As a kid I learnt an odd behaviour of mine that still sort of continues on to this day.
However, now that I more or less have control over my life I find that I don’t often fall prey to this line of thinking. But it’s still there in the deep dark recesses of my defective brain.
When I was a kid, especially living on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach in Edmonton I had developed a perverse way of dealing with Richard’s stinginess and hatred-by-proxy of Marie.
When it would get close to xmas or my birthday I would secretly start wishing that I wouldn’t get what I had asked for.
And it worked.
Never once did I ever get what I had asked for, and by wishing that I wouldn’t get it I actually felt in control.
Looking back it was obviously a really weird coping mechanism, but it did allow me to cope none the less.
This obviously wasn’t a very healthy coping mechanism.
I would often pretend to not be interested in the latest and greatest thing.
And that would often set me on a collision course with the popular kids who thought that I was just trying to be “smarter than them” or who were convinced that I was just a fucking faggot loser.
At school the kids were into the Blue Jays, the Maple Leafs, the Argonauts, “pro” wrestling was a major thing in southern Ontario back then. The kids at school would have the latest jerseys, or other sports related paraphernalia.
I had nothing like this, I don’t even think my brother had anything contemporary back then.
When we lived in Edmonton from 1978 to 1983 this was practically the top of the Edmonton Oilers dynasty. Richard never once took us to a hockey game.
Our grandmother had actually taken us to some Edmonton Eskimos games with tickets that she’d get from the Bissell Centre for disadvantaged families.
Richard loved the Toronto Maple Leafs.
But in the 7-1/2 years that we lived in Toronto on Canadian Forces Base Downsview not once did we ever go to a hockey game.
And no. There was no watching hockey with Richard. If you wanted to watch hockey with Richard, that was fine, you just had to shut the fuck up and not say a single fucking thing. And don’t ask him stupid fucking questions either.
And it wasn’t like I didn’t play hockey as a kid. On CFB Namao my grandmother had enrolled me in beavers, swimming, hockey, bowling, and basketball.
Me before the fallout of the Captain Father Angus McRae child sex abuse scandal on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
Apparently I never played team sports. There was no team photo for 1979 – 1980 as I was kicked out of hockey as a result of the CFB Namao Child Sexual Abuse Scandal
“But Bobbie, what if your father had no money, he was in the Canadian Forces”.
Sure, the pay was bad in the ’60s and the ’70s. But this was offset by the lowered housing costs of living in the PMQs on base. Also, ranks tended to be very close in pay grade. Privates made one rate, Corporals made another, Master Corporals made another rate, Sergeants made another.
I don’t have access to the historical pay schedules. But even going with the current pay schedule the ranks make basic monthly rates based primarily upon rank, but modified by number of years at that rank level and any special qualifications.
The end result is that my father as a Master Corporal wasn’t making $1k per month while the Master Corporal living next door was making making $2.5k per month.
Where’d his money go?
Not to my brother or I. That was for sure.
I know he had no issue spending money on the latest and greatest knickknack or computer toy for himself.
Was he paying child support on the sly? This honestly wouldn’t surprise me in the least. He did have a habit of skirt chasing.
Was he paying an out-of-court settlement for one of his drinking and driving collisions? Again this is a possibility as his insurance would have been very expensive given the number of collisions that he had over the years.
Other than that I don’t know.
But Bobbie, it’s his money, he can spend it any way that he wants to. You can’t tell him what to spend it on.
That may be true. But he should have worn a condom. Or pulled out. Or even just have asked for oral or a handjob. Would have obviously saved a lot of grief.
You don’t get someone pregnant and then wash your hands of the responsibility claiming that your responsibility ended at conception.
You don’t take your hatred of your former spouse out on your children as if being cruel to your kids was going to make your former spouse realize how much she inconvenienced you by leaving you to look after the children you fathered.
So yeah, birthdays mean nothing to me. And xmas means nothing as well.
I won’t stop you from celebrating.
But hopefully you understand why I don’t celebrate.
And no. Please don’t think that you’re going to “fix me” by inviting me to xmas parties or birthday parties. Nothing makes me feel more awkward and out of place. And it’s so fucking tiring pretending like I fit in or like I’m enjoying myself.
I honestly don’t believe that at any point in time the mental health wellbeing of military dependents has ever been a concern of the Canadian Armed Forces or the Department of National Defence.
Sure, the DND, the CF, and the Minister of National Defence will bloviate about the Military Family Resource Centre and other meaningless programs that the DND and the CF have instituted over the years.
But if they really cared, why does the CF and the DND draw such a hard line in the sand as to which dependents they will support, and which dependents can piss off and go get bent?
In my day as a military dependent the maximum age for a dependent to live in a PMQ on base was 18. The only way you could remain living in the PMQ after your 19th birthday was if you were mentally disabled or if you were attending an institution of higher learning. But even if you were attending an institution of higher learning 24 was the maximum age that you could live in a PMQ on base.
In my day dependents were officially referred to as “D.F.& E.” which means “Dependents, Furniture, and Effects”. The Office of the Ombudsman for the Canadian Forces, which only existed as of 1999, was so taken back by this callousness that they kept asking DND to stop dehumanizing the military dependents and to stop referring to them as D.F.& E. which implied that military dependents were of no more worth than the service member’s furniture.
As a kid, there were times when kids would just stop coming to school. Or kids would just one day leave the base. Never to be seen again. And this wasn’t due to postings. If it was a posting nine times out of ten the posting would occur between late June and early September. These absences were often due to their serving parent dying. Training exercise, workplace incident, health issue, it didn’t matter. PMQs could only be rented to active service members. Deceased persons cannot serve in the military. So off the base the family went.
It was rare that a base commander would intervene and make an exception, because once you’ve made one exception how can you not make another? And allowing the deceased member’s family to remain on base in a PMQ could prove to be an issue for DND and the CF. DND and the CF had fought numerous court battles over the PMQs with regard to civilian family courts granting the non-serving spouse possession of the PMQ in which to raise their children. DND would obviously have an issue on their hands if non-serving spouses were suddenly taking possession of PMQs in the PMQ patches. And schools on base prior to 1994 were run by DND and the CF. These schools were exclusively for the children of active service members. How long was the DND and the CF supposed to support the education of a deceased member’s children?
So, back in my day once a service member died, that was it, the DND and the CF washed their hands of the service member’s dependents.
There was no support.
There was no aftercare.
There was nothing.
We weren’t eligible for social programs from the provinces related to a serving parent’s death as the provinces considered that the be the responsibility of the DND and the CF.
