I know that this sounds like a morbid question, but I have a curiosity.
I imagine that as long as violence isn’t involved, and the death isn’t due to slow external or internal bleeding, that death should come on nice and peacefully.
I’ve had two incidents of syncope with elevated troponin levels in the last few years.
The dropping to the floor didn’t hurt.
The being unconscious didn’t feel like anything.
It didn’t hurt.
It wasn’t scary.
It was peaceful.
And then I came to.
Both times I was actually disappointed that I came back.
I can only hope that the dying process is as peaceful as the death.
I know that in the weeks, days, hours, and minutes leading up to my death that I will be anxious as hell.
I know that it’s going to be nerve racking climbing into my death bed.
And I know that it’s going to really be anxiety inducing feeling the midazolam starting to flow into my veins, knowing that I will soon come to the point of no return.
But, all I have to do is remember what depression feels like and what the memories of CFB Namao and CFB Griesbach do to me.
I really wish that there was some way that I could make you understand how being alive hurts.
The depression, the anxiety, the confusion, the numbness.
The memories of the neglect. The memories of the sexual abuse. The memories of the physical abuse. The memories of the mental abuse.
I never asked for any of this.
I never asked for life.
And I should have the right to say that enough is enough.
The opinions of the catholic church and other religious leaders should have no bearing on my request to end my life.
The point of my life is for me to enjoy my life, not to make you happy.
If I can’t enjoy my life, why should I be forced to endure this?
That’s one of the problems with being human.
I’m flawed.
But we’re all flawed.
We have two brains, our primitive brain and our prefrontal cortex.
The primitive brain looks after our basic reflexes and urges.
The prefrontal cortex looks after our higher functions, regulates the impulses of our primitive brain, and basically guides us on our daily struggles to be better than our fellow animals.
The prefrontal cortex as it turns out is very susceptible to stress and mental trauma. And when it becomes damaged it has an even harder time regulating our higher functions.
This is why frontal lobotomies were used to “cure” depression, anxiety, and other issues related to emotional wellbeing. A sharp instrument would be driven into the brain via one or both orbital sockets. The instrument would be moved back and forth, side to side, in order to sever the connection between the frontal cortex and the rest of the brain.
Yes, the procedure would often “cure” the ailments, but it would often leave the patient without the ability to feel any type of emotions, would leave patients apathetic and unmotivated. In worse cases the patient would become catatonic or even just die.
The prefrontal cortex is a relatively new feature in our primate brain. Our closest relatives, the Chimpanzee, which is a great ape, has a prefrontal cortex, but it is much smaller than the human prefrontal cortex.
Chimpanzees aren’t noted for committing suicide.
Humans do.
And quite frequently.
And with very imaginative techniques.
I think it’s just that the prefrontal cortex is too advanced for our primitive brain and it can’t deal with the human flesh and blood body that it is attached to.
When it becomes damaged due to trauma, neglect, or abuse, it is unable to cope properly anymore. It can’t properly regulate anxiety. It can’t properly regulate stress. And it can’t regulate depression.
Structures in the prefrontal cortex change. The prefrontal cortex then decides that dying and death are preferential to being alive.
And the prefrontal cortex makes this decision quite frequently.
It is estimated that around 700,000 people in the world commit suicide each year.
This of course doesn’t include suicide attempts. Nor does it include suicides that couldn’t definitely be proved to be a suicide. And of course sometimes the police / medical personal will avoid recording the death as a suicide to spare the family or loved ones of the deceased.
Who am I to say that the desire to die is wrong.
And is the desire to die really wrong?
Why do I have to live with the trauma that was gifted to me as a child?
Why do I have to live with the brain that was damaged due to neglect and psychological trauma?
Humans by nature, so I have learnt, are far from perfect.
Human brains are so delicate and so easily damaged.
I am far from perfect.
Trauma can destroy a brain.
I should know, mine is fucked.
Mine often feels like it is getting warm, and being crushed from within.
Brains, once traumatized, will never be the same.
No matter how hard you try, you’ll never forget how to ride a bicycle once you’ve learnt how to ride a bicycle.
No matter how hard you try, you’ll never forget how to skate on ice once you’ve skated on ice.
Once your brain has been traumatized you will never be the same.
There will be those that say “Well Bobbie, you’ll just have to try harder and just get over the past”.
Doesn’t work that way.
As I’ve said elsewhere, it wasn’t that people didn’t know about the abuse. People did know about the abuse. And the chose not to do anything about the abuse. And they chose to blame me for the abuse.
That fucked with me. That fucked with my brain.
And how your brain reacts to trauma is genetically set as well.
My mother had issues with anxiety to the point where she couldn’t care for me at times and I had to be taken in as a boarder at the hospital in Halifax.
My father had issues with depression to the point that he was returned to port by the Canadian Forces. Alcohol was his crutch. He was a happy drunk, and that’s why he drank. He only became a raging asshole when he was sober.
People commit suicide A LOT.
People will ALWAYS commit suicide.
According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, 4500 people die by suicide each year. That’s over 12 per day.
America had about 48,000 suicides in 2021
There’s only so much trauma one person’s brain can endure.
The human brain is hardwired to survive.
The fact that the human brain can also devise ways to kill itself indicates that the brain can only take so much stress and damage before it says that enough is enough.
And society has to understand that.
The human brain is a mushy blob of fat with a billion or so neurones that pass around signals by way of electrical and chemical processes.
Forcing people to endure hell is not right.
I get people at work that try to be friendly to me and try to cheer me up all of the time. It’s so fucking annoying.
I like to work because it keeps my brain distracted from its desire to die.
But with depression and anxiety I only have so much energy to give.
Yes, I snap at people.
Yes, I get pissed off at people.
Yes, I find people who talk to much to be annoying to the point that my brain feels like its on fire.
Yes, I am extremely forgetful.
Yes, I cannot remember faces and I get really fucking annoyed when people equate my knack for building automation with being too smart to forget faces.
My brain is damaged.
And I am tired.
With all that I have been through in life, and all that I have suffered through on my own, death is not a punishment.
My death is not an indication of my failure.
My death will be my release.
People have an irrational fear of death.
Death does not hurt.
Death is painless.
Death is peaceful.
Dying is the scary part.
And with all that I’ve been through, I think I deserve to be able to end my life when I want to and to have assistance with ending my life quickly and painlessly.
Sure, there are those who will claim that I am being selfish, and childish, and immature, and unthankful, not considerate of others, and going against god’s will.
Here’s an interesting tidbit. In the next 100 years, over 7.5 Billion people are going to die. The current estimate to date is that over 100 Billion people have died since humans began to walk the face of the Earth.
That’s a lot of death.
And yet the Earth still orbits around the Sun, our solar system still floats amongst other solar systems in the milky way, the milky way is one of an estimated two trillion galaxies in the universe.
My death will have no effect on any of this.
So far as god goes, god is a creation of humans.
God or the multitude of other gods have served as a crutch for humanity to explain things that couldn’t be explained and to justify things that are beyond justification.
Humans have always had an irrational fear of death.
It’s one of the curses of our intelligence.
We know we exist.
We know we are alive.
We also know that we die.
The human brain knows what it is like to be alive.
The human brain has no idea of what it feels like to not exist.
The human brain cannot imagine being dead.
Decaying and rotting corpses look bad and they smell bad.
But you have nothing to fear as once your brain is dead your corpse is just a piece of meat that can no longer maintain itself.
So the human mind creates heavens, hells, Xanadus and Valhallas and a plethora of other places in the “after life”.
And it creates gods to rule over those places.
Gods serve as a source of creation to explain where we came from.
Gods also serve as a source of comfort to take the fear out of death.
But then people become afraid of angering the gods that they have created.
And so every life is sacred.
Life on Earth is a gift.
You are an evil and flawed person if you want to take your leave early.
You will anger god.
God will cast you into a void or a lake of fire.
So suicide and medical assistance in dying become bad, and wrong, and evil.
Forcing people to endure mental trauma and mental anguish to keep the god crutch happy becomes the norm.
No one was around in 1978 to 1980 to stop Captain McRae and his teenaged accomplice.
No one was around when I was in the care of the military social worker.
No one was around when I had to endure my father’s wrath for “fucking with his military career”.
So you know what, you don’t get a say in my death.
And you don’t get to shame me, or chastise me, or ridicule me for choosing death over life.
I didn’t ask to be born.
I didn’t ask for this life.
I didn’t ask for the sexual, physical, and mental abuse.
I didn’t ask for the mental and emotional neglect.
It should be obvious that my family wasn’t close or tight knit.
But there is one person that I know absolutely nothing about, and that is Sue, my stepmother.
(l-r) Susan Gill (nee Zwolle) 1958 – 1959, Richard Wayne Gill (Not an Indian) April 1946 – Jan 2017 Taken in Morinville, AB in summer of 2003
I’m pretty sure that Sue and her two brothers Henry and Peter were born in Canada.
Sue’s parents had immigrated from the Netherlands after WWII.
They lived in a small house in Oshawa.
Sue’s house on Gibb Street. Oshawa, Ontario
Richard must have started going out with Sue sometime around the late summer of 1979 as my father had been involved with Vicki from Wetaskwin up until the summer of 1979. Or maybe there was somewhat of an overlap. We are talking about Richard.
At the time that Richard started going out with Sue, Sue was rooming with her friend Karen at an apartment building out by Londonderry Mall in east Edmonton.
Sue work for the Alberta Government Telephone system, or AGT for short.
To this date I have no idea of what her date of birth was or how old she was.
She was young enough that the female military police officer that lived next door to us in PMQ #69 on CFB Griesbach referred to Sue as my older sister and Richard as our father.
I did learn in the last few years that Sue was born in either 1958 or 1959, which would place her as being twelve or thirteen years older than me.
She was young when she came to live with us. When I say that I often referred to her as the old sister that I never wanted, I wasn’t being facetious.
I would also learn that Richard more than likely knew Sue long before Edmonton.
My father’s father, Arthur Herman Gill had started a new family in Oshawa, Ontario after he broke up with my father’s mother, Margret Mary Waniandy.
Arthur married a woman named Ladean and had two daughters. These were Richard’s step-sisters. Sue and the two step daughters went to the same high school.
Apparently Richard met Sue via his two step-sisters when he had visited his father in Oshawa sometime in the ’70s.
This is apparently what drove a wedge between Richard and his father and why even though we’d go visit Sue’s parents periodically in Oshawa, we never went to see Arthur Herman Gill after xmas of 1982.
I have no idea if Sue knew what she was getting herself into when she started dating my father. I don’t think that there is anyway she could have.
As I have said before, Richard was an accomplished liar and a master manipulator.
I have no doubt that Richard regaled Sue with tales of how his wife just up and abandoned him and his children for a guy name Gus from the PPCLI.
Richard probably also regaled Sue with tales of how the Canadian Armed Forces awarded him sole custody of his children because Marie had abandoned him and her children.
I also have no doubt that he forgot to mention to Sue that his mother was an emotionally disturbed Residential School survivor with a massive alcohol problem.
I have no doubt that Richard didn’t tell Sue that his kids were emotional basket cases due to the then current sexual abuse, emotional neglect, and physical child abuse they were enduring.
And I have no doubt that due to Sue’s young age, she had a certain naivety with men like Richard, she didn’t realize that she was falling into Richard’s trap.
