One interesting idea that I keep running into is this idea that because bad things happened on Canadian Forces Base Namao that I can’t assume that bad things happened on all of the bases.
It’s almost like people are certain that each Canadian Armed Forces base was its own independently owned and operated franchise. And that the franchisee was responsible for recruiting, selecting, vetting, and training their own staff members.
Welcome to Canadian Forces Base Low Low Prices!
However, as amusing as this idea might be, the bases in Canada all belong to the Government of Canada. The Department of National Defence provides custodianship, property administration, infrastructure, maintenance, financial management and institutional support. The Canadian Armed Forces provide military command, base administration, military operations, recruiting, vetting, selecting, training, and discipline.
The problems with the Canadian Armed Forces existed long before unification in 1968. The problems with the Royal Canadian Navy, the Royal Canadian Army, and the Royal Canadian Airforce existed even before the first version of the Canadian National Defence Act was adopted into law in 1950.
The modern day problems with the Canadian Armed Forces stretch all the way back to the days of the various branches of the British military.
The problems with the Canadian Armed Forces is that they have a long standing institutional belief that they are superior to the citizens of Canada, that they cannot be called into question by members of the Canadian public, and that they require their specific isolated justice system due to the “unique” circumstance of the military.
Which of course is absolute rubbish.
The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence have had forever and a day to get their shit straightened out.
Back in 1980, Colonel Daniel Edward Munro had the opportunity to protect the children that were living on the base that he commanded.
But, he didn’t.
And I don’t care if he was just acting under orders from someone at CFB Winnipeg, who was acting under command from someone at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa.
All it would have taken is for someone to have said “No”.
Instead what happened is about 25 children had their lives flushed down the toilet.
The babysitter?
He was anointed to be the sole victim of Captain McRae, and as such he has never had to own up to the hell that he put us through.
He was “appalled” that McRae wasn’t jailed for molesting two boys?
That’s odd. This guy was investigated by the military police on CFB Namao after numerous parents complained to the base military police that he had been molesting their children whom ranged in age from 4 to 10 and who were mostly boys, but there were some girls.
And no, he wasn’t 12 or 13 in 1980. He was 14 when the base military police interviewed him in the dining room of his family’s PMQ in May of 1980. He was 15 at the time of Captain McRae’s court martial in July of 1980.
See, this wouldn’t have been Munro’s decision on its own.
Even the Minister of National Defence at the time, Gilles La Montagne was required to approve of the sentence given to McRae.
Because again, these bases weren’t independent franchises run by local governments and subject to provincial laws.
All of the bases in Canada were operated by NDHQ in Ottawa.
All of the bases in Canada were staffed by members of the Canadian Armed Forces that were recruited, vetted, trained, and deployed by the Canadian Armed Forces.
All persons on base whom were subject to the Code of Service Discipline were following the National Defence Act, which was written by and prescribed by the Government of Canada.
Canada had been aware of these issues for ages, and instead Canada did nothing to reign in its out of control military. Canada instead chose to sit back and let the military’s own separate and distinct justice system deal with these issues, which of course the military didn’t.
Some of the illustrious members that the Canadian Armed Forces recruited, vetted, trained, and deployed:
On November 2, 2026, I sent a formal submission entitled Institutional Betrayal to the Right Honourable Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada.
The submission concerned the handling of historical childhood sexual abuse at Canadian Forces Base Namao, the conduct and independence of military investigations, the denial of access to psychiatric treatment, and the responsibilities of federal institutions. It also addressed the implications of proposed restrictions on medical assistance in dying.
It was a formal submission concerning the conduct of the Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of National Defence, and the federal institutions that are supposedly responsible for ensuring that those organizations are accountable for their actions.
I specifically requested a substantive written response to those issues falling within the federal government’s responsibilities.
On November 6, 2026, I received a response from the Office of the Prime Minister.
Four days. That’s how long it took.
Your Correspondence Has Been Carefully Read
I was then assured that my communication had been:
“received and carefully read.”
Those are interesting words.
Because the very next paragraph acknowledged my distress and directed me toward crisis services.
There it was. The federal government’s apparent answer to a detailed submission concerning decades of institutional misconduct.
Have you considered calling someone about how you’re feeling?
Perhaps I’m being unreasonable, but I would have thought that a submission documenting the Canadian military’s handling of childhood sexual abuse might warrant something slightly more substantial than a referral to mental health support services.
The Convenient Transformation of Institutional Misconduct Into Personal Distress
What I find particularly insulting about this response is the manner in which it redirects attention away from the conduct of federal institutions and toward the emotional condition of the person raising the complaint.
My submission concerned events that occurred on a Canadian military installation, the actions of military personnel, the manner in which allegations of childhood sexual abuse were investigated, and the subsequent conduct of institutions that were entrusted with protecting the people affected.
These are matters of institutional responsibility.
Yet the first substantive observation offered by the Prime Minister’s Office concerned my distress.
It’s an extraordinarily convenient way to acknowledge that something unpleasant has happened without actually addressing what happened, who was responsible, or what the government intends to do about it.
The distress doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
It has a history.
It has causes.
And some of those causes involve the very federal institutions to which I was directing my correspondence.
I’m not looking for an explanation of why childhood sexual abuse is harmful. I have lived with the consequences for nearly half a century.
Passing the Buck, Ottawa Style
The Prime Minister’s Office did manage to accomplish something beyond acknowledging my feelings.
It informed me that my remarks were being shared with three federal ministers:
The Minister of National Defence, David J. McGuinty.
The Minister of Health, Marjorie Michel.
The Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Sean Fraser.
For their “information and consideration.”
Information and consideration.
Not an undertaking to investigate.
Not a commitment to examine the historical record.
Not an explanation of the government’s position.
Not even a commitment that somebody would provide a substantive written response.
