Uncategorized – Page 29

The theme songs of my youth.

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.

The outside appearances.

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.

A much safer alternative to the Gill household.

Anyways, until next time…….

Damn, who knew that my father posed for a statue.

I never would have figured out that my father was the “artsy type” who would have posed for a statue. But here he is .

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.

Anyways, enough for now.

40%

And that’s just those who came forward.

https://globalnews.ca/news/8405606/canadian-forces-sexual-misconduct-class-action-claims-men/

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.

https://aasas.ca/support-and-information/men-and-sexual-assault/

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/

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2021/04/24/i-was-going-to-get-raped-former-soldier-speaks-out-about-his-being-sexually-assaulted-in-canadas-military.html

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.

Here’s a story from the New York Times that deals with male-on-male sexual abuse in the US mIlitary. There are numerous similarities between the US Military and the Canadian Forces.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/10/us/men-military-sexual-assault.html

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?

Here’s a posting from my other site.

https://cfbnamao.ca/2021/12/05/duuuurrrrrpppppp/

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.

https://cfbnamao.ca

The Art of being Insignificant.

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.

You don’t need to be here.

You’re free to go anytime you wish.

You do not owe it to anyone to continue to exist.

The never coming apology.

Over the last ten years I’ve come to fully understand just how horrifically the kids from Canadian Forces Base Namao got fucked over by the leadership of the Canadian Armed Forces from May of 1980 until July of 1980.

And the one thing that the Canadian Armed Forces and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service have made very fucking crystal clear to me is that under no circumstance is the Canadian Armed Forces or the Department of National Defence going to ever acknowledge that children were ever sexually abused on defence establishments by persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline.

In the 2020 final report of the Military Police Complaints Commission the MPCC remarked that the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service had in its possession the Court Martial transcripts of the 1980 court martial, as well as the 1980 Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit paperwork for the 1980 investigation of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae.

This is important for a few reasons.

On May 3rd, 2011 I told Mcpl Christian Cyr about the visits to the rectory at the chapel and the “sickly sweet grape juice” that P.S. would give to me. The next day Mcpl Cyr called me and told me he checked historical records and there never was a rectory at the chapel, the priest lived in other places.

Well, both the CFSIU paperwork and the court martial transcripts make it known that Captain McRae was known to have been taking children over to the RECTORY at the chapel and giving the children ALCOHOL.

The MPCC also indicate that it is very clear that the military police and the CFSIU knew that P.S. was molesting children as this is what initiated the investigation into Captain McRae in the first place and that Captain McRae’s defence counsel tried attacking the credibility of P.S. by raising the issue of P.S.’s habit of molesting children during the court martial hearings. McRae’s defence counsel also raised during the court martial hearings that P.S. had been sent for treatment with a psychologist due to his predilection of molesting children. The Court Martial transcripts describe one of the incidents where P.S., then 14, had forced anal intercourse with a ten year old boy behind the recreation centre in the “horseshoe forest”.

The MPCC also indicated that P.S. had a very lengthy criminal history for molesting children. One conviction in 1982, one conviction in 1984, two convictions in 1985. Three of these convictions were for molesting children while P.S. resided on Canadian Forces military bases in military family housing.

This is important as on November 4th, 2011 I was contacted by the CFNIS and told that they couldn’t find any thing to indicate that P.S. was capable of molesting children.

I don’t know who coaxed the statement out of my father, but his statement to the CFNIS in 2011 was easily disproved by readily available social service records. Was he coaxed into saying what he said, or did he say what he said to cover up for something in the past. Did he take a promotion in trade for keeping quiet about what happened to my brother and I. Or was it something else.

Anyways, back to the topic of this post, which is:

To “survivors” so long as they were not military dependents.
Military dependents can go piss up a rope.

It looks as if the adult members of the Canadian Armed Forces are getting an apology.

I know that I’m going to probably sound crass and out of line, but these are people that CHOSE to join the Canadian Armed Forces. Yes, they shouldn’t have been sexually assaulted. But they had the choice to join the military.

Children living on Canadian Forces Base didn’t have that choice. The choice of where we lived was that of our serving parent. We we put on these bases into housing provided by and administered by the Canadian Armed Forces which was often located on secured Defence Establishments that the Canadian Forces supplied security for.

