that bitch” to pay for this as she didn’t pay a single damn thing towards my brother and I when Richard was raising us.

Yep. Richard had managed to take the high speed engine failure of my motorcycle caused by the wilful neglect of the dealership and spun it around to him being the victim who had to sacrifice everything to raise my brother and I.

Yeah, that was Richard.

Why don’t you start a business?

Do something that you love doing….

Well, that’s a problem. I don’t really “love” anything or aspire to anything. That was beat out of me a very long time ago.

Another thing that I realized a long time ago is without family support, you can have the greatest business ideas, but you won’t get anywhere.

You never hear about the small business failures.

You only hear about the successes.

Bobbie, if you just tried, you could be the next Bill Gates. He started off from absolutely nothing. You like computers, right?

Won’t go off on a Bill bashing tangent, but he came from “old money”. Musk’s family was involved with an Apartheid era Emerald Mine in South Africa. Jeff Bezos had easy access to about $250k in the early ’90s when Amazon almost went bust. Sure, they had innovative ideas, but they also had the family and the money to back them.

And no. I don’t like computers.

I use computers. I can RTFM (read the fucking manual). And I can set them up.

But I don’t like computers. That ship fucking sailed when I was in my teens. I never developed an interest in computers after that.

But what about a small business Bobbie? You seem to like lighting effects and lighting systems. You installed and wired up a BOSE sound system by yourself and installed the DMX lighting system by yourself and impressed the pants off the owner of the lighting & sound company that supplied the equipment.

That’s true. But to start up an even modest lighting company you need funds. And you need guarantors for your loans.

I would rather smash my testicles with a ball-and-peen hammer than ever have approached Richard for any type of loan or help securing a loan.

As Richard would often tell his friends, Richard kept my brother and I solely to control the costs. If he had given us to our mother, he’d have to pay child support, and that wasn’t something that he was ever going to do.

So no, there was no manna from heaven with Richard. It wasn’t that Richard was cheap really. He had the money. And he could indulge himself and Sue whenever he saw fit. The problem is he had such a hard on hatred of Marie. And seeing as how he couldn’t discharge his hatred on Marie he vented his hatred upon my brother and I. The “Heathcliff” phenomenon.

And no, my stepmother would never have been an option. She made it very clear early on that we were not hers.

My mother? Between September of 1982 and July of 1990 I had absolutely no contact with her. From July of 1990 until February of 1992 I had contact with her, but she was unemployed for a good stretch of that. And then I had no contact with her from February of 1992 until November of 2013 when I had to track her down to ask her about who actually had legal custody of my brother and I.

Extended family? Nope. Our family was far too fractured.

So no, there was no financial backing available.

Bobbie, start small then.

Even if you do start small, you need cash.

Okay, fine Bobbie, maybe you don’t go into lighting production. Do something else like cars.

I hate cars. I despise cars. I haven’t owned a car since 1998. I only got into working on cars as I thought that it would be a way to bond with Richard. Man was I ever fucking wrong.

When I lived in Edmonton and I was unemployed from the summer of 1991 until I moved to Vancouver in February 1992 I did some cash work for a bodyshop on the south side of Edmonton. Man did I get fucked over by those two brothers. But there’s a lot of that in the automobile repair business. All I can say is be very fucking wary of buying a car from a bodyshop.

Electronics, why don’t you start an electronics shop? Again, money.

And I turned my back on electronics when I was younger because of what an employer had said to me. Both Bruce and Ed at Rainbow games turned me down for pay raises because although I could beat a DeVry certified technician, the fact that I didn’t have an electronics certificate meant that they couldn’t justify paying me what they paid an electronics tech that was qualified.

Yeah, I’ve used electronics to open doors for me into jobs that I normally wouldn’t have been hired for. But once in the door I scale back what I’m willing to do. I’ll do enough to make up for my major depression and my severe anxiety, but nothing more. But that’s more so that I don’t piss anyone off at work. It sucks that I have to play dumb in order to get along with others. But that’s the way it works out for the “unticketed” and “unqualified”.