Just information and consideration.
And one of the recipients happens to be the Minister of National Defence.
The minister responsible for the department whose historical conduct forms a central part of my submission.
A History That Doesn’t Disappear Because Someone Offers Sympathy
The events at CFB Namao during the late 1970s and early 1980s weren’t simply an unfortunate episode in my childhood.
They involved military personnel, military investigations, the military chain of command, and the manner in which allegations of sexual offences involving children were handled within the Canadian Forces.
Captain Father Angus McRae was court-martialled in July 1980.
The military had investigated his activities.
There were children involved.
And there were decisions made by people in positions of authority that deserve far more scrutiny than they have received.
My submission raised issues that extend beyond the actions of an individual offender.
They concern the institutions that investigated, prosecuted, administered, supervised, or otherwise exercised authority over the circumstances in which those offences occurred.
They also concern what happened afterwards, including my experiences with the military and civilian systems that were supposed to provide protection and access to treatment.
These aren’t abstract policy questions.
They concern actual people, actual decisions, and consequences that have continued for decades.
The Difference Between Acknowledgement and Accountability
I don’t expect the Prime Minister to personally investigate a historical military sexual abuse case.
I don’t expect him to sift through thousands of pages of military records, court-martial transcripts, and investigative reports.
There are departments, agencies, ministers, investigators, and public officials whose responsibilities include dealing with these matters.
What I do expect is for a formal submission identifying serious concerns about federal institutions to be treated as something more than an opportunity to send a sympathetic letter.
A meaningful response could identify which department or official is responsible for examining the issues raised.
It could explain whether the government intends to review any of the matters identified.
It could address the questions concerning investigative independence, institutional responsibility, or the barriers to obtaining psychiatric treatment.
It could explain the government’s position on the policy questions raised in the submission.
It could even explain why the government believes that no further action is warranted.
At least that would constitute a response.
Instead, I received an acknowledgement, a reference to crisis services, and a notification that my remarks had been forwarded elsewhere.
The letter doesn’t establish that nobody will examine my submission. But it provides no substantive indication that anybody intends to do so.
Institutional Betrayal Doesn’t End With the Original Abuse
One of the recurring problems with institutional misconduct is the tendency to treat the original events as something safely confined to the past.
Something unfortunate that happened decades ago.
Something that ought to be acknowledged, perhaps regretted, and then quietly filed away.
But institutional betrayal doesn’t necessarily end when the original abuse stops.
It can continue through the handling of complaints, the withholding of information, the failure to investigate, the denial of appropriate services, and the bureaucratic procedures that prevent individuals from obtaining meaningful answers.
It can also continue when governments respond to documented concerns about their own conduct by concentrating on the suffering of the people raising those concerns rather than the institutional conduct that produced that suffering.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with expressing concern for someone’s well-being.
But concern is not accountability.
Sympathy is not an investigation.
And directing someone toward support services does not relieve a government of its responsibility to answer questions about the conduct of its own institutions.
Carefully Read. Conveniently Unanswered.
I have no way of knowing how thoroughly my submission was examined by the Prime Minister’s correspondence office.
Perhaps somebody read every page.
Perhaps somebody recognized the significance of the historical evidence and the questions being raised.
Perhaps the submission will eventually receive the attention it deserves from one of the ministries to which it was forwarded.
But those possibilities don’t change the contents of the response I actually received.
On November 2, I asked the federal government to address specific issues involving institutional misconduct and responsibility.
On November 6, the Prime Minister’s Office acknowledged that I was distressed and informed me that my correspondence had been circulated.
That’s not a substantive answer.
It’s an administrative acknowledgement dressed up as concern.
And I find it profoundly ironic that a submission entitled Institutional Betrayal should receive a response that so neatly illustrates one of the very problems the submission was intended to address.
The federal government has acknowledged my distress.
Now perhaps it could get around to acknowledging the institutional conduct that helped cause it.
In a formal supplementary opinion to a parliamentary report, physician and parliamentarian Marcus Powlowski pointed to illicit fentanyl as an example of a supposedly painless means of ending one’s life. His remarks raise troubling questions about Canada’s exclusion of mental illness as a sole underlying condition for Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID).
If the government’s objective is to protect vulnerable people from suicide, how does pointing to dangerous, unregulated drugs accomplish that objective? And what happens to people living with decades of psychiatric suffering when the treatments offered cannot undo the experiences responsible for their conditions?
This article examines Powlowski’s statements, Canada’s suicide statistics, the limitations of psychiatric treatment, and the distinction between preserving someone’s biological existence and genuinely relieving their suffering.
“The option to end one’s life remains, irrespective of MAiD, readily available in Canada. Furthermore, there are painless options readily available. One example being illicit narcotics like fentanyl. To my dismay it is arguably easier for my teenage sons to access fentanyl in my hometown of Thunder Bay than it is for me (a doctor) to renew my Lipitor prescription (a cholesterol medication).“
So, Powlowski wants to save me and others like me……..
But at the same time he’s telling me that if I really want to die that I just gotta go get me some fenty and OD.
What I find particularly troubling about Powlowski’s argument is that he appears to treat the availability of suicide as relevant to whether the government should provide access to medically assisted dying.
Those are two fundamentally different propositions.
And coming from a physician, the characterization of illicit fentanyl as a painless option is especially concerning. There is no guarantee that a fentanyl overdose would be painless, peaceful, or even fatal. A fentanyl overdose can cause severe injury and permanent disability. I see the damage on an almost daily basis.
And that’s exactly what I don’t want, brain damage and to be hospitalized until I die.
There’s also a rather glaring contradiction worth examining: If preventing suicide is one of the government’s justifications for excluding people with mental illness from MAID, pointing out that they can still die by suicide does very little to strengthen that justification.
