anxiety – Page 30

Tunnel Vision

Once tunnel vision sets in all hope is lost.

Back in 2019 Netflix ran an eight part miniseries titled “Unbelievable”. It was based upon the true life story of Marie Adler.

Marie had been in foster care for most of her life. She had just turned eighteen and had been set up in her first apartment. Shortly thereafter a man broke in, tied her up, raped her, and took pictures.

Marie made a police report. The police came and investigated. Over the course of the investigation one of the two primary detectives started to latch on to some trivial inconsistencies in Marie’s story. After a little bit of badgering the detectives managed to get Marie to admit that she had made up the whole thing, that there never was a rape.

Even one of her previous foster parents had confided to the police that Marie had more than likely lied about being raped.

To teach Marie a lesson, the Lynwood Police Department pressed for charges to be brought against Marie. She ended up on probation and she had to pay a fine.

A couple of years later in a different state the FBI and a local police department executed a raid on the house of a man who was suspected of numerous rapes across multiple states.

You wanna know what they found in this man’s house?
A camera.

You wanna know what was on this camera? Pictures of Marie being raped exactly as she had described it.

The man is Marc O’leary.

Marc O’Leary was later sentenced to 327 years in prison.

https://www.propublica.org/article/false-rape-accusations-an-unbelievable-story

I urge you to read this story if you want to understand how of the fucking rails the justice train can become if cops or the superiors make leaps of judgement.

The two Lynwood detectives never apologized. The city of Lynwood settled with Marie for something around $150k USD. She didn’t want more money. She just wanted an apology.

It was later found upon review that the detectives became far too concentrated on issues that had no relevance to the rape of Marie Adler.

And I’ve always wondered if that is what happened in my case.

I made my complaint to the Edmonton Police Service on March 5th, 2011. I was contacted by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service on March 7th, 2011. I was interviewed by master corporal Robert Jon Hancock on March 31st, 2011. Master corporal Hancock asked me some question that upon review indicate that the CFNIS in March of 2011 knew about the connection between P.S. and Captain McRae.

Knowledge of this connection was further cemented on May 3rd, 2011 when CFNIS investigator master corporal Christian Cyr asked me if I knew anything about the base priest having been arrested for molesting children during the same time frame that I was accusing P.S. of molesting me and my brother.

There was an error that master corporal Christian Cyr mentioned to me that only could have come from the military police investigation paperwork from 1980. During this phone call Master corporal Cyr tried to tell me that P.S. was only 12 or 13 in 1980. P.S. was born on June 20th, 1965. P.S. would have been just weeks shy of his 15th birthday in 1980 when he was found buggering me in his bedroom. The only place that P.S.’s age is indicated wrong is in the CFSIU investigation paperwork from 1980. The CFSIU paperwork indicated that P.S. was 12 in 1980.

So, it’s apparent that the CFNIS in March of 1980 had access to the CFSIU investigation paperwork and no doubt the court martial transcripts. And as the Military Police Complaints Commission stated in its final report issued in November of 2020, it is very apparent that the military police in 1980 were well aware of P.S.’s molestation of younger children.

So, what happened?

The more I think about it the more it becomes apparent that the CFNIS in 2011 suffered from a very bad case of tunnel vision.

The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces are comprised of multiple units. DND and the CF have a department that specifically looks out for matters that could cause DND and the CF problems on the civil liability front. This is the Director of Claims and Civil Liabilities.

http://www.ombudsman.forces.gc.ca/assets/OMBUDSMAN_Internet/docs/en/grievance-process.pdf

In November of 2008, the Director of Claims and Civil Liabilities indicated that the Department of National Defence was willing to make a cash offer to P.S. to have him discontinue his $4.5 million dollar action against DND in the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench for the abuse he suffered at the hands of Captain McRae. This would have had to have been approved not only by CF Chain of Command, but also the Department of Justice as the DOJ serves as the lawyer for the Government of Canada.

The lawyer for P.S. accepted the offer in late November of 2008 and the case was discontinued in December of 2008.

2 years, 3 months, and four days later I send my fateful email to the Edmonton Police Service.

How much do you wanna wager that when the CFNIS took my initial complaint and started populating the fields of their intake form that notifications popped up requesting that the investigators notify certain superiors?

Were the CFNIS investigators then briefed about the sensitive nature of this matter?

Was it suggested to the CFNIS investigators that I had somehow found out about the payday that P.S. enjoyed and that I was obviously just another shyster looking for a quick buck?

Don’t forget, the DOJ and the Legal Advisor are parts of very large bureaucracies that seemingly answer to no one but themselves.

Looking back at the CFNIS paperwork, which I did not have access to until AFTER the MPCC reviewed my complaint against the CFNIS in 2013, it became apparent right from the get go that the CFNIS had written off my complaint against P.S. as trivial.

In fact, according to the paperwork the CFNIS seemed rather hellbent on portraying me as a “societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military”, that I “frequently changed jobs and was unhappy”, and that I was always looking for easy money.

How does my father forget about the fact that it was his mother raising my brother and I and that he was rarely home?

How does the CFNIS ignore my social service records which keep mentioning “grandma” all over the place and that Mr.Gill invited his mother, the children’s grandmother into the home to raise his children after his wife “abandoned” the family instead to only concentrate on the section of the social service paperwork that says that I am an emotionally disturbed child.

How does the CFNIS justify the observation of Warrant Officer Blair Hart in July of 2011 that this investigation was unlikely to go anywhere due to a lack of evidence, before the other victims had been interviewed and before the suspect had been interviewed?

Tunnel vision.

Don’t forget, the CFNIS is part of a very hierarchical organization where it is imperative that the lawful commands of superiors are obeyed at all times.

The Vice Chief of Defence Staff can issue directions and instructions to the Provost Marshal and the CFNIS relating to ANY investigation.

What if the chain of command didn’t issue outright instructions, but let their subordinates know that I was just a scammer looking to make a quick buck?

I fully understand that my father had issues with telling the truth. He was always like that. But I can’t see my father excising his mother from about 6 years of our lives as kids unless someone had maybe explained to him prior to his interview that his son was obviously just trying to juice the military for some easy cash.

This is my father’s interview with the psychologist hired by the Canadian Armed Forces in November of 1980

“[he] appeared concerned about [his mother’s drinking], suggesting [she was] emotionally abusive to both children, especially when inebriated. As well, [Richard] suggested that [his mother] attempts to undermine any closeness between [him] and [his sons] by telling them false stories”. Yes, my father was a psychological nutcase. That much is clear. And here he is in October of 1980 throwing his own mother to the wolves. The same woman that he desperately needed to raise his children. So yes, it would have been very easy for the CFNIS to manipulate Richard into giving him a statement devoid of grandma.

Again why?

Simple tunnel vision.

Someone up the chain of command decided that I was just some greedy civie looking to make a quick buck from the DND and the CF. This view was dispersed through the Provost Marshal and the CFNIS. Again, due to Section 83 of the National Defence Act, this view doesn’t have to be spread directly down to the actual investigators. Just high enough up that chain of command that subordinates none the less become aware of these thoughts.

And once this tunnel vision sets in it’s so very hard to take the blinders off and see the larger picture.

It will be interesting to see just how much of the truth is able to come out about not only the events on Canadian Forces Base Namao but also about the CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754 during my class action lawsuit against the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces.

Everything is “discoverable”……. everything.

Why do I talk so much about dying?

One curious person wonders why I talk so much about death.

Death is all around us. Each and everyone of us will die. Some of us will die sooner than the others. Some of us will die due to the actions of others. And some of us will even die at our own hands. None of us are getting out of here alive.

And as my chances of receiving any type of justice from the Canadian Forces military justice system start to drastically dwindle, my resolve to apply for Medical Assistance in Dying becomes more solid.

In the next year I’ll probably discuss the procedure in more detail as I learn more about it myself.

I’ll also get more into my depression and my anxiety and how they caused numerous problems for me in my life. I’ll also hopefully be able to explain to you just how fucking hard it is for a male to get sexual abuse counselling in our society and how it is literally impossible for a former military dependent to obtain counselling that takes into account the military environment that they grew up in.

As I’ve mentioned previously, suicide is actually common in our society no matter the desire of the media to hide suicide from public view.