I also have no doubt that she was pretty sure that she could fix whatever was wrong with Richard.
Ladies, here’s some advice. You can’t fix men like Richard. They’re fucking broken. Don’t waste your time. You’re not the misogynistic douchebag whisperer. You see a man like Richard coming, run the other way. You wanna fix something, get a cat and get it fixed.
Sue moved in to the PMQ on CFB Namao in August of 1979 just after the Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse scandal exploded on Canadian Forces Base Namao. Seeing as how the Canadian Forces moved heaven and hell to keep the scandal out of the media she probably had no idea about what had transpired on the base and what had happened to my brother and I.
But one thing became apparent right from the start. Sue despised my grandmother. Sue blamed grandma’s alcoholism for Richard’s alcoholism. So, it became a routine that when Sue came home from work grandma would lock herself in her bedroom and only come out for the bathroom.
And seeing as how Richard told Alberta Social Services in 1981 that the reason my brother and I were having trouble was due to grandma’s cruelty and her alcoholism this was probably something that he had told Sue numerous times to that point.
Richard always needed someone else to take the blame and to take the fall.
When Sue first moved in she promised my brother and I that she would get Richard to stop beating Scott and I. But it wasn’t long until she was hitting the two of us as well. Scott told Alberta Social Services in 1982 that when Sue first moved in she promised that she would never hit us, but that she hits us all the time now.
It really must have pissed her off, hooking up with Richard, and then watching Richard disappear for 6 to 8 weeks at a time for training exercises while leaving her at home with his two mentally fucked up, emotionally disturbed, feral children.
It must have been soul destroying the first time that Richard would come home bouncing off the walls after getting fucking wasted at the Junior Ranks mess and realizing that it was the Canadian Forces enabling Richard’s drinking and not his mother’s alcoholism.
Richard would call her a cunt freely and with reckless abandon. I knew at the time that cunt was a bad word that you never called a woman. But Richard did. He’d use the word to describe my teachers and my counsellors. But he’d also use the word to Sue’s face.
Why she put up with that I’ll never know.
When I went to Morinville in 2003 to see my father, I actually spent more time hanging out with Sue. She apologized for the way things had been and the way she had treated me.
Although I forgave her, the bad things are still experiences that I lived through.
She would frequently call me a girl as if that was some sort of an insult. I never did understand as a kid why a woman would think that being a girl was a bad thing.
She would use dresses like a threat. Which was confusing as fuck for me as a kid. I had worn my friend’s dresses on CFB Shearwater. I had also worn one girl’s dresses on CFB Griesbach on a couple of occasions. I loved dresses, and I still love dresses, hence why I own close to 75 dresses now and I only have one pair of pants to my name.
But yeah, Sue would use “girl” and “dresses” like they were demeaning threats.
I was so envious of girls at the time that I often wished that I would grow my own breasts, or even better yet wake up a girl the next morning.
She called me a “retard” on a couple of occasions, no doubt fuelled by my involvement with the military social workers, the civilian social workers, and the Westfield Program.
There was one time in fact that always sticks out in my mind. Sue was going to take Scott for ice cream at Dairy Queen. I’m not sure if she was rewarding Scott for something, or if she was just taking him in order to rub my face in it. But I asked Sue if I could come for ice cream, she said no explaining that “retards” don’t get ice cream. So, I started to cry. She told me that if I didn’t stop crying like a little girl that she was going to treat me like a little girl and she’d buy me a dress.
Fuck was I ever conflicted. I was angry at her for calling me a retard and for not allowing me to get ice cream, but I was also picturing myself in a nice little blue dress, maybe a petticoat underneath. Some nice and shiny Mary Janes. White stockings…….
To cure me of my bed wetting she decided that it would be best if I wasn’t allowed to change my sheets and wasn’t allowed to shower the smell of my own piss off my body. Fuck did I get teased a lot at school.
She was the one who decided that seeing as how sleeping in my own piss and stinking like my own piss wasn’t enough to stop me from wetting the bed she would rub my face in my own piss stained sheets until I stopped.
She also insisted that the food be locked up. I used to eat our dog’s Gainsburgers.
She was the driving force behind my brother and I always having to “go outside and play” no matter how dark or how cold it was.
Richard had bought me an electronics kit to build a simple AM radio. Sue was pissed off that I wouldn’t go outside and get out of the house so she threw it in the garbage. When Richard found the radio he said that I never appreciated or respected anything that he did for me.
Sometime in early 1982 Sue was getting sick and tired of Richard going on training exercises and leaving her at home to raise his two dysfunctional spawn. I guess she threatened to leave Richard because in the spring of 1982 Richard sat both my brother and I down and said that if Sue left him that Scott’s and my bodies would go into a duffle bag and that nobody would ever find us and that he’d simply go live in the barracks.
This low point in the relationship between Richard and Sue is documented in my Social Service records as during a couple of family counselling sessions Richard and Sue would not address each other or acknowledge each other during the meeting, instead Richard would have me address Sue on his behalf, and Sue would use Scott to address Richard.
A round this time I asked my uncle Doug two questions and my young mind didn’t truly understand the given answers.
I asked uncle Doug why my father always believed Sue over me. Uncle Doug replied “Richard sleeps with Sue, he doesn’t sleep with you”.
I also asked my uncle Doug why Sue was so mean to me. Uncle Doug replied that “Sue wants her own children but Richard has told her that as long as you and Scott live in the house she’s not having kids”
Shortly after that Richard and Sue got “married” in the PMQ on CFB Griesbach in the spring of 1982. I use the quotes as Richard was still legally married to my mother and they didn’t get divorced until 1985.
My brother and I weren’t allowed to be at the ceremony. We were given $50 each and told to fuck off for the day.
I don’t think that Richard ever told Sue that due to Marie’s status as a military dependent that Marie was just a civilian and that Marie was only on base at Richard’s pleasure and that Richard had the full authority to have Marie thrown off the base. This was a documented flaw that still technically exists to this day. Back in the day the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces would actively fight any custody order in which the courts awarded the non-serving spouse the right to live in the PMQ after the divorce as military housing can only be rented to service members.
Richard would never have gone through the courts to get real custody of my brother and I as that would have exposed the fact that Marie didn’t “abandon” the family but that he had her booted off the base and out of military housing.
Richard would have also been very reluctant to go through the courts and get a finalized divorce as the matter of child custody would have been raised as would the matter of Richard’s land that Richard purchased in Nova Scotia while married to my mother.
But again, I don’t think Sue realized any of this.
Richard the Master Manipulator would have told her what his version of reality was.
When we moved to Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario in April of 1983 no doubt Richard told Sue that it was my fault that we had to move.
Things never improved between Sue and I on CFB Downsview.
Same shit as on CFB Griesbach. The food was locked up and I had to be out of the house no matter how fucking shitty it was outside.
Same thing as CFB Griesbach, not allowed to touch her stereo system, not allowed to sit in the living room on her furniture.
In the spring of 1985 my friend John had come over to see if I had wanted to go do something with him. John and I were in the same Sea Cadet corp and we were in the same program for “special kids”. Sue had me cleaning the bathroom upstairs. When the door bell rang I stopped cleaning and went downstairs to the answer the door. As I was talking to John, Sue came over grabbed my right hand and bit my finger. I looked at her shocked and then kicked her square between the legs. I thought for sure that Richard was going to fucking kill me when he got home as Sue was pregnant with William at the time. But she obviously never said anything to Richard as she’d have to explain biting my finger.
Things changed a little bit between Sue and I after the infamous domestic in the summer of 1985. She wasn’t suddenly nice to me, but she no longer had the daggers out for me.
In the summer of 1985, while my brother and I were in Edmonton for the summer with grandma, there was a massive domestic dispute in our PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Downsview.
There was lots of damage to the PMQ and it apparently took three military police officers to bring my father under control. And yes, he nearly got tossed from the Canadian Forces over this.
Richard would never speak of it, and Sue never spoke of it.
I wouldn’t learn until about 30 years later what caused this.
My mother Marie had met a new man in 1984. They dated over the year and decided in 1985 to get married. One problem. Richard had never granted Marie a divorce. Marie demanded the divorce in the summer of 1985. No doubt Richard forgot to tell Sue that he was still legally married to Marie and therefore his marriage to Sue was fake. Being pregnant with Richard’s sex trophy but not being legally married to the father of her sex trophy probably lit the powder keg. But I think it also made Sue realize that Richard was a fucking liar that would bend the truth to suit the reality that he wanted to portray.
I haven’t spoken to Sue since 2003.
There really isn’t anything to talk about.
Each of us in our own way got fucked over and manipulated by Richard.
I have absolutely no doubt that Richard shared with her the contents of the letter I sent to Richard in May of 2008 explaining why I legally changed my name.
I also have no doubt that when the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service contacted Richard in June of 2011 for his statement that he told Sue that he had “no fucking idea” what this “fucking bullshit” was all about, that Scott and I were never sexually abused, and that I was just making this up to score quick money.
I also have no doubt that when I subpoenaed Richard in 2013 with a written examination for Federal Court that he would have bullshitted her with his version of truth all the while filling out the examination with statements that he knew were the real truth or as close to the real truth as he was willing to get.
So in the end, do I bear any hatred towards Sue?
No.
Her parents were both Dutch immigrants to Canada after WWII, so no doubt they held Canadian soldiers in almost godlike revere. After all, it was the Canadians that liberated Holland from the Nazis.
Richard could do no wrong in her eyes.
And as I said, Richard was the master manipulator.
Was I a sexually traumatized child suffering from major depression, severe anxiety, haphephobia, and all sorts of other mental health issues?
Nope, I was just a spoilt rotten brat that had been spoilt by Marie and I was just acting up to get attention.
Even when Richard’s faults started percolating to the surface, like most young women, she probably thought that she could fix him.
But, I can’t pretend that what happened didn’t happen.
In a recent text message, my brother Scott said that it was okay for me to use his name and his pictures.
I had no idea that these pictures existed until I visited Marie in December of 2013.
Even though Richard had very decent camera equipment for the time, there really doesn’t exist any pictures of my brother or I. Richard had tons of pictures of military aircraft, pictures of him and his buddies drinking on training exercises, and pictures of lots of other things that weren’t my brother and I.
Scott had texted me asking about the class action and we messaged back and forth for a bit.
I sent Scott a meme that I had gleaned from twitter:
That’s when he responded that Sue had given him a few pictures a while ago, but that he shredded them.
That’s when he said that I could use his name and share his pictures.
Left – Robert Gill (7 yrs) and Right – Scott Gill (4-1/2 yrs) Picture taken in late summer of 1978 on Canadian Forces Base Namao in PMQ #11 – 12th street
Yeah, we were about the same size as kids. Lots of people on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach and Canadian Forces Base Downsview mistook him as being the older sibling while I was mistaken for the younger sibling.
Scott Gill (rear row, 5th from the left) Grade 1, Guthrie School Canadian Forces Base NamaoScott Gill at Downsview Public School sometime between 1984 and 1986(l-r) Margret Mary Waniandy Anderson, Marie Annette Jacquline Dagenais Gill, Scott Dwayne Arthur Gill, Robert Wayne Gill. About September / October 1978 While Richard was away on training exercises.
I’ve never mentioned Scott’s name for two reason.
The first reason is that I have no idea who he actually is.
The second reason is a lot of people really don’t want their names mentioned in matters like this.