We were often sexually abused by members of the Canadian Forces. We were sexually abused by other military dependents. Our matters were investigated by the same defective military police that couldn’t protect the adult members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

I received two-and-a-half years of conversion therapy at the hands of military social worker Captain Terry Totzke due to the “homosexuality” that I had apparently exhibited when I had been abused by a boy twice my age and the base chaplain.

Military dependents are basically told be successive governments that we don’t matter and that we didn’t matter and that the abuse that we suffered didn’t matter because we weren’t serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

And people wonder why I’m depressed and why I’ve given up.

When that midazolam, and then the propofol, and then the rocuronium, and then the bupivacaine flow through my veins I will finally be free of this ‘life’, this shitty fucked up and rather meaningless existence that the Canadian Armed Forces sentenced me to for no other reason that I was a child living on a Canadian Armed Forces Base and I had the audacity to get molested by a 14 year old boy and a 45 year old member of the Canadian Armed Forces.

The Beard

Well, it continues to grow.

The beard continues to grow.

It’s been what? About two weeks since I last shaved due to escitalopram pimples…..

The beard probably won’t stay very long. I have an appointment in February to get more tattooing on my face.

Going to black out some large patches on my cheeks. Working on some designs right now. I should have something firmed up in a few weeks.

I love my tattoos, and there’s going to me more of them in the next couple of years.

I’m going to try to get as many of them before I go.

But for now I’m growing a beard.

This really wasn’t on a “bucket list”.

In fact I don’t really have a bucket list.

But I have a beard.

We’ll see how it turns out.

I’ve never had a beard before.

And it’s weird at how white it is.

There’s one thin band of black hairs on the right side by the corner of my mouth, but other than that it’s white.

Like I’m old or something.

Like I turned into an old man over night, like Rip Van Winkle.

Too fucking smart for my own good.

“Bobbie, the guys feel too intimidated by you”

I’m not smart. I’m honestly not.

I’m actually pretty plain.

If I was smart I wouldn’t only have grade 8.

I would have put my 136 +/-6 IQ to use.

If I was smart I would have taken a trade.

Or I would have gone to college.

Or even university.

If I was half as smart as people think I am then I would have joined the Canadian Armed Forces when I was 20 and I would have retired this year.

So, I know that I’m not a genius by anyone’s standard.

But what gets me is people at work.

People in my department who have the same power engineering certificate and the exact same qualifications that I have.

I was hired by a man named Dave R. who was the chief engineer in 2005. He said that he saw something in me that would be beneficial to the dept.

Right off the bat this caused problems with my co-workers.

I’m not a trained mechanic.

I have no schooling as a mechanic.

I’m not a millwright, nor am I an electrician.

But as I said, I can analyze problems, and I am not afraid to read the fucking manual.

Maybe that’s my problem is that I realize how fucking stupid I actually am and therefore I know that I don’t know everything and therefore I’m not ashamed to read the fucking manual.

Maybe that’s my super power. Maybe realizing how fucking stupid I really am allows me to not over estimate my knowledge and therefore I’m open to listening to the ideas of others or just plain READING THE FUCKING MANUAL.

So anyways, one of the first incidents occurred while Dave was still the chief engineer. Dave had assigned one of the other power engineers to remove a pillow block bearing from one of the exhaust fans. Dave was getting frustrated with the amount of time it was taking this other engineer. Dave assigned me a work order to go assist this other engineer. This other engineer told me to stay away, he had everything under control.

This other engineer came down to the shop a few days later, still hadn’t gotten the bearing changed, and was now asking Dave to order a new pulley in for the fan as the old one just shattered as he tried to take it off. Turns out that this other engineer had never worked with a tapered bushing hub. He had used a 3-jaw puller on the pulley and when that wouldn’t work he got a 1/2″ impact gun and used that. The tapered bushing and the bore of the pulley were still on the shaft and he still couldn’t get it off. Dave was furious. Bob! Get up there and show him what to do. Now! So I grabbed my 3/8″ ratchet and my 7/16″ socket and headed up. The other engineer said that I was wasting my time and that I’d need the large prybar or a torch as the sleeve was obviously rusted to the shaft.

