Milk, it does a body bad……..

My body.

Milk fucks with my body.

When I was young, nothing would get my grandmother’s anger going faster than me trying to ditch my cereal, or yogurt, or porridge.

I hated milk as a kid.

The taste of it sucked.

It always tasted metallic and acidic to me.

It made my stomach sore.

Within an hour of drinking milk my asshole would become extremely itchy.

The cramps sucked.

So, I used to try to dump my cereal into the toilet.

But grandma caught me and after that she would hover over me and would crack the back of my hands with her wooden soup spoon.

I even tried to discretely dump my cereal into the garbage.

I had to eat my cereal out of the garbage when she caught me.

I once tried to hide my cereal in the floor register.

Got caught and had to scoop it out and eat it.

After grandma moved out, Richard and Sue would leave for work early and leave my brother and I at home to get ready for school by ourselves.

I’d eat my cereal dry and flush the milk.

After I moved out of the house when I was 16 I didn’t really have steady housing until I was about 23. So I never had the need for milk and never drank it again.

As a child, I only had ice cream on the rare occasion. Ice cream always tasted nice.

Well, between the time I moved out and the year 2000, I had never really had much in the way of dairy or ice cream, but I got bit by the ice cream bug while I was living on Barclay St. in the west end of Vancouver.

Went into the Dairy Queen for some totally out of the blue reason and I had a sundae.

Finished it.

And then about 5 minutes later I knew I was in trouble.

I barely made it back to my apartment before all hell broke loose.

It was like my colon exploded.

The smell was rancid.

And the amount of blood was disturbing.

So, off to the doctor I went.

“Anyone in your family lactose intolerant?”

Not sure.

“Well, why don’t you wait a couple of weeks and try some dairy again? You might have just had a stomach bug that coincided with you eating ice cream. I wouldn’t worry”

So, I waited about two months and challenged ice cream again.

Same result.

Went back to the doctor.

“Well, I don’t think we need to waste time testing you, it’s fairly obvious that you can’t process lactose. You might want to stay away from dairy”.

I did some reading on lactose intolerance, and pretty well everything that was indicated as being a symptom of lactose intolerance, I had.

I wondered if grandma knew that I was lactose intolerant.

Did my father know?

Obviously not.

Or so I thought.

In the summer of 2011, after I had obtained my social service records from the Alberta Government, I started filling ATI requests with other provincial governments.

In my hospital records from the IWK children’s hospital were numerous notes about how I would become very colicky and I was exhibiting rectal bleeding.

After a few rounds of testing it was determined that I was lactose intolerant and that I was to be placed on a dairy free diet. This was in 1975.

Two years before grandma would come to live with us full time.

Two years before she practically started funnelling the fucking crap down my throat.

I don’t know how many kids were forced to eat cereal out of the garbage, but I still dry heave when I think about it.

Richard would have written my lactose intolerance off as being just a way for me to get attention. But then again, he just really didn’t give a fuck.

Grandma? She had a lot of issues. Maybe she was too drunk to remember being told that I was lactose intolerant.

These days I survive just fine.

Having ice cream like treats isn’t a problem as there are dairy free soy based products, or even treats like sorbet. And even lactose free dairy exists.

There are still the occasional screwups no matter how careful I am.

I had a donair platter a couple of weeks ago. The store I go to has two styles of Tzatziki sauce. Regular and lactose free. They goofed on the order and gave me regular tzatziki sauce. Yep, it was as painful as could be after about 10 minutes. And I just barely made it home in time.

I drink soy cappuccinos and soy hot chocolates. The baristas at the local coffee shops are great, but occasionally a mixup is made. Usually the acidic taste will tell me that they used real dairy.

One of the side effects of lactose intolerance is malabsorption. The more lactose one consumes, the more inflamed their small intestines become. The more inflamed the small intestine becomes, the less able it is to absorb required nutrients and minerals.

Probably explains why I was an under weight runt for most of my childhood and why the docs at the IWK noted that I was anorexic.

Dying and death.

I honestly don’t know why death frightens people.

Sure, the manner in which you die can be pleasant and peaceful or horrific and terrifying.

But death is death. There is no more sensation, there is no more comprehension, there is no more awareness.

Everything stops.

And everyone dies at least once in their life.

And I really don’t understand why people get so upset about my desire to die and my desire to obtain medical assistance in dying.

You only get one life to live. There are no restarts. There are no do-overs.

My life isn’t going to suddenly get better.

My depression and my anxiety aren’t suddenly just going to disappear.

The memories of what I’ve endured aren’t going to go away.

I’m not going to instantly find a significant other.

I’m not suddenly going to take on interests and hobbies.

I wake up every morning with an intense desire to stay in bed.

On my days off I can sleep, and sleep, and sleep.

Sleep is much better than being awake as dreamland is much more interesting than reality.

There is nothing here for me, there honestly isn’t.

If I die tomorrow or if I die ten years from now, it wouldn’t make a difference other than I would endure ten more years of living with the shit from Canadian Forces Base Namao and Canadian Forces Base Greisbach in my head.

In many ways I wish I hadn’t sent that fateful email to the Edmonton Police Service in March of 2011.

Sure, I had wanted to die before then. I’ve wanted to die since 1980. But I was too afraid of the pain of dying and of botching up my death to go through with it.

But after having dealt with the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence my desire to die has become a mission.

People tell me that I am being silly. That I can’t die. That I have too much to live for.

Maybe if things in my youth had been different, then yes, maybe my desire to die would be silly.

I have absolutely nothing to live for. And that’s the truth. And I’m not being melodramatic.

I obtain no real joy from life.

Life just keeps repeating, day in, day out, the same shit. The same memories. The same depression. The same anxiety. The same hopelessness. The same worthlessness.

I don’t like the fact that one of the reasons that I’m still alive is that others have determined that I shouldn’t be allowed to determine when I’ve had enough.

Not thinking about the depression won’t work.

It’s been with me for far too long, and it wasn’t that I never wanted to seek treatment for it. It was that I was actively denied treatment for it. Fuck, I didn’t even know that I officially had issues until the summer of 2011 when I received my social service records.

Up to that point in time I had always believed what my father told me. That I was acting up. That I was doing this for attention. That I didn’t have friends because I thought that I was better than everyone. That I had fucked with his military career. That I was a cock-sucking homosexual because of what I had been caught doing with the babysitter. That I was a fucking pervert for what I allowed the babysitter to do to my younger brother.