And unlike some inflammatory remark made during a heated parliamentary debate, he put this argument in writing, in a formal supplementary opinion to a parliamentary report.
That’s a deliberate, publicly documented position for which he can reasonably be held accountable.
If you take the total number of officially recorded suicides in Canada from 2000 through 2023 and divide by those 24 years, the average works out to roughly 3,950 deaths per year. More recent years have generally been somewhat higher, often around 4,000–4,700 deaths annually, depending on the year and on how deaths are classified and finalized by provincial coroners and medical examiners.
To put that figure into perspective:
3,950 deaths per year is about 10.8 deaths every day.
Over the entire 2000–2023 period, that’s approximately 95,000 Canadians who died by suicide.
Suicide has consistently ranked among the leading causes of death for younger and middle-aged Canadians, even though it is a much smaller cause of death overall than cancer or heart disease.
One thing that often surprises people is that the annual numbers have remained relatively stable over decades. Canada’s overall suicide rate declined somewhat from its peaks in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but since around the 2000s it has tended to fluctuate within a fairly narrow range rather than showing a dramatic long-term decrease.
Another sobering comparison is that, in many recent years, the number of Canadians dying by suicide has been several times higher than the number of homicide victims, yet suicide generally receives far less public discussion and media coverage. For example, in 2024, Statistics Canada recorded 3,852 suicide deaths compared with 454 homicides.
And the really remarkable thing about Marcus Powlowski recommending that suicidal people simply avail themselves to fenty is that this completely bypasses any safeguards that a rash suicidal person would have encountered during the two assessments. Instead what he’s done now is made that avenue completely unavailable.
Again Powlowski is looking at long term psychiatric issues as being brief, fleeting, not serious, and something that can be cured with enough happy thoughts.
Marcus Powlowski’s cure for long term depression
Powlowski’s line of thinking is very paternalistic, very “father knows best”.
And his line of thinking is very common in the field of psychiatry.
The problem is that just shy of 11 people die by suicide each and every day.
And that number is low, the real number of suicide deaths is probably far higher. But short of a suicide note, most suicides by overdose are simply written off as a misadventure.
We have evidence that there are massive mental health issues in this country and that not everyone’s brain acts in the same manner as other brains. Some people can be treated for CPTSD, some people can’t be treated for CPTSD. Some people can be treated for PTSD, some people can’t be treated for PTSD.
We scream at people and tell ’em that drugs are BAD! But then we hook ’em on ketamine, LSD, mood stabilizers, and other drugs in the hopes that they will no longer upset society and no longer drag society down with their sadness and other issues.
Not everyone wants to be drugged or numbed.
Okay, fine, sure, let’s say that they give me mind altering drugs to make me happier and help me hide my issues from society so that I no longer upset people.
Is that going to magically erase the very vivid memories that I have of CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980?
Is that going to magically erase the very frustrating memories that I have from my dealings with Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke from 1980 until 1983 when the name of the game was to keep me from receiving mental health treatment to deal with the sexual abuse from CFB Namao from 1978 to 1980 so the that true scope and size of the abuse wouldn’t become public knowledge?
Are the mind altering drugs going to magically erase the memories of the beatings that I took from my father from 1980 until 1986 for having fucked with his military career when I got abused on CFB Namao and for “allowing” the babysitter to molest my younger brother?
No, the mind altering drugs will not erase this.
The mind altering drugs will not alter the fact that so many opportunities in my life were stolen from me. The mind altering drugs will not zip me in a time machine back to 1978 where I could explain to my piss tank alcoholic grandmother that she shouldn’t hire the babysitter.
No, all the mind altering drugs will do is allow the psychiatrists and anti-M.A.i.D. parliamentarians to high-five each other, pat each other on the back, and congratulate themselves for “saving” my life so that I can live another 10 to 15 years dreading daily existence, but feeling “happy” about it.
I did send off an email to the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Ontario.
One thing that I feel that I need to make very clear is that there is absolutely no comparison between the Canadian Medical Assistance in Dying protocol and the American death penalty.
I can already hear the anti-M.A.i.D. crowd clutchin’ their pearls about the twice botched execution of Christa Pike.
The American justice system has retribution as one of its core tenets.
The American justice system believes that death itself isn’t enough of a punishment. The American justice system believes that suffering should also be part of the death experience.
Medical Assistance in Dying is the polar opposite of what the American justice system believes death should feel like.
M.A.i.D. is about ending pain and needless suffering.
The American death penalty is all about suffering and getting an “eye for an eye”. The Americans argue that If the victim of a murder suffered, then murderer must also suffer, but to a greater degree. The American justice system is after all based on early American Puritan / Protestant beliefs that crime is a moral failing and not the result of societal influences and societal failings.
The M.A.i.D. procedure in Canada utilizes three or four drugs.
Order
Agent
Purpose
ED95(mg/kg)
MAiD Dose
#1
Midazolam
Sedation
0.033
10mg
#2
Propofol
Induce Coma
2.56
1000mg
#3
Rocuronium
Paralysis
0.305
200mg
#4 (optional)
Bupivacaine
Cardiac Arrest
500mg
#5
Lidocaine
Reduce injection pain
40mg
Usually drugs #1, #2, and #3 are more than enough to allow a person pass away peacefully.
Sometimes Bupivacaine is used to absolutely ensure that the heart stops. But this is at the discretion of the practitioner administering M.A.i.D. to a patient. There are no specific guidelines in the M.A.i.D. protocol that determine when bupivacaine must be used.
Lidocaine is used if it’s believed that the patient may be sensitive to the injection of propofol. Lidocaine is sometime required in regular surgery as some people are more sensitive to propofol at the injection site than others.