When I say I don’t know who Scott is, I mean that.
The only thing that we really have in common is that we were sexually abused by the same person.
Yes, we have the same sperm donor.
Yes, we had the same egg donor.
Yes, we popped out of the same vag.
But we were raised feral.
I was born in Sept of ’71
He was born in Feb of ’74
Our mother was only around until early 1977, so he knew her about three years. I knew her for about six years.
I knew Richard’s anger and his drinking. I don’t think Scott remembers too much of that.
During our time on CFB Shearwater and CFB Summerside Richard was only around periodically, but when he was it usually wasn’t a pleasant time for anyone.
Once on CFB Shearwater, Richard was drinking and watching hockey and yelling at the TV like he always did. Scott was still in a walker and obviously bothering Richard. Richard told me to take Scott to his mother for her to look after him. Marie was downstairs doing laundry. I don’t think Richard realized this. So, I did as Richard said, I tried to take Scott to his mother. That didn’t work out too well, and down the stairs Scott went. Richard denied to Marie that he asked me to take Scott to Marie.
And that’s par for the course in Richard’s house.
Grandma came to live with us on Canadian Forces Base Summerside. Richard was rarely home.
And this is when Scott and I went full feral.
Grandma had a lot of issues from her time in Indian Residential School and from her rampant alcoholism. So she was never really around to raise my brother and I if you know what I mean. Yeah, she kept food in our bellies, and she kept darning our clothes no matter how worn out they had become, but she wasn’t their for Scott and I, so we just drifted around in our own spheres.
When you grow up in a household like that, especially a household on a military base where everyone minds their own business, you tend to go wild.
And wild we did go.
People have asked me if I am serious about the number of times that our babysitter abused my brother and I on CFB Namao. When I tell them that I am they give me an incredulous look as if I am lying. “Why didn’t you tell someone” is what they always ask. Even Alberta Crown prosecutor Jon Weribicki asked this in 2011. The entire time of our stay on CFB Namao, grandma was the only constant in the house. Richard was rarely home. And the one constant about grandma is that she was usually pissed drunk.
The older kids on base used to make “chugga, chugga” sounds when grandma was around. I wouldn’t learn until later in life that “Chug” is a derogatory term for an intoxicated Indian.
So, that’s why Scott and I were the babysitter’s favourite playthings. He knew we were practically on our own and that there was no one for us to tell.
I know Scott was hoping that I could make the babysitter stop, but that was well beyond my abilities.
I think our lack of parental units on CFB Shearwater, CFB Summerside, CFB Namao, CFB Griesbach, CFB Downsview set my brother and I on a collision course with the likes of Captain McRae and his teenaged accomplice as well as the others on the other bases.
Because of Richard’s well documented issues and his refusal to accept responsibility for his family, and his need to blame others, a massive rift was created between Scott and I as kids.
Richard didn’t love either of us, and he didn’t like the either of us.
Richard’s family wasn’t like one of those families you hear of where the mother and father have issues, but they love their children and they try their best.
Richard never actually had legal custody of my brother and I. He took advantage of the National Defence Act in 1977 to have our mother thrown out of the PMQ and off the base. Marie wanted to take my brother and I back to Nova Scotia to stay with our uncle, Al Dagenais. The reason for this was due to Richard’s drinking and physical abuse getting out of hand. Richard wasn’t concerned in the least about losing Scott and I. He was terrified of having to pay child support.
Around 1986, when we were living on Canadian Forces base Downsview in Ontario, one of Richard’s air force buddies asked Richard “Rick, if these fucking kids are driving you nuts, why don’t you give them back to their fucking mother and let her deal with the stupid fuckers”. Richard’s reply was that by doing so he’d be signing his paycheque over to that bitch and that as long as Scott and I lived with him he could control the costs.
So yeah, the household that Scott and I grew up in was completely devoid of any type of loving relationship.
Everything about Richard was penny pinching for my brother and I, but extravagance for Richard and his friends and relations.
Christmas was almost non-existent for Scott and I as kids as were birthdays. Anything we did get was usually from our mother (but secretly paid for by our uncle Doug).
Socks and underwear day is how Scott referred to christmas.
So yeah, it’s no wonder my brother and I don’t really know anything about each other.
When we lived on CFB Downsview in Toronto, my brother and I ran with totally different crowds.
I got further sexually abused and I got introduced to child prostitution. I know that I came damn close to being on a child pornography tape.
I don’t know if any of the men who took advantage of me while I lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview got their hands on Scott, but I do know that Scott was familiar with one of these guys.
I’m almost 100% certain that Scott never turned tricks like I did, but I have no doubt that he got sexually abused as well.
I moved out of the house in late 1987 just after I had turned 16.
I never saw Scott again until the spring of 1990 when I was home on a layover on a six month contract job. My father took me up to Uxbridge, Ontario to see him.
I moved to Edmonton with my father in June of 1990 after my six month contract had ended. Richard said that “we could try to be a family again”. Scott didn’t move with us due to his obligations in Ontario at the time.
I lived on Canadian Forces Base Greisbach for about 1-1/2 months before my father bought a house in Morninville, AB.
The thing about “being a family again” didn’t work and I had my own apartment by October of 1990. I can’t remember when my brother finally arrived in Edmonton, but it was after I had my apartment.
Just as things didn’t work out between Sue and I in “her” new house in Morinville, things didn’t work out between Sue and Scott in Sue’s new house.
I guess that my brother and I were too uncouth to be in “her” house.
It’s probably a good thing that she got her kid off the bases before he got too old.
Scott ended up at my apartment with Richard stating that “I owed it to him (Richard)” after all he did to raise my brother and I without the help of that “silly bitch of a mother” of ours.
Richard absolutely refused to help with groceries or anything else, so Scott ended up going out to our mother’s acreage.
I left Edmonton in February of 1992. The economy sucked, I was unemployed and on welfare. I moved to Vancouver, BC.
I forget the actual sequence of events, but one day on the way to work Scott and his girlfriend were riding the Skytrain.
I think this was when Scott was attending “Columbia Academy of Arts” to be a mixing technician for music recording.
I’m thinking that this was around 1996ish. We didn’t stay in contact for more than a month or two.
Around 1998ish, Richard called me up at my place of employment and told me that Scott needed help to fix his car and because I owed Richard for all that he had provided to us when we were kids this was expected. Again, Scott and I didn’t stay in contact.
I know that Scott and his girlfriend celebrated New Year’s eve 2000 in Vancouver.
The next time I saw Scott was in 2003 when I went to Edmonton with my then girlfriend to see Richard. Richard had no time. I spent more time hanging out with my stepmother than I did with Richard.
That was the last time that I’d ever see Richard alive.
I saw Scott maybe once or twice during the week my girlfriend and I were in Edmonton.
I never did see Scott again until the summer of 2013. I had to contact Scott due to a Federal Court matter I had going on in which I had read his statement to the CFNIS in 2011 and I had some questions to ask him about his statement and the notes that were taken by the investigating officers. I also wanted to share with him the contents of our previously unknown Alberta Social Service Records and our Children’s Aid Society of Toronto records and my foster care records.
We hung out over the course of a week. That was something that I never thought would have been possible before. But after having read the social service records I realized that Scott and I turned out the best we could considering the defective household that we grew up in.
The highlight of the visit was Scott and I stopped for coffee and donuts at a coffee shop in the east side of Edmonton. Anyways, we’re sitting there and this elderly gent comes up to the two of us and asks us if we could please stop swearing as it’s too much for him and his wife.
Yeah, that’s one thing Scott and I did pick up from Richard and his mother. I’m not sure who swore worse, grandma or Richard. Grandma could unleash her profanities and put Richard to shame.
What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you want something to fucking cry about? I’ll give you something to fucking cry about. You fucking little asshole. You goddamn silly fucker. You little fucking cocksucker. That was from both grandma and Richard. Richard wasn’t afraid to let go with “you stupid cunt”, “you’re a fucking stunned cunt” and other choice words directed to his mother and other women around him.
In the fall of 2013 things fell apart between Scott and I, no doubt due to my brother’s recent re-aquaintence with my father.
My father had contacted my brother via our stepmother as Richard wanted to know about the Written Examination for Federal Court that I had subpoenaed Richard with. I guess Richard never thought that I would have seen the statement he gave to the military police in 2011 in which he denied that my brother and I had ever been sexually abused on CFB Namao, and in which he totally erased our grandmother from our past. I also don’t think that Richard thought that I would ever get my foster care records or my social service records.
But nonetheless Richard had to cover his ass.
I don’t blame my brother. I’ve known for a long time that Richard was a skilled and masterful manipulator. I’ll readily admit to being manipulated by Richard. Richard could manipulate anyone. I have no doubt that his manipulation skills were the only thing that allowed him to enjoy a 30 year career in the Canadian Armed Forces.
My brother and I didn’t really speak again until 2019. Since then we’ve had sporadic conversations. Nothing too in depth or extensive, and I honestly don’t think things will ever get better. That’s the way Richard raised us, and that’s what Richard wanted.
Scott and I were two strangers living in the same household.
I don’t think that Scott ever realized as a kid that our family was in as much trouble as it was, I know I sure as hell didn’t have the foggiest idea until I got my social service paperwork in 2011.
No doubt Richard had lied to Scott over the years and convinced Scott that nothing had happened on CFB Namao.
I don’t think Scott honestly believed anything of what I had to say about CFB Namao until the Canadian Armed Forces finally released the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the 1980 Courts Martial transcripts in November of 2020 which indicated that the military police in 1980 were very well aware of what the babysitter and Captain McRae had been doing to young children on the base.
It also helps that I have my class action going on at the moment because if I was Scott I wouldn’t believe a single fucking thing that came out of my mouth.
Do I blame Scott?
No.
How could I?
I know the household that Scott grew up in.
Fuck, I wouldn’t believe anything that came out of my mouth if I was him either.
As kids, when things went wrong in the house Richard would simply blame either Scott or I for what went wrong.
It was like he was doing everything to keep us at each other’s throat.
Gabor Maté observed that “no two children have the same parents” meaning that parents treat each child differently no matter how much they try to treat each child the same. Richard took that observation to the extreme. Not only did Scott and I not have the same father, but the father we had changed on an almost daily basis.
One day I was Richard’s little buddy, and the next day Scott was Richard’s little buddy.
Richard wouldn’t give the slightest fuck about Scott watching cartoons, but if I watched cartoons I’d get berated for watching that fucking horseshit. What the fuck is wrong with you, that shit is for little kids, why the fuck are you watching this?
So of course there would be animosity and resentment between the two of us.
Scott would break something, and I’d get blasted for not watching Scott and keeping him from breaking the thing. So of course I resented Scott. It’s what I was taught.
And I sure wasn’t in any position to raise or care for my brother no matter how much my father insisted that raising my brother was my responsibility.
I was diagnosed at age five as having anorexia due to “societal issues” in the house. At age nine, after having been sexually abused for 1-1/2 years I was found to be severely emotionally disturbed and suffering from major depression, severe anxiety, and haphephobia.
I was in no position to “raise” my brother or to take over as my brother’s father.
So yeah, there really isn’t much of any connection between Scott and I.
Hopefully whatever settlement we get from the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces is enough to help him out because that’s all that I can really do.
There will be no magical time machines to jump into and to go back in time and redo our lives.