I removed the three bolts from the tapered sleeve. The other engineer said that he did the same thing but that the pulley still didn’t come off. I put the three bolts into the other holes that had been empty. These holes are threaded and allow the bolts to press the hub off the sleeve. The other engineer was beyond furious. I said “I offered to help you last week”. “Fuck you, you only think you’re smart”.

This is a tapered bushing sleeve. Three holes are threaded, three holes aren’t.
The holes that aren’t threaded are used to draw the tapered sleeve into the hub using threaded holes in the pulley.
The holes with the threads are used to push the sleeve out of the pulley hub.

A few days go by and this other engineer still hadn’t changed the bearing. Dave was talking to this other engineer after coffee, Dave motioned to me to come over. Bob, go up and show him how to take a pillow block bearing off. “But Dave, I just need the oxyacetylene torch to heat the bearing up and it will come right off”. “We’re a hospital, we can’t be lighting fires in the mechanical rooms”. “Bob, show him what to do”. So I grabbed the angle grinder, and ball and peen hammer, and a cold chisel. The other engineer was adamant that this was not going to work. I used the angle grinder to cut through the pillow block, the and the bearing. The housing and the bearing dropped off. The only thing left was to notch the inner race and then use the cold chisel to expand the race to get it off the shaft.

I’m holding the split inner race, the other engineer is holding the housing I cut with the grinder.
The new bearing is just behind my shoulder.

We never really got along after that. The other engineer would do everything possible to stay away from me. And after Dave retired things got worse. An outside contractor was brought in to be the chief engineer. This guy had very little in the way of mechanical skills. He survived by hiding behind me and one other plant employee.

In 2011 this other engineer and I would collide again. He had been tasked with rebuilding the pitch mechanism for Supply Fan SF-54H. These are large 60 horsepower variable pitch fans. He had never done one of these before, and the new chief had no idea of what to do, so I had to go show this other engineer the different steps. When it came time to put the nose cone back over the hub I told him to get a box of q-tips, some degreaser, and use the q-tips and the degreaser to clean the oil and grease out of the threads for the cap screws that would hold the cover on. And that he was to use red loctite to lock the bolts in place so they wouldn’t come undone. I should have stayed, but he was getting agitated with my presence. Well, guess what he didn’t do? It cost around $15k to fix the damage.

The blades are not supposed to be bent and twisted like that.
The fan ingested the cover that came loose because the bolts weren’t secured.

This other engineer and I had a few more instances like this before he left. He ended up climbing the corporate ladder and now he’s a manager someplace else. It’s funny how people end up in different places.

And no, this problem hasn’t gone away. Just after I became the chief engineer I was pulled into the manager’s office. “Bobbie, the guys are feeling intimidated by you and they’re afraid to ask you questions”.

I don’t get it. I’ll never understand this. We’re all 4th class power engineers. We should all have the same basic level of knowledge. Some of the guys that are my subordinates are 3rd class power engineers. I should be going to them for help. Most of the guys don’t understand basic refrigeration, which is a part of 4th class engineering. Most of the guys have very limited understanding of electrical and controls. Concepts of pneumatic controls and digital automation escape them.

Over the years I had taken on the responsibility of servicing the Honeywell building automation system. I could do power supply changes, CPU board changes, I/O board changes, flash RAM board changes, system backups, system restores. I could do actuator upgrades and replacements. The chief engineer that had replaced Dave kept promising me that he was going to get me into the DDC technician’s position and that this would come with a pay raise. As it turned out this was a lie. The union ended up taking this before human resources. H.R. determined that I was not qualified to service the automation system and that I was to cease doing so. The other guys in the department, who had become accustomed to dumping automation problems on my plate started getting pissed off when I would tell them that I’m not allowed to fix the building automation system. “Bobbie, you’re just being a fucking asshole. If you know how to fix the fucking thing, fix it!”.

I’m the grade 8 drop out with a grade 12 G.E.D.. I’m the loser that lived on the streets. I’m the joker that stayed in homeless shelters. I’m the homosexual that allowed the babysitter to molest his younger brother. As I’ve said, I’ve never gone to trade school. I never took an apprenticeship. I was never trained on electronics in a diploma program.

I’m the asshole who’s supposed to fix everything, but I’m also the asshole who is not qualified to fix anything. I’m Schrödinger‘s power engineer. Too stupid to be anything else, too fucking smart that others are uncomfortable.