Not thinking about the sexual assaults on Canadian Forces Base Namao won’t make them go away. I wasn’t allowed to be a victim. I was a pervert. A homosexual. I “wanted it” because I never told anyone about it.

But, there was no one to tell about it.

My grandmother was an emotionally damaged piss-tank alcoholic Indian Residential School survivor.

My father was a misogynistic womanizer who was just as much of an alcoholic and who was just as emotionally damaged as his mother.

And when people did find out about it I was labelled a pervert and a homosexual by my father and by military social worker Captain Totzke.

Knowing the truth about back then doesn’t make any of this go away.

Knowing that I was caught up in the Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse scandal in which over 25 children were abused by Captain McRae for more than two years on four different bases, doesn’t make me feel like a hero or a champion.

How can I feel good about this mess knowing that men in positions of power made a decision to sacrifice my mental health and wellbeing in order to save the image and prestige of the Canadian Forces and that even my own father stood aside and put up no resistance.

If you respect me, you will respect my desires.

I had no choice in the matter of being born.

That was a decision made by two very irresponsible adults.

I didn’t chose to be raised by my emotionally damaged grandmother.

I didn’t chose to be raised by my just as equally damaged father.

I didn’t chose to be sexually abused on CFB Namao.

I didn’t choose to have a military social worker.

At least let me have a choice over when I’ve had enough.

Respect my choice when the time comes.

Support me in my quest to obtain peace through Medical Assistance in Dying.

Don’t shame me, or ridicule me for wanting to die. Take your energy and direct it towards agencies that hide child sexual abuse. Use your energy to try to eradicate child sexual abuse.

Ensure that no male victim of child sexual abuse is labelled as a homosexual or blamed for their own abuse.

Don’t come after me for making “irrational decisions”. I’m not angry. I’m not upset. This isn’t a spur of he moment thing. I’ve wanted to die since back in 1980. I’m tired. I’m burnt out. I want to go. I want to go peacefully. I want to die with dignity as opposed to dying like an injured animal.

That’s it.

That’s all I ask.

Who would I be getting cured for?

One issue that has been clear to me for quite some time is that it’s really not me that people care about.

It’s themselves that they care about.

And I don’t mean in a rude and selfish manner.

It’s just comes from from a feeling of powerlessness they feel when they can’t imagine not being able to right wrongs.

People fear death as it’s the great unknown, and people generally can’t understand how death could be an answer.

When has no real purpose other than getting up everyday to go to work, what’s the point?

People don’t tell me to get counselling so that I can feel better.

People tell me to get counselling so that they can feel better about themselves.

Empty platitudes as they say.

Me?

I’m tired, so very very tired.

As I’ve said, I will always remember what I lived through.

I will always understand what was taken from me.

I will always remember the abuse.

I will always remember how the abuse was handled.

My brain was already fried as a result of the sexual abuse and then the manner in which Captain Totzke dealt with the abuse.

But, dealing with the CFNIS from 2011 onwards fried my brain even more.

I think what made the CFNIS investigation so much more depressing was that they went out of their way to humiliate me, to discredit me, and to make sure that I understood that no one was ever going to own up for what I endured on Canadian Forces Base Namao from 1978 to 1980 or on CFB Griesbach from 1980 to 1983.

Even though they’re both dead and gone, the memories of my father and my grandmother linger on.

If the memories weren’t so fucking painful, the idea of Richard calling his mother an alcoholic that was cruel to his children would have been a fucking laugh riot.

Let me make a few things very clear.

I was never allowed to be the victim. I made things happen. I allowed things to happen. I was a pervert. I was a homosexual. I was old enough to know what I was doing. I was supposed to be raising my younger brother.

It wasn’t like nobody knew that I had been abused.

Captain Totzke knew.

My father knew.

The military police in May of 1980 started investigating the babysitter for what he had done to younger children on the base as a result of numerous parents complaining. I have no doubt that the military police back then knew about my brother and I.

The fact that both my father and Captain Totzke knew and yet blamed me means that I didn’t suffer in silence since 1980.

It means that they both shoved a sock in my mouth to keep me silent.

One did it because of orders from the chain of command

One did it to hide his dysfunctional household.

In the end, I’m the one left with the burnt out brain.

I’ve lost.

And I’ve lost big time.

The least you could do is admit that I should have the ability end my life if I want to.

I had no input in the matter of being born.

My parents had sex.

That was their choice.

The adults in my childhood were either absent, dysfunctional, alcoholic, or they had agendas.

One line from a song that has always resonated with me since I heard it is:
“You know where it ends, yo, it usually depends on where you start”, Everlast, What it’s like.

I wasn’t given every advantage in life only to piss it away in my college years because I got into drugs or drinking.

During my adolescence all I could do is sit and wonder why I was so fucking stupid and so fucking dumb. Nothing I did ever seemed to work out. Everything I did I fucked up.

In my early adult years I realized that my electronic skills and my computer skills were not going to amount to anything. No degrees, no certificates, no decent pay.

As I said in another post, I could use my mechanical reasoning, my electronic skills, and my interests in computers to get an advantage over other candidates for jobs that were basically just over minimum wage.

It was in the mid to late ’90s that I realized that I was never going to amount to anything.

All those years, wasting away at jobs that I didn’t really like, but they were jobs that allowed me to eat and sleep in a bed.

What makes this even worse is all the years of listening to people telling me that I was crazy, that I was insane, that I was a fucking retard, that I was a fucking loser, that I was psychotic, that I was an asshole, that I was a snob.

The crazy is what the kids in school called me.

The insane was what my father called me.

The fucking retard is what my stepmother called me.

The fucking loser was from my time living on the streets and in emergency shelters.

The fucking psycho was from when a female customer was trying to get a response out of me when she accused the machines of intentionally damaging her personal equipment.

The fucking asshole and the snob come from the fact that I don’t get worked up over shit, nor do I give a shit about TV programs, or sportsball teams, or movies.

And please don’t respond telling me that I’m not the above. It would be meaningless empty gesture.

All my life people have told me that I should be very happy that as shitty as my life was, that at least I wasn’t born in some 3rd world country.