So, it’s not that I haven’t tried. It’s not that I didn’t have hopes and dreams. It’s just that those options were never available to me.

Vince and Ravi

I don’t remember exactly how I started working for Vince and Ravi, but it was sometime after the start of grade 8.

I was in grade 8 for the ’85 to ’86 school year.

I would have been 14.

Vincent was involved with swimming at the University of Toronto. I forget exactly what Ravi did. But for the two of them video games were a sideline from their main jobs.

I’m pretty sure that I was working for Vince and Ravi before I even met Bob Becker from Trans American Video Amusements.

I would go and do service calls after school. At first I would call Vince after school and he’d pick me up and take me to the locations that needed service. After a while though Vince got me a pager and a set of master keys for the video games.

During school I’d keep the pager in my locker. Kept it on silent so as not to attract attention. But this was back in the day when the paging service didn’t record the messages, they’d just send numeric messages to the pager. And if the pager wasn’t on you didn’t get the message.

The keys were far too much of a risk to take to school. So I used to keep the keys at home in my basement bedroom. Because of my untreated severe depression and anxiety and habit of keeping to myself I was often a target for beatings at school. And the last thing I needed was to get beat up and have the keys taken away from me.

Vince and Ravi didn’t have many locations. A couple of convenience stores on Yonge north of Sheppard. They had a few locations around Dundas and Bloor near the Junction Triangle. And a few more locations out on the Danforth. They also had games in the “Studio” arcades that were owned by a guy named Andrew. I can’t remember them all, but there was Studio ’84, and Studio ’85.

I had always hoped on getting a Platt toolkit like the real technicians, but I had to make due with a kit that I made up with a kit made from Active Surplus in Toronto.

Carried around with me a soldering iron, a desoldering pump, desoldering wick, a digital voltmeter, a logic probe, some nut drivers, and a couple of screwdrivers.

I learnt then that it was better to carry around the tools that you frequently used as opposed to carrying everything.

I’d also carry a couple of coin mechanisms, some microswitches, some blade switches.

It was fun.

As I said it before was nice feeling like I belonged and that I was needed for something.

I think that’s why I always had jobs when I was a kid.

Looking back, there actually wasn’t a single year since about 1982 that I wasn’t working somewhere.

I quickly got the nickname “the kid”.

Troubleshooting logic problems wasn’t a problem, actually tracking down logic problems was pretty simple back then. Fixing power supplies, video monitors, etc. all turned out to be within my abilities.

I remember the time Vincent insisted that I bring a machine home that I was having trouble fixing. Around 22:00 hours we pull up to the back of the PMQ on CFB Downsview in a white rental van with a Williams Space Shuttle pinball machine in the back.

Richard woke up and he wasn’t too impressed.

I got the machine set up in the basement of the PMQ and worked on it for the next couple of days. Turned out to be a broken wire under the playfield.

I’ve never known to this day why, but I had the playfield up on the prop rod while I was working under the playfield. I don’t know if it was an accident, or if it was intentional, but my brother knocked the prop rod out of place and dropped the playfield on my head and back.

The playfield isn’t light. With all of the solenoids and other hardware on it I’d say the playfield probably weighs about 50 lbs. The power for the general illumination isn’t all that great. 6.3 VAC for the general illumination. The DC power supply for solenoids on the other hand are about +28 VDC. The 28 VDC is distributed to all of the solenoids on the playfield and then the returns from the solenoids goes back to the TIP120 darlington on the logic board.

So that meant that not only was the playfield digging into my head and back with all of the solenoids underneath the playfield, I was also getting minor shocks from the machine as the terminals for the solenoids were cutting into my skin.

Never did get an explanation from my brother.

My father laughed. Said I deserved what I got for not watching my back.