Bobbie, be something else!

Do something that you like!

Go back to school and become an <something>!

Get realistic.

I’ve got a metric shit tonne of depressions, anxiety, CPTSD, self doubt, and self hatred.

I’m fifty years old. Contrary to what all of the helpful people have to say, there is no simple fix for my issues.

Mom! Dad! I need a place to stay while I go back to school / college / trade school / etc…… Yeah, that fucking ship sailed years ago. Grandpas, grandmas, aunts, uncles? Nope.

The time for trade school, for college, for university, for any of that was back in my teens or early 20s. This of course would have only been possible had I also received treatment for my major depression, my severe anxiety, my sexual and gender confusion gifted to me by Captain Terry Totzke.

Trying to go to school with 40 years of untreated major depression, severe anxiety, and all of the issues that go along with these issues would be utterly impossible.

And if you’re one of those people that say that I just have to smile and feel happy and that everything will be okay, you are part of the problem.

Wishing my issues away just to make yourself feel better isn’t going to make things better.

It was a fucking musical.
This is not how things work in real life.

Richard the gaslighter.

I saw this yesterday. And it really sums up Richard to a “T”.

Richard was a master manipulator.

Richard loved playing people against others.

Richard could “rage out” and beat the fuck out of you or spank you hard enough with his leather belt to leave bruises and scratches, but yet he never once remembered spanking me with the belt. He backhanded me one day and chipped my tooth and drew blood. The next day he claimed that he didn’t remember anything and that even if he did hit me that he wouldn’t have hit me in the mouth and that if I didn’t want to get hit that I shouldn’t talk back to him.

When I was about 10 years old, I fell off the roof of Tim’s camper that he had loaned to Richard for Richard and Sue’s 1982 honeymoon trip to Jasper. My brother had stuffed leaves into the air vent and I knew that Richard would have killed me if he came home and found the vent stuffed with leaves.

Richard was like that though. Richard couldn’t or wouldn’t accept responsibility for his family. He always blamed the problems of his family on others. Quite early on he had decided that it was my responsibility to raise my younger brother. He had even told Alberta Social Services that he considered it to be my responsibility to raise my younger brother. And once my younger brother noticed that I’d get the blame for anything he had done, it was game on.

So, I fell off the roof of the camper. It was one of those pickup truck mounted campers. And the pickup truck was a real 4X4 off-road truck, so it was quite the distance to the ground. I fractured both wrists. I also had the wind knocked out of me. One of the neighbours came over and helped me. Richard got called home from the squadron. When he got home he wanted to know what the fuck I was doing on top of the camper. I told him. His response was that it was my own damn fault for not keeping an eye on my brother. If I had watched my brother like I was supposed to then he would have never been able to get on top of the camper. And Richard said that I should consider myself lucky that my brother didn’t fall off the camper, because if he did Richard was going to beat me so hard that I’d wish that I had never been born.

I got sent to my room. I was told to stop my whining and just “get the fuck to bed” or he’d “give me something to cry about”.

I guess that Sue was finally able to convince Richard the next day that I needed to go to the hospital to get my wrists looked at.

My casts were supposed to stay on for six weeks.

They stayed on for longer than that.

Richard’s reasoning was that he wanted me to “learn my fucking lesson” and not be so “fucking stupid” the next time.

When we lived on CFB Griesbach in the time after grandma moved out of the house, Richard and Sue wouldn’t allow us into the house when they weren’t home. So that meant that after school my brother and I had to wait outside of the PMQ for them to get home from work. School was out at 15:00 Richard and Sue got off work around 16:30. In the summer and fall this wasn’t too bad. In the winter this was fucking stupid. We weren’t allowed to go anywhere, we had to stand on the porch and wait. Well, one cold day my brother decided that he wasn’t going to wait, so he kicked in one of the basement windows and got into the house that way. When Richard and Sue got home Richard was fucking furious. Again it was my fault for not watching my brother. If I had been watching my brother he never would have kicked the window in. Never mind that it could get down to -10 on a typical Edmonton winter day. No, the big problem was that someone kicked a window in to seek warmth.

It’s no wonder that by the time we moved to Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Toronto in April of 1983 my brother and I despised each other so much that the school board had to send us to separate schools due to intense sibling rivalry.