Issue
Canadian MAID anaesthetic/paralytic protocol
Single-drug pentobarbital execution
Initial sedation
Yes
Drug itself initially sedates
Purpose-built general anaesthetic
Yes, propofol
Pentobarbital ultimately causes coma
Unconsciousness deliberately established before respiratory paralysis
Yes
No separate pharmacological step
Neuromuscular paralysis
Rocuronium after anaesthesia
No
Mechanism toward death
Anaesthesia → paralysis/apnea → cardiac arrest
Progressive barbiturate toxicity
Injection discomfort
Can occur, especially propofol; local anaesthetic can reduce it
Possible, including irritation from alkaline pentobarbital
Pulmonary edema concern
Not a characteristic intended mechanism
Documented concern in lethal-injection autopsies
Consciousness during terminal physiological effects
Designed specifically to prevent it
Greater uncertainty
Administration
Medical practitioner within a clinical protocol
Correctional execution team under state protocol
And, as the above table shows, pulmonary edema is almost always present in a single drug execution, and is typically never present in a death brought about by M.A.i.D.
In the most recent execution attempt in Tennessee, the only drug administered was pentobarbital.
In the American penal system, sedating the prisoner and then rendering them unconscious prior to administering a lethal drug is anathema.
The pentobarbital wasn’t even administered by a medical professional. It was instead administered by a “specially trained” corrections personnel.
Whether this “specially trained” person was the facility janitor or an office assistant is anyone’s guess.
The fact that Christa Pike survived two attempts to bring about her death shows that the single drug method does not work reliably.
The Christa Pike affair also illustrates another fear of mine. And that is surviving a suicide attempt.
Sure, she was being executed by the state, which isn’t the same as a suicide attempt, but nonetheless she survived.
And the truth is, the vast majority of people that attempt suicide survive.
Christa Pike is now connected to a ventilator in a hospital. She is expected to recover, but will probably have brain damage. How much brain damage is anyone’s guess. Regardless, she is now trapped inside of a brain that no longer functions properly.
I remember going to see my grandmother’s husband Andy Anderson in the Misieracordia hospital in the weeks after his fall in the bathtub. Tubes and everything coming out of his skull and his spine with talks about brain bleeds, shunts, strokes, and heart attacks.
When Andy was moved to the Mewburn Veterans Nursing home grandma would periodically take Scott and I down to the nursing home to see Andy.
The nursing staff would always tell grandma that it was inappropriate to bring Scott and I there.
I swore that I would never end up in a place like that.
And this is one of the reasons why I feel so frustrated when it comes to M.A.i.D..
To have something like M.A.i.D. within my grasp after so many years of living with diagnosed but untreated mental illness gives me hope that I can finally be free. Sadly I have the fucking do-gooder brigade telling me that I have to endure another 15 to 20 years of this life because it allows them to score feel-good points with their deity of choice.
If your deity tells you that M.A.i.D. is a sin, fine, don’t get M.A.i.D..
If there’s one thing about having grown up on Canadian Armed Forces bases in Canada during the ’70s and ’80s taught me it was to just ignore homophobic slurs.
Mind you I didn’t start hearing these slurs until after the CFB Namao affair, but they started nonetheless once my family was moved from CFB Namao to CFB Griesbach in October of 1980.
Captain Terry Totzke was the first to refer to me as a homo. Yes, he would use the clinical word “homosexual”, but he would also drop “homo” at times as well.
Totzke was also adamant that if I didn’t stop being a homosexual that I would end up in prison like the priest.
Although I had no idea of what priest Captain Totzke was talking about, he was talking about Captain McRae, the base chaplain from CFB Namao. The base chaplain that had just been investigated for having committed “acts of homosexuality” with young boys on the base.
My father, Master Corporal Richard Wayne Gill, would use “homo”, “fag”, and “cocksucker” at home.
And once news spread from CFB Namao to CFB Griesbach that I was the boy that had been caught being buggered by the babysitter in his bedroom it didn’t take long for the kids at school to start using slurs and isolating me.
So, when I get this shit on social media, I don’t really care.
Yes, somebody sent me the suggestion to go hang myself.
I report it.
Sometimes it gets taken down.
Sometime it doesn’t.
But, when that’s the language that was used at home to describe you, you just get used to it.
Especially back in the ’70s and ’80s.
If you were a kid living on base and you were suspected even in the slightest of possibly being queer or a little light in the loafers, you had to grow a very thick skin, otherwise this shit was gonna kill you.
I remember I was in Richard’s car once. I forget where we were going, but we were heading north on Keele St.. We had just passed Sheppard Ave. Richard asked me why I had joined Sea Cadets instead of Army Cadets. I said that my friend John was in Sea Cadets and John took me to one of the parade nights, so that’s why I wanted to join. Richard said that everyone knows that the grunts are in the Army. I looked at him puzzled. He said that the grunts are queer, and maybe I’d be better off in Army cadets.
The worst base I lived on was Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Toronto.
CFB Downsview didn’t have a school on base for military dependents. We went to the local schools like Sheppard Public School, Downsview Public School, Elia Jr. High., Pierre LaPorte Jr. High and others.
I never really had much issue with the civilian kids.
It was always the other kids on base.
And when you come from a visibly dysfunctional home, the other kids have absolutely no sympathy. It’s like you were to blame for your father’s alcoholism and violent tendencies.
There were three kids on that base that made every living moment of my life a fucking hell.
The homophobia, the slurs, the taunts, the teasing, the fights.
Yeah, if you didn’t fit in, you were mocked relentlessly and shunned.
I’ve talked to other former base brats over the years, a majority of them absolutely refuse to admit that there were issues with alcoholism, or family violence in the PMQs on the bases.
But that’s the way things were back then. Dysfunctional families were ignored. They were an embarrassment.
When queer kids got beat up or shunned, everyone ignored that.
And yes, I realize that these attitudes existed out in the civilian world.