I also have no doubt in my mind that there are numerous suicides that don’t get reported as suicides whether that’s done to spare the family “shame” or if its done because the person finally succumbs to their injuries weeks or months after the attempt.

The above table indicates that between the years 2008 and 2018 six thousand one hundred and two people committed suicide in the province of British Columbia alone. And would you look at the age group that commits suicide the most frequently ……

What is not listed in the table above are those who have attempted suicide or those who have had suicidal ideations.

Also what appears to not be incorporated into the table above is the number of Medically Assisted Deaths such as in the table below:

MAID deaths in Canada
These numbers are expected to increase substantially as “foreseeable death” is no longer required as of 2021 and “mental illness” becomes an allowable category in March of 2023.

One of the most common things heard after someone successfully commits suicide is “I had no idea they were depressed” or “Why?”.

I have heard frequently that those who have attempted suicide are just seeking attention and those who have committed suicide are just selfish and thinking of no one else but themselves. It really irks me that society thinks that I owe it to society to live.

The son of one of my engineers at work committed suicide last year. This engineer was beyond distraught. So I had a talk with him. I told him that the only person who knows why his son killed himself is his son. If his son was determined to take his own life, there was absolutely nothing this engineer could have done to stop him. The engineer wanted to know if he had missed the signs that his son was depressed or sad. I asked him if he knew that I suffered from major depression and severe anxiety. He replied “no”. I mentioned to him my own struggles both in the past and currently. Knowing this seemed to put him at ease.

And I think that was always one of the fears that I had in the back of my mind. That when I decided to go that no one would understand why I went and that my father or the Canadian Armed Forces would be able to pass me off as just being insane or simply out to get attention. This blog details my justification for ending my life. I explain everything to the best of my ability. If and when I am able to undergo Medical Assistance in Dying there shouldn’t be any unanswered questions.

The fear of pain is another reason I have never been able to follow through on my attempts. Asphyxiation, bleeding out, jumping from heights, electrocution, pills, etc., none of these are without pain and prolonged suffering. I don’t like pain and I sure as hell don’t want to be hooked up to a ventilator for 2 weeks because someone “saved me”. That’s the nice thing about Medical Assistance in Dying. It’s done as humanely as possible. There will be no pain and there will be no suffering. And it will be very quick. One minute I’ll be alive. The next minute I’ll be completely unconscious. Then I’ll be in a coma. Then I’ll be dead. Supposed to take about 6 minutes from start to finish.

Again, I’m not afraid of death. I am afraid of dying. Death doesn’t bother me because I’ll be dead. It’s the process of going from living to dead that causes me concern. Most suicide attempts fail. With Medical Assistance in Dying I don’t have to worry. Everything will be looked after by professionals.

Being alone. As much as I want to die, dying alone would suck. Why do I have to scurry away to a hidey-hole to die like some sick or injured animal. That’s what I like the most about Medical Assistance in Dying. I don’t have to die alone. At the bare minimum the practitioner performing the procedure will be there. I don’t know who else I’d ask to be there. Don’t really have any friends and my family is more or less none existent. I’d like to keep my death a somewhat private affair.

And with Medical Assistance in Dying I know that my corpse will be looked after. Sure, I’m having some difficulty at the moment trying to figure out how to get my brain to go where I want my brain to go, but regardless my corpse won’t be found a week after I die due to the stench wafting out of my apartment.
But Bobbie, if your goal is to die, why do you care about your corpse after you die?
Simple.
Do you realize how much it fucks with someone’s wellbeing to stumble across a dead body?
Especially if they weren’t expecting it?
And as much as I desire to get out of here, fucking with others isn’t high on my list of priorities.

And as I mentioned at the top of this blog entry, I had always from a young age hoped and dreamed that P.S. would somehow be held responsible for what he did. But he won’t. Nor for that matter will Earl Ray Stevens. And as there is no heaven, hell, or afterlife, so telling me that they’ll be looked after in the afterlife is meaningless to me.

By holding P.S. and Earl responsible for what they did I was hoping for Richard to be held responsible for the shit he put me through as a result of the CFB Namao matter. Well Richard died in 2017, so getting even the slightest acknowledgment from Richard would be impossible.

As I told Sgt. Winship during our meeting, the one aspect of this whole event that I resent the most is that P.S. is loved by is father. Retired Sgt. J.S. couldn’t stop fawning over his son, how his son was the victim in this whole tragic affair, how the military never helped his son and how the military is to blame for his son going on to molest many more children over the years. P.S.’s sister D.S. lied on P.S.’s behalf. P.S.’s younger brother P.S. also lied on behalf of P.S..

My father lied to the CFNIS in 2011. And it wasn’t just that he forgot to mention something. The fucker outright stabbed me in the back and threw me under the fucking train. I guess he never got over Captain Totzke diagnosing me as a homosexual at age 9 and blaming me for “allowing” P.S. to molest my younger brother. He obviously never forgave me for “fucking with his military career”.

This nugget showed up in the copy of my Foster Care records that had been obtained by my lawyer for a different matter. I hadn’t seen this in the records that I obtained in August of 2011. Before CFB Namao I don’t think there were any issues between myself and my brother. At least I don’t remember any. After Namao we are getting flagged in Alberta and Ontario for “extreme sibling rivalry”. What changed?
Well, as it says in the except, my father disciplined my brother and I very differently. Whatever my brother got, I usually got twice as hard. Why?
Richard had determined that my brother was acting up due to what I had “allowed” the babysitter to do to him. And, due to Richard’s piss poor parenting skills, Richard came to believe that I was responsible for raising my brother. And if my brother got into trouble then I obviously deserved twice as much punishment because I wasn’t being responsible and looking after my younger brother.

So yeah, as you can see, there is a lot of damage.

Why do I think that death is the only answer to my problems?

Why do you think that living is something that I need to do?

40 years ago was the time to deal with my issues. 40 years ago treatment would have done something. Not now. Now is far too late. And the older I get the more the toxins of depression build up. The more regret builds up. The more time passes the more that “what could have been” eats at me from the inside.
Yeah, sure, the Escitalopram is keeping my severe depressions at bay and it nips my anxiety in the bud, but being medically numbed for the rest of my life does absolutely nothing for the constant replaying memories and the constant regret.

As I’ve said, if the abuse had been limited to P.S. grabbing my nutsack on one occasion, fine. But this asshole was extremely sadistic in his abuse. The memories of what he did to not only myself but the other kids is forever etched into my mind. And throw into the mix Captain Totzke’s “treatments” and my father’s absolute disdain, and you’ve got some very heavy duty toxins.

My meeting with Sgt. David Winship and Captain Chelsea St-Amand on Thursday April 21st, was the first time that anyone from the Canadian Armed Forces ever came to the realization that I can’t get any type of beneficial counselling through “normal” civilian channels. I wasn’t just sexually abused for 1-1/2 years on Canadian Forces Base Namao by P.S. and potentially Captain Father Angus McRae. I was also mind fucked for 2-1/2 years by Canadian Armed Forces social worker Captain Terry Totzke. Captain Terry Totzke’s rank of Captain and his determination that I was a “homosexual” at age 9 no doubt had a significant amount of influence on my father’s opinion of me and contributed to how my father treated me at home. Sgt. Winship agreed that the Canadian Forces had a very dim view of “homosexuality” back then and that the CFSIU investigation of Captain McRae for committing “Acts of Homosexuality” didn’t really help the matter.
Sgt. Winship indicated that the crimes of “Gross Indecency”, “Indecent Assault”, and especially “Buggery” were crimes that both parties could in fact be charged with implying that back then both parties would have been deemed to be culpable.
Sgt. Winship agreed that I can’t just deal with the sexual assault aspect without dealing with the Captain Totzke issues and the issues caused by my father. Civilian counsellors however are completely at a loss as to how I would ever have been involved with military social workers or how living in a military family at the time would have impacted how I was dealt with and treated in the aftermath of the CFB Namao incident.

So………..

March 2023 is when I find out what my possibilities are. I can bide my time until then. But even then, I will probably have a year and a bit before I can undergo the procedure and go to sleep and never be troubled by CFB Namao ever again.

So, you’re all welcome to follow along. I won’t blame anyone for not following.