One day I got a series of pages from Vince. So I called him right after school

Vince was furious. Seems the owner of the little hamburger shop on Ridge and Wilson had called Vince stating that a bunch of kids had been opening the machine and taking money out of them and had been playing free games for hours. The owner of the hamburger shop had grabbed one of the kids and grabbed the keys from him. The owner of the hamburger shop threatened to call the police if the kid didn’t explain how he got the keys. The kid, C.C. said that my brother had sold him the keys for $20.

I thought that Vince was going to fire me. Nope. He saw no reason for this other kid to have lied. But he wasn’t too happy that my brother was able to get my keys so easily. Vince said that I’d have to be more careful with my keys. Vince suggested that I should put a lock on my bedroom door. I told Vince that my room didn’t have a door.

That’s when I started to learn how to hide my personal belongings. I’d keep the keys hidden in the exhaust ducting for the dryer or even under the control panel for the washing machine. When I started doing collections at the locations I’d have to keep the money hidden. The money I’d keep hidden in a soup can that I’d hide inside the floor drain in the basement.

The only problem this hiding caused is that I’d have to be very careful that no one discovered what I was doing.

I stopped working for Vince and Ravi when I went to work for Bob Becker.

Moonlighting wasn’t tolerated too well in the amusement machine industry back in the ’80s. It was a very cut throat business with a lot of unsavoury business practices.

So, not too many company owners were willing to allow their technician to work for other companies.

I don’t know what ended up happening with Vince and Ravi.

I doubt that they’re in the amusement machine business anymore. The amusement machine industry was decimated in the ’90s with the advent of home machines that far outperformed the most expensive arcade machine.

But still, I often look back at how carrying around my toolkit and fixing arcade machine at various locations across metro Toronto made me feel like anything was possible.

I guess we’re all allowed to be fucking idiots when we’re young, right?

Hoping that you never got what you wanted.

As a kid I learnt an odd behaviour of mine that still sort of continues on to this day.

However, now that I more or less have control over my life I find that I don’t often fall prey to this line of thinking. But it’s still there in the deep dark recesses of my defective brain.

When I was a kid, especially living on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach in Edmonton I had developed a perverse way of dealing with Richard’s stinginess and hatred-by-proxy of Marie.

When it would get close to xmas or my birthday I would secretly start wishing that I wouldn’t get what I had asked for.

And it worked.

Never once did I ever get what I had asked for, and by wishing that I wouldn’t get it I actually felt in control.

Looking back it was obviously a really weird coping mechanism, but it did allow me to cope none the less.

This obviously wasn’t a very healthy coping mechanism.

I would often pretend to not be interested in the latest and greatest thing.

And that would often set me on a collision course with the popular kids who thought that I was just trying to be “smarter than them” or who were convinced that I was just a fucking faggot loser.

At school the kids were into the Blue Jays, the Maple Leafs, the Argonauts, “pro” wrestling was a major thing in southern Ontario back then. The kids at school would have the latest jerseys, or other sports related paraphernalia.

I had nothing like this, I don’t even think my brother had anything contemporary back then.

When we lived in Edmonton from 1978 to 1983 this was practically the top of the Edmonton Oilers dynasty. Richard never once took us to a hockey game.

Our grandmother had actually taken us to some Edmonton Eskimos games with tickets that she’d get from the Bissell Centre for disadvantaged families.

Richard loved the Toronto Maple Leafs.

But in the 7-1/2 years that we lived in Toronto on Canadian Forces Base Downsview not once did we ever go to a hockey game.

And no. There was no watching hockey with Richard. If you wanted to watch hockey with Richard, that was fine, you just had to shut the fuck up and not say a single fucking thing. And don’t ask him stupid fucking questions either.

And it wasn’t like I didn’t play hockey as a kid. On CFB Namao my grandmother had enrolled me in beavers, swimming, hockey, bowling, and basketball.