But living on base, everything was concentrated.
There was no escape.
So, you just learned to be extremely self sufficient.
Recently I finished my 54th orbit around the sun and have embarked on my 55th orbit.
I don’t know how much longer I want to keep working.
Now that I’m 55 I’m eligible for my pension via work, but as I don’t have my full 30 years yet, I won’t get maximum payout.
Yes, I have a class action against the Government of Canada at the moment, but I’m not pegging my future on this.
I’ve worked since I was about 11. My first job was cleaning cages in a pet shop in a mall across 97th street from Canadian Forces Base Griesbach. Home life sucked so badly in the fallout from the events on Canadian Forces Base Namao that I did whatever it took to keep as much distance between my father and I as possible.
I started working for the family that owned a pizza shop in Kingsway Garden Mall. CFB Griesbach was on 97th street and 137th avenue. Kingsway Garden Mall is down on Kingsway and 111th avenue. That was a good walk. Again, any chance that I’d get I’d go down as this was far preferable to being at home.
When my father got his posting to Canadian Forces Base Downsview in January of 1983 to avoid my apprehension by Alberta Social Services I didn’t have any jobs at the time. But by 1985 I was actually servicing video games, pinball machines, and jukeboxes which was an odd job for a 14 year old to have.
When I was 16, the employer I was working for realized that things were really bad at home. He arranged for me to rent a room from a friend of his.
And I’ve been on my own since.
With no support from home I never had the luxury of taking trade training that I would have loved to. Which meant that even though I was qualified to do the work, I couldn’t be paid for the work at the higher rate as I wasn’t qualified.
And with Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke interfering with my mental health treatment in the aftermath of the CFB Namao Child Sexual Abuse scandal, I was always going to be the “outsider”. The freak.
Spent my early years living paycheque to paycheque.
And let me tell you, when there is no safety net, you don’t take any fucking chances.
Sure, it would have been nice if my father could have helped out, but that was never going to be an option. And I knew much better than to ever ask.
My mother? No idea where she was. I had always lived my life with my father’s explanation as to her disappearance. It wasn’t until 2013 that I would learn the truth about what my father had done.
So the jobs that I’ve held over the years are the ones you get by slowly climbing the ladder.
My background in electronics and computers allowed me to bring skills to jobs that normally wouldn’t have these skills.
For instance when I got into servicing bowling alley equipment my skills in electronic were able to massively reduce costs as the centres no longer had to send logic boards out for repairs. I could do the work in house.
And with my background in mechanics, repairing machine assemblies was dead simple. Instead of ordering entire rebuilt gearboxes in from the manufacturer, I could press shafts and press bearings.
One centre that I worked at they ended up firing their head mechanic because I easily demonstrated that a lot of the issues the machines were having were due to his incompetence. But you know what, at the end of the day they couldn’t pay me what they were paying him as he was factory trained and qualified and of course I wasn’t.
Could they send me for factory training like they had sent him?
Don’t be silly, I know too much already, it would be a waste of money for them to send me.
Even in my current employment I’m haunted non-stop by the “you’re not qualified” taunt. I would have much rather been an Instrumentation and Automation tech. But I’m not qualified. And no, taking a four year course at BCIT isn’t in the cards.
So I took the Chief Engineer position instead. The pay is close to what the tech makes, but I really don’t get to spend time doing the kind of work that I like.
So yeah, I think that it’s time to throw in the rag and call it a day.
And as I’ve said elsewhere in my blog, I’m going to keep fighting for the right to avail myself to Medical Assistance in Dying to be free of Captain Totzke, my father, and the mental illness that I’ve been dragging around since my days of living on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
If I’m lucky, the Department of Justice and the Department of National Defence will settle with me, but I ain’t holding out any hope. It took the DOJ to settle with Captain McRae’s accomplice, so I can only imagine how long the DOJ will string my civil action out.
Below is a copy of a letter that I am sending to all members of the House of Commons.
There is a vote on a Private Member’s bill, Bill C-218, introduced by Tamara Jensen of the Conservative Party of Canada.
Conservatives such as Tamara Jansen don’t oppose M.A.i.D. for mental illness because they care about people suffering from mental illness. It’s all performative for them. The Conservatives really don’t care about pain, or suffering.
The Conservatives oppose Medical Assistance in Dying because they love control. They love controlling people. And, they seem to love suffering.
Tamara Jansen has made it her special crusade to introduce religion into the House of Commons and legislation governing Canadians.
Religion and Compassion don’t seem to be able to co-exist.
You want to practice your religion?
Fine.
Practice it all you want, just keep it to yourself.
You don’t want to get M.A.i.D..
Fine.
Don’t get M.A.i.D.
You’re against marriage?
Fine.
Don’t marry someone of the same gender.
Pretty simple, no?
Anyways, here’s the text of my letter that I am sending to all Members of Parliament.
The author expresses frustration over receiving warnings from OpenAI/ChatGPT while using the tool to proofread posts. They reflect on their unique perspective shaped by growing up in a dysfunctional military family and highlight difficulties in researching military dependent suicide, which further activates these alerts.
I don’t know if OpenAI/ChatGPT is being overly cautious with all of the high profile cases recently, but I get a fair bit of these warnings.
Screenshot
It’s not like I’m being a dramatic attention whore.
I just get chat to proof-read my posts.
Growing up as a military dependent in a dysfunctional military family tends to give one a different kind of outlook on life.
I find that even just trying to use chat to review documents related to the underwhelming amount of existing research on military dependent suicide will trigger these alerts.
Canada’s MAID numbers sound frightening when stripped of context. Here’s what the statistics actually show about who receives MAID, Track 1 and Track 2, and some very creative comparisons with American gun deaths.
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”
It’s amazing that people in this day and age still publish “facts” on the interwebs when they know full well that they’re gonna get fact checked.