All that I ask is that you don’t cast judgement on my decision.

It’s mine and mine alone to make.

The Informal Resolution pt.2

On Thursday April 21st, I had a sit down with Captain Chelsea St-Amand and Sergeant David Winship, both of the CFNIS Western Region detachment.

The meeting took place in a boardroom at VPD Headquarters and ran from 13:00 until 16:00.

On the complaint form that I had submitted to the MPCC I had selected the option box indicating that I would be open to an informal resolution so I got an informal resolution meeting.

So, first off I’ll apologize to Sgt. Winship for the complaint I brought against him, not because my complaint was without merit, but because as I discovered during the meeting that Sgt. Winship was not the lead investigator in my matter against the man from the sauna.

The lead investigator in my matter is actually Sgt. Justin Brady.

Sgt. Winship is actually the case manager.

Some of the highlights that came out of the meeting.

Sgt. Winship agreed that unlike a member of the Canadian Forces who can go through their chain of command to voice concerns and complaints against the CFNIS, as a civilian I do not have access to that avenue. I only have the MPCC and at that the MPCC doesn’t take complaints about “investigations”, the MPCC only accepts “conduct” complaints against investigators. This oversight in the National Defence Act seems to come from the mistaken understanding that only military members who can make complaints via their chain of command are the only persons making criminal complaints to the CFNIS. Civilian victims of crime such as myself are outliers that weren’t planned for.

(As a side note, as a civilian the prospect of redress is also unavailable to me. Redress is where a complaint is made directly to the Chief of Defence Staff and the CDS can review any matter brought to their attention. This is how Stephanie Raymonde was able to have her matter looked at again in 2014)

We talked for a bit about my distrust of the military justice system related to the news from the ’90s and pretty well up to the current day. The horrific flaws with the National Defence Act that had to be fixed due to the inability of the military justice system to deal with the illegal actions in Bosnia and Somalia. Then there were the findings of Madame Marie Deschamps in 2015 that found that the military justice system could not properly conduct sexual assault investigations, and the 2021 recommendations of former Supreme Court of Canada justice Louise Arbour that only civilian police be allowed to investigate military sexual assaults which resulted in Minister of National Defence Anita Anand ordering all current sexual assault investigations be moved to the civilian police.

I also discussed how I could never bring myself to trust the CFNIS after they took my father’s statement at full face value and never attempted to re-interview my father when my foster care records were made available to the CFNIS in 2011 and indicated that there were very serious concerns with my father’s statement. My father’s statement had a significant impact on the Crown’s decision to not lay charges against P.S. as my father claimed there was never a babysitter in the house.

Which brings up my matter and which was the cause of the MPCC complaint and the informal resolution meeting. Sgt. Winship assures me that there is nothing political with the decision for the CFNIS to retain my investigation. Sgt. Winship says that my investigation was sent for review and it was decided to keep it within the CFNIS because they were at the stage of interviewing both P.S. and R.B..

I don’t know how receptive P.S. will be to being interviewed by the CFNIS. The more I think about it the more I believe that P.S. attempted suicide in the year 2000 as too many brats from CFB Namao kept making complaints against him. So I’m pretty sure that P.S. will no doubt have a good attorney who will tell him to tell the CFNIS to go away.

R.B. is a different matter. The CFNIS are still waiting for Library and Archives Canada to give the CFNIS a copy of R.B.’s service file. I find it sad that law enforcement doesn’t have priority access to service files at the LAC.

We talked for a bit about counselling and if I’ve tried to access it. I explained that one of the most significant issues that I have with receiving counselling is that almost every counsellor that I’ve dealt with to date is unfamiliar with the military aspect of what I went through. Having a military social worker who was blaming me for basically allowing myself to be sexually abused really fucks with one’s brain. Being labelled by this military social worker as being a homosexual is just as bad as being blamed for the abuse. Having a father at home, who due to his rank of Master Corporal, was probably placing very special emphasis on what the Captain was saying was just as fucking devastating as what the Captain was saying. And even Sgt. Winship agreed that there is no way that I will be able to deal with the sexual assault components on their own without dealing with all of the other aspects. Sgt. Winship mentioned that male on male sexual assaults were just handled a lot differently back then. I added that I think what really bad was when Captain David Pilling requested that Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham investigate Captain Father Angus McRae for committing “Acts of Homosexuality” with boys on CFB Namao that this tarred all of McRae’s and P.S.’s victims as also being “homosexuals”. And back in the day, the official policy of the Canadian Armed Forces was that homosexuality was a mental defect. To this end, Sgt. Winship said that when he got back to Edmonton that he would talk to some counsellors that he knew of that specialized in treating survivors of military sexual assault trauma who also work with civilians to see if the would be able to somehow bring their military services into the civilian realm. We also discussed a bit about how military dependents such as myself are ineligible for assistance through the Canadian Armed Forces and how most provinces balk at picking up the costs for counselling or therapy, especially if the former dependent is living in a province where the assaults did not occur. Members and former members of the Canadian Forces can receive help no matter where they live. This is not true for former military dependents.

Communication is one of the things that we discussed. Just a periodic heads up along with an explanation of the current status of the investigation would be great.

We did briefly discuss the fallout of the Lamer Report, the findings of the Somalia Commission, the findings of Madame Marie Deschamps, recommendations of former Supreme Court of Canada justice Louise Arbour. I also brought up some of the concerns that the Military Police Complaints Commission has voiced about the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, a position that is not law enforcement and is not a sworn peace officer, making recommendations and issuing instructions for any CFNIS investigation and that how even though in theory the Provost Marshal is supposed to make those recommendations or instructions available to the “public” that all the Provost Marshal has to do is post a copy of those instructions in the 10th floor coffee room at National Defence Head Quarters and the Provost Marshal has met their obligation.
Sgt. Winship is adamant that he would not allow the chain of command to interfere with his investigations.
I brought up the matter of Corporal Stuart Langridge and how CFNIS investigator Sgt. Matthew Ritco had told the MPCC Inquiry that CFNIS brass had rewritten his report and instructed him to sign the new report.
Again Sgt. Winship insisted that he would have refused to sign the report.

All in all it was a productive meeting.

I’m still very wary of the CFNIS and the Canadian Forces, but at least I feel more comfortable with Sgt. Winship and the current investigation into the man in the sauna.

Who knew that it would be this hard.

Disposing of a body is harder than one could imagine.

So……

It doesn’t look as if I will be able to donate my brain after my death.

And this kinda saddens me a bit.

I had always envisioned that my brain would serve some useful purpose.

After all I survived:
– sexual abuse
-mental abuse
-physical abuse
-neglect

I have lived with and coped with:
-CPTSD
-Major Depression
-Severe Anxiety
-The effects of military conversion therapy

The thought of death has never been very far.

Depression runs in my family.

And yet not once have I stuck a needle in my arm or snorted anything up my nose or toked on anything. The last time I had a drink was in July of 2011 and even then I was a very infrequent drinker.

I’ve had to deal with personality issues caused no doubt by the various traumas and abuses.

And yet I’ve somewhat navigated life and ended up with stable employment even if it is not at the level of employment that I could have risen to.

This rise is something that I’ve done on my own with absolutely no help from my father or my family. During all of the times I was unemployed in the early ’90s Richard was of no use. Even when I was on Skid Row in Vancouver and Toronto my father was of no assistance.

I did this all on my own.

You would think that research labs would want to know what it was inside my brain that allowed me to go from basically non-functional and requiring psychiatric institutionalization at age 10 to being the Chief Engineer of a hospital at 47.

Nope.

It’s like the field of depression research is oblivious to confirmation bias. By this I mean that researches are obviously looking for answers where they expect to find them, in the brains of depressed people who have not fared well in life. Or the researches go looking for the answers to drug addiction in the brains of those who were abused and who succumbed to drugs and other forms of self medication. They often use the brains of those who have never suffered from depression in their lives as a reference point. And that’s great if you’re only concerned about the two extremes, but it gives you absolutely no data about those in between the two extremes.

Where my body goes after my death? Don’t know really. So long as it isn’t cremated or buried, I’m cool with that.

Medical school would be nice.

But medical schools like UBC pose a problem in the sense that they only take “whole body” donations for their medical students to dissect. If my brain were to be removed immediately after my death, then UBC wouldn’t take my body.