Me before the fallout of the Captain Father Angus McRae child sex abuse scandal on Canadian Forces Base Namao.

Apparently I **never** played team sports.
There was no team photo for 1979 – 1980 as I was kicked out of hockey
as a result of the CFB Namao Child Sexual Abuse Scandal

“But Bobbie, what if your father had no money, he was in the Canadian Forces”.

Sure, the pay was bad in the ’60s and the ’70s. But this was offset by the lowered housing costs of living in the PMQs on base. Also, ranks tended to be very close in pay grade. Privates made one rate, Corporals made another, Master Corporals made another rate, Sergeants made another.

I don’t have access to the historical pay schedules. But even going with the current pay schedule the ranks make basic monthly rates based primarily upon rank, but modified by number of years at that rank level and any special qualifications.

The end result is that my father as a Master Corporal wasn’t making $1k per month while the Master Corporal living next door was making making $2.5k per month.

Where’d his money go?

Not to my brother or I. That was for sure.

I know he had no issue spending money on the latest and greatest knickknack or computer toy for himself.

Was he paying child support on the sly? This honestly wouldn’t surprise me in the least. He did have a habit of skirt chasing.

Was he paying an out-of-court settlement for one of his drinking and driving collisions? Again this is a possibility as his insurance would have been very expensive given the number of collisions that he had over the years.

Other than that I don’t know.

But Bobbie, it’s his money, he can spend it any way that he wants to. You can’t tell him what to spend it on.

That may be true. But he should have worn a condom. Or pulled out. Or even just have asked for oral or a handjob. Would have obviously saved a lot of grief.

You don’t get someone pregnant and then wash your hands of the responsibility claiming that your responsibility ended at conception.

You don’t take your hatred of your former spouse out on your children as if being cruel to your kids was going to make your former spouse realize how much she inconvenienced you by leaving you to look after the children you fathered.

So yeah, birthdays mean nothing to me. And xmas means nothing as well.

I won’t stop you from celebrating.

But hopefully you understand why I don’t celebrate.

And no. Please don’t think that you’re going to “fix me” by inviting me to xmas parties or birthday parties. Nothing makes me feel more awkward and out of place. And it’s so fucking tiring pretending like I fit in or like I’m enjoying myself.

Socks and Underwear day.

Xmas in the Gill household.

When I had gone to visit my brother in Edmonton in the summer of 2013 we sat down for coffee in a coffee shop.

We hadn’t really talked much in the years prior. Even when he was living in the Vancouver area from the mid ’90s to the early ’00s we didn’t talk that much.

While we were talking, one thing that came up was Richard’s stinginess around birthdays and christmas.

My brother blurted out “Socks and Underwear day”.

I laughed. Not because “Socks and Underwear day” sounded funny, but because up until that point in time I had almost convinced myself that I was over exaggerating what I remembered.

It took me a while in my adult years to realize that as kids my brother hadn’t been smashing up my toys just as I hadn’t been smashing up his.

This was Richard’s go to excuse as to why he wasn’t buying us anything. We couldn’t look after our toys and we always broke our toys.

Richard always had an excuse as to why he wouldn’t buy us toys. We didn’t look after out toys. We’d break our toys. We’d take our toys apart. We wouldn’t show him gratitude for buying us toys.

When I had my first apartment in Edmonton in the fall of 1990 and I was away from Richard and I started becoming exposed to co-workers whom had families the more I began to realize that there was something terribly wrong with Richard.

I started to realize that he wasn’t buying us toys because he didn’t want to waste his money on us. And like usual, because he couldn’t take responsibility for his own decisions he had to blame others for his decisions. My brother was breaking my toys. I was breaking my brother’s. And seeing as how we couldn’t look after our stuff, neither of us would get a damn thing. I wonder if this is where our intense sibling rivalry came from.

On CFB Summerside I had a decent model railway. I don’t remember too much about it other than it fit on a sheet of 4’X8′ plywood. It was literally here one day and gone the next. Richard’s excuse always was that I smashed it apart and there wasn’t anything left of it.

