Uncategorized – Page 18

Special K

Well, it would appear that my brother didn’t die from heart disease or epilepsy.

Ketamine is more than likely what killed him. And this is why the medical examiner said that his death certificate wouldn’t be issued until after the toxicology tests.

The medical examiner said that he had some broken ribs, which would probably be the case with ketamine. He would have dropped like a stone. And he was about 230 to 250, more than enough to break a rib or two.

Apparently Scott had started snorting ketamine quite a few years ago. I didn’t even know that you could snort this shit.

I’ve seen ketamine injected a few times at work. The emergency department will call us up periodically to help out with patient issues. Twice I was involved with removing roofing nails from body parts. Once was through a foot, and once was through a knuckle. Both time I had to explain that you couldn’t simply pull these nails out using a claw hammer as the nails a nail gun fires usually have flutes on them to prevent them from pulling out. Both times I’d get the heads of the nails cut off and then the docs would get me to pull the nail through with vice grips while they stabilized the patient’s foot or hand. Both time, before pulling, the nursing staff would administer a small shot of ketamine into the patient’s IV and out like a fucking light and off to dream land in under 10 to 15 seconds.

Also, having served on the Occupational Health and Safety Committee we had to deal with the possibility drug addiction amongst staff. Years ago there was a nurse at VGH that had been helping herself to the partially used vials of ketamine. One day she grabbed a vial of a partially used paralytic agent and took it home and injected herself with it. It’s assumed that she died instantly as this paralytic agent would have stopped her breathing. Since then drugs like ketamine are controlled in that the unused portions must be returned to the pharmacy and the surgical staff are not allowed to place ketamine into the used surgical sharps containers of the surgical carts.

The person I spoke to at Scott’s condo said that Scott had been known to have started partaking drugs years ago. He started off with weed, then graduated to mushrooms, and somewhere along the line he started into “Special K”. Ketamine isn’t a hard drug to get on the streets. It’s known to be a recreational “clubbing drug” in which users try to enter the “k-hole”.

Like any drug, it has its downfalls. And one of those downfalls is overdose and then death.

The person who let me into Scott’s apartment explained how he came to be found. No one had heard from him for a few days. Then the occupant of the condo below his started to report stains on their ceiling and then a fluid. At about this time the residents on Scott’s floor stated to notice a smell of something rotting.

The Edmonton Police Service was summonsed to do a wellness check.

A lot of force was applied to open the door.

It’s an older building that used to be apartments. It looks like at some point in time the apartment was changed from rental to condominium and Scott had purchased a suite for about $30k.

It was a mess, and not just from his death, but messy in general.

The stench of his decomposition was still heavy in the air. I don’t know how you ever get rid of that smell. This is one of the reasons that I want MAiD. I couldn’t kill myself knowing that I’d leave this type of mess behind and fuck the people up who found me. Sure, Scott didn’t mean to kill himself, but the damage was staggering .

The flooring from around where he fell had to be removed. His body has obviously gone through algor mortis, livor mortis, rigor mortis, and then into bloating, and finally decay.

The white marks on the trusses are where his fluids seeped in and couldn’t be removed. You can also see the drywall that had to be removed as it was damaged.

He was a heavy smoker, and a drinker from the looks of it.

The Gill family and alcohol are a deadly combination. Grandma was a prolific alcoholic. Her son, my father, was a piss tank alcoholic. I don’t know what Scott’s drinking level was but I was never willing to play with the alcohol gods.

Growing up in a military family living on military bases, both Scott and I started smoking at a young age. I started smoking when I was 13. Scott was already smoking before I was which meant that he started around 11. And I think it would be fair to say that about 40 percent of early teens on Canadian Forces Base Downsview were smoking. Smoking was a way to calm your nerves. With our father and stepmother we needed all the help we could get.

Richard didn’t care that we smoked in the PMQ. His only rule was that we were never to touch his smokes, and if he ever ran out of cigarettes, we had to give him ours until he could go get a new pack. And there were lots of stores around base that were willing to sell smokes to kids.