Conversely, no brain research program would take my brain after it had been removed from my skull by medical students.

Now, of course this is all really silly when you think about it isn’t it?

After I’m dead they could launch by body into space and I wouldn’t have the foggiest clue, would I. What they do with my corpse and my brain after I’m dead and gone is really a matter of trust. But still…….

You don’t look depressed.

How is a depressed person supposed to look?

One of the issues that I seem to have when being taken serious about my desire to seek Medical Assistance in Dying for mental health issues is that I don’t look “sad”, or “depressed”, or “unhappy”.

I appear smart and intelligent.

Piercings and tattoos are the only form of “self harm” that I engage in. And no, I don’t consider my tattoos or my piercings to be “self harm” or a “cry for help”.

Surely if I was depressed and wanting to die I’d be on drugs, or living on skid row, or a frequent flyer in the local psychiatric wards.

But that’s my problem.

I’ve always been on my own.

I’ve never had anyone to fall back on in times of trouble.

I’ve had to navigate life so fucking carefully that I didn’t end up an drug junkie or an alcoholic on skid row where people could say that I was the captain of my own misfortune.

If I had followed through on any of my previous suicide attempts and not succeeded there would have been absolutely no help from my father. In fact there only would have been shame and ridicule.

I’ve struggled with the fact that if I make one misstep that I’d have a very long fall down the ladder of society.

And believe me, the number of people that attempt suicide and fail far outnumber the number of people that attempt suicide and succeed.

My first attempt was way back on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach when I was about 9. I honestly don’t remember what I thought I was doing. I put the bag over my head and I held the bag around my neck. I kept breathing in and out, but as my lungs started to burn I couldn’t hold the bag any more and I let go of the bag.

The next time I tried was again on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach. This time I taped the bag around my neck thinking that would work better. It didn’t. Again I couldn’t get past the burning in my lungs and I ripped the bag off my face.

I had no idea that killing myself was actually going to be this painful.

The next time I tried suicide was in Toronto when I was living on Canadian Forces Base Downsview. This was before my bedroom had been moved downstairs into the basement in 1986. I had done a “practice run” at the Bloor-Yonge station. I actually did two practice runs. Both times I would wait on the Yonge platform until the trains had left. Then I’d take a little run and jump down on to the tracks. This was just to see if I could work up the nerve to jump down. I would then vault across the 3rd rails and climb up on the other platform and then out of the station.

However, when it came time to do it, I just couldn’t work up the nerve to jump in front of the train.

I don’t mean to sound cliche, but I did try the Bloor Street Vaiduct. Just couldn’t get the nerve to get over the railing.

There were a lot of things that kept me from following through.

Pain. I think my fear of pain has always ranked up there as the #1 reason why I haven’t succumbed to suicide. I really don’t want to spend my last 5, 1o, or 15 minutes on Earth in severe pain, gasping for breath and feeling the pain of broken bones.

Even worse, I always had visions of Andy Anderson with tubes in his skull as the doctors did everything to save his life after he slipped and fell in the bathtub in our PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Namao. Andy honestly had no life after that. They should have just let him die after his first series of blood clots and strokes. He spent the subsequent 5 years “living” in the Mewburn nursing home. He had been warehoused with other people who could no longer function on their own. And that’s another fear that I had. That I would do just enough damage to myself and that some asshole would “save me” and that I’d spend the rest of my “life” living in a facility being fed with a feeding tube.

Yet another reason that I couldn’t ever work up the courage to kill myself is my fear of Richard. I knew that if I had succeeded in killing myself that I would never have to be afraid of Richard again. But what I was afraid of the most is what Richard would do after I was dead. I knew that after I was dead that Richard would be free to blame my suicide on my insanity, that I committed suicide to weasel my way out of accepting responsibility for what I had allowed P.S. to do to my younger brother.

Richard had also impressed upon me from my time with the psychologists and social workers in Edmonton that “I was just acting up to get attention”. And as Richard had really impressed upon me that I was a worthless piece of shit that had fucked with his military career, the last thing I wanted to be seen as was an “attention seeker”.

I had so many reasons to kill myself back in the days of CFB Namao, CFB Griesbach, and CFB Downsview, but yet I couldn’t “man up” and do the deed because I was worried about what my father would say and do. Pretty fucking lame dontcha think?

My next attempt at suicide came in 1994.

I was unemployed. I was collecting E.I. as it was known back then. I had just returned from a disastrous trip out to Toronto to take a job that fell through. My E.I. got cut off because my E.I. cards were still being sent to my Toronto address so I ended up collecting welfare in B.C.

At this point in my life I had been on welfare in three different provinces. Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia at different points in time between the summer of 1991 and the spring of 1994. I had slept in various Salvation Army houses, as well as different charity dorms.

And no, there was no fucking way on Earth that I was going to endure the humiliation of calling Richard and asking him for assistance that I know wouldn’t be coming anyways.

I know the exact date of the 1994 attempt.

It was the very early morning of Sunday June 12th, sometime after midnight.

I had scoped out the Lions Gate Bridge for around a week prior. And I knew that after midnight car traffic dwindled to almost nothing. I wasn’t planning to jump of the bridge in the typical manner. I didn’t want anyone to see me. I didn’t want anyone to stop me. Earlier in the day on June 11th I had gone to a BC Liquor store and purchased a 6 pack of whatever. I didn’t drink very often, so I knew that a 6 pack would take away my chickenshit fear and would allow me to jump.

When I got to the bridge I waited for a break in traffic, then I headed onto the bridge and got to where the maintenance gondola was parked. The bridge had a gondola underneath that allowed maintenance crews to service and paint the bridge from underneath. There really wasn’t any type of security on this gondola which was amazing when you think about it. So over the railing I went and I climbed down the ladder and onto the gondola.

I don’t knowhow long I was under there. I didn’t have a watch, and this was years before I owned a cellphone. But eventually I drank the last of the six beers. The gondola was parked perfectly over the footing for the south side pylon. If I just sat on the rail of the gondola and leaned back I could hit the footing without bouncing off of any of the ironwork for the pylon. It should be quick and I was so pissed that I probably wouldn’t feel anything. But now I was fucking hallucinating. There was P.S. and my father holding hands and laughing at me. Both of them were calling me a cocksucker, a faggot, a homo. I passed out. I woke up a little while later with no shirt on and both shoes missing.

Fuuuuucccckkkkk.

So I managed to climb back up the ladder, back over the railing and walked back to the Sally Anne on Dunsmuir. Being drunk and without footwear I nearly killed myself in the process of climbing the Gondola ladder. I was screaming my lungs off as I walked through Stanley Park. I couldn’t believe how much of a fucking loser I was. I had the perfect opportunity to kill myself and my childish fears of what Richard would say after my death stopped me.

To this day I still don’t know why I feared Richard as much as I did. It made absolutely no sense. I should have hated him. But I didn’t. I feared him.

Anyways, the reason I know the exact date is that on Monday June 13th, 1994 I ended up at St. Paul’s Hospital. I could barely breath. I was coughing up blood and thick brown / green phlegm. The diagnoses was that I had come down with a bad case of community acquired pneumonia. The doctors had asked me if I had done anything out of the ordinary over the last week, if I had been anywhere unusual. Nope was my answer.

I felt like a fucking idiot.

In between 1994 and 2006 there were a few more attempts with the Skytrain, still couldn’t fucking do it.

The next time I would try to kill myself was in 2006. In August of 2006 I had called Richard and left some blistering messages on his cellphone. The next day he called me. I expected him to be angry. He wasn’t. He was quite shaken. I hadn’t really seen Richard since I moved away from Edmonton in February of 1992. Sure, I stopped in Edmonton in 2003 with my then girlfriend, but Richard barely had the time to speak to me. In my messages I had told him that I was sick and fucking tired of being blamed for what P.S. had done, I was tired of being blamed for having fucked with his military career, I was sick of everything. He knew that I was working at the hospital since the year previous as I had called him for his birthdate and my mother’s birthdate so that I could get my birth certificate replaced as the hospital needed to have a copy for my personnel file. He knew my phone number. He knew my address. But not fucking once did he ever call to see how I was making out.