I’ve never underfuckingstood what they bullshit is supposed to mean.

I wasn’t born in some mythical 3rd world country. I was born in this country. A country where children are supposed to be safe. A meritocracy where one can go as far in life as they’re willing to go. This shit all turned out to be a fucking lie. But I’m supposed to pretend that I’m the luckiest boy in the world for all of the opportunities that were thrown at my feet.

Why the fuck am I not surprised?

Back in 2022 during one of the mediated hearings between myself and the lawyers for an entity that I cannot name, the lawyers brought up a line from my social service records that I had never seen.

“Mr. Gill appeared to be concerned about his mother’s drinking suggesting she is emotionally abusive to both children, especially when inebriated”.

That floored me as I never thought that Richard would have the fucking balls to call his mother a drunk. Never mind his fucking hypocrisy as both him and his mother were champion drinkers.

In January of 1977, Richard was arrested by the CFB Summerside military police for fighting with his own mother while they were both pissed drunk.

Well, seeing as how Richard was fucking dead since 2017, I submitted another Access to Information request, this time requesting more information if possible as both my grandmother and my father were dead.

On May 8th, 2022 I received the additional information that I requested.

Fuck, what a blast this was.

“Mr. Gill has a tendency in contact with professionals to blame the boys’ behaviour on their relationship with their grandmother who has lived with the family. Mr. Gill states that his mother is an alcoholic who refuses to seek help or treatment for her condition”.

“Mr. Gill claims that his mother is an alcoholic”.

What a fucking asshole. But he wouldn’t be Richard Gill if he wasn’t a fucking asshole.

” Another point is that Richard is resistant to Sue coming into sessions and voices concern that she ‘should be home making supper'”.

I’ll never understand why Sue stuck around.

She could have easily found someone who wasn’t an misogynistic alcoholic asshole.

I’ve seen my father naked, so it couldn’t have been the intense satisfying sex.

Richard was never subtle with his misogyny.

When Richard and Sue would get into arguments and fights in the house he’d gladly let fly with cunt this and cunt that.

When his friends were over he’d regale them with how much of a stupid bitch Sue was and how much of a fucking stunned cunt she could be.

When Sue was learning to drive stick shift on CFB Greisbach he’d get pissed off with her when she ground the gears.

If we were out in the city driving and a woman was driving slow in front of him or didn’t signal properly he’d gladly let fly with fucking cunt!, fucking dumb cunt!, fucking stunned cunt!

And he was no better with my child care workers in Edmonton, the majority of whom were women.

When my mother left in 1977 my father made sure that I understood that my mother was a whore who would spread he legs for anyone and that she ran off with a guy named Gus from the P.P.C.L.I.

I’m beginning to think that Richard probably told Marie to get into the kitchen and cook his supper one too many times.

But it’s really amazing to see exactly how much disdain Richard had for his mother.

Like, holy fuck, he’s the one who brought grandma into the house to live with us at CFB Summerside when our mother left.

He’s the one who requested the compassionate posting to move from CFB Summerside to CFB Namao when grandma returned to Edmonton to be with her husband Andy.

He’s the one who couldn’t stop his womanizing after Andy slipped in the bathtub and ended up in the long term care facility at the U of A.

And he had the fucking balls to tell my social workers that the problems my brother and I were exhibiting weren’t due to being sexually abused by our babysitter for a year and a half but were due to his alcoholic mother?

What a fucking complete asshole.

Was Richard an oddity in the Canadian Forces.

Fuck no.

The Canadian Armed Forces had a significant problem with misogyny. Actually they still have, but it’s no where near as bad as it was back in the ’70s and ’80s.

A guy like Richard would have found like minded malcontents in the military.

Remember, the canteen at 447 Squadron was plastered with fully naked centrefolds, and not just one or two pictures. They were all over the place. And when fathers would bring their sons to the squadron, they didn’t give a shit if their sons saw photos of naked women. That’s what women were for.

Marie was a woman, so as far as Richard was concerned his responsibility to raise his kids ended when he ejaculated. And cook his supper.

Grandma was a woman, so as far as Richard was concerned it was her job to look after his kids.

Sue was a woman, so it was her job to raise my brother and I.

Richard had no responsibility to raise his kids.

That’s what women were for.

Mental Health

People often ask me if I’ve tried to obtain professional help with my issues.

Surely if you only tried Bobbie, you could get help! But remember it’s all on you!

There’s a few problems with this.

First, until relatively recently I didn’t realize that I had any problems as Captain Totzke and my father had both drilled into my head that my issues were just a way for me to seek attention and that the abuse that I endured on Canadian Forces Base Namao was not really abuse but was more than likely due to me being a homosexual, which was obviously a choice.. Even my father said much the same in 2013 in response to my written examination of him for federal court. “His issues could be whatever he wanted them to be”.

Second, after a childhood of being caught in the war between two opposing factions, my father and Captain Totzke on one side and my civilian counsellors and health practitioners on the other side, I really don’t have a lot of trust for these people.

Third, medical science doesn’t understand how the human brain works. Sure, there are a ton of theories. But most monographs that accompany psychiatric pharmaceuticals stress that they don’t understand the exact mechanism that allows the drug to work, but that the drug does seem to have the desired effects.

The Escitalopram that I’m on is interesting, but it’s like using numbing cream on the site of a tattoo. Sure, the numbing cream will keep the pain of the tattoo to a minimum, but the tattoo is still gonna cause trauma to your skin and even after the numbing cream wears off you’ll still feel pain.

Mental health funding in this country often looks like this:

Typical mental health facility in Canada.

A pretty sign, but nothing more than an out of order shit-house.

Counselling usually consist of being warned not to trauma dump on your counsellor. Just tell them enough that they feel like they know more than you, but don’t tell them so much that they run up on to the roof of the building to jump off.

I actually had one counsellor in a preliminary session tell me that he didn’t want to hear about my past as we live in the here and now.

I swear that most counsellors get into this field with the doe-eyed misconception that everyone’s trauma is the result of their goldfish dying when they were 10 years old, or their puppy got run over by a car when they were 12.

Then there are assholes like me that show up with multifaceted trauma. Sure, kids got sexually abused out in civvy land, and sure, some of this abuse occurred in the Catholic Church which could use its influence to hide things from the public eye. But that influence only went so far. Eventually enough stories became public that the church could no longer use its influence to hide this shit. The gates were opened and all of the crap came bursting through.