I don’t connect easily with people.
I have no emotions to offer.
And I’m undergoing M.A.i.D. sometime in 2024.
Our father never taught us how to love or how to be loved.
Richard taught us how to hate, and how to despise, how to show contempt, and how to be isolated.
So, just sitting down eating a bite for lunch and enjoying a soy cappuccino.
I’m probably going to ride my scoot over to the VCC-Clark skytrain station and take a run out to Value Village in Coquitlam and maybe the one out in Port Coquitlam.
People have asked me repeatedly how I can live without a car.
I say very easily.
I haven’t owned a car since 1998 when I moved downtown.
But even before that, when I did own cars, I usually couldn’t afford to drive them.
I bought a 1977 VW Rabbit when I was 15. This was so that I could get a membership at the base auto club. The car really wasn’t drivable, but it was something that I could learn mechanics on from guys like Bill Parker and Bob Wrightson at the autoclub.
In a way I wish I had never been a member of the autoclub. My brother had a friend named Greg. Greg was younger than me, but much like my brother they were both built larger than me.
I stayed clear of Greg. Avoided him at all costs.
Anyways somehow Greg got it in his head that because I could tinker on cars that I was going to fix his V6 Chevy Nova.
Straight fours is all I had ever worked on at the autoclub. Never had touched an American car, especially not a V-anything. Anways, I was at work on night at Bob Becker’s workshop when my brother, Greg, and a few of their buddies show up. My brother told Greg that I could fix cars, so therefore I was going to fix Greg’s car. The car that showed up with no distributor, no ignition coil, no spark plugs, and no spark plug wires. These were all in a jumble in the trunk of the car.
As could be expected, I couldn’t fix the car.
Greg and his buddies caught up with me at a Plaza on Keele just to the south of the entrance to the base. Fuck did they ever beat the shit out of me. And it wasn’t like it was anywhere near a fair fight. I was maybe 110 lbs tops. There was Greg. Greg had to be about 5″ taller than me and maybe weighed close to 150 to 160 lbs. And the other 3 were about the same size and stature. There was also this older guy, can’t remember his name, but he had to be around 40 or 50 years old.
I remember avoiding home and instead heading over to Billy Donuts on Wilson Ave.
The owner called the cops.
But ratting out on Greg would have been the end of me so I refused to say anything.
I knew that telling Richard would have been an absolute waste of time.
This was pretty well when I started to make sure that no one knew that I had any interests in cars or fixing things.
The first road worthy car that I ever owned was in Edmonton, AB.
I bought that car in August of 1990.
I made a mistake and I quit the job that I had prior to ensuring that the job I was going to was going to work out.
So I ended up on welfare.
A guy in my apartment building noticed that I liked to work on cars so he asked me if I wanted to make some extra money under the table working on cars for his brother. Who could turn down extra money to make ends meet when you’re on welfare. Welfare barely paid the rent at the time, let alone bought goceries.
I worked on a few cars for his brother Adam who owned a used car dealership on the south east side of Edmonton.
There were some sketchy things going on in that shop. So I didn’t stay very long.
It wouldn’t be until sometime in the 2010s that I would find out that in the years after I had involvement with Adam that some skectchy shit really was going down in that shop.
The car that I bought in 1990 was my transport when I decided to leave the welfare rolls in Alberta and try my luck in Vancouver in February of 1992.
I spent so much time on and off living in that car. The best place for car camping at the time was Stanley Park. There were also industrial areas that one could camp out in.
Around the spring of 1993 I couldn’t afford to keep the car any longer so I got rid of it for free with a scrap dealer.
I ended up moving back to Toronto around the fall of 1993. That didn’t work out so well so I ended up back in Vancouver by May of 1994.
I lived down at the Sally Anne until about August of 1994.
From ’94 to ’95 I primarily rode the bus, rode a bicycle, or walked to work from New Westminster to East Richmond.
In 1996 I got my hands on a very good condition 1984 Diesel Rabbit.
Kept that until I moved downtown in 1998.
I’ve owned a few motorcycles through my life, but I’ve only kept them for a few seasons.
Most were used, only one was new of a showroom floor.
That one was written off by a cab driver that ICBC found 100% at fault for the incident.
After getting cut off by that cab driver and seeing how easily someone else could end my life for the sake of beating a green light I realized that motorcycling wasn’t for me.
My greatest fear of getting injured in a motorcycle collision isn’t dying. It’s surviving. Motorcycle helmets really don’t protect the rider when struck by another vehicle. Motorcycle helmets, much like bicycle helmets are meant to protect the rider from incidents involving the motorcycle rider alone.
My father had a friend named Jacques Choquette. One night while Jacques was riding home on his motorcycle Jacques hit a pedestrian. Jacques ended up losing part of his skull and part of his brain. The guy was a fucking psychotic nutcase after the incident. No impulse control. Anger outbursts from nowhere. Seizures. Jacques was the one who tried to strangle me in the basement of the PMQ on CFB Downsview while my father stood to the side chuckling.
That’s what I’m most afraid of. Ending up with brain damage and having to live for 40 or 50 years like a fucking psycho like Jacques.
I bought a motorcycle back in 2020 at the start of the pandemic. I rode it for that first summer. It has sat in the under ground parking lot since.
I wanted to do some modification to it, but my depression told me that I’d get started and never finish the fucking thing off like I never finish anything else off.
So all in all, I’d say that even though I’ve had my driver’s licence since I was 17, I’ve actually only driven a car for maybe 5 years of my life. That’s about 14% of my adult driving life.
Total riding time of motorcycles would be less than 8%.
Riding bicycles would be close to 20%, riding the bus would be another 20%, walking would be almost 46% if not more. I’m probably a little high on the bicycle and the bus.
I think that I can credit my father and his driving skills and his belittling attitude.
Richard could be a complete asshole behind the wheel.
Everyone else on the road was a stupid asshole, a stupid cunt, a fucking idiot, or some fucking goddamn asshole that got their licence from a cracker jack box.
This is why he was forever rear ending other vehicles.
I could never figure out why he would never get his pride and joy fixed after various collisions. But as I would learn later in life, you never wanted to claim against your insurance for any accident that you were at fault for. That’s how the ’83 Mustang GT went from being a showroom new car in 1983 to a wreck with the driver’s seat falling through the floor and needing wood to hold it in place by the time I moved out of the house in 1987.
The collisions I know of from being in the car when they happened were the time he rear-ended a Jaguar over by the Don Valley parkway. Slammed right into the back of the car at an intersection. As usual it was my fault becuase if I hadn’t asked him for a ride to work this would never have happened.
The next time was on Keele Street just before we got back on to base. He rear ended a Metropolitan Toronto Police Service cruiser. And this was back in the day when they were bright white with yellow reflective strips. I didn’t stick around to see who he blamed the collision on. I just walked home.
Richard wasn’t adverse to throttle blips to let the driver infront of him at the lights know that he was displeased with the fact that because they were driving so slow he got caught behind them at the light.
He also had this habit of passing cars as we were coming to intersections and once he passed through the intersection he’d start swearing at the light to change and teach that silly fucker a lesson.
Of course there were also the times that he drove drunk.
He wrote off his 1969 Ford Thunderbird that he had bought with his retention bonus. Wrote that car off around 1975. Wrote it off in the PMQs of Canadian Forces Base Shearwater. That put me in the hospital for stitches.
The next time that he crashed a car due to drinking was after our mother left in 1976 / 77. He had gone to the junior ranks mess on CFB Summerside and was driving back home to our PMQ at 353 High Street in Summerside. Somewhere on the highway he crossed the centre line and clipped an on coming car.
My brother and I were more or less unscathed. But I ended up with a fat lip after the other driver asked my father if he had been drinking and I told the other driver that my father was drink at the bar on base. Guess I wasn’t supposed to rat out the rage fueled alcoholic, was I?
Maybe that’s why I don’t care much for driving. My father’s rage behind the wheel and his alcoholism ruined driving for me.
Also, not having help with my cars in the early days made me realize just exactly how much of a fucking money pit cars are and how one’s paycheque just goes into the endless pit of car culture.
I don’t think that we’ll ever know how the CFNIS in March of 2011 knew to obtain CFSIU DS 120-10-80 and the Court Martial transcripts for CM62 from the JAG archives.
The Security of Information Act pretty well ensures that the truth about anything that ever happened on a defence establishment will be forever buried in the past.
Master Warrant Officer Terry Eisenmenger, Warrant Officer Blair Hart, Master Corporal Robert Jon Hancock, and Master Corporal Christian Cyr weren’t more than a twinkle in their father’s eye at the time of the events on CFB Namao.
So how the fuck would they know about the existence of the paperwork?
It’s probably something automated in their incident reporting and recording software called SAMPIS. Enter the babysitter’s name or enter Captain McRae’s name and a warning will pop up instructing the person to contact someone up the chain of command for further instructions.
Was it the Provost Marshal in 2012 that made the decision to withhold the existence of CFSIU DS 120-10-80 from the Military Police Complaints Commission? Or was it someone superior to the Provost Marshal, like the Vice Chief of Defence Staff? The VCDS has the authority under the National Defence Act to direct any CFNIS investigation and also has the authority to direct the actions of the Provost Marshal.
The Vice Chief of Defence Staff takes their orders from the Chief of Defence Staff, and the CDS acts upon instructions from the Minister of National Defence.
You have to admit that the MoD, the CDS, the VCDS all have very strong political and parochial motives for wanting to keep the Captain Father Angus McRae matter dead and buried in the past.
Sure, lawsuits are one thing.
But lawsuit settlements don’t come out of the DND or the CAF budgets. It’s the Canadian taxpayer that pays for these, so really the DND and the CAF don’t give two shits about lawsuits. it’s not their fucking money to worry about.
Allowing the Canadian public to discover that the Canadian Armed Forces willingly sacrificed the mental health and wellbeing of sexually abused children by not only denying them justice, but also blaming them for their own misfortune, and then giving them “conversion therapy” would be too damaging to the image and prestige of the Canadian Armed Forces for the chain of command to allow for this to happen.
And the fact that the CFNIS were able to pull this off so flawlessly in my matter indicates to me that this isn’t the first time they’ve done this.
I know of one person who committed suicide and whose family blames the events on CFB Namao and the way the military handled it for this person’s suicide.
I know of at least one person who attempted suicide due to the events of CFB Namao.
I’m intending to undergo M.A.i.D. in order to get away from the events of CFB Namao and my conversion therapy and my subsequent dealings with the Canadian Armed Forces.
How many other kids or adults committed suicide as the result of their sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Bases?
No one knows.
And no one cares.
Steven Truscott, a former military dependent from RCAF Station Centralia nearly died due to the actions of RCAF Sgt. Alexander Kalichuk. Even though Kalichuk was never directly implicated in the sexual intercourse with and the subsequent murder of Lynn Harper, Kalichuk is actually the sole suspect in the abduction, sexual intercourse, and murder of another child.
Donald Joseph Sullivan joined the Canadian Armed Forces in the late ’70s to early ’80s after the Ottawa Police Service started to investigate him for molesting numerous boys when Sullivan was a boy scout leader.
In 1984 Sullivan was arrested and given a military courts martial for molesting a group of boys on CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick.