So out of frustration I called him and vented into his voicemail. I was surprised when he called. I was even more surprised when it sounded like he was scared, like he had been wounded. He told me that yes, he had probably over reacted to what P.S. did ( yes, he used P.S.’s name). He didn’t mean to blame me, but that things were hectic back then. I was the older brother. I was supposed to look out for Scott. He pleaded with me to understand that he didn’t hire P.S.. He told me that he told his mother that he didn’t want P.S. around the house but that grandma kept hiring P.S.. And if I was to be angry at anyone for what P.S. had done, I should be angry at my grandmother for hiring P.S..

Things were great for about two months after this. Richard would call me on a daily basis. He even mailed me a $100 gift certificate to the Old Spaghetti Factory for my birthday. For him to tell the CFNIS in 2011 that he didn’t know how to get hold of me was a fucking crock of shit.

Anyways, just after my birthday the calls started to drop off.

By November he wasn’t calling or returning my calls.

Not a word at Christmas.

So I had decided to jump in front of a Skytrain.

Again I chickened the fuck out.

This was the last time I had ever been in a hospital.

But this hasn’t been the end of my desire to die.

As I’ve said in other posts, in the early 2000’s I had become aware of what was then called “assisted suicide” in Europe. Towards the late ’00s I had heard that in some European countries that depression was an acceptable reason to seek “medical suicide”. I knew that I would never have the money to make it over to Europe. And then the unthinkable started to happen. Jurisdictions across North America started to warm up to the idea of assisted suicide.

Medical Assistance in Dying for Mental Health reasons is so close that I can almost taste the propofol in my tongue. March 2023 to be exact.

Whether or not I have what it takes to pass the “test” to be allowed to die peacefully in my bed without any violence inflected upon my body remains to be seen.

North America has a puritanical streak in which it is believed that everyone must suffer right to the end for a death to be righteous.

I haven’t enjoyed a single fucking day in my life since Canadian Forces Base Namao. Society tells me that I am a fucking loser for wanting to die. Society tells me that I am selfish and only hurting others with my desire to die.

Society tells me that I don’t value the special and unique life that I have been “given”.

I sure as fuck didn’t ask for this. I didn’t tell Richard to fuck Marie so that I could be born.

I didn’t ask for my father to be a rage prone alcoholic in the Canadian Armed Forces.

I didn’t ask for my mother to leave.

I didn’t ask for my grandmother to hire P.S.

I didn’t ask to be molested by P.S. and Captain McRae.

I didn’t ask for my brain to be fucked with by Captain Terry Totzke.

I didn’t ask for my father to be a spineless wimp that followed along with the desires of the Canadian Armed Forces.

I have no interests.

I have no hobbies.

I have no friends.

I have absolutely nothing.

People tell me that I have to live, that I simply have to find the reasons to live, that I’m not trying hard enough.

People tell me that I’m only trying to get attention, that I’m weak, that I’m ungrateful.

People tell me to “forget the past and move on”.

How the fuck does one simply forget what I’ve been through?

Why do I have to keep suffering so that others can feel like they’ve fixed me or cured me?

Trust me, I am angry about a lot of things, but I’m not angry about dying.

Everyone dies.

My death won’t be some unusual event that no other human being has experienced.

Four simple drugs administered via a PICC catheter into the superior vena cava of my heart and I can be freed of all of this dysfunctional shit that is my life.

Midazolam

Propofol

Rocuronium

Bupivacaine

All that I want is to die a little earlier than what the cosmos has planned for me so that I don’t have to live with CFB Namao playing on an endless loop inside my skull. Richard may be dead and gone, and yes it was very cathartic when I found out that he was dead, but his ridicule, his hatred, his loathing, and his depression live inside my skull. P.S. lives in my skull. The knowledge of what Captain McRae did to me after the wine lives inside of my skull. Going to “special school” is inside my skull. Being a grade 8 dropout who missed out on a multitude of opportunities lives in my skull.

Let me go.

Let me be at peace.

Let me be free of the things that I had no control over.

The second examination for discovery.

Today was the second and final day of my examination by the defence in the matter involving Earl Ray Stevens.

The lawyer for the defence was a pleasant enough chap. “Just doing his job” as they say.

Over the course to the two days my lawyer only really had one objection. And the defence lawyer and I had a quibble about the meaning of a word.

But that was it.

I’ll have to produce further documents for the defence. My lawyer is going to put together a list of the undertakings that were requested of me. The nice thing is that the documents that I have to produce for the defence are scanned and are on my online drive, so sharing these documents is simple. As I said, I never really got into computers, but scanning and archiving is something that I got into. Really has come in handy at work where I took four old file cabinets of documents and manuals and scanned them into the shared drive at work so that they’re available to all plant engineers.

How this matter will work out is anyone’s guess.

So, until next time.

Well, today was interesting

Today I was interviewed by the lawyer for the defence.

Today was interesting.

Thankfully I’m on escitalopram. I’d hate to think how today would have turned out if I was my good ol’ self.

Being depressed and suffering from severe anxiety means that today would have been an absolute nightmare if I wasn’t medicated.

Sorry to say, but I can’t discuss anything that was discussed today. Not even supposed to discuss the evidence presented today with my lawyer who was also present during the examination.

Yesterday was interesting.

Yesterday was the first “in office” visit with my nurse practitioner since the start of the pandemic back in March of 2020.

My N.P. is the one who set me up with escitalopram last year when my brain started to seriously crack.

So yesterday was the first time that I had seriously talked to him about medical assistance in dying. We had talked on the phone various times over the last year as he was doing monthly check-ins to see how I was doing and we would discuss M.A.i.D..

However I was in person this time and we had a much better conversation. I explained to him why counselling couldn’t or wouldn’t work for me. No civilian counsellor would understand the mess I went through as kid. And no civilian counsellor or even a military counsellor would be able to sweep the crap out of my brain.

The damage is there, the damage is permanent, and the damage isn’t simply going away.

And no, I don’t want to learn how to live with it. I’ve lived with it long enough.

But I am getting way ahead of myself. I still don’t know what the specific criteria will be. And those criteria won’t be released until March 2023.

So, we’ll have to wait and see.

I’ve also had the opportunity to start shooting pictures in RAW mode with my camera.

I know, large jump from death to cameras, but hey, what the heck.

Movieland Arcade — RAW image converted to PNG.

RAW images are interesting in the sense that they can be truly manipulated. These images in RAW are the actual data unprocessed from the sensor.
These images have not been processed or compressed.
This RAW image is converted to PNG just for the sake of being able to be uploaded to my blog. The PNG format does have some compression.

If you have a Mac or an image program capable of viewing RAW files, here is the original RAW image.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/imnb8frl603f3u6/DSC03189.ARW?dl=0

Anyways, enough for now.

Empty on the inside

“What do you like to do Bobbie?”

“What are your interests?”

“You must have hobbies”

“What music do you like?”

“What do you and your friends like to do?”

The truth is that I don’t actually have any interests, any hobbies, or any friends.

I don’t like TV.

There are very few movies that I like.

I don’t like electronics.

I understand electronics. But I don’t like dabbling in electronics.

I bought various electronic kits over the years. For example I used the Raspberry Pi for a bit, I’ve also used the Arduino kits. Setting them up and programming them is easy enough. There’s just nothing inside of me that gives me any joy programming these devices.

I don’t like computers.

I can use computers. Computers are a tool just like any other tool. I can set them up. I can use them for writing reports. I can scan and archive. But I really don’t care for computers.

When my brother came to visit last year he said that he was sure that I liked cars. Nope. I understand how they work. I can work on them. But I don’t like them.

Music. I really had no interest until I was in my 20s. This I think was due to the way Richard belittled me for any interest that I had shown in music at school. Throw into that the fact that Earl Ray Stevens had used my desired to learn how to play drums as a way to sexually abuse me.

Also, as a form of punishment for causing our relocation from CFB Griesbach to CFB Downsview, Richard had thrown out my stereo, my records, and my 8-track tapes as punishment. This was a record collection that Uncle Doug, grandma, and my weekend job at Pizza Plus had allowed me to build. It wasn’t large. Maybe about twenty or thirty albums and 45s. The 8-tracks were mostly Uncle Doug’s. I was 11 when Richard threw out my stereo. The stereo had belonged to grandma, and it was mine when we moved from CFB Namao to CFB Griesbach. Uncle Doug bought grandma a new stereo system for her bedroom.