The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence OWN the bases and employ just about everyone on the bases. They even have their own law enforcement agency and their own judicial system. This is why you very rarely hear of child sexual abuse from the bases. It’s much easier to control a company town when you own everything and employ everyone in that company town.

My father and Captain Father Angus McRae worked for the same employer. On Canadian Forces Base Namao they had the same base commander who had control over the base military police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit. Even Captain Terry Totzke, the military social worker whose care I was under from October of 1980 until April of 1983 was under the command of Colonel Dan Munro, the base commander of CFB Namao.

How do I explain to a counsellor that my father’s employer pulled out all of the stops to ensure that the Captain McRae fiasco didn’t blow up beyond Captain McRae being charged with just molesting his teenaged accomplice?

How do I explain to a counsellor that the rejection and derision that I faced from my father came no doubt from his shitty parenting skills and his obedience to the Canadian Forces chain of command?

I learnt a while ago to not even mention my grandmother’s stint in Indian Residential School. Sure, her shitty childhood in a racist country run by the church and corrupt politicians obviously impacted my father’s shitty childhood, which of course impacted my childhood and my brother’s childhood. And sure, it was my grandmother’s frequent intoxication while she was raising my brother and I that no doubt led to my brother and I needing a babysitter, which led to our abuse. But bringing up my grandmother leads to accusations of me trying to be a full blood pretendian.

Basically my brother and I aren’t the end result of intergenerational trauma.

We’re not the victims of 1-1/2 years of sexual abuse on CFB Namao because our primary abuser was the sole victim of Captain McRae*.

I didn’t really have major depression, severe anxiety, or a host of other issues that I was diagnosed as having, because my military social worker said that I didn’t.

I wasn’t a victim of childhood sexual abuse because my military social worker declared that I was a homosexual and therefore I was a willing participant.

On base, child neglect and child abuse were verboten subjects that no one dared speak about. Everyone just minded their own business as you had no idea who the abuser’s chain of command was and how this could impact your own chain of command.

And you can’t go into a counsellor and talk about this shit. They don’t understand what life was like for military dependants and what a hell it could be when your serving parent could use compassionate postings to stay one step ahead of provincial social services.

Due to the over saturation of feel good depictions of the military and military life on television, no one in the civvy world believes that children were in any type of danger living on the bases and that in fact living on a military base was probably the safest place for a child to grow up.

And even if I did luck out and find a counsellor that has first hand military experience and understands that military life was far from perfect and that people in or around the military who found themselves in need of help were often neglected and ridiculed, what would that accomplish?

I have understood for quite some time that I am not at fault for what happened.

I understand what caused the issues that plague me to this day.

I fully understand that the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are far too massive of an opponent for me to ever have any influence over.

Talking isn’t going to fix anything.

I know the things that will forever be broken.

I know the things that will forever be beyond my grasp.

I know the things that were taken from me by others simply because they need to hide things.

Even if my lawyers are able to reach a settlement with the DND and the CAF, that settlement and any accompanying apology (if issued) isn’t going to undo things.

There’s one thing in particular that the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces will never be able to get for me. This is partially due to me never being able to believe a single fucking thing that would ever come from their collective mouths, and this is due to the fact that my father is long dead.

Around 1987ish, my brother took our stepmother’s Pontiac Chevette for a joyride. Richard beat the shit out of me for that because it was my fault that I wasn’t keeping an eye on my brother and I wasn’t raising my brother right. During that beating my father kept freely bringing up the babysitter’s name and that it was my fault that my brother was acting up because I let the babysitter touch him.

In 2006, during our infamous phone calls, Richard pleaded with me to understand that he didn’t hire the babysitter. The it was our grandmother’s fault. She kept hiring the babysitter even through he told her that he didn’t like him. He said that he even paid for the babysitter on a couple of times because grandma didn’t have the money to pay the babysitter. He also said that I was partially to blame as I didn’t tell anyone and that I should have done more to protect my brother from the babysitter.

In 2011 he would give a statement to the CFNIS in which he completely forgot to mention to the CFNIS that he wasn’t living at home with us on the base and that his mother was raising my brother and I. He also told the CFNIS that he was certain there was never a babysitter in the house, just some rando woman from across the street that would keep an eye on his kids periodically.

In 2013 when I examined my father for Federal Court in his written response to my examination he now all of a sudden remembers that his mother was raising his children at the time in question, and why yes, there was a male babysitter, but his mother hired the babysitter, not him.

My social service paperwork from the period of time of November 1981 to October 1983 which also includes my paperwork from October 1980 to November 1981 when I was solely in the care of Captain Totzke makes frequent mention of my grandmother as having been brought into the house to raise my brother and I. This paperwork also contains an observation from a psychiatrist hired by Captain Totzke to evaluate my family in which my father was found to take no responsibility for his family, blamed problems with his family on others, and expected other to solve his problems for him. In this same paperwork my father tells Alberta Social Services that the issues being exhibited by my brother and I were due to his mother “who was very cruel to his children, especially when she was inebriated, which was often”. I gave a full copy of my social service paperwork to the CFNIS in August of 2011.

My brother says that I have to forgive my father because maybe the Canadian Forces forced him to give that statement in 2011, or maybe the Canadian Forces edited his statement to be what they wanted it to be.

No.

My father was a liar. Nothing was believable coming out of his mouth when I was a kid.

Birthday parties? Sure you can have a birthday party, I promise.

From 1977 until 1985 not a single birthday party. Apparently kids with depression and suffering from child sexual abuse aren’t allowed to have parties.

Had a birthday cake in 1985. Richard made a promise that he’d never forget my birthday again. Never had any type of birthday acknowledgment after that until 2006. What was behind the birthday cake in 1985? I didn’t realize at the time that my family was under supervision from the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, but we were. And I guess that Richard was buttering my ass up just in case that Children’s Aid found out about the domestic outburst that he had that required 3 military police officer to bring him under control.

He promised and he swore up and down that he’d pay for my driver’s training for my 16th birthday if I stayed in school. Well, birthday time rolled around, and all of a sudden he just realized that he couldn’t let me get my driver’s licence as it would affect his car insurance.