Remeber, Sullivan JOINED the Canadian Forces even though the Ottawa police Service had an active investigation going against him. So there obviously was nothing in the way of a meaningful criminal record check for persons enlisting into the Canadian Armed Forces.
Captain Angus McRae was investigated in 1974 for committing “acts of homosexuality” at CFB Kingston in Ontario. Captain McRae was investigated in May of 1980 for committing “acts of homosexuality” with young boys on CFB Namao. Is “acts of homosexuality” Canadian Forces speak for sexually abusing young male children? Does this mean that McRae was known by the Canadian Forces to have molested children on CFB Kingston? Was Captain McRae allowed to remain in the Canadian Forces becuase his commanding officer, during the summary review of the charges, dismissed the charges brought against Captain McRae? After all, when McRae was charged in 1980, McRae first underwent an Ecclesiastical trial with the Archdiocese of Edmonton in which he confessed to having had sexual relations with boys for years.
How many kiddie diddler priests did the Canadian Armed Forces move around from base to base thereby allowing these kiddie diddlers to molest an untold number of children across the country.
How many teenage pedophiles like P.S. did the Canadian Forces move around from base to base in Canada? P.S. was involved in the molestation of over 25 children on CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980. His family was moved to CFB Petawawa in Ontario in the summer of 1980. P.S. was charged and convicted with molesting an 8 year old boy in a town just north of the base in 1982. In 1984 P.S. was charged and convicted with molesting an 8 year old in Manitoba on an unnamed Canadian Forces Base there. And in 1985, after his father was posted back to Canadian Forces Base Namo, P.S. was charged and convicted with molesting a 9 year old boy on Canadian Forces Base Namao and a 13 year old boy in the city of Edmonton. After P.S. was charged with molesting the 9 year old on CFB Namao, the Canadian Armed Forces gave the babysitter’s father Jack an ultimatum, have P.S. move out of the military housing immediately or the Canadian Forces would kick the entire family out of the military housing.
How many other men like Donald Jospeh Sullivan did the Canadian Armed Forces allow to enlist even though they were known pedophiles? How many military children was Sullivan allowed to prey upon. And don’t forget, all of the boys that Sullivan was charged with molesting were over the magical age of 14. How many kids under the age of 14 did Sullivan molest on CFB Gagetown that he was never charged with so that the Canadian Forces could keep jurisdiction of the matter?
How many men like Sgt Alexander Kalichuk did the Royal Canadian Navy, the Royal Canadian Army, and the Royal Canadian Air Force, and the Canadian Armed Forces have in their employ that murdered military children, or children in towns adjacent to bases that have never been charged due to screwups with the military justice system.
There are a lot of persons within the Department of National Defence, the Canadian Armed Forces, and the Department of Justice who have the power to keep these secrets buried in the past.
I’ve come to realize that I was marked as disposable collateral by the Canadian Armed Forces in May of 1980.
I’ve also come to realize that the Canadian Armed Forces have absolutely no interest in truth, honour, or integrity.
The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are all about lies, subterfuge, coverups, and maintaining their prestiege no matter the cost.
I have absolutely no interest in carrying on knowing full well that the DND and the CAF are so free of ethics ond morals that they don’t care how their decisions both past and present have fucked up and destroyed lives and families.
I just want out.
In the absolute least there is no help for what ails me so long as there is no acknowledgement as to what occured on CFB Namao with the babysitter and Captain McRae, nor is there any help for me so long as there is no acknowledgement for what Captain Terry Totzke subjected me to.
What ever paltry pittance the Department of Justice will offer me and the rest of the victims from CFB Namao will obviously be without any strings and without any ackowledgement and without any apology.
This is why I look forward to my death.
This life of mine has been rendered meaningless by the lies of the Canadian Armed Forces both back in 1980 and in the current day.
I was denied so many opportunities in life by the decisions of the chain of command in 1980 and by the conversion therapy from Captain Totzke, and by the interference from Captin Totzke with Alberta Social Services.
Being denied treatment for my mental health issues in 1980 by Captain Terry Totzke has had very horrific impacts on all aspects of my life.
So, as it turns out a coworker and their spouse have discovered my blog, and they’ve been reading it.
We had a little talk on Thursday about the contents of my blog.
Of course they haven’t had the chance to digest the entire blog, so I thought that I would write this post which quickly recaps everything I feel to be of importance.
At the end I’ll recap my reasons for desiring Medical Assistance in Dying.
I was born into a very dysfunctional military family.
My father’s mother had been through Indian Residential school as a child and bore the emotional damage that one could expect. Grandma was a full fledged alcoholic by the time she was in her late teens / early twenties. She had my uncle Norman when she was about 16. She had my father when she was 23. Uncle Norman was full Cree. My father was half Cree half Irish.
My grandmother raised my father and my uncle Doug on her own and she obviously transferred her emotional damage to my father as he was already a very heavy drinker when he joined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1963 at age 17. His academic abilities were nothing to be proud of as his grade 9 math had to be upgraded before he could officially join the navy. His academic skills left a lot to be desired and he was of no help to me with school related topics.
In fact, teachers calling home would often enrage him beyond all reason. To him, school was a daycare centre where children were sent to keep their mouths shut and to stare at the chalkboard.
I was born in 1971. And since the day I was born until age 16 I lived in military housing. 7 PMQs on five different bases in four different provinces by the time I was 12.
My mother left in 1976. She couldn’t take my father’s drinking or physical abuse any longer. Due to the unique nature of military dependents (children and non-serving spouses) living in military housing, my father was able to have the base military police remove my mother from the PMQ and to bar her from contacting my brother and I.
My father brought his alcoholic and emotionally damaged mother into the PMQ to raise my brother and I. She lived with us in the PMQ attached to Canadian Forces Base Summerside from 1976 until the spring of 1978 when she returned to Edmonton, AB. During her time with us on Summerside she put me into Sunday school and we also had involvement with the Knights of Columbus.
In the spring of 1978 my father obtained a compassionate posting from Captain Lynda Tyrell, military social worker for the Atlantic region of the Canadian Forces. The Canadian Forces paid to relocate him to Canadian Forces Base Namao just north of Edmonton, AB. Richard took my brother and I with him from Prince Edward Island to Alberta without sole custody and without the permission of our mother. Doing so is a criminal code offence called “kidnapping”.
The ability of serving members to use the Canadian Forces to transfer them and their children to a different jurisdiction from which the freshly ejected spouse was residing in was documented in a 1996 study commissioned by the Canadian Armed Forces titled “Canadian Forces response to Spousal Abuse”.
If it wasn’t for my grandmother calling my mother in the fall of 1978, I don’t think my mother would have known where we ended up moving to.
In August of 1978, Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae had been posted to Canadian Forces Base Namao from Canadian Forces Station Holberg due to allegations that he had inappropriate relations with a teenage boy on the station.
On CFB Shearwater and CFB Summerside my father was rarely home. He was happy to have his career in the military as it gave him a reason to not be at home raising his children. He could go off on “military exercises”, drink and hang out with the boys and leave a woman at home to raise his kids as raising kids was obviously woman’s work.
In order to do this on CFB Namao he brought his mother into the PMQ to raise my brother and I. Grandma brought her husband Roy William (Andy) Anderson into the PMQ with her. Grandma and Andy lived in the ground floor bedroom.
Much like on CFB Summerside, grandma put me into Sunday School at the base chapel. Grandma would take my brother and I to Sunday service at the chapel. In fact we had our Sunday church clothes that we’d wear, and after church we had to change into our regular clothes before we could go out and play.
Grandma also put me in the Red Cross learn to swim program, the base hockey team for 6 to 8 year olds, the Youth Bowling Council at the base bowling alley, Beavers, and basketball.
My grandmother had a fierce temper and an equally fierce temper. She wasn’t above using sticks or whatever else was at hand to inflict corporal punishment. Her two actual maxims were “Children are to be seen and not heard” and “Children only speak when spoken to”
Towards the winter of 1978 both grandma and Andy had been drinking very heavily in the PMQ. Andy took a shower one night to “sober up”. He slipped in the shower and cracked his skull. Once Andy went into the hospital, he never came out again. And this is what led to my brother and I requiring the babysitting services of one of Captain Father Angus McRae’s altar boys. This altar boy was born in June of 1965 and had the initials of P.S..
P.S. would turn out to be quite a pedophile. He had an intense sexual attraction to children, especially boys. P.S. was late 13 when he started abusing children on Canadian Forces Base Namao. He wouldn’t stop until he was investigated by the base military police in May of 1980.
May of 1980 is the same period of time that the babysitter had been found buggering me in his bedroom with his penis firmly inserted into my rectum. It’s just too unbelievable that I was found being buggered by the babysitter right around the time that the military police, specifically Sgt. Mossman and Sgt. Clark, investigated P.S. due to numerous complaints that the base military police received due to the complaints of “numerous parents” on the base.
P.S. was a very angry teenager. He didn’t have the self restraint and self control that Captain McRae would have. See, Captain McRae would get us intoxicated before he abused us. Captain McRae would also be very careful with what he did so there wasn’t any evidence.
There were times when the babysitter would cause me to have rectal bleeding. All grandma would say when she saw my underwear is that I had to learn how to wipe my ass properly and that I had to stop scratching myself.
As I said, there was no confiding in grandma.
And there was no way I could confide in my father.
Even at 7 and 8 years of age, kids on base knew what queers and fags were. And you knew sure as fuck that you didn’t want it known that you touched another boy’s penis or let another boy touch your penis. And getting fucked by another boy? You were just asking for a beating.
So no, there was no telling my father.
The babysitter wanted every type of sexual pleasure. And if you didn’t perform and pleasure him he’d make his displeasure felt.
The memories of what he did to me, what he made me do to him, what he did to my brother, what he made me do to my brother, what he made my bother do to me, and what he did with the other kids will be with me until the day I die.
As I told Master Corporal Christian Cyr of the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service on May 3rd, 2011, there were 5 visits that the babysitter took me to see the father at the base chapel. I don’t remember anything about the visits after the “sickly sweet grape juice”
In the aftermath of CFB Namao, my family was moved off the base and sent down to Canadian Forces Base Griesbach.
At the school on base for the children of military families I started seeing a man named “Terry”. Terry was upset at what I had been doing with the babysitter on CFB Namao. He said that boys who had sex with other boys had a mental illness called “homosexuality”. He said that because of what I let the babysitter do to my brother that I was a sexual pervert. On the days where my father would attend meetings with Terry my father would agree with Terry like Terry had some magical power over my father.
Terry would warn me that he had the base military police watching me and that if I ever tried to kiss or touch another boy that I would be going to psychiatric hospital for treatment.
Terry told my father that it was a good idea to not let me play in sports any longer as I obviously couldn’t control myself around other boys. I know that my father took this to heart as there was a school field trip that he specifically wouldn’t allow me to go on as “there would be naked boys in the change room and that I wouldn’t be able to control myself”.
In the spring of 1982 the relationship between my father and his girlfriend was deteriorating. He told me and my brother that in no uncertain terms that if she left, he’d put our bodies in a duffle bag and that no one would ever find us.
In the summer of 1982 I started going to a “special school” that treated homosexual children. Or so my father and Terry used to say.
In the spring of 1983 my father said that I had been “expelled” from the special school for kissing another boy. When we moved from CFB Griesbach in Edmonton, AB and went to CFB Downsview in North York, ON in April of 1983 I asked my father why we had to move. He said that the counsellors wanted to give me drugs to stop me from liking boys, and that he didn’t want me to take these drugs so in fact he was saving me and that I owed him for that.