When we were younger and living on Canadian Forces Base Downsview, my brother always accused me of picking on him and making fun of the groups that he listened to. Even when I went up to Edmonton in 2013 and saw him over the summer he quizzed me to see if I knew the songs he was playing. And then he told me that he was always ashamed to sing along with his bands because I used to “tease him” when we were younger.

Tease him? Nope. I was going to Junior High in the period of ’84 through ’87. Poison, Cinderella, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Twisted Sister, Motley Crue, et. al. were standard fare at school and on the radio. I liked Van Halen, Quiet Riot, Slade, Queensryche, all the way to Supertramp, Bruce Hornsby and the Range, Peter Gabriel. So, it wasn’t that I didn’t like his music, or that I thought his music sucked. What I deeply despised him for was that he could play his music at any volume in his bedroom and neither Richard nor Sue would give a flying fuck. If I turned my music up above barely audible, Richard would fly off the fucking handle. My brother was allowed to have a stereo. I had to scrap together a used stereo out of a van. So yeah, there was some angst created there. I don’t know if Richard intentionally created this rivalry, or if he was just so fucking stupid that he didn’t realize what he was creating. What my brother also seems to forget is that Richard would make non-stop snide comments about the music we listened to. The comments didn’t seem to have much impact on my brother. It was like he was oblvious to Richard’s contempt. For some reason I was super sensitive to Richard’s snide comments and his put downs. C’est la vie I guess.

I think my lack of interest in TV comes down to two things.

The first was having a stunted imagination as a child. After the events on CFB Namao, and after being involved with Captain Terry Totzke, and with my father’s reaction to the events on CFB Namao, any imagination I had as a child was killed. Richard’s demeaning comments and his frequent sarcastic putdowns would kill the imagination in just about everyone he came in contact with. But the weird thing was he loved the original Star Trek, he loved the original Dr. Who, he loved Bug Bunny, and he loved the Batman TV series. I’ll never figure him out. He’s dead and gone. All I can put it down to is his self centred perspective and his superiority complex.

The second was that Sue would insist that we play outside which was fine with me as on Downsview I was mostly heading off to work at my after school jobs. On Griesbach things were a little worse as I only had my weekend job at Pizza Plus so week nights were spent wandering around North Edmonton no matter what the weather was like, and yeah, Edmonton can be quite cold in the winter.

So yeah, I’ve never really formed an attraction to TV.

When I met up with my brother last year, we went for a long walk around the seawall. He wanted to talk about whether or not I was really serious about wanting to undergo medical assistance in dying. I assured him that I was very serious about this and I explained to him why as well as my justifications for wanting to die.

I don’t know if he honestly believes that I was a psychiatrically fucked up as I was, or if Richard’s frequent assertions that I was just “acting up to get attention” have made it impossible for him to understand.

As we walked around the seawall we talked about other things, such as my skills with fixing cars. We ended up on the topic of electronics. He wanted to know why I wasn’t more involved with electronics. I told him that I was never very good at electronics to begin with, and that as I had no diploma in electronics any skills that I had were nothing more than a “hobby”. He replied that I had built so many things as a kid that he was sure that I liked electronics.

I told him that the one time it became very crystal clear to me that electronics was never to be in the cards for me was when I was in grade 8 and I had put together a helium-neon laser for science fair. I had salvaged the parts out of a couple of old Pioneer Video Laserdisc players. Mr. Bowles, my grade 8 science teacher was very impressed with the project and my writeup of how ionizing gas laser tubes worked. My father was pissed off because Mr. Bowles called my father at work to try to convince him that I should enter my project at the National Science Fair in Ottawa. My brother replied to me that I didn’t really build that laser, I just took it from a laserdisc player.

****insert abrupt vinyl record scratch noise here***

Narrator: It was at this point that Bobbie realized that maybe he was wrong, that maybe there was an afterlife, and that his dysfunctional father had risen from the grave and had gained control of his brother’s vocal cords in order to issue insults from beyond the grave.

Yeah, that was Richard’s thing back then. That I was just too fucking stupid to make anything on my own. That I was too fucking dumb to do anything with my life. That I was a liar. That I was fucking insane like my mother. That I had fucked with his military career.

And sure, it’s true the parts came from two non-functional video laserdisc players. But it took me picking the parts out of two players to make one functional 5mw helium-neon laser. These lasers, because of how much energy they emitted were under very strict control of the laserdisc player CPU. This meant that the laser power supply had to be modified to allow the laser to start and run without the CPU controlling it.

I had also built from scratch the twin 20watt push-pull power amplifiers that would drive the radial and tangential correction mirrors that I had repurposed into scanning mirrors. I could feed audio into the amplifiers and have the laser make patterns on the wall. I could feed the output of a frequency generator into the amplifier and make shapes on the wall. I could even feed the analog X-Y signals from an old Vectrex video game into the amplifier and play vector scan graphic video games on the wall. Was quiet messy though as I couldn’t figure out how to blank the beam.

It was basically Richard belittling and ridicule of my electronics skills that made me turn my back on electronics.

The final knife in my back came a few years later when I was servicing arcade games, pinball machines, and jukeboxes. I would have been around 16. The company that I worked for, Rainbow Games, had a Championship Sprint game in the shop that their technician couldn’t fix. This technician had a diploma from DeVry and a diploma from ITT Tech. He had been working on the game for weeks and couldn’t solve the problem. They were about to give up on this machine and scrap it for parts. I went through the schematics, went through the error codes list, and found that the problem was caused by a faulty 8-bit bi-directional latch on the data bus between the mother board and the graphics processor board. It took me two days to do what this DeVry / ITT tech trained technician couldn’t do. Hey Bruce, hey Ed, can I get a pay raise seeing as how I’m fixing more equipment than Len. Nope, sorry Rob, but you’re not a certified technician, it wouldn’t be right for us to pay you more without a diploma.

So, that drove the final nail into the coffin of my interest in electronics.

Computers honestly were never a thing for me.

So…… what are my interests?

Nothing.

Really.

I have no interests or desires.

I think that the depression that I inherited from Richard also explains why Richard was the way he was. He really didn’t have any interests either. What he had though was a gun pointed at his head. He had to learn avionics / aeroframe mechanics / electronics / computers if he wanted to be able to stay in the Canadian Forces. When Richard joined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1963 at the age of 17 with a grade 8 education and a remark from the enrolment officer stating that Richard was developing into a bit of a “rebel” in school, the Navy was more than happy to accept people like Richard. As the years went by though, the requirements to enlist went up and the expectations placed on the currently enlisted went up as well.

Richard’s education level is debatable. When I examined him for federal court in 2013, he claimed that he had grade nine. His enrolment records into the military also say grade nine. However, when I met Marie in 2013 I asked her how Richard and she met. She said that her brother, my uncle Al, and Richard had both attended the same grade 9 remedial program in Nova Scotia before they were allowed to join. Either Richard’s grade nine marks were too low to meet the requirements, or he only completed some of his grade nine.

By the time I tried to enlist when I was 18 grade 10 was the absolute minimum and there weren’t many trades in the military open with that minimal qualification. Grade 12 was preferred. And university or college was desired.

I don’t think that my father really had an interest in electronics or computers as his depression wouldn’t allow for it. My father did have the ability to learn electronics and computers, but that was mainly so that he could save his career in the military. In the ’70s and the ’80s there really wasn’t much need for a unilingual anglophone with a grade nine education.

I know first hand just how crushing depression can be, especially major depression.

Where did Richard’s sarcasm, his pettiness, and his desire to mock and ridicule come from? That I will never know. With my depression I’ve never felt the desire to ridicule or mock anyone. I just want to be left alone when I hit one of my crushing depressions. I know that grandma could be cruel. But I don’t remember her as ever being the type to mock or into ridicule. She was a very authoritarian type person who loved to discipline. I don’t know when exactly Arthur Herman Gill left grandma. I remember that Richard and his father were not close at all. Is that where Richard picked up his need to ridicule and mock? I don’t know when exactly Roy William Anderson and grandma hooked up. I honestly don’t remember much of Andy as he was only with us a short time before he slipped in the bathtub and suffered severe brain damage. Was Andy married to my grandmother when Richard was young? Did Andy mock and ridicule Richard?