The numbers quoted above sure look dramatic, until you actually look at the numbers behind them.
Currently in Canada there are two tracks to obtaining Medical Assistance in Dying.
They are Track One, and Track Two.
Track 1: You’re seriously ill and approaching the end of your life, although nobody knows exactly when you’ll die. Track 2: You’re seriously and incurably ill, but you’re not approaching a reasonably foreseeable natural death, so additional safeguards apply.
In Canada, M.A.i.D. is not the primary cause of death. There has to be a diagnosed underlying medical condition.
To see how well our American friend loves to play with numbers, let’s look at the TOTAL number of gun deaths over the last 10 years in the United States of America.
Year
Total firearm deaths
Suicide
Homicide
Accidental
Legal intervention¹
Undetermined
2015
36,252
22,018
12,979
489
484
282
2016
38,658
22,938
14,415
495
510
300
2017
39,773
23,854
14,542
486
553
338
2018
39,740
24,432
13,958
458
539
353
2019
39,707
23,941
14,414
486
520
346
2020
45,222
24,292
19,384
535
611
400
2021
48,830
26,328
20,958
549
537
458
2022
48,204
27,032
19,651
463
643
415
2023
46,728
27,300
17,927
463
604
435
2024
44,447
27,593
15,364
450
636
404
Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics System. “Total firearm deaths” includes firearm suicide, homicide, accidental (unintentional) deaths, legal intervention and deaths of undetermined intent.
¹ CDC uses the term “legal intervention”. This category includes firearm deaths involving law-enforcement or other peace officers acting in the line of duty. The classification does not itself indicate whether the use of force was legally justified.
In 2024 there were a total of 44,447 deaths involving firearms. Homicides came in a distant second to suicides by gun.
In a ten year period from 2015 to 2024, there were 249,728 suicides in the USofA, and unlike in Canada where a request for M.A.i.D. has to be attached to an underlying medical condition, suicide has no safe guards in place.
Listed below are the total number of Canadian deaths per year, and the cause of those deaths
Year
All deaths
Cancer
Heart disease
Accidents
Stroke
Chronic respiratory
MAID provisions
MAID % of deaths
2006
228,079
67,807
49,893
9,640
13,805
9,786
—
—
2007
235,217
69,595
50,499
9,951
13,981
10,659
—
—
2008
238,617
70,558
50,722
10,234
13,870
10,923
—
—
2009
238,418
71,125
49,271
10,250
14,105
10,859
—
—
2010
240,075
71,882
48,757
10,866
13,706
10,757
—
—
2011
243,511
72,736
47,911
10,961
13,332
11,243
—
—
2012
246,596
74,361
48,681
11,290
13,174
11,130
—
—
2013
252,338
75,112
49,891
11,452
13,400
11,976
—
—
2014
258,821
77,059
51,014
11,724
13,573
11,876
—
—
2015
264,333
77,054
51,534
11,833
13,795
12,573
—
—
2016
267,213
79,084
51,396
12,524
13,551
12,293
1,018
0.4%
2017
276,689
79,844
53,029
13,894
13,893
12,847
2,838
1.0%
2018
283,706
79,536
53,134
13,290
13,480
12,998
4,493
1.6%
2019
285,301
80,372
53,364
15,527
13,717
12,902
5,461
1.9%
2020
308,824
81,242
54,430
16,818
13,761
11,844
7,469
2.4%
2021
313,268
82,822
55,271
19,257
13,491
11,018
10,066
3.2%
2022
338,217
82,412
57,357
18,365
13,915
12,462
13,199
3.9%
2023
327,546
84,629
57,890
20,597
13,833
12,994
15,427
4.7%
2024*
326,779
~85,600
~57,800
~20,300
~13,700
~13,100
16,499
5.1%
Notes: Canadian mortality figures are from Statistics Canada, Table 13-10-0394-01, covering Canada, both sexes and all ages. 2024 mortality data are preliminary. MAID figures are from Health Canada’s annual reports on Medical Assistance in Dying. MAID became legal federally in 2016, so no MAID figures are shown before that year. Historical MAID totals may be revised by Health Canada as additional or corrected reports are received.
Important: MAID is shown here for comparison only. It is not classified as an underlying cause of death by the World Health Organization. A person who receives MAID generally remains classified in mortality statistics according to the underlying disease or condition that led to death. Consequently, the MAID column must not be added to the other cause-of-death columns.
First thing to remember when looking at the table above is that people who receive M.A.i.D. are already included in Canada’s total number of deaths. If someone suffering from Stage IV cancer receives M.A.i.D., they’re not counted once as dying from cancer and then counted a second time as dying from M.A.i.D. Their underlying cause of death remains cancer.
Looking at the above table, 16,499 deaths by M.A.i.D. sure looks like a lot of people “offing themselves” for no reason at all. However, the truth is the overwhelming majority of those deaths were Track One deaths.
Year
Total MAID provisions
Track 1
Track 2
Track 1 %
Track 2 %
2016
1,018
N/A
N/A
—
—
2017
2,838
N/A
N/A
—
—
2018
4,480
N/A
N/A
—
—
2019
5,461
N/A
N/A
—
—
2020*
7,469
7,451*
18*
99.8%
0.2%
2021
10,066
9,842
224
97.8%
2.2%
2022
13,199
12,730
469
96.4%
3.6%
2023
15,427
14,802
625
95.9%
4.1%
2024
16,499
15,767
732
95.6%
4.4%
Track 1: The person’s natural death is reasonably foreseeable. Track 2: The person’s natural death is not reasonably foreseeable.
The statutory two-track MAID framework was introduced in March 2021. Accordingly, Track 1/Track 2 figures are not applicable to the 2016–2019 figures. Health Canada’s current historical series categorizes 18 provisions in 2020 as Track 2; this predates the commencement of the statutory two-track regime and should therefore be interpreted with caution.