When we arrived in Toronto, I hated it. I was big. It was polluted. And going to civilian schools was a nightmare.
When I told my father that I didn’t like Toronto he unleashed on me. Said that the was sick and tired of me fucking with his military career. Said that I cost him dearly.
Over the time on CFB Downsview my father would often lay into me whenever my brother would get into trouble. He’d say that my brother was acting the way he was because I had let / allowed the babysitter to touch my brother, that I wasn’t raising my brother the way that I was supposed to.
I have no doubt in my mind that because of my grandmother’s alcoholism, she’d often get pissed for days and that it would be my father’s responsibility to raise his younger brother Douglas. Out of the two, Doug was the more casual and more laid back. Richard was the anal retentive prick. Doug was grandma’s favourite of the two. Whereas Richard was the more dependable of the two.
In the summer of 1985 while my brother and I were staying in Edmonton with our grandmother over the summer Richard and Sue got into a massive domestic dispute that seemed to revolve around the fact that my father hadn’t divorced my mother until the spring of 1985 even though he had married Sue in a private ceremony in the spring of 1982.
September 1985 was the first birthday that I had had since my mother left in 1976. Richard promised that he would never forget my birthday again. He never acknowledged my birthday after that.
I quit school at the end of grade 8. I only went to school for one month of grade 9.
I left the house when I was 16, not too long after my 16th birthday.
I didn’t know at the time that 6 years prior that I had been diagnosed with major depression, severe anxiety, an intense fear of men, and an intense fear of being touched. I was found that I didn’t have the ability to form friendships. I also couldn’t express my emotions.
All I knew from my father’s constant reminders is that I was a lazy fucking cocksucker who couldn’t get out of bed on time for school. My suicidal ideations were just my attempts to “get attention”. My frequent outbursts of tears were just because I was just a fucking crybaby trying to get attention. Etc, etc, etc.
I didn’t have many conversation with my father after that.
In June of 1990 he called me up and invited me to move back to Edmonton with him on his final posting. He said that he was going to try to make the family work this time. This of course was more bullshit from Richard.
In August of 2006 I had an intense conversation with Richard. He wouldn’t accept any blame for the events leading up to us requiring a babysitter. In fact, he blamed his mother for hiring the babysitter even though he claimed he told grandma not to hire the babysitter. I told Richard of my plans to press charges against the babysitter as I was sick and tired of being blamed for what the babysitter did to my brother. Richard warned me about doing that. He said if I went sticking my nose into that I might not like the smell of the shit.
After this I started changing.
Not coming out of the closet, but not afraid to try to figure out what I was. This is the period of time that I started wearing dresses and playing with makeup.
This is also when I legally changed my name to Bobbie Garnet Bees.
I don’t think Richard reacted too well to me changing my name. I did write him a letter explaining why I legally changed my name. But I think it was the fact that I wasn’t sure of my gender or my orientation at the time that caused him to break off all communications with me. After this he would never answer my calls again and my letters to him were always sent back “RTS”.
In 2010 I left the hospital to go work for a private employer. This didn’t last too long as there were massive fights and disagreements going on at the shareholder level. One faction of shareholders decided to fire everyone at the business. I took these shareholders to the Supreme Court of BC and just before a trial date was to be booked, their lawyer called me and offered to settle out of court.
Due to this I decided that enough was enough, that I was going to go after the babysitter.
I emailed the Edmonton Police Service and gave them a brief explanation of what happened and what I wanted to do. From certified tribunal records I would learn that the Edmonton Police Service contacted the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team. ASIRT contacted the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service. And the Master Warrant Officer Terry Eisenmenger told Warrant Officer Blair Hart to explain to the Edmonton Police Service that “at the time of the offences, the RCMP would have had the jurisdiction for this investigation, but that the CFNIS were going to take this investigation”. MWO Eisenmenger then instructed WO Hart to check with the RCMP to see if I had ever tried to report this matter to them.
I was contacted on March 5th, 2011 by Petty Officer Steve Morris from the CFNIS Western Region. He told me that the military police were going to investigate this matter. I asked him what had changed as when I tried to report this to the military police in 1984 and 1990 I was told that this was a matter for the civilian police. PO Morris gave me a brief description of how the CFNIS came to be. Of course he left out the whole matter of the troubled missions in both Bosnia and Somalia and how the CFSIU were found to be utterly useless due to direct exposure to manipulation by the chain of command.
One of the first things that the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service did in March of 2011 was to request the investigation paperwork from the Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit investigation into the matter of Captain Father Angus McRae in 1980 along with the Courts Martial transcripts from Captain Father Angus McRae’s courts martial which ran from July 15th to July 18th, 1980.
The fact that the CFNIS in March of 2011 knew to request CFSIU DS 120-10-80 and the transcripts from Courts Martial CM62 indicates that the CFNIS in 2011 knew what this investigation was all about even before my statement was taken on Thursday March 31st, 2011 at VPD headquarters by master corporal Robert Jon Hancock on the CFNIS Western Region.
I have no doubt in my mind that I am not the first person from CFB Namao to go after the babysitter, and as such I have no doubt in my mind that the CFNIS have experience with the babysitter and his relationship as Captain McRae’s accomplice.
In fact, with the sheer number of victims that the babysitter abused along with the sheer number of children that the babysitter escorted over to the chapel to be abused by Captain McRae I have no doubt in my mind that the ghosts from the babysitter’s past keep coming back to haunt him and are probably what drove him to attempt suicide in the year 2000.
I March of 2001, due to his suicide attempt, the babysitter launched a civil action against the Minister of National Defence. The Minister of National Defence, the Canadian Armed Forces, and the Archdiocese of Edmonton settled with the babysitter in November of 2008. The settlement cheque was disbursed to the babysitter in December of 2008.
I also have no doubt that the CFNIS and the Provost Marshal are well aware of the babysitter’s civil claim and subsequent out of court settlement with the Canadian Armed Forces.
As such, I have no doubt that the CFNIS, the Provost Marshal, and the Vice Chief of Defence Staff all have specific protocols and procedures in place for dealing with complaints against the babysitter.
Due to very odd and unique language in the National Defence Act, the Vice Chief of Defence Staff has the authority to issue directives to any CFNIS investigation. As the Military Police Complaints Commission has indicated in the past, the VCDS has no legal training, no legal background, and is very political in nature only being one or two steps removed from the Minister of National Defence who is a political appointee.
Why else would the CFNIS in March of 2011 request CFSIU DS 120-10-80 and the Courts Martial transcripts from the archives?
As I was told by Sgt. Damon Tenaschuk in 2017, it was odd that this paperwork still existed. Paperwork like this is usually destroyed seven years after it was created, unless it was used periodically. This paperwork should have been destroyed in 1987. But it has obviously been frequently used since 1987.
My interview with Mcpl Hancock was interesting. It was the first time that I had told anyone outside of my father and “Terry” of the abuse and what had happened on CFB Namao.
Everything in the interview was going okay until towards then end when Mcpl Hancock kept asking me if there was anything else I wanted to talk about, anything at all, was there anything that I wasn’t telling him about from CFB Namao.
What Mcpl Hancock didn’t share with me at this time was that he already read the CFSIU investigation paperwork and that he already knew what the babysitter had done.
On May 3rd, 2011 I was contacted by Mcpl Christian Cyr. I don’t know why Cyr had bothered to contact me. And in many ways it probably would have been much better of he didn’t. But Cyr has a problem. He is one of those types of guys that once he knew a secret, he has to gloat to others about his secret.
Cyr called me and left a voice mail message for me to call him back, so I returned his call. Cyr, being the braggart that he was, blurted out two pieces of information that would prove that he had seen the CFSIU paperwork from 1980 and that he had seen the Courts Martial transcripts.
He first tried telling me that when the babysitter was found buggering me in the spring of 1980, that the babysitter was only 12 or 13 years of age. Next Cyr asked me if I knew anything about the base chaplain being charged with molesting children during the same period of time that I was accusing the babysitter of abusing me.
The problem with the date of birth, and this was confirmed by the Military Police Complaints Commission in the November 2020 final report, is that the speculation of the babysitter’s age only exists in the CFSIU paperwork from 1980. The babysitter was in fact born on June 20th, 1965. The was the D.O.B. given to me my the RCMP in August of 2012. This D.O.B. was also confirmed by two newspaper articles involving the babysitter in his adult years.
Why did this error in the babysitter’s age exist at all? It seemed to stem from the CFSIU investigation back in 1980 as a way to block the RCMP from being called on base to deal with the babsitter. If the babysitter was under 14, then it wasn’t much use calling the police in as the Juvenile Delinquents Act really didn’t call for any type of punishment for offenders under 14.
But at the time, the Canadian Forces had to be aware of the babysitter’s true age as the Canadian Forces couldn’t conduct a service tribunal for sexual assaults where consent wasn’t a possibility. In 1980 the age of consent was 14.
And the Military Police Complaints Commission in November of 2020 confirmed that the CFNIS had done CPIC checks of the babysitter and that these CPIC checks had the correct date and age of the babysitter. Again, the MPCC noted that this error in age existed only in the CFSIU paperwork and no where else. Meaning that Mcpl Cyr had read the investigation paperwork from 1980 and already knew what the babysitter had done.
Because of my interaction with Cyr, I was able to do a Google search for “CFB Namao Molesting Priest”. This is how I discovered the whole sordid history of what happened on that base and how even back in 1980 the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence “threw a veil of secrecy” over all aspect of the courts martial. The Canadian Forces in 1980 didn’t want the Canadian public to know that children on bases weren’t safe from the pedophilic children of other service members or predator priests, especially not seeing as how these priests were members of the regular force and held the rank of Captain.
Because of my interaction with WO Hart on July 18th, 2011 and his insistence that my case wasn’t going anywhere due to a complete lack of believable evidence I decided to track down my records for that “special school” that I went to for treatment of my homosexuality.
Was I ever in for a very rude awakening.
There was no program for homosexual children. I was in a program for emotionally disturbed children.
But even more shocking than that was who “Terry” was and why my ball-less wonder of a father hung from every word that Terry said. Terry was Captain Terry Totzke, military social worker with Canadian Forces Western Command. My ball-less wonder of a father would have had to pay attention to every thing that Terry had to say of he wanted to keep his career in the Canadian Forces.
Terry, seeing as how he knew about the babysitter, and that he knew about Captain McRae, was obviously working on blaming me for what had happened to me and my brother on CFB Namao with the goal of having me forever keep my mouth shut about the abuse.
Other interesting things I learnt from my social service paperwork.
My brother and I had both been brought to the attention of Captain Totzke due to our bizarre behaviour when we started to attend school once we moved from CFB Namao in October of 1980.
I was sent for psychological testing and I was found to:
be suffering from major depression
be suffering from severe anxiety
be terrified of men
was extremely terrified of being touched.
was convinced that my father was going to drown me in the toilet
My father was found to:
Not take responsibility for the family
Blamed others for problems with his family
Blamed his son’s emotional problems on his alcoholic mother who was cruel to his children, especially when she was inebriated, which was frequently.
claimed that he had sole custody of his children.