He invited me in June of 1990 to move to Edmonton with him and we could try to be a family again. That lasted for one month before him and my stepmother bought a house in Morinville and my stepmother made it very clear that I wasn’t welcome. What pissed me off the most about the whole move from Toronto to Edmonton was that I paid for most of the meals on the way and I paid for some new office furniture for my father’s work area in the basement of the PMQ. He told me to give him the receipts from the meals and that he’d submit them to the DND and give me the money when he was reimbursed. He also told me that he’d pay me back for the office chair and desk that I bought him. He never did pay me back. Claimed that after all he paid raising my brother and I that I owed him.

He called me up a couple of times in the ’90s when I was living in Vancouver. Said that he’d give me some money if I helped my brother fix his car. Helped my brother. The promised money never came.

I’ll never get an apology from Richard. Did he lie to the CFNIS in 2011 because he was pressured by the CFNIS? Or did he lie to the CFNIS in 2011 because he was ashamed of the fact he participated in a cover up in 1980? And even if it wasn’t a coverup that he participated in, was he ashamed to admit that his children were abused because he left his children in the care of his very dysfunctional mother?

But then again, even if Richard was still alive today, would I be able to believe anything that came out of his mouth?

And this is why I am tired.

And this is why I am burnt out.

And this is why I am disillusioned.

Everyone keeps telling me to move on.

To let the past stay in the past.

Even my father said in 2006 the if I went sticking my nose into this that I might not like the smell.

Everyone makes the depression out as being my fault because I just don’t want to be happy.

My anxiety attacks are nothing more than ploys for getting attention.

If I honestly wanted to get better, all I’d have to do take “x” therapy and all would be great.

My desire for M.A.i.D. is nothing more than melodrama.

My father and the art of terror.

When I say that I was terrified of my father as a child, I’m not exaggerating.

There’s a reason why the psychologist that evaluated my family in November of 1980 found that I was terrified of men and that I was certain that I my father was going to kill me.

And it wasn’t just the physical violence that Richard could dish out. It was the outright psychological terror that he could dish out.

I had once gone and spent a weekend at a sea cadet corp in Port Hope, Ontario. Port Hope was just a little beyond Oshawa, Ontario so Richard had no problem driving me out as this was part of Richard’s and Sue’s shopping trips to Knob Hill Farms in Oshawa.

Richard came to pick me up on the Sunday evening.

When I got into the Mustang he just looked at me and wound up like he was going to backhand me, so I put my hands up to block and cover my face.

“What? You thought I was going to hit you?”

I lowered my hands a bit to look at him.

“You are so goddamn fucking lucky, do you understand that?”

“I was planning to give you the beating of your life when we got home”

I stared at him but I didn’t say anything.

“I went to use my oscilloscope today and some asshole had used one of the probes to poke fucking holes in the anti-glare screen”

“So of course I thought that it was you as you’re the only other person in the house that would dare touch the ‘scope”

I still just stared at him.

“And I was so fucking looking forward to giving you the beating of your life when we got back to the base, but then I remembered that I used the ‘scope yesterday and the fucking holes weren’t there. So it had to be your asshole brother”

I asked Richard what he was going to do to my brother.

“Nothing, what the fuck can I do to him to make him listen. He won’t listen to you and he sure as fuck won’t listen to me”.

The actual fact of the matter was that by this time my brother, who was 2-3 years younger than me (depending what time of the year it was), was larger than Richard. And I have no doubt that if Richard had tried to raise his hand against my brother that my brother would have ripped Richard’s arms from their sockets and beat him over the fucking head with them.

There were things as a kid that I was jealous of my brother for.

Richard would let him watch all the Saturday morning cartoons that he wanted to. My cartoons were too stupid and childish and I was the older kid so I was supposed to set an example for my brother.

Richard wouldn’t object to my brother listening to any music that he fancied. Twisted Sister, Poison, Motley Crue, etc. I wasn’t allowed to have a stereo in my room, and any music that I listened to such as Bruce Hornsby and the Range was utter stupid garbage.

And yes, the fact that Richard was afraid of my brother, or more than likely Richard was cautious of my brother due to my brother’s ability to fight back where as I couldn’t.

You would think that putting up with Richard’s bullshit would have taught me how to fight.

Nope.

Fighting just made things worse. Standing up for myself only made things worse.

And Richard’s temper was swift and quick and often without second thought.

I forget when exactly it happened, but it was when my bedroom was still upstairs in the PMQ on CFB Downsview, my brother had his first epileptic seizure. Actually, I don’t know if this was the first one he actually had, or if this was the first one in which someone else found him in the midst of a seizure.

I came home from wherever it was that I was. Sue, our stepmother, told me that I had to go up to my room and wait for my father to come home and that I was to sit on the floor and not touch anything.

I went upstairs and did as I was told. I sat on the floor.

For hours.

There really wasn’t anywhere else for me to sit as my room had been tossed.

Thankfully I didn’t have much to my name at the time as I have no doubt that Richard would have destroyed it.

My bed was up ended and the sheets had been torn off.

My dresser had been emptied out on the floor.

My closet had been emptied out on the floor.

The cover for my radiator had been pulled off.

So, I sat on the floor and waited for Richard to come home.

Richard came home and I heard him ask Sue, “did the little fucker come home?”

“He’s upstairs, Richard control yourself”.

Richard sprinted up the stairs, had to be 3 steps at a time.

He came into my room and with one fell swoop put both hands on my chest, picked me up, and slammed me into the wall so that our heads were at the same height?

“Where the fuck are the drugs?”

“What drugs?”

“You gave your fucking brother drugs, he’s in the fucking hospital because of you”

Slam.

“I don’t do drugs, I don’t have drugs, I don’t know what you’re talking about”.

Slam, down I went to the floor.

“If your fucking brother dies, I will fucking kill you!”

“Now, get this fucking shit cleaned up and you better think long and fucking hard about what you’ve done!”

I think it was two or three days later that the official diagnoses came in that my brother had Grand Mal Epilepsy.

Richard died in 2017 without his lips once ever uttering an apology.

In 2006 when I had my infamous blowout with Richard on the phone he remembered this, he also said that I was overreacting, and he couldn’t understand why I was holding on to this. He was a father, he was concerned, I didn’t understand what it was like for him.

“It’s obvious that your brother has epilepsy so why you’re holding on to what I said all those years ago makes no sense. Why do you insist on living in the past?”