But that’s the way that gas-lighters work.

I worked for a man like this once. His way of keeping anyone from noticing that he didn’t have managerial skills was to keep everyone at each other’s throats. He had the admin assistants fighting amongst themselves. He had subordinate managers fighting with each other. He had the building operators distrusting each other. Even after the board of directors wised up and fired him and his assistant the damage was done.

And that’s the same with Richard. He was a fuckup. He knew he was a fuckup. Social services in three provinces knew that he was a fuckup. A psychologist hired by the Canadian Armed Forces knew that he was a fuckup. And what do fuckups do when they don’t want people knowing how much of a fuckup they are? They gaslight everyone around them. They have to. It’s the only way they can keep from having to admit that they’re fuckups.

My mother? Did she get kicked off the base? Nope, she “abandoned” her children.

Did she leave because she couldn’t take his drinking and his abuse? Nope, according to Richard she was a “slut” that would spread her legs for any man.

Was my brother getting into trouble because my father was a shitty parent? Nope, I wasn’t raising my brother correctly.

Did my brother start getting into trouble on CFB Downsview because my father was a neglectful parent. Fuck no, if only I had raised my brother right he wouldn’t be getting into trouble.

Was I having psychiatric problems due to sexual abuse, physical abuse, and neglect? Nope, I was just acting up to get attention.

Were my brother and I having issues because of Richard’s psychiatric issues? Hell no, it was his mother’s fault. She was the reason my brother and I were acting up.

There was one time that Richard had to pick me up after a weekend cadet camp out in a town near Kingston, Ontario. Richard pulled up in his Mustang. I put my dufflebag in the back of the car and I got into the passenger seat. As soon as I sat down Richard made a slapping motion towards me. I recoiled. But Richard stopped short of slapping me. He laughed and chuckled. Then he said that I was so fucking lucky. I asked what for. He said that he was so looking forward to slapping my fucking face when he came to pick me up. I asked again “for what?”. He said that earlier in the day he used his oscilloscope to work on something electronic and someone had poked holes in the anti-glare screen. I said “Wasn’t me”. He said “I know. I remember using the oscilloscope on Saturday morning and it was okay, so that means it was your fucking brother that did it”. He then continued on ” Why the fuck can’t you look after him. He’s your brother, you should be teaching him how to respect my equipment. Older brothers are supposed to look after their younger brothers. I guess that your just too fucking self-centred to give a shit about anyone else other than yourself”

This tendency for Richard to blame me for everything resulted in my younger brother remarking that he knew that all he had to do to get Richard to punish me was to take a screw out of something of Richard’s and to leave the screwdriver and the screw beside the equipment so that Richard couldn’t help but notice.

Sure, I can look back now at laugh. But it doesn’t really undo all of the psychiatric pain and suffering that was inflicted.

The damage that Richard did was fucking astounding. But the sad thing about gaslighters is that they do so much fucking damage that there often is no recovery.

The problem that a person like Richard causes for a person like me is that when you’re dealing with major depression and severe anxiety, the bullshit and the lies deliver a much more devastating blow. If I wasn’t suffering from CPTSD, major depression, and severe anxiety I probably could have weathered Richard’s gaslighting and victim blaming. But it wouldn’t be until I was 40 years old that I would learn the truth about Richard. By that time Richard’s gaslighting had a lot of time to cement itself and fix itself into my brain.

Even though I now know the truth, the damage can’t be undone. And even if it could be undone the problem is that the majority of my life was wasted away with Richard’s gaslighting being my only frame of reference.

I’m tired.

I’m broken.

I’m defeated.

I’m at peace with the way things were and the way things are.

I know that I can’t rewrite the past. The past will always be the past.

The future doesn’t really hold anything for me.

I know that my depression, my anxiety, my CPTSD, and my distrust of others, my crippling self doubt and my intense self hatred will plague me to the end of my days.

There is nothing that can be prescribed that will undo what was done.

ECT could erase some of the memories, but it also stands a good chance at obliterating the few good memories that I have.

The gaslighter made damn sure that if he couldn’t enjoy his life that no one else would enjoy theirs.

“in the end it isn’t the gods that cause us so much suffering, but those closest to us” – Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice.