Category: Uncategorized

Well, it’s vacation time again.

When I first entered the wonderful world of full time work after I left the house at 16 vacation time would always cause me panic.

Sure, vacation time was mandated by law. But I always felt ashamed for taking it, like somehow I was stealing.

Probably had a lot to do with my father always chiding me for being a lazy fucking asshole.

And as the years went on my anxiety would get the best of me and I’d be certain that my employers were going to use my vacation time to replace me and that when I’d come back from vacation I’d find my job gone.

You would think that in 36 years that I’ve lived on my own that I would have gone somewhere on a trip.

Nope.

Going camping or going on trips wasn’t something that Richard was in to. I don’t ever remember going anywhere with him on vacation. Well, there was the one trip to Jasper, but that turned into a disaster as Richard just couldn’t fucking relax and chill. It was like the fucker was on drill 24/7.

Anyways, just never went anywhere.

Well, there was the one time in the summer of 1984 when my brother and I were staying with our grandmother in Edmonton and she took us on a two-way bus ride from Edmonton AB to Terrace BC to see our uncle Norman. I’ll save this for another post.

And no, the summers spent with grandma in 1984 and 1985 don’t count. Those weren’t vacations. Those were just Richard offloading his parental responsibilities onto his mother.

Starting back in 2013 I went places. In Canada, but still I went places and stayed in backpacking hostels.

Even though these trips were done during my “vacation” time, these were anything but vacations. I had to go places to get documents and look through archives.

Which brings me to this year.

I have two trips planned this year.

The first trip is by train. Just out to Toronto and back. 4 days to Toronto, 1 night in Toronto, and then 4 days back to Vancouver.

I booked this trip last year just after I had booked my doctor’s appointment to make my formal request for Medical Assistance in Dying. I figured that after making the formal application that I was going to need some time off work to let the gravitas of my decision settle in.

Well, as we all know, the government caved to the demands of various American evangelical dark money funded astroturfing groups. Hopefully this only delays M.A.i.D. for one more year.

I’m still gonna take the train trip.

Not my first time on a train. Back in the spring of 1989 when Ed loant me out to Barry in Timmins Ontario for the summer to help Barry with his video game route I took the Ontario Northlander to Timmins from Toronto.

Next time I’d take a train was in the summer of 2014. I flew to Ottawa to deliver a letter to the Minister of National Defence at NDHQ. On the spur of the moment I took the train to Montreal for a couple of days.

But yeah, this will be the first time taking the train and sleeping on it. Didn’t have enough money to splurge on a private room so I’ve got a sleeping berth. This ought to be interesting.

Am I going to reconsider my desire for MAiD? Will I suddenly discover the meaning of life? Will the trauma from my past magically evaporate?

No.

But I need something to kill the time.

This train trip really wasn’t a “bucket list” thing, but I’ll include it on my bucket list.

The matter is still with the lawyers, and it does seem to be moving forward.

The Department of Justice has indicated that the government would like to settle this matter out of court.

The DOJ is no longer objecting to me being the representative plaintiff due to my very public desire to obtain Medical Assistance in Dying at the conclusion of this matter.

The DOJ is even entertaining the inclusion of base brats that may have been abused by Captain McRae and his “agents” on previous posting such as:
Canadian Forces Station Holberg on Vancouver Island;
Canadian Forces Base Portage La Prairie in Manitoba;
Canadian Forces Base Kingston in Ontario from when McRae was at the Royal Military College at Kingston.
And any other base or station that Captain McRae may have been stationed at during his brief career in the Canadian Forces.

The feeling that I get is that the DOJ would like to exclude the children abused by McRae’s “agents” if they can.

“Agents” are the older kids that Captain McRae abused and groomed and in then in turn used these “agents” to bring younger children to visit with Captain McRae.

In my case I can remember five very distinct visits to the rectory at the base chapel. Each visit ended with me being given a tumbler full of what I remembered at the time as being a “sickly sweet grape juice”.

I have no memories of what happened after the “grape juice”.

I don’t even remember how I got back home after the visits.

And no, there would have been no one at home who would have noticed that their 7 – 8 year old charge was shitfaced drunk as both of his guardians were piss-tank alcoholics. My father was rarely home, and my grandmother was usually in the city on the weekends visiting with her husband in the nursing home, at the Rosslyn Inn drinking, at the Canadian Legion drinking, or just pissed drunk in the PMQ.

And yes, it doesn’t matter that I lived on a Canadian Forces Base in housing for military families. Dysfunctional families existed in the military community just as they existed in the civilian world. But unlike in the civilian world, it was very hard for the children of these dysfunctional military families to receive any type of assistance as the military communities on base were the epitome of the “company town”.