In 2011, after I had received my social service paperwork from the Alberta Government I started seeing a counsellor named Doug.

We were discussing my father’s anger outbursts and I mentioned my brother’s first “official” seizure and how Richard accused me of giving my brother drugs.

“So, were you ever tested?”

Tested for what?

“Epilepsy, it’s genetic. Your brother is your full brother, right?”

I wouldn’t learn until 2013 when I tracked my mother down, that the epilepsy originated on her side of the family. It skipped her, though.

I had seen my brother in a couple of seizures. I knew what the seizures looked like, I knew that there would always be physical evidence, and when my brother came out of a seizure he was always disorientated and angry. I don’t honestly ever remember having any type of seizure like my brother, and I told Doug that.

“The reason I ask is your records indicate that you frequently had trouble paying attention in school, you often drifted off and didn’t pay attention, you were often found to be “day dreaming”, your testing indicated an auditory memory issue.”

No, I’m absolutely sure that I never had a seizure of any kind when I was a kid.

“Do you know what an absence seizure is?”

Nope.

Absence seizures, as I would find out, are often a precursor to full blown epilepsy. Epilepsy is mainly genetic and runs in families. My mother’s mother died from an epileptic seizure. Anyways, absence seizures are often exhibited by children that are genetically predisposed to epilepsy. The interesting thing about absence seizures is that children will either grow out of them by adolescence or they will progress to Grand Mal Seizures.

Absence seizures are typically brief and only last from a few seconds to maybe a minute, but they can happen numerous times a day, sometimes in rapid fire succession.

There were times as kids when my brother and I were in the back of the car. Richard would be driving somewhere. And my brother would make this face at me where he’d roll his eyes back in his head and flutter his eye lids. If I complained to Richard about the faces my brother was making he’d get pissed off at me and my brother.

Well, as it turns out, that’s a symptom of an absence seizure.

My records indicated that I would frequently interrupt the school class by making clucking / clicking noises, grunting noises, and that I would often day dream and not pay attention.

The clucking and clicking noises I honestly can’t remember them other than what the other kids would say what I sounded like or looked like while I was doing them.

The day dreaming? I don’t remember day dreaming per se, but what I do remember is that I had what I thought was a magic ability that I needed to work on. I found that if I stared hard enough at the clock that I could make the second hand jump forward in time by up to 40 seconds. I thought that this was a magic power. It wasn’t. There were times when the teacher would be explaining something, and I would zone out and miss out on what was said. And this would happen maybe about four or five times per class.

Of course my misbehaviour in school made Richard angry. Not so much the fact that this “misbehaviour” was fucking with my education, but because my “misbehaviour” was causing my teachers and my principal to frequently call Richard at work and “disturb” him while he was busy playing soldier in the military.

The number of times that I had to endure Richard’s anger when he arrived home from work is more than what I want to remember. The pants and underwear down leather belt spankings that I took from Richard fill me with pain to this day.

I remember during my time living on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach and Canadian Forces Base Downsview trying so hard to be normal in school but then realizing that I was too fucked up to be normal.

My father’s anger is something that will always be with me until my life is ended.

My counsellor Doug set me up with a neurologist for testing. I did the sleep depravation test and the strobe light test. Triggered my ocular migraine. But it didn’t trigger a seizure. When I got home I had to sleep in my bathtub covered in my blankets and duvets as this was the only room quiet and dark enough to let me sleep.

The neurologist that I went to said that at that stage in my life it would be very doubtful that any testing would show that I had absence seizures as a child. But considering that my brother has full blown epilepsy, and that description of my issues in my social services paperwork, it was more than likely that both my brother and I were having absence seizures as kids and that one of us grew out of them and the other didn’t.

Which brings me back to Richard’s anger. How would things have turned out differently for my brother and I had Richard had control of his temper and his anger?

How would things have turned out for my brother and I had Richard even tried in the most basic sense of the word to be a father and not just a sperm donor?

What if, instead of being an angry asshole, Richard had actually cared?

Makeup……..

Yeah, as per my previous posting, I did dabble with makeup for a few years.

I liked it.

Growing up in military communities as a child can be extremely stifling.

Back in the day “queers”, “fags”, “homos”, “lezzies”, etc. were not welcome in the Canadian Armed Forces.

This was enforced by Canadian Forces Administrative Order CFAO 19-20. Yes, CFAO 19-20 was not aimed at military dependents living on the bases, but it would have affected the attitudes of our serving parents towards anyone that appeared in the slightest to be a homosexual.

And housing communities on military bases made the boring conformity of the civilian suburbs look like outright anarchy in comparison.

Yeah, I understand that out in the civilian world, makeup and dresses on boys wouldn’t have been all that tolerated, but there were glimmers of hope.

In the defence community dresses and makeup on boys would have resulted in some pretty substantial beatings and corrective measures.

CFB Downsview was probably the closet to a tolerant base that I lived on, but that was more or less due to the fact that CFB Downsview was the base where military personnel went to finish off the last few years of their career until retirement.

So, after a childhood, adolescence, and adulthood of self loathing, why did I suddenly give in to my whims starting in 2006?

Well, first I had a union job. I wouldn’t have taken a chance with my previous employers finding out about my proclivities involving makeup and dresses.

Second, some co-workers from work from different departments invited me out to a pride event.

Now, to be honest that was the only pride event that I’ve ever been to in my life. There’s just way too much in the way of alcohol indulgence at these events for me to feel comfortable. And there’s way too much social interaction. I like to be left alone. And I don’t like to be touched. I still participate in fringe events at pride outside of the main events.

Anyways, after the party and on my way home I gave my father a few phone calls. All of these calls went to voice mail. But they must have hit a nerve as Richard called me the next morning.

The last time this fucker had called me on his own initiative was back around 1996 when he called me and told me that if I helped my brother fix his car that Richard would pay me. Richard never did.

Anyways, we talked for a long time when he called.

You have to remember that this was almost 5 years before I received my social service paperwork that contained the evaluation of Richard by the psychiatrist hired by the Canadian Armed Forces which stated that Richard took no responsibility for his family, blamed other for the problems with his family, and expected others to solve the problems with his family. This paperwork also contained evaluation from Alberta Social Services that Richard lied and Richard basically had two faces depending on the situation.