Not my concern where Richard got his issues from.

What is my concern is that Richard, his defective parenting skills, his depression, his sarcasm, his need to feel superior, his need to ridicule, and his need to mock left a trail of destruction in his path.

And that is why I mainly feel completely void and empty and for the most part worthless.

And please, I’m not trying to be rude, but don’t try to cheer me up. Compliments are the hardest thing for me to accept. You could say that I have major trust issues. And when I was young, compliments were a way that people got their hands into my pants, or got me to do things for them.

So, as truthful as you may be with your compliments, my trust issues are burnt so deeply into my brain that I will never be able to accept a compliment without assuming that you’re buttering me up for something.

And trust me, it’s not you.

It’s me.

I know that.

March 17, 2023

The clock has begun ticking.

https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/medical-assistance-dying.html#b11

Less than a year now before I start the process of applying for Medical Assistance in Dying.

It’s a weird kinda of sereneness.

Now that I know approximately when the end of my life will be, and that I won’t have to endure being tormented into my senior years with the flashbacks and memories from Canadian Forces Base Namao, I feel relaxed and calm.

And unlike suicide, being that M.A.i.D. is a medical procedure carried out with clinical precision, I don’t have any fears of botching the job and not doing it correctly or even ending up a vegetable for the remaining 30 years of my life.

All of the mental suffering and anguish that I have endured for the last 40 plus years will finally be over.

Captain Terry Totzke will no longer reside in my brain, nor will Captain Father Angus McRae, Peter S., my father Warrant Officer Richard Wayne Gill, or Earl Ray Stevens. Every member of the Canadian Armed Forces that hurt me will be gone from my brain, forever.

My time spent being torn asunder between Alberta Social Services and Captain Terry Totzke will come to an end.

It’s not that Alberta Social Services did anything wrong, Captain Terry Totzke just made sure that I didn’t tell anyone in the civilian world what had occurred on Canadian Forces Base Namao. He tried to portray himself as my friend, the guy who was trying to help me. He, and my father, both portrayed my civilian social workers as being the enemy. People that weren’t to be trusted. People that were trying to hurt me. There was no way that Captain Totzke or his chain of command were going to allow me to tell my civilian social workers about what had transpired on Canadian Forces Base Namao from October 1978 until May of 1980. Especially not with Captain Father Angus McRae having admitted during his Ecclesiastical trial in June of 1980 that he had been molesting children for years. McRae molested 25 children on CFB Namao. How many did he molest on CFS Holberg, or CFB Portage La Prairie, or even CFB Kingston. 50 kids total? 100 kids total?

The Canadian Forces and the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit were well aware at the time that McRae was bringing children over to the chapel and giving them beer and wine before escorting them into the bedroom of the rectory to “fool around”. How many kids like me were there that have vague memories of being escorted to the chapel by our babysitter, playing games and watching TV, and then being given a “sickly sweet grape juice” and not remembering anything after that?

Children’s Aid Society of Toronto records.
The blacked out info is my father’s name Richard and Rick.

Reading my foster care record from November of 1981 until April of 1983 shows that my father was outright hostile towards Alberta Social Services. No doubt this was encouraged by Captain Terry Totzke.

This is my grandmother that Richard “forgot” to tell the CFNIS about in 2011.
I still don’t know if Richard didn’t tell the CFNIS of her by his own decision or if the CFNIS suggested that it would be best if he didn’t mention her as her presence in the PMQ would complicate things for the CFNIS in 2011.

Grandma had issues from her time in Indian Residential School when she was a child.
This no doubt contributed to her hostile personality.

*Alberta Social Services Observation of my father Richard Wayne Gill.*

So, why wasn’t my father too eager to work with Alberta Social Services considering how emotionally disturbed I was?

Captain Terry Totzke would have already explained to my father, Master Corporal Richard Wayne Gill, that I had obviously been having sex with Peter because I was a homosexual and that I had allowed this to go on for over a year because I was a homosexual.

Section 70 of the 1970 National Defence Act.
Sure, my father could have done the right thing, but that would have taken a backbone.

Captain outranks Master Corporal. And the National Defence Act and its section on “Insubordination” would have meant that my father would have paid attention to the words of a captain.

This is why my bedroom door had been taken off both on CFB Griesbach and on CFB Downsview. This is why I wasn’t allowed to participate in sports. Even though it was my father that said that he wasn’t going to allow me to go swimming with my class at the Kinsmen Sports Centre “because there’d be other naked boys in the change room and that I wouldn’t be able to control myself”, I have absolutely no doubt that it was Captain Totzke that told my father to keep me away from other boys. After all it was Captain Totzke, or Terry as I knew him, that had warned me early on that he had the base military police watching me and that if I ever tried to kiss or touch another boy that I’d be sent off to the Alberta Hospital for treatment.

And homosexuality was a major no-no in the Canadian Forces back in the 50s through to the ’90s. The official military policy was that homosexuality was a mental illness. CFAO 19-20 was the official CF policy toward homosexuality.

Yes, CFAO 19-20 would have only applied to persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline. But once you’ve been trained the in military way and trained to enforce military policies you can’t just turn that training on and off at will.

So yes, it will be so nice to finally be free of Captain Totzke and my father.

You have absolutely no idea of what it’s like to navigate through life not knowing why you don’t like sex with women, but you also don’t like sex with men. Everyone assumes I’m gay because I don’t have sex with women. The problem is that I’m not into guys either. I actually find sex and the concept of sex to be disgusting.

I wear dresses, not because I consider myself to be a woman. I wear dresses because they’re comfortable and I believe that pants are stupid considering male anatomy. I also wear dresses I believe because I had been told all of my life that I wasn’t allowed to play on the men’s team because of what I had done on CFB Namao with P.S. and Captain McRae.

When you’re told that your not good enough to play by the rules, you play by your own rules.

To further complicate things, I had been diagnosed as having major depression and severe anxiety. And no doubt I was suffering from what would now be termed “Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder “.

After CFB Namao and CFB Griesbach I learned to live in solitude.

I legally changed my name in 2008 thinking that I could get a fresh start and leave CFB Namao behind.

I honestly do love my chosen name, but it didn’t erase my past as I had hoped.

I’m still Robert Wayne Gill, the 8 year old who was caught getting fucked in the ass by his almost 15 year old babysitter on Canadian Forces Base Namao in May of 1980. I’m still Robert Wayne Gill, the 7 and 8 year old boy that allowed the 14 year old babysitter to molest his younger brother. I’m still Robert Wayne Gill, the 9 to 11 year old boy who received “conversion therapy” at the hands of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke. And I’ll be that Robert Wayne Gill until the day I draw my last breath.

Knowing the truth about CFB Namao and the direct connection between my babysitter and Captain McRae doesn’t erase the past. I just made me understand that I have very little control over my life and that other people made some very fucking horrific decisions about my life even before I had a chance to begin living my life.

I’ve had to work so fucking hard in my life just to get to where I am. And I am still so fucking vulnerable it’s not funny. One simple little fucking mistake in life and I fall and I fall hard. There is no safety net for me. There is no inheritance for me to rebound off of. There is absolutely no family for me to be able to depend on.

So I took the path in life that was very carefully navigated.

Every day of my life up to this point I have wondered where I life I could have gone had I been encouraged to finish school, an go on to college or university. Even trade school. Almost every successful tradesman started out on an apprenticeship when they were young and living at home and they didn’t have to worry about paying for the course, or the books, or anything else.

CMAC says that the majority of first time home buyers get help from the Bank of Mom and Dad. So I missed out on that.

It drives me up the wall the number of times that coworkers, or managers, or even outside trades, contractors , and suppliers say to me “Bobbie, you’re wasting your time/talents here, you’ve got the smarts you should be over there doing that and making a fortune”. Fine, sure, you gonna let me move in to your house so that you can pay my bills and feed me while I take the 4 or 5 year full-time program to get the degrees required to pursue that line of work? Didn’t think so.