I started smoking Player’s Extra Light just like Richard was smoking. Scott was smoking DuMaurier. I couldn’t figure out why until he told me it was so that Richard wouldn’t poach his smokes. I switched to Players Unfiltered.

I was up to two packs a day by the time I was sixteen. But that plummeted to less than a pack a day after I moved out of Richard’s PMQ.

I quit smoking when I was 25 and I haven’t smoked since. But it looks as if Scott wasn’t able to shake the cigarette habit.

What does concern me is the butane torch. Scott was no pastry chef, so it wasn’t like he was making crème brûlée, and I don’t think that he was using the torch to sear his steaks.

Was he using this for a water bong for weed, or was he cooking something a little harder with this? Guess I’ll have to wait for the toxicology reports.

I know that Scott had issues. I grew up in the same defective family that he did with the same defective parents that he did.

And having lived through what we lived through it’s no surprise that he had issues.

I’m no saint, but the one thing I was able to do was stay clear of drugs. The only needles that I’ve ever done for pleasure are my tattoos.

It’s obvious that for whatever reason, Scott wasn’t able to stay clear.

I know that there were indications when we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview that Scott was doing something, but neither Richard nor Sue seemed to concerned about it. They would literally lock themselves in their bedroom and spend the evening watching TV.

As Scott’s drug use seems to have ramped after 2011 when the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service contacted him for a witness statement. Was it bringing the past into the modern day that set him on the path to self destruction?

I know that in 2013 after I had given Richard his written examination for Federal Court, Richard had tracked Scott down and talked to him, Scott even admitted as much. And that’s when Scott started accusing me of letting the babysitter molest him, just as Richard and Captain Totzke had blamed me years ago. Did Richard lie to Scott in 2013? Did Richard tell Scott the “official Canadian Forces approved version” of what happened from 1978 to 1980?

When it was revealed in 2020 that I had told the absolute truth about the whole CFB Namao affair and that it was in fact a much larger scandal than just Captain McRae having consensual homosexual sex with the 14 year old babysitter, did this shatter Scott’s world as Richard had built it for him?

Doesn’t matter much now, does it?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I’ll never understand why I didn’t get addicted to drugs, be it booze, pot, opioids, etc. Why Scott got addicted and I didn’t is always going to be a fucking mystery. We both grew up is the same fucked up dysfunctional military family living on military bases. We both lost our mother due to abuse of military procedures. We both got sexually abused and swept under the rug by defects in the National Defence Act.

I have no one to impress, but then either did Scott. I don’t have a “dad” that I always wanted to impress, and neither did Scott. I couldn’t give a flying fuck what Sue has to say, and I don’t think Scott cared for Sue either. And Marie was never around. This is why I really want to donate my brain to science after I die.

If my brain can offer clues as to why someone who went through the shit I went through never got addicted to drugs, then giving my brain to science would be worth it.

Interesting day

So, I flew up to Edmonton from Vancouver this morning.

Very quick flight.

Never have flown on an Airbus before, but now I did get to hear the infamous Airbus Barking Dog noise. And as I was over the wings it was quite loud. It’s nothing to be worried about, it’s just a hydraulic pump trying to equalize the pressure between two different hydraulic circuits.

I was waiting for the 747 bus to take me from YEG to one of the LRT stations.

While I was waiting a fellow passenger came up to me and introduced herself.

She said that she had loaded my blog onto her phone and read the blog on the flight.

Skye had discovered my blog when she googled my name that I have on my carry-on luggage.

It’s odd, outside of a few people related to the CFB Namao matter, and outside of a very select few people in Vancouver, no one has ever come up to me to talk about my blog.

She offered to drop me off on her Uber ride into Edmonton and she kept apologizing the whole time reassuring me that she wasn’t a stalker.

So, we talked on the way up to Edmonton. I’m sure the Uber driver thinks that I’m insane.

Skye had just come back from Australia. She’s actually a conductor for one of the railways, can’t remember if she works for CP or CN. She took some time off work to help her sisters run the family lumber mill after her father died a few years ago.

We’ll probably meet up for coffee or lunch in the next day or two.