Historical totals can change slightly as Health Canada receives late reports and corrections. Figures shown here use the revised historical series published in Health Canada’s Sixth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada (2024).
The vast majority of the 15,767 M.A.i.D. deaths in Canada in 2024 were from people suffering from cancer.
From 2006 until 2024 the number of cancer related deaths went up from 67,807 to 85,600.
What happened there?
The boomers are getting older, and as the population ages they get cancer more often.
So no, the people receiving M.A.i.D. are not little Suzy who tripped at Grade 6 Track & Field day at school and was put down like a race horse ’cause she broke her tibia and would never be able to race again. It’s 87 year old Nana who has Stage IV cancer that has spread from her bowels and into her lungs, her heart, and is starting to attack her eyesight. She doesn’t want more chemo, she doesn’t want more radiation therapy, and she doesn’t want to spend the next 6 months slowly checking out.
Religion does seem to have a bearing on where one stands.
I fully believe that the choice to live or the choice to die belongs solely with the person making the decision so long as the criteria are met.
People whose sole underlying medical condition is mental illness are currently excluded from M.A.i.D. That exclusion is scheduled to end on March 17, 2027, after already being postponed twice. When M.A.i.D. for mental illness as a sole underlying medical condition comes into effect, it will not simply be a matter of someone walking into a doctor’s office and asking to die.
There is already a framework of eligibility requirements, independent assessments and additional safeguards intended for these cases.
Will M.A.i.D. ever turn into the “suicide booth” from Futurama?
No, no matter how much the anti-M.A.i.D. crowd try to scare the public about M.A.i.D., M.A.i.D. will never be a quick process where one just walks into a booth, inserts a quarter, and selects between “Quick and Painless” and “Slow and Painful”
A childhood already shaped by violence and neglect was pushed over the edge by what happened at CFB Namao—and by the military system that helped bury it. This is about the abuse, the aftermath, and the damage that followed for decades.
I’m often left wondering where I would be in life right now had it not been for the events of Canadian Forces Base Namao.
My life was always going to be on the rough side considering the issues that my parents had. But throw into that mix growing up in the military community where the public image of the military is of paramount importance to the mental health of children growing up on the bases.
Trying to move forward in life while the babysitter, Captain Terry Totzke, Master Corporal Richard Gill, and various others up and down the chain of command keep dragging me into the past makes advancement impossible.
back row from L-R Captain McRae, Captain Totzke, Mcpl Gill foreground: no one of any consequence
And please, don’t give me any crap about just moving on or just growing up and recognizing that there are people who’ve had a much rougher time than I have.
It doesn’t work that way.
If you had a happy life, received encouragement and support from your parents, and more or less ended up in life where you wanted to be, enjoy what you have.
Not everybody had that opportunity.
Home life before the events of CFB Namao were already fucked up.
CFB Namao just pushed my life over into the abyss.
There were multitudes of stories in the media back in the ’80s about child abuse and neglect in the military community, but the Canadian Forces just circled the wagons and the problem went away.
Of course the problem really didn’t go away no matter how much the chain of command ordered it to.
My father, Master Corporal Richard Gill, was a piss tank alcoholic before his military career started in 1963 when he was 17. Richard had grown up in a dysfunctional family himself. His mother was an emotionally damaged survivor of the Indian Residential School System in Canada. His father, Arthur Herman Gill wanted absolutely nothing to do with grandma or his kids, so he walked out on the family.
Grandma took my father and her other son Doug and moved from Peterborough, Ontario back to a community she was familiar with, Fort McMurray, Alberta.
My father believed in physical punishment, and I’m talking more than just the belt. Open handed slaps and closed fist punches were not beyond him. And the thing is he didn’t care where he unleashed his anger. In the PMQ, on the base, on civy street, in a shopping mall. Didn’t matter. Once you tweaked his PTSD fuelled rage, he would unleash.
I know where Richard got his temperament, it was his mother.
She had absolutely no problem with the belt, kitchen utensils, sticks, tree branches. Anything she could hit us with, she’d hit us with. And just like her son, she had absolutely no impulse control.
From 1977 until 1981 grandma moved into our PMQ. First at CFB Summerside in PEI, and then at CFB Namao in Alberta. This was primarily due to my father’s idea that raising kids was “woman’s work” and not his concern.
Grandma was angry.
Grandma was violent.
And grandma was an alcoholic.
Yes, she had been to Indian Residential School as a child, but that wasn’t any excuse. And before I get attacked, no, I’m not claiming First Nations intergenerational trauma, but to say that Indian Residential Schools didn’t fuck up and destroy my family would be downplaying things a little too much.
It was grandma’s alcoholism that ultimately lead to the need for Scott and I to require the babysitting services of the pedophile babysitter.
My father brought an alcoholic into his PMQ to raise my brother and Inot only was grandma a raging alcoholic, but she was cruel too. Richard learnt his cruelty from his own mother
Here’s my father, Master Corporal Richard Wayne Gill, blaming my emotional issues on his own mother, the same woman that he brought into the PMQ to raise my brother and I because he couldn’t be bothered.
What were the “false stories” that Richard accused his mother of telling my brother and I? When our mother “abandoned” the family on CFB Summerside in PEI my father would tell my brother and I that our mother was a whore who would spread her legs for anyone and that she ran off with a guy named Gus from the PPCLI.
I would have been 5 when my mother left. Scott would have been about 3. And Richard’s vulgarity didn’t care about our ages.
I was old enough to understand that my father was a bad man. Scott on the other hand never knew our mother that well, and I think he swallowed Richard’s lies and bullshit.