So, in 2006 I was totally unarmed in my discussion with Richard.

First, I had to understand that hiring the babysitter wasn’t his fault. It was his mother’s fault that the babysitter was hired. He told her not to hire P.S., but she wouldn’t listen to him. He knew the babysitter’s name. He blurted it out himself without any prodding.

He even managed to blame me again for the abuse by telling me that I let it go on for far too long, and that because I allowed my brother to be abused by the babysitter that I was to blame for the issues my brother was having.

Richard said that all I had to do was tell him or tell Grandma and they could have stopped the abuse. But because I had allowed the abuse to go on there were some concerns that I was a pervert like the babysitter.

Second, Grandma wouldn’t have had to come raise my brother and I if our mother wasn’t a whore that would spread her legs for anyone in uniform. Yes, he actually said that. He said that our mother ran away and she abandoned us, it wasn’t his fault. She knew he had a career in the Canadian Forces and that he wouldn’t be home a lot. He had no decision in the matter, when the Canadian Forces told him to go, he had to go.

Third, he really didn’t beat me as hard as I remembered that he did when my brother took the Pontiac Chevette for a joyride. And even if Richard did go a little to far that morning it was because he was under a lot of stress at the time from work and by me not keeping my brother under control I was just making matters worse for him.

He on his own brought up the matter of the Vectrex and the laser. Said that he couldn’t understand why I got so worked up about that. School was meant to go to, sit down, shut up, and look at the blackboard, not to be a show-off, who the fuck did I honestly think that I was trying to impress.

And of course he railed on and on about how he sacrificed everything for my brother and I and that we didn’t show him the least about of respect or appreciation.

It was at that time that I had begun to realize what an asshole my father really was and how I had wanted my entire life trying to make amends with a man who only cared about himself.

Even though I realized in 2006 just how horrific Richard really was, this didn’t (and never will) erase the memories of everything that I had lived through under his roof.

The more I wore makeup and the more I switched from “men’s” clothing to “women’s” clothing and went against the conventions that society considered “normal” for the genders, the more what my father and Terry had told me as a kid came back to haunt me.

I generally stopped wearing makeup around 2012. The whole previous year of dealing with the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service and the Military Police Complaints Commission sucked the fucking life right out of me.

And this was before I received a copy of the certified tribunal records in February of 2013 for my Application for Judicial Review.

Dealing with all of the stress and the lies and the intentional obfuscation pretty well killed any joy that I had with wearing makeup. I still get my nails done on occasion, but not to the extent that I used to before.

Maybe in a way my facial tattoos make up for the loss of my desire to wear makeup.

Wearing dresses and make up and my weird fashion sense have made me wonder what exactly I could have been in life had I not grown up in the circumstances that I grew up in.

I thought that everyone knew

When did Bobbie start wearing dresses?

I didn’t realize until December of 2013 when I tracked my mother down and went to see her in Calgary that I had slipped into my friend’s dresses once or twice on CFB Shearwater.

My father wasn’t around, so he never found out. Which was probably a very good thing.

The next time I wore dresses was actually on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach. I had a female friend. Her parents were very traditional in the sense that girls had to wear dresses. So she and I would slip off base, swap clothes, and hang around for a while. This of course was during the time I was in the care of military social worker Captain Terry Totzke for my “homosexuality”. So this would have been in the period of 1981 to 1983. Again, I don’t think my father ever knew.

There was an incident on CFB Griesbach that caused me a lot of conflict though. I knew it would have been after I was placed into the Westfield program by Alberta Social Services. Sue, my stepmother, was going to take my younger brother to Dairy Queen for ice cream. I asked Sue if I could come. Sue, who was only about 12 years older than me, looked at me and said “Retards don’t get ice cream”. She was obviously referring to my involvement with Westfield and the problems that my untreated depression, anxiety, and other issues were causing for my father and her. Anyways I started crying. She came over and grabbed me and looked me straight in the face and said that if I didn’t stop crying like a little girl that she was going to take me to Sears and buy me a dress and that I could cry like a little girl all I wanted too. 

This caused me great conflict for three reasons. 1) I hated being called a retard. I was getting teased and taunted enough on base having to take the short yellow bus to school, but now my own stepmother was calling me a retard. 2) I despised [brother] for how he could cause all sorts of shit in the house but it was always my fault for not looking after him. 3) I really wanted a dress. I was kinda hooked on Alice’s dress from Alice in Wonderland.

As things had become way out of control at home with Richard and Sue and as Richard was blaming me for “fucking with his military career” and dishing out the physical abuse to go along with that, my desires for dresses took a back seat.

The only type of glimmer that I had in my teenage years of the fascination I had with dresses as a kid was when I went to see Ridley Scott’s Legend in the theatres. I wanted Lilli’s “Black Evil Dress”.

It wouldn’t be until I had my first apartment in New Westminster around 1995 that I started to buy dresses on the sly and wear them in my apartment.

Because of my time with Captain Totzke and my father’s attitude I knew that this was probably due to my “homosexual perversion”.

It wouldn’t be until I got my union job at St. Paul’s in 2005 that I really got into dresses. First it was skirts. Skirts that could conceivably pass as “kilts”.

But by 2008 I was mainly wearing dresses.

My wardrobe at this point is mainly dresses and skirts. I do own a couple “utilikilts” and one pair of jeans.

Why do I wear dresses?

I think that on CFB Shearwater it was just childhood curiosity. When you’re under 5 I don’t think that you have a clear understanding of societal gender roles. Don’t forget, it was very common up until the early 1900s for boys under the age of 7 or 8 to wear dresses. When a boy turned 7 or 8 they were “breeched” and given their first pair of trousers / pants as well as their first haircut. Toilet training and the lack of mass produced clothing would account for this.

This is Franklin Delano Roosevelt wearing a dress.

Historians have had to go back and reevaluate paintings from the Medieval and Early Modern Eras as a lot of the paintings depicting girls in dresses may have actually been both boys and girls in dresses. To tell the two apart boys tended to wear plain dresses while girl’s dresses tended to have small amounts of finery attached to the dress.

But I think that from CFB Griesbach and onwards my desire for wearing dresses had more to do with my gender identity having been destroyed by my sexual abuse on CFB Namao along with the “conversion therapy” that I was receiving from Captain Terry Totzke on CFB Griesbach.