I didn’t get much sleep last night, too many things ruminating in my skull to let me have a decent sleep last night.

Shout out to my stepmother Sue for not wanting to help out with this, Richard would have been so proud of her.

I’m almost 100% certain that Scott didn’t have a will. The police didn’t indicate that they found anything of the such.

So the first thing I have to do tomorrow is go pick up his ashes and his personal belongings from the crematorium. The I guess I’ll have to go to his apartment and see what’s up there and see if there’s any paperwork indicating what his finances were like. If he had a financed or leased car I’ll probably have to make arrangements for the dealer to come pick it up. I’ll see if there’s any documents and paperwork or photos of interest that I want and then the rest of his belongings will be going to wherever.

And then I’ll fly back to Vancouver.

In the meantime I’ve ridden around the city on the little Lime Scooters. Those things are a blast. They’re a lot more sketchy and jittery than my Segway scooter, but in a way that lends an interesting quirkiness to them.

I don’t know what I’ll do with Scott’s ashes. I could put them inside of a Jack-in-the-box and send the Jack-in-the-box to the Chief of Defence Staff.

alt text: Executive assistant to the CDS turns the crank while the CDS awaits.

I could go up to Edmonton Garrison and sprinkle his ashes at our old PMQ and other places around the base.

alt text: Bobbie sprinkles Scott’s ashes on a Defence Establishment while unimpressed CFNIS investigator stands around.

Anyways, enough for today.

I gotta go find some place to grab a bite to eat.

Luckily Whyte Ave is just a block away.

Flights are booked

So, the flights are booked. The crematorium has been paid.

I leave Vancouver at 08:30 on Sunday and fly back from Edmonton on Thursday at 06:00.

I don’t know what I’m going to do once I get to Edmonton. Probably go check in at the crematorium first to see what they have. Next I’ll be heading off to Scott’s apartment to see what needs to be taken care of there.

Never really had any plans of stopping back in Edmonton, but I guess life throws a curve ball every now and again.

I’ll be staying at Hostelling International just south of Whyte Ave.

Should be able to get around by the LRT, bus, and by foot.

The last time that I was in Edmonton was in 2013. Prior to that I was in Edmonton in 2003. Prior to that I was in Edmonton from 1990 until 1992. And then prior to that I was in Edmonton from August 1978 until April 1983.

Scott and I also spent the summer of 1984 and 1985 staying with our grandmother. Wasn’t our choice.

I’ll have to go see my brother’s apartment and see what I can make of his paperwork. Hopefully this doesn’t turn into a nightmare with creditors and such. If he was leasing a car or bought a car with a loan, I guess this goes back to the dealer.

I’ve already told the landlord that they can dispose of furniture, clothes, and other miscellaneous materials, but that I want access to any computers, paperwork, statements, etc. that might be in the apartment.

Probably have some paperwork to sign off with the Edmonton Police Service. And might have some paperwork to sign with the Medical Examiner’s office.

I always thought that I was going to die long before he did. But I guess he won the race and beat me to the escape first.

Still sucks that he didn’t even get an apology from the Department of National Defence or the Canadian Armed Forces for what they had subjected him to as a child.

Sick humour time……………

Skeletor always had choice observations.

What a weird week.

Never had to make cremation arrangements before, but here I am.

Gotta take some time off work next week to fly up to Edmonton to go through my brother’s paperwork to see what comes next.

Air Canada has bereavement flights.

I gotta book a hotel room for a few nights, the sad thing is that Edmonton is not a very transit friendly city. The good thing is my brother’s apartment seems to have been located near an LRT stations, so as long as I book a hotel near the LRT I should be okay.

The cremation facility is going to take care of notifying all of the required government agencies and credit bureaus. If he’s financed a car guess I’ll have to tell the dealership to come pick it up.

As I said previously, contact between by brother and I has been almost as non-existent as contact between my father and I.

I honestly don’t know very much about him, where he worked, what his hobbies were, etc.

But, that’s the way that Richard raised us.

I once told Scott that we pretty well lived feral on the bases and he chuckled about that.