For instance, when my family was shuffled off from CFB Namao in the aftermath of the Captain McRae fiasco the teachers at the school for the children of military families ob CFB Griesbach brought my brother and I to the attention of the military social worker.

When our teachers brought us to the attention of the civilian social workers with Alberta Child and Family Services, the military social worker didn’t cooperate. The military social worker ran interference and acted to stymie our civilian social workers.

But back to the matter of “agents”.

The DOJ is trying to argue that the Government of Canada should only have to pay damages to those for whom Captain McRae was charged with molesting and that no damages are owed to the victims of the “agents” or the victims of Captain McRae who were drugged or intoxicated prior to their sexual abuse.

Remember that in my case when the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service conducted their investigation into my complaint against Captain McRae’s agent “P.S.” the CFNIS had in their possession the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the 1980 court martial transcripts that indicated:

• that the investigation into Captain McRae was commenced as a result of the base military police investigation of Captain McRae’s teenaged “agent” that had been accused by numerous parents on the base of sexually assaulting their pre-pubescent children.
• that Captain McRae admitted to the military police in 1980 that he took boys into the rectory of the chapel, gave them beer, wine, and alcohol, and then took them into the bedroom and “messed around with them”.
• That during McRae’s court martial, his defence officer tried to use the fact that his “agent” P.S. had molested numerous children on base as a way to discredit the testimony of “P.S.”
• That P.S. was in fact receiving treatment for his sexual attraction to children.
• And that Captain McRae had confessed during his ecclesiastical trial with the Archdiocese of Edmonton that he had abused children for numerous year.

Yet, during the 2011 Canadian Forces National Investigation Service investigation the CFNIS was hellbent on the following:

• Portraying me as a “societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military”
• Portraying me as someone who frequently jumped from job to job and was unable to hold down steady employment and therefore I was only doing this for money.
• Changed statements that I had given to them such as when I told master corporal Christian Cyr about the five visits to the chapel ending with the “sickly sweet grape juice”, master corporal Cyr entered into his log books that “Mr. Bees remembers going to visits at the chapel, but that nothing sexual ever occurred”
• Master corporal Christian Cyr would try to convince me that I was confused and that I didn’t know what I was talking about in relation to the chapel as his insisted during our various telephone calls that the chapel I indicated to him didn’t exist in 1980, and no military chapel on that base ever had a rectory, and that the military chaplain never lived on base. The CFSIU paperwork from 1980 clearly indicates everything that I told him about the chapel was true. So did the blueprints that I obtained of the chapel.
• Investigators with the CFNIS tried their utmost to convince me that I was “misremembering things”. For example they tried their damndest to convince me that there was no house fire at PMQ #26 in the summer of 1980 and that I was attributing a fire from a different base to my memories of 1980. It turned out that the CFNIS had the Canadian Forces Fire Marshal’s paperwork for the June 23rd, 1980 house fire that did $56k (1980) dollars in damage to a house worth $75k (1980) dollars and that a construction engineer suffered a fatal heart attack during the fire while trying to shut off the natural gas.
• Warrant officer Blair Hart told the Morinville RCMP in July of 2011 that the investigation into my complaint was likely to go nowhere due to a lack of evidence. This was well before the CFNIS had tried to talk to any of the other victims / witnesses.
• The CFNIS removed all mention of my grandmother from the investigation, and never questioned my father about his failure to mention my grandmother when I supplied the CFNIS with my social service paperwork in which my father acknowledges that my grandmother was brought into his house to raise my brother and I after our mother “abandoned” us.
• The CFNIS had access to the CPIC of P.S. that indicated that he had numerous charges between 1982 and 1999 that were for sexual crimes against children. Even still, on November 4th, 2011 Petty Officer Steve Morris called me and told me that the CFNIS “just couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that P.S. was capable of the crimes that I had accused him of”.

Why would the CFNIS do this? Why would the CFNIS go all out to ridicule and belittle a victim of childhood sexual abuse?

No matter the PR spin that the Canadian Armed Forces like to give the public, the CFNIS are NOT independent of the Chain of Command.

The Minister of National Defence has unfettered command authority over the CFNIS via the military chain of command.

The VCDS is only a step or two away from the Minister of National Defence.

It is extremely concerning that the National Defence Act gives the Vice Chief of Defence Staff the ability to advise and issue instructions to ANY CFNIS investigation.