At the time my IQ was evaluated using a professional psychiatric test. I was evaluated to have an IQ of 136 +/- 6.

Maybe this figured into my desire to wear dresses. Dresses don’t have genders. They’re clothing.

As Richard would often say, maybe I was too fucking smart for my own fucking good.

You don’t become a woman by wearing a dress anymore than a woman becomes a man by wearing pants.

Don’t forget, but society heavily frowned upon women wearing pants right up until WWII when women were then required to work on the assembly lines to build weapons and aircraft.

Dresses are comfortable and easy to wear.

And the less things I have touching my body, the happier I am.

I think the destruction of my gender identity also figures into my desire to wear dresses.

I don’t identify as male or female.

I have no desire to be a woman.

But I also don’t fit into society’s definition of a man.

Therefore I’ve never felt locked into society’s demands that I wear specific clothing.

I have no attraction to women, but I also have no attraction to men.

I have had sex with both earlier on in my life.

During the late ‘80s and into the ‘90s I was mainly with men, but it always felt mechanical.

But don’t let this sound like I was involved with 1,000s or partners.

Maybe about 10 guys total.

Maybe about 2 or 3 women.

And I haven’t been with anyone since the early 2000’s

My attraction to men is stymied by the fact that I’ve lived all my life with the knowledge that homosexuality is a mental illness and that it is inherently evil. Having sex with men always brings back memories of my father, of Terry, and of [baby sitter / accomplice]. This cannot be escaped.

My attraction to women is stymied by the fact that I’m not really attracted to women.

What am I?

I identify as “queer”. Not gay. Not bi. Not straight. Not trans. 

Just queer.

Maybe I am gay, but unfortunately that was taken away from me back in ’78 through ’83.

When I legally changed my name in 2008 I chose Bobbie specifically because this is the unisex spelling of this name.

Bobby = male

Bobbi = female

Bobbie = unisex.

I hated the name Robert as this is a boy’s / man’s name.

Anyways……………..

The fact is I wear dresses ‘cause I like dresses and I don’t identify with either gender.

The fucking irony of ironies.

Hold on to you fucking hats boys and girls………

Guess who might not see a single red fucking cent from his class action brought against the Canadian Armed Forces.

I kid you not.

Even if the DOJ goes ahead and settles this matter out of court, I might not see a single nickel from the action.

See, even though the babysitter had been groomed by Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae. And even though the babysitter had been recommended to families such as mine by Captain Father Angus McRae in his role as padre for the base. And even though Captain McRae was using the babysitter to bring us young children over to the rectory attached to the chapel. And even though the chain of command made decisions to not bring the RCMP to deal with the babysitter and the horrific crimes he committed against the children living on the base, the Government is arguing that the babysitter was not a member of the Canadian Forces and that Captain McRae had no real authority over the babysitter and therefore the Government of Canada is not responsible to compensate those who were only abused by the babysitter.

But Bobbie, didn’t you say that the babysitter had taken you over to the chapel on five different occasions and that at Captain McRae’s request he gave you a “sickly sweet grape juice” which was later determined to be wine?

Well, because the CFNIS never undertook that investigative path in 2011 after I told the CFNIS about the visits to the chapel, there was never any investigation into this.

And the CFSIU investigation paperwork from 1980 doesn’t help much as the military police and the CFSIU conceded during their investigations that they had only touched the tip of the iceberg, that not all of the parents on Canadian Forces Base Name wanted their children associated with the obvious taint that would have come from being a male victim of male-on-male sexual abuse and so they wouldn’t let their children be interviewed by the investigators.

And then there’s that fact the some of Captain McRae’s abuse victims along with the victims of the babysitter had moved off the base during the summer of 1979 posting season and weren’t around to be interviewed by the military police and the CFSIU in May of 1980 when the babysitter’s activities along with Captain McRae’s activities became know to the military police, the CFSIU, and the base chain of command.

Am I angry?

nope.

Am I upset?

nope.

Am I surprised?

nope.

I’ve spent the last 12 years learning about the military justice system.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the Canadian Armed Forces are literally fucked seven ways from Sunday.

It’s an organization, that while not brimming full of child molesters and pedophiles, will do anything it can to not own up to the fact that its twisted and broken “justice system” as well as its self-interested parochial chain of command knew that there were pedophiles and child molesters praying on military dependents but was happy to look the other way so as not to create a public relations nightmare.

I can’t ever see the Department of National Defence or the Canadian Armed Forces owning up to and fixing this mess. They don’t have to. They’re so fucking untouchable that they never have to worry.

They’re not legally obligated to look after military dependents.

Ethically, sure. Legally, no.

Again, look at how the Canadian Armed Forces fucked over the 12 to 18 year old Army Cadets from Canadian Forces Base Valcartier in 1974 from the “grenade incident”. The only people in the room who received any type of help when a grenade detonated were the regular force members who were negligent in their duties and allowed the grenade in to the barracks and allowed the cadets to handle and play with it.

From 1974 until 2011 the Canadian Armed Forces told the victims and the families of the victims who died to basically fuck off and go pound sand due to the civilian nature of the cadets. The DND and the CAF weren’t legally responsible, the kids were on the base at their own risk.

Finally in 2011 the Ombudsman released a scathing report that chastised the Canadian Forces for compensating the negligent members of the Canadian Forces who allowed the bloodshed to occur while at the same time ignoring the death, pain, and suffering that the cadets aged 12 to 18 endured.

And that’s where I am at along with all of the other victims of the babysitter.

So far as General W.D. EYRE and the rest of the chain of command at National Defence Head Quarters are concerned, the child victims of Captain Father Angus McRae and his teenaged accomplice can go fuck themselves in the politest of terms.

To men such as General W.D. EYRE and even women such as Minister of National Defence Anita Anand are concerned the children from Canadian Forces Base Name and the other bases that Captain McRae served at are just collateral damage that must be endured in order to keep the image of the Canadian Armed Forces unblemished.

Vacation time.

Well, it’s vacation time again.

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

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

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

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

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

Nope.

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

Anyways, just never went anywhere.

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

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

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

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

Which brings me to this year.

I have two trips planned this year.

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

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

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

I’m still gonna take the train trip.

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

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

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

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

No.

But I need something to kill the time.

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