And it wasn’t that Richard was just a neglectful and absent parent.

Richard loved to play mind games. It was my fault whenever Scott got into trouble, and it was Scott’s fault whenever I got into trouble. I guess that men like Richard will do anything to avoid taking responsibility for their issues.

And Richard saw absolutely no problem with allowing his mother to live on base to raise my brother and I. She was a woman that he described to Alberta Social Services as being “extremely cruel to his children, especially when she was drunk, which was frequent”. But he was okay with that as that meant that he didn’t have to personally spend time raising his kids.

So Scott and I grew up in a household where you kept your back turned to the wall at all times so that you didn’t get attacked from behind in a surprise ambush.

There were no emotions to be expressed as kids least Richard or Grandma would rage out. And on military bases, whenever the parents or guardians were raging out it was obviously because the kids deserved it.

So yeah, Scott and I spent as much time out of the PMQ and as far away from each other as possible as kids so that one wouldn’t catch the beating the other was receiving. Beatings, beratings, and derision were common place things in our household. Well, truth be told, in the military company towns that the PMQ patches were, child abuse and child neglect was rampant, it’s just that the Canadian Armed Forces had its way of “washing the laundry” in house so that no one on the outside world would ever learn about what was going on in the closed military family communities that were isolated from pubic view.

The Edmonton Police Service constable who is handling Scott’s file has agreed to try to contact my stepmother Sue to let her know about Scott.

I’m the only one left

On Tuesday evening I was about to settle down on my bed and watch some Netflix before going to bed.

As I was about to lay down there was a rapid knock at the door. I walked over to the door and opened the peephole but I couldn’t see anyone so I said “Hello?”

A voice answered back ” Hi, this is the Vancouver Police Department, we’d like to talk to you, you’re not in any trouble”

I opened the door.

The one constable introduced himself and he asked me if I knew why they were here.

I invited them in.

I told the one constable that I was pretty sure that it had something to do with my brother as just about everyone else in my family was dead.

He asked me what my brother’s name was and I told him.

He said that beforehe could tell me anything more that he’d need to check my ID. So I provided him with my ID. He said that the name on my ID card didn’t match what they had on record. So I told him my birth name.

He then said that he was sorry to inform me that Scott had been found deceased in his apartment. The last he had been seen was on August the 8th and the police had been asked to do a welfare check on the 13th. And Scott was found on the floor of his apartment.

I told the constable that I wasn’t surprised. Scott did suffer from Grand Mal Epilepsy and he also had five stents in his heart.

He asked me if I was going to be okay. I told him that I’d be fine. And I guess the way that I said this took him by surprise a little. So I gave him an extremely brief “Reader’s Digest” version of my dysfunctional family and how my brother and I only started talking in 2013 after I went to Federal Court for judicial review. I said that prior to that Scott and I really had no use for each other, and that was the way that Richard raised us.

Currently the Alberta coroner is conducting the autopsies and toxicology testing and once they’re finished they’ll give me Scott’s death certificate. The only thing the medical examiner has said so far is that Scott’s heart was pretty well plugged solid.

Once I have his death certificate I can go to Edmonton and check out his apartment to see what I want to keep, what can be donated, and what can go to the trash.

It also looks like I’ll have to figure out what to do with his body. Creamation is probably what I’ll end up giving him.

Then I guess I have to settle out his finances. I’ve never had to look after anyone’s affairs before so this ought to be interesting.

I’ll have to check to see if he had a will. If he’s like me, he probably lived day to day without any longterm plans for the future as quite honestly we never expected to have a future.

It’s just too bad that he doesn’t get to find out if we prevail against the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence. That’s one thing that he had been looking forward to.

Growing up as nothing more than glorified trailer trash living on Canadian Armed Forces bases in the hidden squalor of the PMQ patches with out of control alcoholism and angry men with untreated PTSD and other issues meant that life sucked for a lot of kids.

Sure, there were the good families on base, but more often than not they’d turn a blind eye to the dysfunction that was going on all around them.