In 2013 I managed to track down my mother whom I hadn’t had contact with since March of 1992. I had to track her down after the PEI courts had stated that Richard had never been awarded custody of my brother and I.

I went to see her over the 2013 xmas holidays. And I asked her about this infamous train set. She laughed when I told her that Richard had told me that I smashed the train up. Nope. Wasn’t the case. Richard had been out drinking, first at the base mess, then at the Royal Canadian Legion in town. When he came home he went downstairs into the basement with a bottle of rum. The next morning when Marie went down to get him, everything in the basement was damaged. The washer and dryer were smashed and needed replacement. Richard’s drafting table was in pieces. His work bench was in pieces. And the railway was smashed all apart.

She said that his anger and his drinking had really increased since we left CFB Shearwater and this is one of the reasons she was trying to get us back to Nova Scotia to stay with Albert Dagenais while Richard sorted out his shit.

She said that we had xmas and birthday parties before Marie left, but Richard really wasn’t into these types of events and almost felt embarrassed by them.

I don’t remember my brother having much in the way of birthdays when we were kids. I know I didn’t.

I can’t remember any birthday parties on CFB Shearwater or CFB Summerside, but that’s more to do with my age than anything. I turned 7 on CFB Namao in 1978. I can’t remember a party then.

The one and only birthday party that I do remember was when I turned 14 in 1985. I came home and there was a cake on the table. Just said “Happy Birthday” with no name. There was a card and I think $50 in it. Richard said that he knew he hadn’t been a good father, but that he was going to try harder and that he would never again forget my birthday. This was the last birthday of mine that he ever celebrated. At the time I had no idea what this party was all about. Richard told me on previous missed birthdays that I didn’t deserve a party because I was going to special school or special classes and until I smartened up and learned to behave I wasn’t getting anything.

It wouldn’t be until August of 2011 that I would learn why out of nowhere I had a birthday in 1985.

Unbeknownst to me, my family was under the supervision of the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto. We had been ever since we fled Alberta in April of 1983. Richard and Sue had a massive domestic dispute in the PMQ in August of 1985 while my brother and I were in Edmonton with our grandmother for the summer.

Not too sure what the domestic was about, but it appears that it had something to do with divorce papers.

According to the base military police it took three military police officers to bring my father under control. Even my next door neighbour Tanya said the amount of damage to the PMQ was significant. Furniture and paper out the windows. Most ground floors windows smashed out.

And that’s why I had a birthday party in September of 1985. Richard wasn’t trying to make up for having missed out on my previous birthdays. Richard was buttering me up just in case the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto found out about the domestic dispute.

Remember, CAST said in their paperwork that due to budget cuts and staffing issues they couldn’t really become too involved with my family unless they heard about issues in the home from outside agencies. And here is a massive domestic dispute. Probably also explains why the base military police didn’t want us to call 9-1-1 the next time Richard blew up and instead call base switchboard and ask for the military police. It wasn’t because the base military police could respond quicker. It’s because the Metropolitan Toronto Police would have been required to notify social services. The base military police were under no obligation to notify children’s aid. More of the “washing the laundry in house” mentality.

It was my conversations with Marie over the xmas holidays that I learnt that Uncle Doug had been buying gifts for my brother and I on Marie’s behalf and that Uncle Doug was the only reason why her gifts would show up in our house at all.

So if you’ve ever wondered why I schedule time off from work around my birthdays, this is why. My birthday is always a painful event for me. Xmas isn’t much better, but at least those are statutory holidays and I get to be alone for those.

I don’t hate xmas mass. I am atheists. I don’t believe in the invisible magical sky daddy. It just doesn’t mean anything to me. I like looking at the coloured lights and the non-over-the-top decorations. But anything beyond that I don’t get too worked up about.