The expulsion? Nope, I wasn’t expelled. Captain Terry Tozke was warned by Albertya Social Services that I was supposed to be removed from my home and placed into foster care or residential care as a means of persuading my father to participate in the family counselling as they were beinging to form the opinion that my issues were all related to major dysfunction in the household that was due to known issues with my father. I was pulled out of the Westfield program days after this meeting.
The surprise move to Ontario from Alberta was no doubt due to the desire of Captain Totzke and my father to get me out of the jursidiction of Alberta Social Services.
According to my social service paperwork, I was supposed to have been instutionalized in a psychiatric facility for children both in Alberta and then in Ontario. Captain Totzke, Captain Tyrell, and my father never followed through with any psychiatric treatment.
If I was so emotionally disturbed as a result of the 1-1/2 years of sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao, why were Totzke and my father so against me receiving treatment?
Secrets.
As long as I lived at home with my father, Totzke had direct control over me. If he wanted me to believe that I was the author of my own misfortune on CFB Namao, then so be it. If he wanted to cement this belief any harder, then he could just make sure that I understood that I was to blame for what happened to my brother.
If I was removed from the home, then Totzke would lose his control over me. And whoever it was up the chain of command that decided that CFB Namao was to remain a secret would not have been happy. I guess that the reasoning was that if I was taken out of my father’s care that I would start talking about CFB Namao and then the civilian authorities might start sticking their nose into the military’s business.
My father also had his own reasons for not wanting me placed in foster care or residential care. He lied to Alberta Social Services when he said that he had been awared sole custody of my brother and I. In 2013 the PEI government revealed that Richard only made an application for custody, but never follow through. He was never awared sole custody by any legal authority in Canada. He committed parental kidnapping. If the courts found out about this, Richard would have been looking at not only the loss of his kids, but also the loss of his military career, and possible jail time, and the very real possibility of monthly child support payments.
The CFNIS investigation was ended on November 4th 2011 when PO Steve Morris contacted me and said that the CFNIS couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that the babysitter was capable of what I accused him of.
On November 27th, 2011, after a plea in the Facebook groups for former military dependents I contacted a man named Fred Cunningham whom lived in St. Albert, AB.
Fred had a lot to say about the 1980 investigation into Captain McRae. He said that the investigation was started because of P.S.’s molestation of numerous young children on the base. I asked Fred how old the babysitter was in 1980. Fred said that he was certain that the babysitter turned 15 just before Captain McRae’s court martial in July of 1980.
Fred stated that the military police tried to have the matter moved to civilian court seeing as how the majority of children were under the age of 14. According to Fred, the “brass” intentionally dismissed all of the charges brought against captain McRae for any child under the age of 14. P.S. was the only child over the age of 14. This meant that Captain McRae’s accomplice was officially recognized by the Canadian Armed Forces as Captain McRae’s only victim. The rest of us were thrown under the bus.
Fred said that when the charges for the other children were dropped one boy in particular became enraged and swore that P.S. had stabbed him in the back. Fred said that this boy, who was also named Fred was a prolific pyromanic who had set numerous fires on the base. I asked Fred if he was insinuating that the young Fred had any responsibility for the fire at the babysitter’s PMQ which caused $56k in 1980 dollars worth of damage and resulted in the death of a civilian gas fitter. Fred said that he was going to refuse to answer that.
Fred did confirm to me the fire that occured in PMQ #26 on June 23rd, 1980 and that this fire did in fact result in the death of a person, but he wouldn’t say who this person was.
I submitted two FOIs to DND for fire information related to addresses that the Namao telephone book indicated that this boy’s family resided in on CFB Namao. Both of these FOIs came back and indicated that this boy was in fact a known pyromanic and had set the fires that had occured at this family’s PMQs. That he had a tendency to light fires and then “play the hero” after “discovering” the fire. One of the fire marshal reports indicate that Fred A. and P.S. were friends and that they had been playing together prior to one of the fires at F.A.’s house. The fire marshal report also indicated that F.A. was currently not in school as he was in the process of being sent to an institution for treatment related to his pyromania.
Fred also said that the military police did everything in their power to try to bring the RCMP in to deal with the babysitter, but that the brass wasn’t going for it.
Fred implored me to keep this information to myself as he wasn’t legally allowed to discuss this. He wouldn’t tell me what he meant. I would later learn that the Official Secrets Act / the Security of Information Act makes it an offence for anyone who was ever subject to the Code of Service Discipline to discuss ANY information that they had learned of while they were on a defence establishment. Basically anyone who was ever a member of the Canadian Armed Forces is barred from talking about anything they were involved in while they were on a base. This would easily apply to members of the military police or the CFSIU for any investigation that they were involved in while on a base.
As I would learn later on, there were two flaws in the pre-1998 National Defence Act that allowed the Canadian Armed Forces to hide and bury not only the events of CFB Namao but quite honestly.
The first and most horrific flaw that was removed from the National Defence Act in 1998 was the Summary Investigation Flaw.
In the military justice system at the time there was no such thing as a “prosecutor”. After an investigation the CFSIU would lay charges directly against the alleged offender. The charges were then forwarded to the commanding officer of the accused. The commanding officer would then review the charges and either cause them to proceed to summary investigation, to a court martial, to a civilian tribunal, or the commanding officer could dismiss any or all of the charges.
The Canadian Armed Forces confirmed that captain father Angus McRae’s commanding officer was the base commander of Canadian Forces Base Namao, colonel Daniel Edward Munro. Daniel Edward Munro is a retiree living in Victoria, BC. He retired from the Canadian Forces a Brigadier General.
As the base commander of CFB Namao, Munro would have had direct control over the base military police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit Western Region detachment.
I contacted Mr. Munro in 2016. Oddly he didn’t want to discuss anything about CFB Namao. I should also point out that it was Munro’s decision to not call in the provincial fire marshal to review the fire at P.S.’s PMQ.
After my telephone call with Mr. Cunningham I wrote a letter to the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal and discussed what I had been told by Mr. Cunningham. This letter was sent in the last two weeks of December 2011.
In January of 2012 I received a telephone call from lieutenant colonel Gilles Sansterre. Sansterre was the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal at the time. He told me that I couldn’t believe anything that this “Fred Cunningham” person had told me. The military couldn’t find any records of Cunningham. Sansterre said that maybe this “Cunningham guy” was giving me information that he had heard second or third hand.
I would learn in 2017 that Fred Cunningham was warrant officer Fredrick R. Cunningham. WO Cunningham was the Acting Section Commander of the CFSIU at the time and had been personally tasked by the base security officer, captain David Pilling with investigating captain father Angus McRae for having committed acts of homosexuality with young boys on the base. WO Cunningham was also the prosecution’s main witness against captain McRae.
And, more importantly, everything Mr. Cunningham had told me was backed up in the CFSIU paperwork. The very same paperwork that the CFNIS had in 2011.
In 2012 I filed a complaint with the Military Police Complaints Commission. This review went nowhere as reviews are extremely limited and in my matter the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal willing and intentionally withheld information from the Military Police Complaints Commission. The Provost Marshal hid the existence of CFSIU DS 120-10-80 and the court martial transcripts from the Military Police Complaints Commission. These were two very important documents as in CFSIU DS 120-10-80 is the babysitter’s statement to the military police in which he admitted to molesting numerous children on the base and in the court martial transcripts captain McRae’s defence counsel is using the babysitter pedophilia and current psychological treatment for being sexually attracted to young children to discredit his testimony against captain McRae.
Even when submitting the CFNIS brief to Alberta Crown Prosecutor Jon Werbicki in October of 2011, master corporal Robert Jon Hancock failed to disclose to the crown that P.S. had already been investigated by the military police for sexually abusing young children on the base and that the colonel Daniel Edward Munro had prevented the Royal Canadian Mounted Police from being brought in to deal with the babysitter.
I wonder if former Alberta Chief Crown prosecutor Orest Yeriniuk realizes that the Canadian Armed Forces intentionally withheld information from him and made him look like an absolute fool. I wonder if Alberta Crown prosecutor Jon Werbicki realizes that he was played like a cheap violin.
Giving fucked up briefs to the provincial crowns in nothing new. This was a tactic that the CFSIU employed. Give the crown such a fucked up and useless brief that only a moron would allow charges to be proceeded with. This allows the military police to state that “they thought for sure they had enough evidence” while at the same time blaming the provincial Crown knowing that the victims would almost never be allowed to see the communications between the military police and the crown.
I know exactly what the CFNIS sent to the Crown and I know what the Crown’s replies were back to the CFNIS. Alberta Crown prosecutor Jon Werbicki said that what I had endured on Canadian Forces Base Namao was nothing more than childhood curiosity and experimentation and that it was very suspicious that I never told anyone about the abuse.
Yeah, it seems that the CFNIS excised a lot of information to the Alberta Crown.:
They removed any mention of my grandmother living on base raising my brother and I.
They removed any mention of military social worker Captain Terry Totzke and the conversion therapy that I had been receiving as a result of my sexual activities with the babysitter and McRae.
They didn’t tell the Alberta Crown that the psychologist hired by the Canadian Forces in 1980 found that my father had a severe issue with personal responsibility and would often tell people he perceived to be in positions of authority what he thought that they wanted to hear.
The CFNIS failed to disclose to the Alberta Crown that Alberta Social Services was of the opinion that my father frequently lied, or as they politely said “Mr. Gill has a tendency to tell conflicting stories from one meeting to the next”
They didn’t disclose to the Crown that my father described my grandmother a heavy alcoholic who refused to admit to her problems and that my father described her as being very cruel to his children.
They didn’t tell the Alberta Crown that the babysitter had been investigated in 1980 for having molested numerous children on the base.
They didn’t tell the Alberta Crown about the babysitter’s predilection for young prepubescent children.
They didn’t tell the Alberta Crown that the babysitter was receiving psychiatric treatment at the time for his attraction to children.
The CFNIS didn’t disclose to the Alberta Crown that when P.S. was contacted by CFNIS investigator mcpl Robert Jon Hancock in August of 2011 that P.S. told Hancock that “anything he had been involved in as a youth has already been handled by the military and that if charges were brought against him a lawyer would handle that”. Does this allude to Munro’s decision to not allow the babysitter to be handed over to the RCMP in 1980, or does this allude to the terms of the out of court settlement agreed to between P.S. and the DOJ, the DND, and the CAF in November of 2008.
The CFNIS got the response they wanted from the Crown. No charges.
My father died in 2017.
Believe me, the world is a better place without that asshole.
But the sad thing is, he’ll never have to apologize for what he did.
It was his alcoholism and anger that caused my mother to be ejected from the PMQ.
It was his inability to take responsibility for his family that allowed his children to be cared for by his alcoholic and emotionally damaged mother.
It was my father’s fault that grandma was anywhere near us.
It was ultimately my father’s fault that my brother and I ended up with a pedophile babysitter for 1-1/2 years.
I hope that you can understand why I want Medical Assitance in Dying.
I’m not giving up.
I’m not letting the DND or the CAF “win”.
There is no winning in this matter.
The DND and the CAF are completely untouchable.
Nobody of any consequence will ever have to apologize.
There is nothing that anyone can do to erase the trauma that I suffered through, not only at the hands of the babysitter and captain McRae, but also at the hands of my own father and the hands of captain Terry Totzke.
Nothing will ever undo the fact that the CFNIS in 2011 and 2015 to 2018 did everything in their power to gas light me and to portray me as a “societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military” or someone with money troubles who frequently jumped from one job to another.