When we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downview in Ontario, my father Richard pretty well abandoned Scott to the little thugs, wannbe gangsters, and outright shitheads that ran riot in the civie houses around the base.

As such, Scott was involved with the juvenile justice system in Ontario.

But, Richard just didn’t give a fuck.

As I said previously, Richard didn’t keep my brother and I because he loved us. Richard kept my brother and I because, as he told his friend Jacques one evening, “As long I they live under my roof, I control the costs. If I send to live with the bitch mother of theirs I may as well sign my paycheque right over to that cunt. And that’s not about to happen”.

The Canadian Armed Forces knew that they had a problem with spousal abuse. But the Canadian Forces turned a blind eye to it. When it came to child abuse and child neglect on the bases, the military did everything it could to pretend it didn’t happen.

Scott had tried to get on the right path over the years, but he always ran into the same ghosts from the past that I had. I think that once Scott realized just how horrible of a father Richard really was and how defective Scott’s childhood had been becuase of Richard, he started to change.

And so it goes, with Scott’s death I’m the last of the Gill / Waniandy clan.

The reality sets in.

I think that the reality of the situation is starting to set in for people that are involved with my matter.

The Department of Justice has access to the following documents:

All the CFSIU investigation paper work from 1980, this includes documents that have never been released to the public.
All of the 1980 correspondence between Colonel Daniel Edward Munro, his superiors and his subordinates.
All of the CFNIS GO 2011-5754 paperwork from 2011 and 2015 to 2018 including all paper work that was never released to the Military Police Complaints Commission in 2012.
All of the correspondence between myself, the Provost Marshal, the Chief of Defence Staff, and the Minister of National Defence.

In a court matter, the complainant and the defendant need to submit to the court the documents that they intend to use to argue their case. The DOJ doesn’t have to supply copies of the records that they used, but by reading the documents indicated above, the DOJ can formulate a plausible defence and they wouldn’t have to submit copies of what they have accessed to the court.

And the thing is that my lawyers would never have any idea of what the DOJ has accessed as we have absolutely no idea of what documents the Department of National Defence supplied to the Department of Justice.

Another issue that stymies my case and puts the sexually abused children from CFB Namao at a severe disadvantage is the spectre of the Official Secrets Act / The Security of Information Act.

There are those who will say that I am blowing things out of proportion with the Official Secrets Act / the Security of Information Act.

The Security of Information Act replaced the Official Secrets Act.

The Official Secrets Act specifically applies to ALL persons who were ever subjected to the Code of Service Discipline.

Section 4(1) states that anyone who was subject to the code of service discipline at the time they became aware of information while on a defence establishment is guilty of an offence if they ever tell anyone outside of persons they are authorized to pass that information on to.

“Having in his possession or control any secret official word” -comma- “password” -comma- “sketch” -comma- “password” -comma- “sketch” -comma- “plan” -comma- “model” -comma- “article” -comma- “note” – comma- “document” -or- “information that relates to or is used in a prohibited place”. The adjective “secret” applies only to “official word”. The commas do not apply the adjective secret to every subsequent clause.

In other words the first sentence of Section 4(1) reads as “Having in his possession or control any secret official word” or “password” or “sketch” or “password” or “sketch” or “plan” or “model” or “article” or “note” or “document” or “information that relates to or is used in a prohibited place”.

The first sentence of Section 4(1) DOES NOT read as “Having in his possession or control any secret official word” ,” secret password” ,” secret sketch” ,” secret password” ,” secret sketch” ,” secret plan” ,” secret model” ,” secret article” ,” secret note” ,” secret document” or ” secret information that relates to or is used in a prohibited place”.

What is a “prohibited place”?

Basically, any Canadian Armed Forces base in Canada is a prohibited place. Any chapel located on a Canadian Forces Base is a prohibited place. Any military police detachment located on a Canadian Forces Base is a prohibited place. Any CFSIU or CFNIS detachment is a prohibited place. Any private married quarters located on a defence establishment is a prohibited place. Any military social worker’s office located on a defence establishment is a prohibited place. Any school located on a defence establishment prior to 1994, would also be considered a prohibited place.