Birthdays are much the same. I don’t resent people having birthdays. I do sign cards at work and I do slip $20s into the kitty, but I just find the whole idea of celebrating birthdays to be childish and immature.

Sure, maybe Grandma didn’t give Richard much in the way of xmas and birthdays when he was a kid. But that doesn’t explain why uncle Norman and uncle Doug seemed to have no problems with celebrating xmas and birthdays.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and state emphatically that Richard viewed my brother and I as remnants of Marie, and seeing as how he couldn’t punish Marie he was going to exact his revenge on Marie by proxy.

Was Richard a modern day Heathcliff?

Was Richard exacting his revenge on Marie by taking out his anger on my brother and I?

I have no doubt.

To Richard it must have been amusing watching his two kids at each other’s throats. Just proved how insane their mother was and how much he had to sacrifice to raise her hell spawn.

As I work in a hospital with a large psychiatric department, I’ve had the opportunity to ask “off the record” what the most significant cause of intense sibling rivalry is, rivalry so intense that kids have to be sent to separate schools. The most common cause? Dysfunctional parents. And no, no matter how much Richard insisted, it was not my responsibility to raise my younger brother.

Anyways, until next time.

Blimey, it just keeps looking worse and worse.

I think someone forgot to flush the toilets at 101 Colonel By Drive…. the shit is overflowing at NDHQ.

Well David Pugliese had this article in the Ottawa Citizen today. The story involves the Minister of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces Chain of Command using the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service to harass and intimidate the Office of the Ombudsman of the Canadian Armed Forces.

The Federal court has rebuked the military and compensation has been paid to members of the Office of the Ombudsman of the Canadian Forces.

It just doesn’t get any fucking better than this.

The story is available here at: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/dnd-investigations-into-ombudsmans-staff-exposed-as-shoddy-lacking-in-evidence

The Office of the Ombudsman for the Canadian Forces enjoys a rather unique position of independence from the Canadian Armed Forces.

Unlike the Military Police Complaints Commission which may only ‘ask’ for documents from the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal during investigations of complaints against the CFNIS. And unlike the Military Police Complaints Commission which may only ‘ask’ for persons to participate in their investigation. The National Defence Act makes mandatory the participation of military members in any Ombudsman investigation.

This is because criminal charges cannot result from any Ombudsman investigation or inquiry. The Ombudsman may only recommend changes and possibly compensation or other remedies.

The Office of the Ombudsman of the Canadian Armed Forces was the agency that recommended that while the Canadian Armed Forces were “technically correct” to deny benefits or compensation to any of the 12 to 18 year old cadets that were killed or injured in the 1974 grenade explosion at Canadian Forces Base Valcartier, it was absolutely the immoral thing to do considering that the regular force member whose negligence led to this disaster was allowed to receive benefits and compensation from the Canadian Armed Forces. The Ombudsman recommended that the Canadian Forces make amendments posthaste and offer the survivors compensation, counselling, and therapy.

There is one problem with the Office of the Ombudsman of the Canadian Forces. That problem is that the Ombudsman may only undertake investigations that the Minister of National Defence agrees to.

See, the Office of the Ombudsman of the Canadian Forces would have been the perfect agency to investigate the matter from Canadian Forces Base Namao. No criminal charges could ever flow from an Ombudsman investigation or findings.

P.S. could give all the information that he wished and he would never face criminal charges for what he said. Nor would P.S. be in violation of his Non-Disclosure agreement that he had to sign with the Government of Canada in November of 2008 in order to receive his settlement from the Government of Canada.

The Ombudsman could have called witnesses, including anyone who had been subject to the Code of Service Discipline during the events of the Captain Father Angus McRae affair.

Even though my father is dead now, had the Ombudsman conducted an inquiry while my father was still alive it would have been fun asking my father to explain just exactly who the hell was looking after his children from 1977 until 1981 if he was always away on training exercises and his wife had “abandoned the family” years prior. Was he letting his children run feral on a military base? Did he just drop his kids off at a random neighbour’s house for 6 weeks while he went and played soldier out in the woods?