And after having been what I’ve been though in life, and with my depression and anxiety, I’m not exactly a pleasant person to be around. No, I’m not offensive or unpleasant. But I have no hobbies, and I have no interests. I don’t care about sportsball teams. I don’t care about TV shows. I don’t gossip. I like music, but I keep my interests to myself. I’m an odd fucker that just doesn’t fit in. I have no interest in hearing about your family. I don’t care about your kids. I was never taught the art of small talk. This makes a person very fucking vulnerable.

As I’ve said in other blog entries, I picked up electronics, automotive, and computer skills as a kid in the hopes that it would create some sort of connection between my father and I. But that connection was so damaged that nothing was ever going to fix it.

I haven’t wrenched on a car since I stopped driving back in 1998.

When it comes to electronics or computers at work, I pretend to be abso-fucking-lutely stupid.

Up until recently I had about $1k worth of soldering equipment at home for electronic projects that I always wanted to start on, but never did. There is no passion or drive inside anymore. Any interest that I had in electronics died back in the mid ’90s when I realized that no matter how good I was at troubleshooting and repairing electronics I was never going to be an electronics technician. “We can’t pay you a technicians wage, you’re not certified”. “We can’t hire you for the technician’s position as you don’t have a diploma”. “Sure, you’ve got electronic skills and you beat a licenced technician in a test, but you’re not qualified without a diploma”. Basically what I was hearing all of my life was “You let the babysitter abuse your younger brother, we can’t hire you, it’s your fault”

I had a friend that used to get me to work on motorcycles for him. I told him that I despised doing mechanical or electrical work on motorcycles. But he kept on pushing me as he was certain that I’d get to like repairing motorcycles as I had a natural talent for fixing mechanical and electrical problems. This friendship died about 10 years ago. Yes, I have an unnerving ability to troubleshoot electrical, electronic, and mechanical problems, but it doesn’t mean that this is what I would have liked for a career.

So many possibilities were on my horizon, but the way in which the Canadian Armed Forces reacted to Captain Father Angus McRae stripped away from me any of the possibilities that could have been mine. And that’s the knowledge that I am going to live with until I draw my final breath.

So, I’m where I am, not because I want to be, nor because I deserve to be here. I’m where I am because it pays the bills and keeps me fed.

I have never sought help with my depression or my anxiety primarily because I had no idea that I had depression, or anxiety, or cptsd. I was told that I was acting the way I was and behaving the way I was because I was a homosexual that allowed my younger brother to be molested.

Battling the CFNIS and the Canadian Forces since 2011 sure hasn’t helped matters much.

And to be told recently that my former babysitter P.S., and the man in the sauna both have more legal rights than I do is just one of the many nails the CFNIS have driven into my coffin since 2011.

These are the reasons that I am looking forward to M.A.i.D.

Yes, M.A.i.D. will result in my death, but that’s the price I am more than willing to pay to erase the memories of:
My father and his drinking and his anger issues;
The fact my mother ran off and left me with my father;
Being raised by my grandmother, who had her own issues;
Peter S.;
The memories of watching Peter S. abuse the other children, including my brother;
The 5 visits to the chapel on CFB Namao;
The sickly sweet grape juice;
The fact that my father sent me on one of these visits with Peter;
My involvement with Captain Terry Totzke;
Being called a homosexual by both Captain Totzke and my father for what I had “allowed” to happen on CFB Namao;
My confusing involvement with Alberta Social Services;
Being blamed by my father for “fucking with his military career” and for being the cause of our April ’83 posting to Canadian Forces Base Downsview that “ruined his fucking career”;
My involvement with Earl Ray Stevens, a former member of the Canadian Forces and a then current member of the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires;

I’m tired, I’m burnt the fuck out, my brain is fried, and it’s time for me to go.

Sure, I could live until I’m 70 or maybe even 80. But the fuck for?

So that I can remember that Minister Sajjan accused me of trying to scam the Canadian Forces for a quick buck?

So that I can remember MWO Eisenmenger calling me a liar in July of 2011 and accused me of making up the story about Peter S.?

So that I can constantly remember how horrific of a fucking liar my father was?

So that I can remember all of those nights as a kid when I’d cry myself to sleep wishing that I’d be dead in the morning? And the times I tried to make sure that I was dead in the morning.

So that I can remember all of the times Peter would get me to bathe with him so he could stick his fingers in my ass to get me ready for his penis?

So that I can remember all of the times that Peter would hit me, slap me, and kick me if I didn’t perform oral sex on him they way he liked it?

Nope.

Departure time is coming.

I’ve got my ticket.

And nobody is going to stop me from turning my brain off and leaving this shit of a life behind.

Only the military can investigate historical child sexual abuse.

Well, this one is bound for the toilet as well.

This is where most CFNIS investigations end up.

In 1980 in the period of time between May of 1980 and June 23rd, 1980, my babysitter, P.S., had intercepted me in the change room at the base swimming pool. He escorted me to the sauna where there was an older man waiting for me to perform oral sex on him.

This obviously wasn’t a random chance. This had been planned out. Especially with the man asking P.S. if I was as good as P.S. said that I was.

When I went to the CFNIS in 2011 with my complaint against P.S. I was envisioning cleaning up a bunch of things from my past:

P.S. and the abuse from CFB Namao;
Terry, the man who called me a homosexual;
The man from the sauna;
Earl Ray Stevens from the Dennison Armouries;
And Alan M. from North York.

Of course, as we know now, the Minister of National Defence, the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, the Provost Marshal, and the CFNIS had ample reasons to deep six the investigation into P.S. as it threatened to resurrect the whole sordid Captain Father Angus McRae fiasco along with exposing the 3-year-time-bar and the summary investigation flaw.

So that delayed my complaint against the man from the sauna.

The delay might have worked in my favour as when I was given a copy of the CFSIU investigation paperwork it gave me the very likely name of the man from the sauna. This man had in fact had his own involvement with underaged children.

But at the same time the CFNIS and the military justice system were coming under attack for their failure to actually solve sexual assault crimes.

In November of 2021 Minister of National Defence Anita Anand announced that she was instructing the CFNIS and the Provost Marshal to hand over all sexual assault investigations to the civilian authorities.

But, can you guess who’s case is NOT going to the civilian police?

Yep, that’s right, the CFNIS are keeping my case.

Apparently the Civilian Police aren’t as qualified to investigate child sexual assaults like the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service is.

So, if you’re wondering why I have absolutely no desire to live, this is it.

The CFNIS aren’t holding on to my investigation because they’re qualified to look after child sexual abuse matters.

The CFNIS are holding on to my matter because the 3-year-time-bar would make it legally impossible to ever charge the person I accused. This person was a major in the Canadian Forces and was a member of the regular force. They were subject to the code of service discipline 24/7/365 on duty or off duty.

The 3-year-time-bar applied to all service offences. Service offences included all criminal code offences including offences such as gross indecency, and indecent assault.

The civilian police would have encountered this the moment they went to the provincial Crown to lay charges. The civilian police would not have kept quiet about this.

The CFNIS on the other hand know exactly how to deal with this issue. They’ll submit such a laughably weak case to the Crown knowing full well that the Crown will decline to prosecute.

The CFNIS can also delay the case to the point in time that the person I accuse simply dies of old age. “Golly geez Mr. Bees, if only you had come to us sooner we could have charged him, but he’s dead now, oh well”.

And if the person I accused hasn’t kicked the bucket, the CFNIS can go harass P.S. and frighten him with the possibility of prosecution for his participation in providing me to the man that I accused. This will absolutely shut P.S. up guaranteeing that we’ll never know who the man in the sauna was.

And this my friend is why I want to die.

To know that I will never receive any form of justice is a bitter pill to swallow.

To not receive any acknowledgment for the hell I lived through is maddening.

To have the guilty portrayed as innocent, and to have the innocent judged as being not worthy of even a simple apology, tells me just exactly how valuable human life is.

You don’t understand how anxious I am for the Criminal Code of Canada to be further amended in March of 2023 to allow for Medical Assistance in Dying for Psychiatric issues.

Midazolam, Propofol, Rocuronium, and Bupivacain injected through a catheter will erase these memories and will release me from my past and from my suffering.

If I can’t get justice, if I can’t even just get simple acknowledgment for the hell I went through, give me mercy and just let me go into peace where these memories and the Canadian Armed Forces can no longer haunt me.