What is “information”? Information is not specifically defined in the Act, so I will go with the dictionary definition of “information”.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/information

Merriam-Webster defines “information” as “knowledge”, “intelligence”, “news”, “facts”, “data”.

So……… anyone who was an active member of the Canadian Armed Forces and who was subject to the Code of Service Discipline back in the period of time between 1978 and 1980 and knew about the exploits of Captain Father Angus McRae or the babysitter, or knew any of the details of the investigation, or knew why the brass didn’t call in the RCMP to deal with the babysitter, or knew who exactly it was that limited the charges against Captain McRae to only those charges related to the babysitter, is forever prohibited from discussing these facts or observances with anyone at anytime without the expressed permission of the Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of National Defence, and the Department of Justice.

This explains why Fred R. Cunningham had no problem telling me what he knew about the events in 1980, but shut his mouth pretty damn quick when I told the Provost Marshal in December of 2011 what Fred had told me in Nov of 2011. This is the same Provost Marshal that told me in January of 2012 that they couldn’t figure out who Fred Cunningham was and that I couldn’t put faith in what he had to say even though it would turn out that Fred Cunningham was the Acting Section Commander of the CFSIU in 1980 and was personally charged by Base Security Officer Captain David Pilling with investigating Captain McRae for “acts of homosexuality with young boys on the base”.

Fred even refused t0 be interviewed by the CFNIS in 2016 stating that he would only talk to the CFNIS if there were no records or recordings. The only thing that Fred did state as a matter of fact was that the “Provost Marshal threw the CFSIU to the dogs” in 1980. Reading the court martial transcripts and the CFSIU investigation paperwork, it appears that the Chain of Command was upset with the CFSIU for digging up more victims than was required.

If you’ve ever wondered why there aren’t more victims of military child sexual abuse from the military communities coming forward. It was all treated as a secret back then, and it’s all treated as a secret in the modern day with the people who could be our champions forever silenced by the Official Secrets Act and its very overly broad application to members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

It’s all my fault……..

The fun thing about being the chief engineer at work is that bad designs by professional engineers for projects that were put in well before my time in the Captain’s chair are somehow my fault.

Friday was a 17 hour day and Saturday was a 6 hour day dealing with the A/C for a freezer room that hadn’t been designed correctly from the start, had absolutely no redundancy, and had been packed with more biological -80 freezers than it was designed to accommodate.

Had to bring in 70 kW of emergency cooling to deal with the room. This emergency cooling was comprised of four 17.5 kW water cooled A/C units.

Water hoses all over the place distributing city water to the A/C units to cool the compressors in the A/C units with the warm water going down the drain.

Had to get electrical in to install four 208 volt 3 phase plugs for the A/C units.

These units got the room under control and are cycling on and off which means that they have ample cooling capacity. More than the four 12.5 kW split A/C units that are in the room.

When sizing mechanical refrigeration for an area, if the unit is running 100% of the time and it can barely maintain its set point, the unit is grossly undersized. If the unit only comes on for 5 minutes and shuts off again, the unit is grossly oversized. For a simple reciprocating compressor with no capacity control a 20 minute run cycle with 10 to 15 minutes off between runs is about right.

So, tomorrow I gotta propose a solution for this.

Most of the system I’ll design.

I’ll propose using either four water cooled 17.5 kW units or four water cooled 35 kW units. Four 35 kW units would give the best option for redundancy. If I can get them to spring for four 35kW units, then I can have N+1 redundancy with the ability to do Lead / Lag alternating with extra capacity for out-of-the-ordinary extreme days.

I’d have to get the appropriate fluid coolers for this setup. Again, nothing too fancy, just some adiabatic coolers. I could also get some air coils put into the air handler for the Emergency Department or the 2 East unit so that the heat from the freezer room could be used to pre-heat the fresh air in the cool weather thus reducing our steam bills for these two air handlers. When pre-heat isn’t required for the Emergency Department or the 2 East unit the adiabatic cooler would just reject the heat to the atmosphere.

Pipes would have to be installed up the side of the building, but they’re tearing the place down in about 6 years, so………. And I’ve always been a function over form type of guy. And it’s not like they’d look horrible. Probably be a pair of 76mm pipes.

So, we’ll see what I’m up for tomorrow when I get in to work.

Today’s Prompt…….

10 things that I know are absolutely certain.

The law doesn’t work much for everyone. The justice system in this country is not equal and is easily manipulated by those with agendas.
The idea of justice is an illusion meant to keep the working classes in line with the bullshit belief that if you work hard then things will work out in the end.
Religion is far too great of an opiate for the masses. Far too many people refuse to face reality and instead placate themselves with magical people with magical plans. God will fix this, Jesus will fix that.
Governments can become so big that as an institution it spends an inordinate amount of time protecting itself from the wrongs it, its employees, and its agents have caused.
People really don’t give a rat’s ass unless it directly affects them.
People would rather victim blame because it’s far much easier to blame the victim than it is to admit that society’s biases and blindspots led to the victim being injured or harmed.
Some parents can be outright shitheads that should have been sterilized at puberty.
Humans are not nearly as smart or advanced as we think we are.
Expecting people to simply forget the past and move on and stop whinging doesn’t work. Especially when there is no acknowledgement of the past events.
Death is peaceful. Death is also the great equalizer. Death is the relief from the pain of life.

And those are the ten things that I believe to be absolutely certain.

My ovaries………

Well, seeing as how I don’t have ovaries I have to get my estrogen the good ol’ fashioned way like nature intended.

Through a transdermal patch.

A trans on a trans………. I think I just made a joke?

I’ve noticed some changes so far.

But I’m still a few weeks away from the changes really becoming pronounced.

And this ain’t cheap. Those 8 packages are just over $30.00 each for 8 patches. That works out to $3.75 per patch.

The prescription calls for 4 patches per week, so those patches will last for 3.25 months. So in one year I’ll be looking at using 208 patches. This works out to about $800 per year. And that’s if I stay with the four 50 microgram patches per week. As I progress along my dosage will be increased. It could go up from 100 micrograms (two 50 microgram patches) up to a maximum of 400 micrograms (four 100 microgram patches). So yeah, this will get pretty expensive.

And no, this isn’t covered by provincial medical and it’s not covered by my Pacific Blue Cross insurance yet.

So, if you hear alt-right nutcases whinging on about “state subsidized trannies” or government paying to force transexuals on the rest of society there isn’t any such thing. There are special cases where the government will subsidize the cost of the medications, but this generally isn’t the case, at least not for me.

So, what am I?

Male, Female, or non-binary?

I definitely am not male. I’ve never really identified as male.

And NO, this so called “gender confusion” has nothing to do with the babysitter, McRae, or Totzke. I have honestly never identified with being a male. But the environment that I grew up in would never have allowed for the expression of an identity that did not match the junk between my legs.

Yes, there will be those who will scream that the civilian world was not much different than life in a military family living on a military base. And sure, the civilian world back in the ’70s and ’80s wouldn’t have been a cake walk for a trans kid, but……… in the civilian world there was no official order demanding that you rat out your co-worker or your neighbour. In the military community there was CFAO 19-20. And yes, CFAO 19-20 didn’t apply to military dependents directly, but it set the attitude of the members of the Canadian Forces that people who didn’t conform to sexual norms were mentally defective and a liability.

But, what will I identify as?

Me, I’m going to go with the letter “X”.

There are far too many areas in North America where identifying as a trans female isn’t legal, and travel wise there are some areas as well that don’t accept genders different from what you were born as. However, almost every jurisdiction will accept “X”.

And as I said, I’m not going for bottom surgery. I’ll get parts removed, but that’s it. I’m not getting things created. So in the end I’ll look like a Ken doll, but a Ken doll with breasts. And not as muscular or masculine……..

Washrooms? Thankfully most places have unisex / single washrooms. I haven’t ever encountered problems going to the men’s room in the lower mainland, or Iceland, or Washington state or Oregon. I suppose there is the possibility that this might change once my breasts start to become larger and more visible. Women’s room? Probably not. That’s far too much of a hornet’s nest for me to go poking just to take a piss. Even though I will eventually become a sitter and unable to use urinals, going into the women’s room will undoubtedly trigger some people, and I ain’t going there.

I think that’s enough for now.

Tomorrow will be a different day.

My DNA

To clear up some things about my DNA results, because I was directed to a CBC program by my brother.

I wasn’t aware that so many people don’t understand DNA and what the DNA results mean.

The first thing that needs to be made clear is that all of the DNA testing available on the consumer market is only as reliable as the sample pools.

My DNA results state that 15% of my DNA is shared in common with indigenous communities in North America. All this means that that 15% of my DNA is shared in common with those who have submitted DNA tests to Ancestry and who have self identified as indigenous. Due to the small sample sizes Ancestry will not be able to tell me which nation my DNA is derived from. To do that Ancestry would need a much more detailed pool to pull from.

This also why even though my father and his father identified as Irish, I only share about 3% of my DNA with persons who identify with being solely Irish.

This is where things get really murky with DNA results from England and Northern Europe. England will include a massive amount of Irish. Same thing with the Scottish. As England was conquered numerous times over the ages, and as England conquered its neighbours numerous times over the years it’s pretty easy to understand that there would have been migrations and marriages between the people of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, along with the Republic of Ireland.

Again, unless everyone alive in the UK and the Republic of Ireland took a DNA test you’re not going to be able to pinpoint my ancestry down to a specific village or a specific county.

My DNA results will not explain why I like to wear dresses or why I don’t identify as a male. There just simply isn’t enough DNA sampling coupled with clinical research. And DNA will never explain societal norms such as boys wear pants, girls wear dresses, pink is for girls, blue is for boys. And this is because societal norms are learnt behaviour, they’re not encoded in your DNA.

For instance up until the 1930s, pink was the boys colour as it was seen as being the diminutive of red and red of course was seen as being a man’s colour. Blue was for girls as it was seen as being dainty and delicate. Why it changed? Who know. But it changed around the 1930s and it seemed that it was large American retailers that decided that in American pink was for girls and blue was for boys.

Dresses for boys? Even in America as late as the early 1900s it wasn’t uncommon for boys to wear dresses until they were breached around age 7 or 8. Even historically in England boys wore dresses. There are portraits of English nobility and for the longest time researchers couldn’t figure out why the boys were never in the paintings, why it was always the girls. Not too long ago historians finally realized that some of these “girls” were actually boys. And that the only way to tell the boys from the girls in these portraits is that the dresses worn by boys were plain and the boys weren’t wearing any type of jewellery where as the dresses worn by girls often had patterns or trims and the girls were always wearing bracelets, necklaces, or earrings.

Why aren’t boys in modern media and modern history depicted as wearing dresses or wearing pink? As is the case with war stories, things get cleaned up and adjusted to fit the modern narratives.

What DNA can tell you, but again without 100% certainty, is what type of genetic characteristics you will possibly express.
Are you ambidextrous?
Can you taste certain foods?
Do certain foods taste repulsive to you?
Are you double jointed?
Are you left handed?
Can you digest lactose?

Again, this is only as accurate as the number of samples that these DNA companies receive.

And as far as I know, these DNA companies all steer clear of known genetic markers for disease and disabilities. And this is because you can have markers for MS, or a particular kind of cancer, or for Down syndrome, etc. But just having these markers doesn’t mean that you will develop these issues nor does it mean that you will pass these genetic issues down to your offspring.

So no, DNA testing will never explain why I like dresses, or why I don’t identify as a male.

But what DNA testing will do to a certain extent is let me fill in my family tree.

I’ve already come across numerous connections for every branch of my tree except for the paternal side of my father side. The Gill tree is a complete dead end after Arthur Herman Gill. Maybe someday in the future someone from the Gill side of the family will submit a DNA test that will let me fill in Arthur Herman’s side of the family, but until then I’ve got numerous 2nd or 3rd cousins from the Gill clan in the Durham and Peterborough region of Ontario, but nothing yet that directly ties them to Arthur or his son Richard.