The Ombudsman could have made recommendations to DND and the Canadian Forces so far as how to deal with the survivors of the Captain McRae fiasco.

But I can see why the Minister of National Defence would have declined the Ombudsman the permission to review the matter.

This would have been far too risky for DND.

If this matter had been reviewed by the Ombudsman, and news of this review made it to the media, how many other former military dependents would come forward with their allegations against DND and the CF?

Would the Ombudsman have made the formal recommendation that any and all child sexual abuse matters be formally handed over to the civilian police?

Would the Ombudsman make the recommendation that the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence hire an independent investigation firm to conduct a completely independent and arm’s length investigation looking at how many children were sexually abused on the bases from 1950 until the present day?

Would the Ombudsman make recommendations that Parliament pass the required legislation to nullify the effects of the pre-1998 3-year-time-bar flaw and the Summary-Investigation flaw for matters that could be considered to be child sexual abuse?

There’s just far too much risk for the Minister to allow the Ombudsman to go digging into the MIlitary’s copious dirty laundry.

And I know from speaking with various investigators with the Office of the Ombudsman that the Ombudsman has been fighting for even more independence from the Canadian Armed Forces and not having to rely on the permission of the Minister of National Defence to conduct investigations that look at historical matters which occurred prior to when the Office of the Ombudsman was created in the late ’90s.

Trauma Counselling……

falling through the cracks again.

If there’s one thing my current nurse practitioner doesn’t seem to understand is how difficult it is for me to find trauma counselling.

I had “counselling ” from October of 1980 until January of 1983.

This involved a military social worker, Captain Terry Totzke, convincing me that I was responsible for what happened to me on CFB Namao, that it was my fault that P.S. abused my younger brother, and that I was a homosexual for having allowed the abuse to go on for so long.

Now, the thing is at the time I didn’t realize that Captain Totzke was in the Canadian Forces.

When I became involved with Pat, Wayne, Aviva, and Mrs. Washylesko in the spring of 1982 Terry would often tell me that I couldn’t trust these people. My father often took the same tack as Terry. Terry and my father were adamant that I had to watch what I was saying to Pat, Wayne, Aviva, and Mrs. Washylesko as they’d twist what I had said to them and use my words against me.

My father would often refer to Pat as a “stunned cunt”. Wayne was a “fucking cock sucker”. As I grew older I began to realize that Richard referred o a lot of people like this. Anyone he didn’t agree with was usually labelled with these epithets.

And here I was from 9 years of age until 11 years of age caught in a war with my military social worker and my father on one side and my civilian social workers on the other side.

At home any punishment I received was blamed on Pat or Wayne telling my father that he had to punish me. Of course I know now that that was an absolute lie. But still, when you’re that young you don’t understand that your father can be a liar with psychiatric issues.

So here I find myself in the year 2021.

My nurse practitioner wants me to find a counsellor that I can talk to.

The first counsellor that he suggested had a magical waitlist that just kept getting longer and longer the more detailed my issues became.

This counsellor referred me to a second counsellor. This second counsellor said that I would need specialized trauma counselling.

Fair enough.

The problem is though, I come from a military family.

A military family that lived on military bases during the ’70s and the ’80s.

An era when mental health issues were denied. An era where mental health issues were seen as personal failures and weaknesses.

An era where psychiatrists were seen as “head shrinkers” and “fucking quacks” and “feel good friends for pussies”.

Counsellors, psychologists, and psychiatrists were not viewed too nicely by military personnel back then.

So, put yourself in my shoes.

You try to find a “trauma counsellor” and this first problem that you run into is that most people won’t believe a single word you have to say. Sexually abused children on military bases? Get outta here! Next you’ll be trying to tell me that the moon is made out of cheese.