Living on base wasn’t as easy as it’s often portrayed.
The children of dysfunctional families were often tormented and ostracized by their peers. When you live in a regimented community like a military PMQ patch you either conform or you will have trouble.
Dysfunctional parents, like my father, could easily use the Canadian Forces to stay one step ahead of civilian social services. Sure civilian parents could move to a different town, but at great expense. In the Canadian Forces your dysfunctional parent’s moving and travel expenses were covered.
Back in my day the military social workers were more concerned with containing problems. But again, that’s the way the military functioned back then and still functions to this day.
The rank of your serving parent had its privilege, especially if your serving parent was an officer or above. Anybody who says that this wasn’t the case is absolutely full of shit.
There was no way that the base military police were going to go after the son of a Lt. Col. for beating the crap out of the son of a Corporal. No Warrant Officer MP is going to risk getting transferred to CFS Alert over two kids having a donnybrook out behind the rec centre. And yes, this still holds true to today. The provost marshal himself even said that he would never investigate a senior officer of the military.
Sure, Simon Trudeau was talking about investigating his commanding officer. However, if his commanding officer is good buddies with a lower ranking officer, and the Trudeau’s commander doesn’t want the PM to investigate the other lower ranking officer who is the Trudeau to argue with a lawful command from his superior?
Don’t forget, the Canadian Forces didn’t have a Provost Marshal from about 1968 until the office of the Provost Marshal was stood up again in 1998. Prior to that, the base military police and even the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit were under the influence of the local chain of command. Yes, when the CFNIS was created in 1998 along with the Provost Marshal being stood back up, the idea was that the CFNIS and the base military police would operate without chain of command influence. That’s all fine and dandy, but someone forget to rewrite the National Defence Act and the Queen’s Regulations and Orders to exempt members of the CFNIS and the base military police from section 83 of the National Defence Act.
The Provost Marshal was stood up in 1998 as a result of the findings of the Somalia Inquiry. The Inquiry found that the base military police and the CFSIU were ripe for interference from the local chain of command and that superior officers would often put their own parochial interests above any semblance of justice. So it was suggested that the command of the base military police and the new CFNIS be transferred to the command of the freshly stood up Provost Marshal who would be of significant enough rank that they would be immune from chain of command influence. That hasn’t worked out.
How many wife beatings or child beatings were the base MPs and the CFSIU told to ignore and look away from?
And as I said, things were far worse back in my day as a military dependent.
As retired Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham told the CFNIS in 2016 when he was interviewed, the Assistant Judge Advocate General threw Cunningham and the CFSIU “to the dogs” in 1980 during the Captain Father Angus McRae Investigation and subsequent court martial.
When I spoke with retired Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham on November 27th, 2011 he said that it was the “brass” that made the decision to limit the number of charges brought against Captain McRae and that the military police had “many, many more” charges ready to go against McRae but that the “brass” wasn’t going for it, and that the military police tried to move the Captain McRae matter into the civilian system, but again the brass wasn’t going for it.
Most of Captain McRae’s victims were under 14 years of age. In 1980 the age of consent at which a child could agree to have sex with an adult was 14. P.S. was the only boy over the age of 14. If the Canadian Forces had insisted on prosecuting Captain McRae for abusing the children under the age of consent, this whole matter would have had to have been moved into the civilian courts. For obvious reasons the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces were not going to ever agree to this as in the civilian courts the DND and the CF would be hard pressed to “throw a veil of secrecy” over the trial and the evidence. A trial and evidence that would have shown that Captain McRae sexually abused over 25 children on Canadian Forces Base Namao and an untold number of children on Canadian Forces Station Holberg, Canadian Forces Base Portage La Prairie, and Canadian Forces Base Kingston.
So the fact that the “brass” and the “AJAG” were able to insert themselves into a criminal matter again shows that rank in the Canadian Armed Forces carries a significant amount of weight.
And according to retired Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham it was also the Assistant Judge Advocate General that made the decision to not call in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to deal with P.S. under the false assumption that P.S. was only 12 years old in 1980. P.S. was born on June 20th, 1965. P.S. turned 15 on June 20th, 1980. And as the court martial transcripts and the CFSIU paperwork indicate, it was the abuse of young children on base that brought P.S. to the attention of the base military police and it was that attention that brought Captin McRae to the attention of the CFSIU.
Again, the base military police and the CFSIU were not independent. They followed the whims and desires of the chain of command.
That’s why spousal abuse was grossly under reported on the bases.
That’s why child sexual abuse was grossly under reported on the bases.
That’s why child physical and mental abuse was grossly under reported on the bases.
Far too much chain of command influence and far too many parochial decisions.
Most of the children from CFB Namao never received any form of meaningful help. Some went on to have troubled lives. Some have attempted suicide. Some have committed suicide. And that’s only on CFB Namao. What about the other bases that McRae was at?
In 2010 retired Brigadier General Roger Bazin was investigated by the CFSIU for having sexually abused a young boy on Canadian Forces Base Borden in 1974. How many other kids, now adults, are out there that may have been abused on Canadian Forces Base Borden who have never come forward due to not knowing their abuser’s name? How many other former military dependents have never come forward because they were posted around so many times that they can’t remember on which base the abuse occurred on?
Our attempts at suicide and our suicides will never be recorded as being military related. Our deaths and our psychological trauma will always be written off as having been due to something unrelated to our time living on base as children.
When I die it won’t be recorded as being the end result of untreated childhood sexual trauma.
My death will simply be recorded as someone who sought Medical Assistance in Dying due to psychological issues caused by childhood trauma.
And that’s it.
There will be no mention of Captain Father Angus McRae;
There will be no mention of Captain Terry Totzke;
There will be no mention of Colonel Dan Munro
There will be no mention of AJAG J.D. Boan.
The media won’t really show any interest, because what’s interesting about one person seeking M.A.i.D. to get away from their demons?
Between 1950 and today, how many military dependents have attempted suicide, committed suicide, or have wound up with profound psychological issues due to the childhood spent living on military bases?
No one knows.
And the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces would love for it to stay this way.
In the past there have been murmurs and burbles of organizations noticing that children of service members or adult who once were children living on base are committing suicide.
However, sadly this latest research falls well short of other research projects in the past.
The common flaw being that these researchers overlook events that occurred on base and how these events impacted the children living on the bases. This current research looks at how events that impacted service members might lead to family members of the service member committing suicide. For example, if a serving member of the Canadian Forces commits suicide and then their parent commits suicide.