Yes, the Provost Marshal is supposed to notify the public of this advisement or of the directions, but the VCDS also has the authority to issue “lawful” commands to the Provost Marshal, such as to NOT release this information to the public.

Remember, under the National Defence Act that the penalty for “Insubordination” which is to disobey a “lawful” command from a superior is “Life in prison or a lesser sentence”. The Provost Marshal is subject to this, so is the CFNIS chain of command as are the investigators with the CFNIS.

No civilian police officer in Canada or for that matter anywhere in the western world faces life in prison for disobeying the commands of their superiors.

The only place you find civilian police officers under this type of threat are in third world dictatorships or in goon-thug theocracies.

I mention this for two reasons.

First is that in February of 2016 I met with then Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan at his constituency office on Victoria St. in Vancouver. Mr. Sajjan spared no time in accusing me of “playing games” and of “having an angle” insinuating that I was just trying to milk the Canadian Forces for some easy money.

Second is that the DOJ will rely heavily upon the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service to conduct investigations into the victims of Captain McRae and his various “agents”. I have no doubt that the CFNIS will conduct investigations in such a manner as to minimize the number of victims of Captain McRae and to totally prevent the establishment of a valid connection between Captain McRae, his various agents, and the children abused by those agents..

The Canadian Armed Forces are in a public relations battle with the general public. The CAF have been in a PR battle for a very long time. This is why in 1980 the court martial of Captain McRae was moved in-camera and why the number of charges against McRae were minimized and why the Canadian Forces refused to call the RCMP in to deal with the pedophile babysitter. It was a PR battle then, and it’s a PR battle now.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/military-leaders-told-sex-misconduct-scandal-was-a-pr-war

Can you imagine how the Canadian Public would react if it were to discover that the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence have been aware for a very long time of the problem of child sexual abuse in the military communities on base and how the chain of command would rather bury the victims instead of punishing the offenders, all for the optics of public relations.

Or for that matter, can you imagine how upset the general public would be to discover that victims of male-on-male child sexual abuse were treated as homosexuals and were given life altering “conversion therapy” at the hands of the Canadian Forces military social workers?

Where would I be right now if Master Corporal Christian Cyr had kept his fucking mouth shut on May 3rd, 2011 and never asked me about Captain Father Angus McRae?

I never would have discovered the connection between Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae and his teenage accomplice, P.S..

I would never have discovered that my father and my mother were both having emotional problems right from the word go and that the IWK Children’s Hospital wanted to bring my family to the attention of social services.

I never would have obtained my social service records and discovered that I was in foster care in Edmonton, AB. Or that I had been diagnosed with some very serious issues as a child but that I was actively prevented from receiving treatment for these issues.

I never would have discovered that Terry was actually Captain Terry Totzke and that he was a military social worker in the Canadian Armed Forces.

I never would have discovered that the “special school” in Edmonton that I went to wasn’t for “homosexual” children, but was instead a program for severely emotionally disturbed children from dysfunctional families.

I never would have discovered that a licenced psychologist and my child case workers had described my father and being irresponsible, unable and unwilling to take responsibility for his family, and prone to lying.

I would never discover that the true reason we left Edmonton is a hurry back in April of 1983 wasn’t because my father wanted to “save me” from the drugs the doctors wanted to give me to stop me from being attracted to other boys but was actually because Alberta Social Services wanted to place me into foster care or residential care which would have potential caused two problems. The first problem is that I might have started talking about the babysitter from CFB Namao once I was removed from my father’s care and no longer living in fear of him. The second problem that my removal from Richard’s care risked exposing was that fact that my father didn’t have legal custody of my brother and I and that by moving us from Prince Edward Island to Alberta without permission from our mother he in legal fact had kidnapped us.

I never would have come across the existence of a report from 2000 that looked at the “Canadian Forces response to Spousal Abuse in Military Families” which acknowledged that members of the Canadian Armed Forces could use the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations to have their spouse thrown out of the military housing due to their status as a civilian on a military base once the marriage started to breakdown.

I never would have obtained my social services paperwork from the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto.

I would never have discovered the two pre-1998 flaws that existed in the National Defence Act which actively prevent persons who were molested by persons subjected to the Code of Service Discipline prior to 1998 from ever receiving justice for their sexual abuse.

I never would have discovered that prior to November of 1997, the commanding officer of the accused and NOT a military prosecutor would determine which charges, if any, that their subordinate would face after an investigation by the base military police or the CFSIU.

I never would have discovered that an officer of the Canadian Armed Forces can direct any CFNIS investigation even though this officer is not a Peace Officer and is not required to have any law enforcement experience.