And then there’s the magical, mystical, chakra cleansing counsellors. The ones who know you can improve your life with lavender and candles.

The counsellors that I like the best are the ones who are certain that if you try hard you can come to term with your past, and if your don’t it’s because you’ve failed.

Which trauma do I work on first:

Intergenerational trauma that started with my grandmother and passed on down through my father which resulted in both being rage fuelled alcoholics?
The year and a half of sexual abuse at the hands of my 14 – 15 year old babysitter who had also been delivering me to Captain McRae at the base chapel?
The two and one-half years of “counselling” and conversion therapy at the hands of military social worker Captain Terry Totzke?
The sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach?
The sexual abuse at the Dennison Armouries?
Living with my emotionally unstable father until my 16th birthday?
Being attacked by Jacque Choquette in the basement of our house on Canadian Forces Base Downsview while Richard looked on with complete indifference?
My father’s periodic threats to end my life. There’s a reason why when I was interviewed by the psychologist hired by Captain Totzke in October of 1980 that I said that I was terrified of my father drowning me in a toilet. In the aftermath of CFB Namao he made a couple of threats. His most serious threat was in the spring of 1982 when Sue was threatening to leave. He said that if Sue left him that he stuff my brother and I into a duffle bag and that no one would ever find us.
The beatings and the spankings. I guess it’s true, you never fuck with a man’s military career.
Richard’s constant beratement for “not looking after my brother and not raising my brother properly”.
Richard’s drinking prior to Sue.
The three cars crashes when Richard was DUI.
Richard’s meltdown on CFB Summerside when he destroyed everything in the basement.
Grandma’s drinking while she lived with us.
There’s the guy in Toronto who tried to strangle me in his car when I was about 15.
And many many many more other issues.

There’s so much shit that went wrong. Where to start?

Hot tantric yoga therapy isn’t going to do anything.

Chanting mystical psalms isn’t going to do anything.

Fuck, I can’t even get the military to admit that Captain McRae and P.S. were up to no good on that base because DND and the CF are fearful of civil actions.

It’s always going to be me, the kid who made is 14 year old babysitter molest him and his younger brother. I’m always going to be the guy that didn’t raise his brother properly and who allowed the babysitter to molest his younger brother, who was accused of giving his younger brother drugs which caused his brother to have a seizure. Sure, I know now that Richard was a dysfunctional parent who took absolutely no responsibility for his own family, blamed others for problems with his family, and expected others to solve the problems with his family. But I’m the guy who lived through all of Richard’s bullshit. Richard’s bullshit is burnt into my brain.

Dancing around with magical crystals isn’t going to undo what Richard did.

Writing poems and painting trees and Suns isn’t going to remove P.S. from my memory. Fuck, after watching what he would do to the other kids, that shit’s burnt into my brain. You can’t watch what he did to your own brother and not have issues from that. It’s one thing when he does it to your own body. You can “go to a different place” and not be there. But to watch it, and watch what he victims were doing, you can’t erase that, you can’t block it out.

Even though I was given wine in McRae’s rectory, it doesn’t take an over active imagination to realize what was happening there. You don’t give a 7 or 8 year old child a tumbler full of wine just because you want to be the cool Padre on base. You give that 7 or 8 year old kid wine because you don’t want him to remember you sticking your fingers up his arse. Or that you gave him a blow job. Or that you put your penis in his intoxicated mouth.

And to say that dealing with the Canadian Armed Forces over the last 10 years hasn’t been a trauma all on its own would be a lie. I’ve never seen such a dishonest organization that is hellbent on keeping secrets a secret no matter the cost. The fact that someone decided to erase the fact that my grandmother raised my brother and I from 1977 until 1981 is pretty un-fucking-believable.

So yeah.

There’s just so much fucking wrong upstairs.

And no one is willing to help.

Psychiatric Help

I’m not everyone’s cup of tea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, my journey for a counsellor continues.

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

A lonely existence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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