Even during a face to face meeting with then Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan, he accused me of being a scammer trying to scam the Canadian Forces for easy money.
Nothing will ever erase the 40+ years that I’ve suffered with severe mental illnesses gifted to me by P.S., captain McRae, captain Totzke, colonel Dan E. Munro, and the whole host of other members of the Canadian Forces that wanted the events of CFB Namao to stay a secret dead and buried in the past.
Medical Assistance in Dying is something that I want.
Even just thinking about my death and being put to sleep fills me with a serene peace and tranquility.
No matter what people wish, there is no way that I can ever get over the betrayal, the pain, the suffering.
And I refuse to live with the damage from horrific chain of command decision both from 1980 and from the present day.
Four simple medications:
Midazolam
Propofol
Rocuronium
Bupivacaine
And all the suffering, misery, and torment are gone forever.
My life will forever be full of regret until the day I die. Regret for things that were denied to me, regret for things that I was not allowed to do.
Well, here I am publishing three videos on this holiday Monday. Being union and being that Canada Day was on Saturday, Monday is a day off for me.
Anyways, I had an interesting trip to Iceland. And at least I can say that I have a pair of stamps in my passport so that’s one thing off my bucket list.
Well, no one will ever convince me any differently now.
If I had a vagina between my legs and the other kids from CFB Namao had vaginas between their legs it’s very, very obvious that the CBC and most other Canadian media would have handled our story and the story of the more than 25 male children from Canadian Forces Base Namao a lot differently.
And as per Captain McRae’s court martial transcripts, and as per his signed confession during his ecclesiastical trial in front of the Archdiocese of Edmonton, Captain McRae molested kids not only on Canadian Forces Base Namao, but also on Canadian Forces Station Holberg, Canadian Forces Base Portage La Prairie, and Canadian Forces Base Kingston.
As it is, the CBC’s outright refusal to look at the events surrounding Captain Father Angus McRae and his 15 year old accomplice shows that the CBC doesn’t consider male child sexual assault to be as serious or as damaging as female sexual assault.
I’ve been dealing with the CBC since 2012.
The only person at the CBC to have shown the slightest in interest was Jenn Blair.
Jenn had a camera operator over to my place to record an interview.
What I didn’t know and what I hadn’t been told was that Jenn was temporary.
Shortly after the interview Jenn was replaced by Rachel Ward.
Rachel scrapped the entire interview. She had an idea. Her idea was that instead of a televised news story, my story could be told via a “timeline” that would be on the CBC Go Public website that people could click on if they were interested.
Rachel just wasn’t that interested.
I told Rachel about MP Randall Garrison, who was the co-chair of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on National Defence, and that he had agreed to ask Lt. Gen. Christine Whitecross during a Standing Committee hearing, who was responsible for investigating matters of child sexual abuse on the bases in Canada.
Rachel told me to call her as soon as I found out.
Randall’s office called me the moment the hearings had concluded to let me know that Randall had asked the question and that I needed to watch the video of the hearings.
Lt. Gen. Christine Whitecross said during the hearing that matters of child sexual abuse are always handed off to the outside civilian authorities. So why were the Canadian Forces National Investigations Service and the Provost Marshal so hellbent on retaining a 35 year old child sexual abuse matter?
So, as per Rachel’s instructions I called her. Got a message saying that the subscriber hadn’t set up their voicemail. I called the Calgary office number that she had called me from. No answer, no voice mail. So I dialled some random numbers by changing the last two digits. End up getting some guy from a video booth. He couldn’t say that he had heard of Rachel, but he checked the internal directory for me. Nope, her name wasn’t showing up. He ended up transferring me to a woman who said she thought that Rachel worked out of the Calgary studio, but that she didn’t really have a landline.
Rachel called a few days later in a huff wanting to know what was so important. I told her that Randall had asked the question about jurisdiction of the military police for child sexual abuse matter and that Lt. Gen. Christine Whitecross had said that the the military police always hand child sexual abuse matters to the outside civilian authorities.
“Look, just because he said that is what she said doesn’t mean that is what she actually said”.
I told her that this was an official session of the Standing Committee on National Defence, that it had been video recorded, and that it was available to view on Parliament’s website.
“I’m busy with other stories right now, I can’t just drop everything that I’m doing to deal with your story”.
I didn’t want to believe it at the time, but I do believe it now.
Had I had a vagina between my legs, the media would have been tripping over themselves to look at child sexual abuse on the Canadian Forces Bases in Canada.
As it is, I have a penis between my legs. And everyone knows, especially the CBC, that people with penises between their legs can’t be sexually abused, they can only be sexual abusers. Because a person with a penis between their legs can’t get pregnant from a sexual assault it’s not really a sexual assault, now is it?
It’s just like what Captain Terry Totzke said to me back in 1980. An 8 year old boy being penetrated by a 15 year old boy and also being abused by a 50 something year old military chaplain happened because I had a mental illness called “homosexuality”. If I didn’t have “homosexuality”, then it wouldn’t have happened.
Realizing that Canadian media was not ever going to be interested in this story I contacted the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)
The ICIJ put me in contact with a member named Frederic Zalac.
Frederic as it turned out is a reporter with the CBC.
Not interested in the slightest. No criminal charges. I didn’t have the names of the other victims.
And now I have 100% irrefutable proof that the CBC deals with sexual assaults differently depending on the junk between a victim’s legs.
“CBC Investigates”.
Well fuck me gently.
The CBC told me time and time again that without criminal charges, there would be no story. That without statements from other victims willing to go on camera, there would be no story. That I had to find the other victims.
Well, in my case the military justice system wasn’t able to find any evidence to indicate the babysitter was capable of what I accused him of. This even though as it turns out the CFNIS in 2011 had the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the 1980 Court Martial transcripts that indicate that it was very well known by the base military police, the CFSIU, and the court martial panel, what the babysitter had been doing to young children on base and that it was this molestation of young children on the base that resulted in the prosecution of Captain McRae.
Could the military police be in conflict of interest?
Two retired Supreme Court of Canada justices seem to think so.
An initial investigation…… The CBC had the ability to track a victim down without even knowing their name, but the CBC tells me they can’t investigate my story because tracking names isn’t their job.
Bobbie, unless the other victims are willing to go on the record, this story isn’t going to go too far.
I guess that women are more delicate than men and that men in today’s “macho” society are supposed to be okay with having their names associated with what was until recently considered to be “acts of homosexuality”.
Yep, that’s what it was called back in 1980 when a 50 something year old officer of the Canadian Armed Forces and his teenaged accomplice are investigated for sexually assaulting young prepubescent boys. “Acts of homosexuality”. That’s why I got my conversion therapy from Captain Totzke. That’s why Captain Totzke was adamant that I was a homosexual.
I know where the man who was not only my babysitter, but who was also the accomplice who took me to the chapel to be abused by captain McRae, and who subsequently pimped me out to some random stranger in the sauna at the base swimming pool. He lives in Fort Erie Ontario.
The man who was my primary abuser has a extensive criminal record involving children: 1982 – charged and convicted for molesting a young boy north of CFB Petawawa 1984 – charged and convicted for molesting an 8 year old boy around CFB Winnipeg. 1985 – charge and convicted for molesting a 9 year old boy on CFB Namao and a 13 year old newspaper boy in the west side of Edmonton. 1986 – 2000 Various charges from Buggery to Assault and Robbery. 2015 – 2x sexual assault, 1X forcible confinement
But Bobbie, we can’t just contact this guy and make accusations against him! That wouldn’t be right!
According to retired warrant officer Frederic R. Cunningham, “the brass” wouldn’t allow the Canadian Forces Special Investigation unit nor the Canadian Forces Military Police to call in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to deal with the babysitter. In May of 1980 the investigators with the CFSIU were told to lie about the age of the babysitter and record that he was only 12 years old. The babysitter was born on June 20th, 1965.
I wasn’t “slut shamed”. I was “homosexual shamed”. I received 2-1/2 years of conversion therapy from Captain Terry Totzke for the homosexuality I had exhibited when I frequently had sex with the babysitter.
Yes, for the 1 millionth time, I understand that CFAO 19-20 would not have applied directly to me as I was not a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. However, my social worker, military officer Captain Terry Totzke would have been very well aware of this. His training as provided by the Canadian Forces would have trained him and instructed him that males having sexual intercourse with other males was wrong and was ultimately a sign of an underlying mental illness. The fact that I was an 8 year old boy with nary a hair between his legs didn’t make a difference. I had allowed a boy twice my age, and on more than one occasion , to put his fingers and his penis into my ass. It doesn’t get more homosexual than that.
I met a couple of other victims via the face book groups. But most people who had a rough life growing up on base stay away from the base brat groups. If it wasn’t for me wanting to seek justice for what had happened on CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980 and then on CFB Griesbach from 1980 until 1983 I never would have joined facebook.
Advocating for change within the defence community is a non-starter as the defence community won’t even acknowledge this. In 2016 during a meeting with then Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan, Minister Sajjan accused me of “playing games” and “having an angle” insinuating that I was just trying to score some easy money from the military.
I had sent communications to current Minister of National Defence Anita Anand. I’ve never received any response. Not even after the Military Police Complaints Commission released their report in 2020 that found ample evidence that the CFNIS in 2011 knew about the babysitter’s criminal history on CFB Namao as the CFNIS had the 1980 CFSIU and 1980 Court Martial transcripts.
There is no support available for former former military dependants who were sexually abused on base and then fucked over by the defective military justice system. The DND and the CAF have no legal obligations to military dependents living on defence establishments, no matter the source of their injuries.
Civilian support services just roll their eyes when you try to explain what happened on the bases. The provinces in general consider what happened on base to be a federal matter, not a provincial matter.
An investigative podcast and two feature stories, man I wish I was this lucky.
People often wonder if I really want to undergo M.A.i.D.. or if I’m just claiming to want to do so as a means of getting attention.
I grew up in a dysfunctional military family in which my father used his postings to stay one step ahead of provincial social services.
I was sexually abused for 1-1/2 years starting at age 7.
From age 9 to age 11 I received what amounted to “conversion therapy” from a Canadian Forces military social worker.
As this social worker was a captain and my father was a master corporal my father placed special emphasis on what this social worker had to say.
I was raised by a grandmother who had survived Indian residential school and had the emotional damage and the alcoholism that came with having gone through Indian Residential School.
My father was just as emotionally damaged as his mother and was a piss-tank alcoholic just like his mother.
My father, unable and unwilling to accept responsibility for his two sons being sexually abused in his house while being raised by his own mother blamed me instead for the abuse my younger brother went through.
Even though just months after the abuse came to a screeching halt I had been diagnosed with major depression, severe anxiety, haphephobia, and an intense fear of men, Captain Totzke never seemed to follow through with treatments for me.
According to my social service records, when Alberta Social Services wanted to pull me from my father’s home and place me into residential care or foster care, Captain Totzke appears to have helped with my father obtaining a posting out of the jurisdiction of Alberta.
I was left to suffer all alone for all of these years with gender confusion, fear of sex, fear of men, untreated major depression, untreated severe anxiety, haphephobia, etc.
Yes, I really do want to undergo M.A.i.D..
There’s nothing left to fix.
I’m tired, my brain is burnt out, and it really is time to go.
Beeshive 