My grandmother would always tell me brother and I not to listen to or believe anything Richard said about our mother, that we would learn the truth one day.
Grandma was right. We learnt the truth. I learnt the truth at least. Scott was still holding on to his hatred of Marie right until the end. The way he hated her you would have sworn that she beat his cats to death in front of him.
The truth was that Richard used the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations to have our mother ejected from the PMQ and barred from coming anywhere near the PMQ. He had her ejected because she wanted to take Scott and I back to Nova Scotia to stay with her brother Al as Richard’s drinking and violent outbursts had greatly amplified after we were posted from CFB Shearwater to CFB Summerside.
And make no mistake, Richard didn’t do this ’cause he loved Scott and I. As he told his buddy Jacques Choquette around 1986, Richard never kept Scott and I ’cause he liked us. He kept us for his taxes, so that he could rent a PMQ, and as long as we lived under his roof he could control the costs as opposed to having to pay our mother child support.
Richard wasn’t some mastermind criminal.
He was just a self absorbed and self centred little asshole.
Civilians accessing Defence Establishments were subjected to the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations. Defence establishments included and lands and any buildings that were owned or leased by the DND for the CAF.
PMQs were considered defence establishments.
Non serving spouses and the children of military service members were always subject to the Defence Establishment Trespass regulations.
A study commissioned by the Canadian Forces in the mid ’90s found that service members were known to use the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations to eject their civilian spouses when their marriages broke down.
So yeah, home life was extremely dysfunctional.
But things were only going to get so much worse.
Enter the babysitter.
And yes, the babysitter grandma hired was quite the pedophile.
My grandmother didn’t encounter this babysitter on her own.
My grandmother had a weird devotion to the Catholic church. This I will never understand. She was a devout catholic. When she came to live with us on CFB Summerside she put me into Sunday school, and she got my brother and I involved with the Knights of Columbus. When we arrived at CFB Namao she would get Scott and I dressed in our Sunday best and off to church we went.
When Andy Anderson slipped and fell in the bathtub and ended up in a long term nursing home she needed someone to look after my brother and I while she took the two hour bus ride from CFB Namao to the Mewburn Nursing Home at the University of Alberta.
I have absolutely no qualms about saying that it was Captain McRae himself that had suggested the babysitter. The babysitter after all was one of his altar boys. McRae was the base padre. The base padres were expected to assist families in need. I remember on two different occasions that he gave grandma a drive to the nursing home, and on one occasion he took grandma, Scott and I to a local lake for swimming. These trips always occurred in a motor-pool vehicle.
In the aftermath of the CFB Namao child sex abuse scandal my family was moved 10km down the street to CFB Griesbach. This came about because I was the boy discovered being buggered in the babysitter’s bedroom and I was tormented, teased, and attacked by the other kids on base. It was plainly obvious to anyone involved that I couldn’t remain on CFB Namao.
When we arrived on CFB Griesbach I was brought to the attention of Canadian Forces social worker Captain Terry Totzke. Totzke was adamant that the only reason that I was abused and why I did nothing to protect my younger brother Scott was because I had a mental illness called “homosexuality”. The truth was since about 5 or 6 I had identified as a girl, and for the longest time I had thought that the reason that I got abused by the babysitter was that I was acting too much like a girl.
If you thought that my father was unhinged prior to CFB Namao, you should have seen how unhinged he had become after CFB Namao and after Captain Totzke had labelled his son a “homosexual”.
Richard would be sure to remind me at every opportunity that I had fucked with his military career, and that if he got thrown out of the military it was my fucking fault.
The first time that I tried to kill myself was back in 1981ish. We were living on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach in PMQ #70. Between my father, my grandmother, my stepmother, and the teasing I was enduring from the kids on base who knew about what happened on Namao, I wanted off the planet.
I tried with a plastic bag and some packing tape.
Didn’t work. Richard discovered me. That was a beating. If I wanted attention, he’d give me the fucking attention.
There have been other attempts over the years. Usually ends up in frustration with Richard in my brain telling me that I’m a fuckup. Also, one of my greatest fears is fucking up and not doing it right. Ending up in a nursing home being spoon fed soup while being trapped inside my brain would be a punishment worse than living.
By 1982 my mental health deteriorated to the point that my civilian counsellors and psychiatrists were trying to get me institutionalized in a psychiatric facility for children.
When social services wanted to remove me from my father’s house for my protection, Captain Totzke informed my father’s chain of command and my father received a posting to Ontario before Alberta Social Services would have been able to act.
I spent ages 11 until 38 not knowing why I was such a fuckup in life. Couldn’t make friends if my life depended on it. No idea of what my gender or orientation was. No ability to form intimate relationships. No self-worth to take the course or the training required to get the credentials to recognize the abilities that I have.
And then on top of this I spent 2011 onwards being actively lied to by members of the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service. Each and everyone of those silly fuckers knew the truth about CFB Namao from 1978 to 1980. They had CFSIU DS 120-10-80 and CM62 in their possession.
They knew the fucking truth about the babysitter.
They knew the fucking truth about Captain McRae.
They knew the fucking truth about how the chain of command in 1980 intentionally buried the whole Captain McRae child sexual abuse scandal.
A also gave the CFNIS copies of my social service records in August of 2011, so they knew that my father’s version of reality covering the years of 1978 to 1980 was absolute bullshit.
And each and everyone of the silly fuckers involved with the 2011 Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit knew that the whole fucking investigation was nothing more than a dog’n’pony show that would never be allowed to lay charges against the babysitter.
All my life I’ve been treated as an inconsequential joke.
I’m involved with a job that I don’t like and I don’t want, but it pays the bills.
And with the daemons that plague me, it’s not like I’ve really ever had other options.
And I just feel so fucking numb and tired all of the time
I really don’t want to be here, and I don’t really have a need to be here either.