However, what this research seems to completely overlook and omit are suicides or attempted suicides that came about due to events that occurred on the base that the military dependent endured first hand and received little or no support after the event or received inappropriate support.
Like it or not, children were sexually abused on base, children were physically abused on base, children were neglected on base, children were ostracized on base, children couldn’t cope with postings, children couldn’t cope with constantly losing friends, children had to deal with serving parents that had issues made worse by military service such as excessive drinking, anger outbursts, and untreated PTSD.
Persons who lived on base between the 1950s and the 2000’s grew up in a very homophobic, LGBTQ phobic, misogynistic, environment in which psychological issues were to be hidden away and not discussed.
Is it any wonder that no one in the DND, the CF, or even the media really wants to tackle this subject.
Kids who committed suicide already will forever be silent, so the DND and the CF don’t have to worry about them ever talking.
Kids who were 8 years old on base in 1950 are now in their late 70s. They won’t be around for much longer.
Kids who were 8 years old on the bases in 1970 are now pushing 58. Even if the CF and the DND were serious about tackling issues that may have effected these persons, by the time DND and the CF have finished the requisite number of committee meetings these people will easily be in their late 60s and early 70s.
So far as the Government of Canada, the DND, and the CF are concerned, military dependents were never the responsibility of the DND or the CF. As such, they’re more than willing to play the waiting game until we’re all gone.
I’ll be gone in about 2 years. And that’ll be one less issue for the DND and the CF to worry about.
In June of 2011, sensing that my complaint against the babysitter P.S. from CFB Namao was going off the rails I started to try to locate proof that what P.S. had done to me on CFB Namao had some effect on me. And I remember that one of my counsellors named Terry had called me a “homosexual” because of what I had been found doing with P.S. on CFB Namao. And with both Terry and my father blaming me for allowing P.S. to molest my younger brother I knew that if I could get my hands on Terry’s paperwork that I could give this to the CFNIS and it would show them that something had occurred on CFB Namao.
I ended up getting the paperwork. Took some hunting, but eventually I obtained my foster care records from the Alberta Government. These records detailed quite a bit of information that I had obviously been oblivious to as a child.
Terry was Captain Terry Totzke a social worker with the Canadian Armed Forces.
I was found to be terrified of men, and especially terrified of my father.
I was afraid that my father was going to drown me in a toilet.
I was beyond depression and had severe anxiety issues.
My father had signed paperwork admitting me to the foster care system.
I was supposed to be placed into foster care or residential care.
I had become so emotionally disturbed that I was supposed to be placed into psychiatric care.
Richard refused to allow me to be placed on medication to help me with my major depression and my severe anxiety.
More interesting though was that my father was found
to accept no responsibility for his family,
blamed his mother for problems with my brother and I,
blamed my mother for problems with my brother and I,
expected others to solve his problems for him,
Frequently told different stories from one meeting to the next,
Was found to tell those in positions of authority what he thought they wanted to hear.
Needless to say I was beyond devastated when I read the social service paperwork.
I was able to get trauma counselling through work.
I needed help. The social service paperwork literally turned my world upside down.
Everything that Richard had told me as a kid was a lie.
We didn’t suddenly move in April of 1983 so that he could save me from the drugs the counsellors wanted to give me to make me stop kissing boys. He was fleeing the jurisdiction of Alberta so that he wouldn’t lose custody of me through the foster care / residential care system
I didn’t get expelled from school in February of 1983 for kissing a boy in class. Richard yanked me out of the school so that Alberta Social Services couldn’t apprehend me when I was off the base and in civilian jurisdiction.
In fact there’s not a single damn mention of Alberta Social Services having any concern about any apparent “homosexuality”. They were concerned about how dysfunctional my home life was, how emotionally disturbed I had become, and how indifferent my father seemed to be to helping me.
So, I got set up with professional counselling.
This counselling though wasn’t to help me with the past. It was just to help me cope in the here and now so that I could process the information that I had obtained and the information that I would no doubt keep obtaining from my quest for knowledge.
SCAPEGOAT.
Even though my counsellor wouldn’t be able to help me deal with the issues from my past he needed to understand the dynamics of back then so that he could understand why these documents were having such an impact.
In one of the sessions he asked me if I understood what a “scapegoat” was. I replied that beyond being someone blamed for somebody else’s fuckups I didn’t know too much about what a scapegoat was.
So he explained to me that in biblical times a scapegoat was a goat that was cursed with all of the sins and impurities of the village and then chased off into wilderness to carry away the sins and impurities with it.
I was my father’s scapegoat. Probably chosen because (a) I was the eldest, (b) I most resembled my mother, the woman he despised, (c) I had caused trouble for him on CFB Namao when I got molested by the babysitter.
Why did Richard need a scapegoat? The reasons are multiple:
He needed to shield himself from the blame of my brother and I being molested on CFB Namao by our babysitter.
Richard was frequently away on training exercises for 6 to 8 weeks at a time.
Even when Richard wasn’t on training exercises he was often staying off base with his various girlfriends.
Vicki in Westakawin
A woman on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach
Sue out by Londonderry Mall.
Richard was frequently absent from the house between September 1978 and August 1980.
Richard knew that his mother was an alcoholic and had issues.
Richard was an alcoholic and had issues.
So instead of my brother and I having been molested over 1-1/2 years because of Richard’s very poor parenting skills and very poor decision making, my brother was sexually abused because I allowed the babysitter to molest my younger brother. I was sexually abused because as Captain Terry Totzke said, I had a mental illness, I was a homosexual.
And over time Richard dumped his entire parenting responsibilities upon my shoulders. He even said this to Alberta Social Services, that he expected me to look after my younger brother.
When we arrived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview things started to get worse for me the more my brother started to get into trouble.
My father called me self centred for not spending more time with my brother.
My father said that it was my fault that my brother was getting into trouble because I wasn’t looking after him.
I forget exactly when, but my brother did something that ended up with Richard dragging me out of bed and laying a good beating on me. During this beating Richard made it very clear that my brother was “doing these things” because I let P.S. touch him. Yes, Richard named the babysitter himself around 1986ish.
The more trouble my brother got into, the more I got blamed and chastized for not raising him right and being a good example to him.
The counsellor asked me who my brother’s father was. I said “Richard”. Whose responsibility was it to raise your brother? “Richard?” Whose responsibility was it to discipline your brother? “Richard?” Whose responsibility was it to keep you and your brother safe from that child molester? “Richard?” Yes, Richard was his father just as Richard was my father. I didn’t impregnate my mother with my brother, so why the hell was it my responsibility to raise him and to protect him? It wasn’t. It was Richard’s responsibility. And as Richard couldn’t and wouldn’t take responsibility he needed someone to blame. I became his scapegoat. All of Richard’s failings, shortcomings, inadequacies, and fuckups became the failings, shortcomings, inadequacies, and fuckups of an 8 year old boy.
My brother has asked why he doesn’t remember Richard being like this, why he never remembers Richard blaming me for things that went wrong.
As my counsellor said, Richard only needed one scapegoat to absolve himself of any problems with his family. Marie wasn’t around, so he couldn’t blame her. He knew better than to try to blame his own mother to her face, so he couldn’t blame her, there’s no way that Sue was going to wear my brother or I. Richard couldn’t blame my younger brother as that would be absolutely batshit insane even for a clown like him.
I was Marie’s son.
I was the oldest.
I became the scapegoat by default.
Richard could carry on as the poor guy just trying his damnedest to raise his children that had been abandoned by their mother. It obviously wasn’t his fault that his sons were being sexually molested, or having psychiatric issues, or getting into trouble with the law.
Fuck no. It was Robert’s fault.
Robert wasn’t suffering psychological trauma from 1-1/2 years of sexual abuse at the hands of P.S. and Captain McRae. Robert wasn’t having psychological issues due to the unwarranted “conversion therapy” at the hands of Captain Terry Totzke. Robert wasn’t suffering psychological trauma because of his dysfunctional family. No, Robert was just “acting up” for attention.
Or how an Independent at arms length agency is controlled by the agency that it is supposed to be overseeing and is supposed to be independent from.
It looks as if the Canadian Forces is getting slagged in the media again. This time not for its abysmal ability to investigate matters of sexual assault within the Canadian Armed Forces.
No, the Canadian Forces is getting slagged for interfering with the Office of the Ombudsman for the Canadian Forces.
The Office of the Ombudsman has powers that the Military Police Complaints Commission doesn’t have. The Ombudsman can compel members of the Canadian Armed Forces to appear before any of its investigations. One would think that this matter would also extend to retired service members who were subject to the Code of Service discipline at the material time of the investigation.
The Ombudsman is supposed to have unfettered access to DND and CF records and can compel the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence to hand records and documents over to the Ombudsman for their investigation.
Why does the Ombudsman have these powers? Because no criminal charges can flow from a Ombudsman review. The Ombudsman can only make non-binding recommendations to the Minister of National Defence, the Department of National Defence, and the Canadian Forces.
For example
In 1974 there was a group of teenagers on Canadian Forces Base Valcartier in the province of Quebec. These teenagers were all between the ages of 12 and 18 and were members of various army cadet corps from across Canada. Somehow a live grenade found its way into the hands of one of the teenagers during a class session on ordnance. One cadet even asked the instructor, a captain of the regular force if it was a real grenade, the captain responded that no it wasn’t. So the teenager did what any curious teenager would have done, they pulled the pin and released the handle.
In 2013 the Office of the Ombudsman for the Canadian Forces received the permission of the then Conservative Minister of National Defence Rob Nichols to undertake an investigation of a pre-mandate issue.
I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Ombudsman would not have been allowed to conduct this pre-mandate review in the era of Harjit Sajjan or for that matter Justin Trudeau. After all, it was Harjit Sajjan that accused me of playing games and having an angle when I went to speak with him in February of 2016 just after he became the Minister of National Defence.
Even my local MP, Dr. Hedy Fry says that she can’t become involved in my matter because there are “no military bases” in Vancouver Centre.
And it was under Sajjan’s command that the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces refused to release to me the court martial transcripts of Captain Father Angus McRae along with the Canadian Forces Special Investigations paperwork all because they indicated that the Canadian Forces chain of command was well aware in 1980 that my babysitter, P.S. had been molesting numerous children on Canadian Forces Base Namao and that Captain Father Angus McRae, who the MPCC called a known pedophile in 2020, was enticing children over to the rectory at the base chapel and getting them drunk before “fooling around” with them.
I have absolutely no idea as to why the Liberal Party of Canada refuses to allow the Office of the Ombudsman of the Canadian Forces to conduct an investigation into historical child sexual abuse in the era of the pre-1998 National Defence Act but neither Harjit Sajjan, Dr. Hedy Fry, nor Justin Trudeau seem to show any inclination to uncover what was hidden by a well known defective military justice system.
And I’m not imagining this interference.
Lo-and-Behold, it would appear that the Minister of National Defence and the Deputy Minister of National Defence have been interfering with the Office of the Ombudsman of the Canadian Forces.
A few years ago Randal Garrison, the MP for Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke and then the Vice Co-Chair of the Standing Committee on National Defence asked Lt. General. Christine Whitecross during a committee hearing who had jurisdiction for the investigation of child sexual assaults on the bases in Canada. She blathered out some meaningless drivel about all child sexual abuse matters being handed over to the civilian authorities.
Sure, I wasn’t a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. But my father was. And under the Ombudsman’s mandate I am allowed to ask the Ombudsman to review a matter in relation to my involvement with the military justice system back in 1980.
Section 12(f) allows me to avail myself to the CF Ombudsman
These are the policies that guide the office of the Ombudsman.
DND and the CF SHALL provide……..Hrrmmmm. So the Ombudsman can review military police investigations. Interesting.During a Military Police Complaints Commission investigation the CFNIS and the MPs can tell the MPCC to go piss up a rope. Not so with the CF Ombudsman.The Military Police Complaints Commission has no such authority.A very interesting annex.
According to the above Annex B, the Canadian Forces are preventing the Ombudsman from conducting criminal investigations. But the Canadian Forces are also stating that there is nothing stopping the Ombudsman from conducting an investigation while a Military Police or CFNIS investigation is underway. So there would have been nothing stopping the Ombudsman from reviewing how military dependents are treated by the military justice system which is set up to deal primarily with perpetrators and victims that are subjected to the Code of Service Discipline and not civilians with no connection to the Canadian Forces other than they were military dependents at the time of the alleged crimes.
For instance the Ombudsman could review how the 3-year-time-bar or the Summary Investigation flaw actively prohibits the Canadian Armed Forces or any civilian court from bringing Code of Service Discipline charges against any person who was subject to the Code of Service Discipline prior to December of 1998.
The Ombudsman could also review how military dependents and other civilians availing themselves to the military justice system receive no actual victim services from the Canadian Forces as they are not members of the Canadian Forces and how often these military dependents receive no help from the provinces as the provinces consider sexual abuse on the military bases to be a Ottawa issue.
The Ombudsman could also initiate an inquiry to look at the rates of child sexual abuse on the bases prior to 1998 and determine if the 3-year-time-bar and the Summary Investigation flaw denied justice to children and also served to present an artificially low incidence of child sexual abuse on the bases in Canada.
The Ombudsman could also look into how the appalling homophobic attitudes of the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence resulted in male children being subjected to “conversion therapy” at the hands of the Canadian Forces military social workers.
I never wanted to CF Ombudsman to judge P.S. and determine if P.S. was guilty of what I accused him of.
I only wanted the CF Ombudsman to review child sexual abuse on the Canadian Forces Bases in the era of the pre-1998 National Defence Act and to have the CF Ombudsman urge the Minister of National Defence and the Department of National Defence to do the right thing.
And you wonder why I am so looking forward to my date with death in 2023.
A person can only be told “Up” is “Down” and “White” is “Black” for so long before all of the demons from the past urge one to just give in an fall into the eternal slumber where none of this shit will ever haunt a person again.
There were a couple of songs that still stand out from my youth.
It wasn’t until my father fled from Alberta to Ontario in April of 1983 to avoid my apprehension by Alberta Social Services that I started to become exposed to popular music outside of what my uncle Doug would buy for me.
Up until we arrived at Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario I had never gone to a public school. My education up to the point was at schools for military dependents on base.
My grandmother had the stereo system glued to 790 CFCW. Richard was much the same. He really only listened to country music.
My first taste of music that wasn’t country and western was the kid’s disco that used to be put on every Sunday at the Lamplighter Pub on CFB Namao for the military kids that lived on Lancaster Park on CFB Namao.
When we arrived in Toronto this was the first time that I had been exposed to music that wasn’t country.
There was Pop, Rock and Roll, Heavy Metal, New Age, Progressive Rock, Hip-hop, Rap, Reggae, Top 40, you name it and the kids at Sheppard Public School listened to it.
It was also at this time that I began to realize that songs could tell stories. And more than just about rusty pickup trucks, dead dogs, and cheatin’ wives.
Whenever I hear the opening saxophone on “Overkill” by Men At Work I can visualize myself looking over the ravine out of the bedroom window of our PMQ at 94 Sunfield Road where we lived prior to moving to 223F Stanley Greene Park. I can also kinda smell and feel the humidity of that first summer living in Toronto.
Another song that will take me to back is “Come Dancing” by the Kinks. My brother absolutely hated the line “It’s only natural”. “Our House” by Madness is another one that would drive him bonkers if I sang along with it.
One of the first songs that I noticed that kinda spoke to me about what things were like at home was “Where is this love?” by the Payolas.
As psychologically damaged as my grandmother was, my father was even worse. My father had his anger, his depression, his PTSD, his alcoholism, and his physical strength. Under no circumstance did you ever want Richard upset with you. Living with him was like walking on egg shells.
If things had gone to shit at work for Richard you didn’t want to bother him. If he had too much to drink at the mess he wasn’t too bad when he was pissed drunk, but the next day when he was having his hangover you just steered the fuck clear of him. Sometimes when Richard was a little too pissed drunk for Sue’s liking she’d kick him out of bed and banish Richard to the living room to sleep. Usually not on the couch though. He’d usually be on the floor, rolling around stark naked and screaming at the top of his lungs. Even when we’d try to take Richard a blanket or try to calm him down Sue would come down and tell us to leave him alone, that he had to learn his lesson. So, it would usually be a sleepless night listening ti him yell and howl from the living room.
It was a few years after this that I heard another song that kinda spoke to me. It was “Luka” by Suzanne Vega.
The third song that I had heard of was actually introduced to me by someone else. I didn’t hear this song on my own as it was slightly before my time.
I was working for Ed Blaha, Bruce Beveridge, and Dirk Verdoold at Rainbow Games. Ed worked for the Metropolitan Toronto Police at Central Traffic. Dirk was an officer at 14th Division. Bruce was Ed’s childhood friend from when they grew up together in Montreal.
The three of them had purchased a pool hall at Keele and Sheppard on the North East corner of the base. Initially there was a fourth partner, Gary Mountjoy, but he sold his interest in the business very early on. I started working there in late ’87 – early ’88.
One of the things that Ed noticed right off the bat is that even though I was 16. Richard really didn’t seem to give a fuck where I was or how late I was out to. I would frequently sleep overnight in the work shop. And not once would Richard come looking for me.
And things were getting rough at home for other reasons as well.
Rainbow Games provided video games, pinball machines, and juke boxes to bars and donut shops across the Greater Toronto region.
One day Ed came back from the records wholesaler with an assortment of records for the various juke boxes.
He handed me one 45 and told me to put it in the juke box and play it.
Ed told me to sit down and listen to it.
So I lit up a smoke and drank my coffee and listened to the song as it came on.
It was “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin.
This song, as touching as it was, only kinda touched on my family life at home.
See “Cat’s in the Cradle” is about a father who is so tied up in his work that he doesn’t have time to spend with his son like his son wishes that he would, and then when his son has grown up and the father wants to spend time with him, it’s now his son that is to busy to be there for his father. The song doesn’t seem to be about physical or mental abuse.
When the song was over Ed said that as a police officer he had worked with street kids before, and street kids don’t go there because they want to be there, they go there because there’s no one to guide them away from the streets.
Ed said that if his son was ever working for someone and his son wasn’t home for bed before 21:00 that there’d be hell to pay. The fact that my father didn’t give a shit if I didn’t return home for days on end told Ed that something wasn’t right at home.
Ed said that I was bright, that I was smart, and it was my smarts that were keeping me off the streets. Ed asked me if I felt safe at home. I told him no. I told him that in addition to my father I now faced another physical threat in the house.
Ed arranged a room for rent in a house just across the street from the pool hall. The house was a PMQ that was rented by a service member of the Canadian Forces. This guy had just broken up with his wife and his wife had left him and taken their children. He had already rented out one of the children’s bedrooms to another person. This arrangement worked fine until the summer of 1988 when the CF Housing Authority found out that he was renting rooms.
But anyways, from early 1988 until the summer of 1989, almost a year and a half, I had peace. I didn’t have to worry about physical violence or threats of physical violence. I could sleep in peace. In fact I never wet the bed again after I moved out of Richard’s house.
And while “Cat’s in the Cradle” didn’t really focus on my relationship with my father, it did have some similarities.
My father wanted nothing to do with me. And as an adult I wanted very little to do with my father.
My father really didn’t want kids. I have no kids. I don’t think my brother has reproduced either. All I know is that I’m taking this rancid Gill DNA to the grave with me.
What has stuck with me all these years about “Cat’s in the cradle” is the fact that Ed went out of his way to buy this one 45 to act as an icebreaker meant that my dysfunctional home life was actually visible for all to see.
I just wish that the right people had seen the dysfunction and reacted properly.
Recently I made acquaintances with a woman named Nacy who was married to Jean-Yves Dagenais. Jean-Yves is the younger brother of my mother. He was the uncle I don’t think I ever met.
I met my uncle Albert (Al) Dagenais various times while we lived on Canadian Forces Base Shearwater. But I honestly can’t remember meeting Jean-Yves.
One interesting thing that Nancy did mention is that Marie, Nancy, and Jean-Yves drove up from Regina because Marie was in a panic that her children were in danger. It turns out that Marie was still on Prince Edward Island and had been told where Richard had moved to. Marie called up Jean-Yves and borrowed some money to fly from PEI to Regina, and then the three of them drove up to Canadian Forces Base Namao.
Apparently when they arrived the found grandma feeing my brother and I at the kitchen table. We didn’t appear to be in any distress.
I remember this visit. Not too much detail. I sure didn’t remember Nancy or Jean-Yves. I know that I had been told about my mother coming for a visit as I went and waited by the entrance to the PMQs with a flashlight for them to come. I figured that with the flashlight she’d see me better and she wouldn’t drive past.
I remember Marie bitching about the house numbering. And yes, the houses were numbered weird. Or at least weird when compared to the civilian world. In the civilian world the houses tend to be numbered odds on one side and evens on the other. The house numbers also increase typically from the lower cross street to the higher cross street.
This was not how they were numbered on CFB Namao. The houses were numbered sequentially down one side of the street and then sequentially up the other side. This is how our PMQ #11 on 12th street was literally across the street from P.S.’s PMQ #26 on 12th street.
I’ll never figure out who it was that told Marie that we were living on Canadian Forces Base Namao. There were only two people who would have told her. And they’re both dead now. It was either my grandmother, or my uncle Doug. There is no way on Earth that Richard would have ever called Marie.
Grandma was always of the opinion that Marie and Richard should never have separated and that Richard should have swallowed his pride and asked Marie back in.
Doug never really liked Richard. When uncle Doug would come back from the oilfield every six weeks or so, Doug would buy my brother and I toys and other things to Richard’s chagrin.
Most of the xmas present that my brother and I received like our little B&W tvs and the little Coleco rifle games for those TVs were bought by Doug in Marie’s name.
If I was a gambling man I’d have to say that it was Doug and not grandma that called Marie to let her know where Richard had technically kidnapped her children to.
Grandma was too afraid of Richard to have gone behind his back to tell Marie where he had moved to with their kids and without a valid custody order.
Uncle Doug just didn’t seem to give a fuck. Yeah, he wouldn’t outright antagonize Richard, but he would do things that he knew would rub Richard the wrong way.
For example, when I moved back to Edmonton in June of 1990 with Richard “so we could try to be a family again”, it was Doug that introduced me to Marie. It was also Doug that tried to get me to go for my small “m” metis papers.
Small “m” metis papers really don’t amount to too much, other than you can rightfully say that you have First Nations DNA. I think Doug knew this would kill Richard as Richard had spent his entire life pretending that he wasn’t Half Cree and Half Irish.
Nancy said that when Marie, Nancy, and Jean-Yves arrived that my brother and I were sitting at the kitchen table happily eating our breakfast. So I don’t know if Nancy and Jean-Yves came at a later time, but I do know that when Marie arrived I had my father’s military issue flashlight because it was getting dark.
Maybe Marie came up by herself initially and then Nancy and Jean-Yves came up the next morning.
Nancy said that after seeing that my brother and I weren’t in any danger that things became testy between Jean-Yves and Marie.
Nancy would go on to say that because Marie had abandoned my brother and I on Prince Edward Island and left us in the house alone by ourselves Uncle Al was furious with Marie and she didn’t think those two ever spoke again. Probably explains why Marie was never mentioned in Uncle Al’s obituary. And this probably explains why Marie wouldn’t say anything about Al when I went to visit her in 2013 and 2014.
I don’t honestly remember too much about when Marie left. I know I was crying. I know my brother was crying. And I know that Marie was crying. She packed my brother and I a suitcase each of our clothes.
Marie took us over to another PMQ on base and left us with one of Richard’s airforce buddies. I can’t remember who this guy was other than he had two kids that were older than me. It was one of these older boys that gave me their bicycle when his father bought him a new bicycle. What I also remember about this guy is that he had a reel-to-reel tape deck that I was fascinated with.
I can’t remember which PMQ we were dropped off at, but it was one of these.
So yeah, my brother and I weren’t abandoned.
Until the day I die I will never forgive Marie for leaving me with an alcoholic rage fuelled monster suffering from PTSD and intergenerational family trauma. But no, she didn’t abandon us like Richard and his melodramatic outbursts would make it sound like.
Richard would have been fucking pissed. Richard was at sea with the airforce when Marie left. Richard was fine with having children so long as he didn’t have to look after them. And now with Marie gone, he was going to have to look after his own kids. So he brought his alcoholic and psychologically damaged mother out from Edmonton, AB to raise my brother and I.
And as we know from my Alberta Foster Care records, Richard always had to play the victim. And I kid you not, Richard was excellent at bullshitting. There’s a reason why Alberta Social Services noted Richard as “frequently telling different stories from one meeting to another”. He lied, and he lied good.
And I also know for a fact that Marie didn’t abandon us like Richard said she did. Richard made an application to the PEI courts for child custody. The application never went anywhere in the court. The court made no determination as to child custody. If Marie had abandoned my brother and I like Richard claimed she did, it would have been a slam dunk. Richard would have been awarded custody and in fact the courts may have awarded Richard child support payments from Marie.
Yet, none of this happened. Richard wasn’t a kind old man who didn’t want free money from Marie because he had a kind heart and didn’t want to cause her further distress. Richard was a man who could carry a fucking grudge better than Allied Van Lines carries furniture.
At the time it wasn’t common knowledge, but it is now that service members back in the day often abused the National Defence Act and the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations to their own advantage.
The Hillcrest housing development was built to DND spec by a private builder and was then leased to DND by this builder. Any property that is leased by DND becomes a “Defence Establishment”. Only members of the Canadian Armed Forces or civilian employees of the Department of National Defence have any legal right to be on a Defence Establishment.
Military dependents such as my brother and I and our mother have no legal right to be on a defence establishment. We’re only there at our serving parent’s pleasure.
There was a report commissioned by the Canadian Forces in 1996 to look at spousal abuse in the Canadian Forces. The report was finished in the spring of 2000 and released.
The report found that men would often use the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations to eject their spouse out of the PMQ and off the base when the marriage was breaking down.
Once kicked out of the military housing and off the base the non-serving spouse often found it impossible to serve papers on the service member as they and their lawyers would be barred from the base or from approaching military housing which was located on a base.
The report would also discover that the serving member’s superiors would often lie to outside social service agencies about the child custody status of the children, implying that the service member had custody. This would deny the non-serving spouse of any civil benefits.
Now, the odd thing about Richard’s claim that Marie abandoned my brother and I is that he himself would readily abandon my brother and I when it fit his needs.
(father will be back from Iceland tonight)
I have no idea of who the woman was that brought me to the hospital after my bicycle incident.
But I do know that Iceland is nowhere near Prince Edward. In fact it’s 3,341km from Prince Edward Island to Iceland. By way of comparison it’s 3,359km between Vancouver, BC and Toronto, ON.
Grandma had already returned to Edmonton to be with her husband Andy Anderson when I was admitted to the hospital.
Richard received a compassionate posting from Captain Lynda Tyrell in August of 1978 and we ended up moving to Canadian Forces Base Edmonton in August of 1978.
This isn’t the only time Richard would abandon my brother and I.
One of Richard’s favourite places to drop off my brother and I was Canada’s Wonderland north of Toronto. Richard would buy my brother and I the $29.99 season’s pass. He’d drop us off just about every weekend that the park was open during the spring and the fall. He’d drop us off just about every day of the week in the summer. He’d drop us off at 08:00 in the morning and he’d pick us up again at 22:00 after the park closed. That’s almost 14 hours in that fucking park.
He’d give my brother and I $10 each for the day. Even back then, $10 didn’t go very far in a park where hotdogs were about $4 ea. I don’t know about my brother, but I used to just go hide and try to sleep for the afternoon and evening. You can only ride the same rides so many times before they become outright boring.
As my brother would call it, this was “Richard’s Discount Babysitting Service”.
I used to pray that every time that Richard would drop me off there that I would be kidnapped and killed and then when the police found my body they’d arrest Richard for child endangerment.
That’s why when I read Richard’s statement to the CFNIS on June 9th, 2011 I nearly choked.
Richard’s statement to the CFNIS in 2011
” – In T.O. he (Richard) refused to take him(Robert / Bobbie) to Canada’s Wonderland because of (sic) he was bad; the school found out and said it was child abuse.”
“- He (Robert / Bobbie) threatened to call the police”
You get the feeling that Richard loved good ol’ melodrama and playing the victim?
I have my records from the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto. There’s nothing at all mentioned in there about Canada’s Wonderland or abuse.
The Children’s Aid records make note of the intense sibling rivalry that existed between my brother and I. The records also noted that my father didn’t perceive any trouble between my brother and I, that he but it down to “boys will be boys”. He was also adamant that our family didn’t need to be involved with social services, that our involvement with social services in Alberta was unwarranted. But the Children’s Aid records also make note that due to budget constraints and staffing issues they couldn’t dedicate a lot of resources towards my family unless someone called them about witnessing physical abuse. And living on a military base meant that no one would rat-out another family.
And I highly doubt that the school or Children’s Aid would really give a sweet flying fuck if I went to Canada’s Wonderland or not. But I’ll bet you that Children’s Aid would have loved to have known about Richard’s discount babysitting service.
Yeah, I don’t care how much my murder would have hurt, the suffering and the agony I would have gone through would have been worth seeing the police and the courts destroy Richard.
Now, back to the part where Nancy and Jean-Yves were startled to see my brother and I sitting at the kitchen table happily eating our breakfast.
In our interviews with Alberta Social Services both my brother and I described our grandmother as a threat and very authoritarian.
In my initial assessments with the psychologist hired by Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke this is what I had to say.
From my psychological review in November of 1980
My desire to die is nothing new. It’s been with me for so long as I can remember. It’s just that the fear of pain has kept me alive. But yeah, I would have been 9 years old when I said this.
I guess that first impressions can be very, very deceptive and very misleading.
When Nancy, Jean-Yves, and Marie first showed up in September or October of 1978, Andy Anderson had yet to slip in the bathtub and crack his skull open. Grandma had yet to start drinking. And P.S. had yet to be our babysitter.
And almost two years to the date in 1980 I have major depression, severe anxiety, and I want to kill myself.
When I talked to my brother back in 2013, one of the things that I mentioned was that I remembered grandma having a “Block Parent” sign in her bedroom window.
My brother remarked that kids would have been better off getting into the “Free Candy Van” than coming to our house for help.
I never would have figured out that my father was the “artsy type” who would have posed for a statue. But here he is .
Richard Wayne Gill in his younger days.
Yeah, my father definitely wasn’t “dad” material.
As I’ve learnt in life, there actually aren’t too many men that fit the “ideal” model of a modern age “dad”.
Just as not every woman is fit to be a mother, not every man is fit to be a father.
Having sex and reproducing are simple enough that anyone can do it really.
No qualifications or experience required.
My paternal grandmother should never have reproduced.
My maternal grandmother should never have reproduced.
My mother and my father should have had a hysterectomy and vasectomy.
Sure, I wouldn’t have existed. But at the same token I would never have gone through any of the stuff that I went through.
Win-win I guess.
As I’ve said elsewhere, life isn’t a video game.
There’s no final stage boss to fight with the experience points you’ve gained in life.
You don’t win the game of life.
You don’t get bonus points for completing all of the missions and side quests in the game of life.
You don’t win a bonus life.
Two people have sex.
You gestate for 9 months.
You pop out into the world.
You then make a bee-line straight to your inevitable death.
What you life is like in between birth and death is pretty well determined by how well the two people who fucked to bring you into the world give a fuck after you’ve enter into the world.
Well, here’s something that might come as a surprise to some people, but it doesn’t come as a surprise to me.
There were about 19,000 claims submitted for compensation.
If 40% of claimants were men that’s 7,600 men. And trust me men, especially in a military environment, are NOT going to be all that willing to come forward out of fear that others will judge them as being weak or of being a homosexual.
And if one sexual abuser in the Canadian Armed Forces had five or six victims that 7,600 sexually abused men could quickly become 45,600 men. And I don’t really want to think about the total number of men that were sexually abused by other men in the Canadian Armed Forces. According to some stats, over 90% of sexual assault victims never report their assaults.
I’ve known about this since 2014 when L’Actualite ran an exposé on sexual assault within the Canadian Armed Forces. Part of this exposé looked at male-on-male sexual assault within the Canadian Armed Forces. This exposé was stripped from the English version of this article that ran in Maclean’s magazine.
This story was only featured in the French newsmagazine L’Actualite in Quebec. This story did not survive the translation into English for the Maclean’s English version of the exact same story.
Basically, it was found that male-on-male sexual abuse in the Canadian Armed Forces had nothing to do with “homosexual” relationships. The article found that male-on-male sexual abuse was more about exerting dominance and punishing others for perceived bad behaviour. https://globalnews.ca/news/8360601/canadian-veteran-military-sexual-assaults-misconduct/
Male-on-male sexual abuse was frequently used to shame other members into compliance or to humiliate members that had “caused trouble” or used to blackmail a member into silence least his coworkers, friends, and family discover that he had participated in anal intercourse.
And I have absolutely no doubt that many male children living on the bases were subjected to this “discipline” in the household.
If a member of the Canadian Armed Forces is willing to force anal intercourse on a fellow adult member or if a member of the Canadian Forces is willing to force another adult member to perform fellatio on him in order to teach the other member a lesson or to change the other member’s non-conforming behaviour, you can bet that this type of behaviour found its way back into the PMQs on base.
Almost every type of discipline these men were taught would find its way back into the homes on base.
Once you engage in the military life, it’s almost impossible to separate and segregate the military life, the military training, and the military discipline from the home life.
I have absolutely no doubt that there are many a male military dependent that have some rather fucked up hazy memories from way back then. After all, it’s not like these male members were engaging in routine homosexual activities. They would just use male-on-male as a disciplinary tool.
It might have happened once.
It might have happened twice.
But I would be more than willing to believe that if it happened once or twice, that this would have been buried in the dark recesses of one’s mind.
Especially if it happened on a military base.
Who are you going to tell?
Who is going to believe you?
Are you really going to risk having your serving parent booted from the military?
Are you really going to endure the wrath of your serving parent if they found out that you tried to rat them out to the military police?
Sure does raise some interesting questions, doesn’t it?
Maybe this is one of the reason why the Canadian Armed Forces refuse to investigate historical child sexual abuse.
Maybe this is one of the reasons that some former serving parents are always telling their kids to forget about the past and to let sleeping dogs lie. Even if the serving parent in question didn’t abuse their own kids, were they aware of other service members that abused their own kids? Hard to keep secrets during an investigation, isn’t it? Might be best to just deny anything and everything, right?
And you should know I have another site that deals specifically with the Canadian Armed Forces. This site is mainly to do with me. But I feel that some of the topics that I post on the other site might me of interest to those following this site.
or how I realized that to be at peace with one’s self you have to realize that none of this matters.
It’s interesting how little people actually matter.
I could disappear tomorrow and to be honest not a single person would miss me. And that’s not being glib, it’s just being realistic.
Sure, there’s the pleasantries that would be exchanged. “Where’s Bobbie? Anybody seen Bobbie? No? Okay, who wants to go watch a hockey game next week?”
But me, like you, and like everyone else, are completely expendable.
As long as a person proves to be useful to someone else and we fill their requirements, then we matter.
But the instance you stop being useful, and the instant you stop fulfilling the needs of other, you’re dispensable.
In March of 2011 when I went to the Edmonton Police Service with my complaint against P.S., I honestly had no idea of just how putrid this was going to turn out to be.
The more that I uncovered, the more blown away I was that I was actually part and parcel of something much larger than I could ever have imagined. I was no longer the little homosexual faggot that made the babysitter molest my younger brother.
I was now one of at least 25 children, if not many more that Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae molested on the three Canadian Forces Bases and one Canadian Forces Station that he had been stationed at from 1973 until July of 1980.
I thought that with the uncovering of the Captain McRae court martial transcripts and the CFSIU investigation paperwork that this would get the ball rolling. That people would start asking “If this could happen to a schmuck like Bobbie, how many other kids were sexually abused by members of the Canadian Forces?” and “How many other kiddie diddling priests were in the Canadian Forces bouncing from base to base?”
I thought that with the Military Police Complaints Commission noting that the CFNIS in 2011 and 2015 to 2018 had in their possession the paperwork from the 1980 investigation of Captain Father Angus McRae and the 1980 court martial of Captain Father Angus McRae which indicated that the military police in 1980 were well aware of the antics of P.S. that this too would get the ball rolling.
Nope.
Outside of one story by David Pugliese, not a single bit of interest from the media or anyone else for that matter.
And with that I think that I’ve reached the final conclusion of my engagement with the Canadian Armed Forces.
Child sexual abuse obviously did not occur on the bases.
Children were obviously not sexually abused on base.
The Canadian Forces military police were obviously competent enough to protect the children living on base even though they couldn’t protect the adults.
My brother was not abused by P.S.
I was not abused by P.S. or Captain McRae.
P.S. didn’t have me provide oral sex to a much older man when I was 8 years old.
None of that happened.
And that’s okay.
I am not the person to expose this.
Not within my skillset.
So now I just have to concentrate on what’s going to happen in 2023.
We’ll have to see how my application for M.A.i.D. goes.
As I’ve said before, suicide isn’t for me.
Too much pain and too messy.
M.A.i.D. is ideal from the look of it.
Very painless, very quick, no mess, no fuss.
I don’t want to be the poster boy for M.A.i.D. for psychiatric issues.
But it is what it is.
I get to leave on my own terms.
I get to tie up all loose ends.
I get to fulfil my “bucket list” if you will.
And then I never have to worry about anything ever again.
And I promise you, no one will be the wiser when I’m gone.
Sure, you may say “but Bobbie, aren’t you letting the Canadian Forces off the hook too easy?”.
Nope.
Not my fight anymore.
Not my concern anymore.
I’m probably going to take some time off from work before I go through with M.A.i.D..
I found out that my pension will actually pay out early if I’m about to die, and yes M.A.i.D. is an acceptable cause of death for early payout.
Won’t be much, but it’ll be enough that I can do somethings.
Maybe travel.
Maybe just disappear right up until the day before the procedure.
But yeah, I’m not working to the end. And I have no intention of letting my pension go to waste.
My corpse can go to UBC medical school.
I’m hoping that my brain can go to the Montreal Brain Bank.
And in the end, when I’m gone I’ll be just as missed as I was prior to being conceived.
Once you realize just how truly insignificant you are you begin to realize that everything in the universe will carry on just fine without you.
Beeshive 