I never would have witnessed first hand just how hobbled police review agencies are and just how limited their powers actually are.

I would never have discovered that the screening process for members of the Canadian Armed Forces were so lax in the 1970s and the 1980s that an active pedophile under investigation by the Ottawa Police Service was able to join the Canadian Armed Forces and “disappear off the radar”. Even worse than that, this person’s criminal conviction in the military never showed up on their civilian criminal record and thus was never taken into consideration when this person was finally sentenced for his 1970’s offences in 2019.

How do I feel knowing all of this?

Does knowing all of this make me feel any better?

I should have known that something was up when I talked with my father all through August of 2006 about the babysitter. He knew the babysitter’s name. He begged me to understand that he had nothing to do with hiring the babysitter, that it was all grandma’s fault. That he had warned grandma not to hire him, but she kept hiring him. He even warned my that if I went to the police and started sticking my nose where it didn’t belong that I might not like the shit that I would smell.

Yes, I am well aware that I’m not responsible for what the babysitter did to my younger brother. Not in the slightest.

Did being molested by the babysitter and potentially Captain McRae make me a homosexual? Nope. Was the treatment I received from Captain Terry Totzke of any benefit to me? Fuck no.

But knowing all of this doesn’t undo the damage.

It doesn’t erase the memories of myself crying myself to sleep wishing that I would die in my sleep and never wake up.

It doesn’t erase the memories of Richard’s belts, backhands, kicks, or being slammed into walls.

It doesn’t erase the memories of my two attempts on CFB Griesbach or any of the attempts there after.

I’ll always remember crying on the phone as I called grandma long distance in Edmonton from the plaza on Keele St. begging her to let me come live with her because Richard was giving me some pretty bad beatings in the PMQ for “having fucked with his military career”.

Knowing that the military police, the CFSIU, and the military justice system were in such disarray prior to the Somalia Inquiry and that significant changes were enacted by Parliament in 1998 doesn’t erase any of the memories.

I still clearly remember most of the attacks at the hands of the babysitter.

I still remember the visits to the chapel and the “sickly sweet grape juice”.

I remember the babysitter escorting me into the sauna at the base pool to perform oral sex on a man who wasn’t Captain McRae.

I remember “temperature check” and other issues that I despised at the “homosexual school”.

And now I am fully aware how justice systems don’t work for the people who need them the most but instead work for the powerful and the elite in order to allow them to hide and control embarrassing situations.

Well, it looks like I’ve been sentenced to yet another year of this fucking existence.

The government caved to the desires of American astroturfers.

I gotta thank all of the American Dark Money astroturf financiers that sunk money into disrupting Canadian politics.

The American alt-right evangelicals have always tried their best to disrupt Canadian politics. They hate and despise our socialist leanings and the progressive ways of our government.

The idea that a fully grown adult could have their right to request the end of their life at the hands of a trained medical professional was too much for these fundies.

God loves suffering….. suffering is next to godliness.

So, they came to Canada and whipped up a frenzy of fear amongst the xtian fundies in this country and used “the disabled” as a prop in their war.

If M.A.i.D. for mental illness was allowed to proceed then apparently the government was going to start rounding up “the disabled” and would start murdering them in killing fields located outside of every city and every town across this country.

The actual argument put forth by the astroturfing fundies was that “the disabled” were going to kill themselves en masse instead of living in poverty.

And you can tell that this was a concerted effort by American evangelical fundies because the only thing being proposed was to not allow M.A.i.D. for mental illness to proceed. The evangelical fundies never once proposed raising the support rate for persons living with disabilities.

Why wouldn’t the American fundies suggest increasing support rates paid to the disabled?

That’s socialism.

Can’t suggest that.

But at least they can support not allowing M.A.i.D. for mental illness.

This doesn’t cost the tax payer money.

And if it increasing the amount of suffering, so be it, suffering is a bonus for the evangelical fundamentalist.

And don’t kid yourself, America has been influencing Canadian politics for an extremely long time.

Whether it be the rise of alt-right neo-conservative politics in this country, or the decimation of our public social programs, American think tanks can usually be found pumping the dark money into Canada.

You want to see evidence of American dark money?

https://sustainablesong.medium.com/revoke-the-fraser-institutes-charitable-status-bec03751567e

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2022/02/13/warning-bells-have-rung-for-years-over-the-risk-of-american-money-flowing-into-canadian-politics.html

American dark money has influenced Canadian politics for ages, and it will just end up getting worse in the future.

Canada had one chance to allow me to obtain the end of my suffering. Now I doubt if the government will ever bring this up again.