As a kid, my father Richard would often tell me that I needed to be really careful with the questions that I asked suggesting that I wasn’t going to like the answers that I was going to discover.
Even when I had my series of telephone calls with Richard back in 2006 he suggested that I forget about the babysitter from CFB Namao and just “move the fuck on” and quit worrying about the past. The past was the past and there was no changing it.
At the time I didn’t understand what he meant. Well, I kinda understood what he meant, I made the babysitter molest my younger brother, and therefore I was just trying to blame the babysitter for something that I was ultimately responsible for.
None the less, I had to go and kick the hornet’s nest in 2011.
Do I regret kicking the hornet’s nest.
No. Not one bit.
As soul crushing as this has been, I’ve learnt that I was a victim, just as my brother was. I didn’t make the babysitter molest my brother. If anyone was responsible for my brother being molested it was ultimately Captain Father Angus McRae and the Canadian Forces chain of command that was responsible for transferring Captain McRae to CFB Namao even though they knew he was having issues.
So, in a way I’m happy to know the truth.
But the truth also kills me.
Knowing the truth has shattered some very longstanding illusions that I grew up believing. These were illusions that formed my life.
Now, let’s be very clear, it’s not knowing the truth that makes me want to seek M.A.i.D. in 2023. It’s all of the mental health issues surrounding my untreated major depression and my severe anxiety that were known about and left untreated between 1980 and 2011. It’s all of the memories of the sexual abuse of not only me, but of my brother, and of the other kids that P.S. would abuse and the manner in which he would abuse them.
Yes, learning the truth has been a very painful journey. But it also has been very liberating at the same time too.
Some of the truths that I now know that I didn’t prior to 2011 are:
Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae confessed in 1980 during an ecclesiastical trial to having had sexual relationships with young boys for years prior to his arrest and court martial in 1980.
The Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit were both aware of the fact that P.S. was sexually abusing children on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
The Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit were both aware that Captain McRae had been bringing children to the rectory at the base chapel and that Captain McRae was giving these children alcohol and then “fooling around” with them.
That P.S. was molesting children was of no doubt as Captain McRae’s defence counsel was trying to discredit the testimony of P.S. by bringing up the fact that P.S. himself had been molesting young children on the base, in many cases performing anal intercourse on children under 10.
Prior to 1998 there existed two flaws in the National Defence Act which meant that even if I had come forward prior to 1998 with complaints against P.S. and Captain McRae that Captain McRae could never be charged for any crime he committed against a child which occurred on a defence establishment while he was subject to the code of service discipline.
Even though the Canadian Forces were prohibited from holding a service tribunal for the crimes of Murder, Manslaughter, and Rape from 1950 until 1985 and Murder, Manslaughter, and Sexual Assault from 1985 to 1998, they could oddly enough hold a service tribunal for sexual crimes committed against children.
My father was known to be a liar who would frequently change his stories.
My father was known to tell people he perceived to be in positions of authority what he thought they wanted to hear.
My father had issues with his role as a parent and showed very little in the way of responsibility towards his own family.
It was known since 1980 that I was a severely mentally ill child in need of help, but Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke for some reason didn’t ever seem to follow through with the recommendations that I receive help.
I was actually in the foster care system and it appears that Captain Totzke assisted my father with obtaining a posting out of the jurisdiction of Alberta so that Alberta Social Services couldn’t apprehend me and place me into care.
My mother hadn’t abandoned the family. Flaws in the National Defence Act and the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations meant that spouses and children were defect “visitors” on base that were only there at the pleasure of the serving member.
I can only wonder what my father truly knew about the events on CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980. Events he knew of but pretended that didn’t happen.
How could my father “forget” in 2011 that he was rarely home from 1978 until 1980 and that he had brought his own mother into the PMQ on CFB Namao to raise my brother and I. This seems like quite the omission does it not? It’s not like grandma popped in for a weekend or two and babysat my brother or I once or twice in the two years we lived on CFB Namao. She moved into the PMQ on the same day we moved in. She moved with us from CFB Namao to CFB Griesbach in October of 1980. Her husband Andy Anderson didn’t die until 1983.
My brother suggests that maybe the CFNIS leaned on Richard to get Richard to say what the CFNIS wanted him to say. I have a different thought. I remember when Richard was dating Vicki, he kept asking my brother and I if we would like to live in Wetaskiwin and he would get a job working as a mechanic locally. There were times when Richard was home for visit before he and Sue moved into the PMQ in August of 1980. We’d go for drives around the base and he always seemed to be certain that he was going to be out of the military and that he’d have to get a civilian job.
I think that in 1980 Richard sold my brother and I down the river in trade for what ever deal the Canadian Armed Forces was offering to service members if they would keep their mouths shut about what happened on CFB Namao. This would explain why I had to be blamed for my brother being sexually abused as well as me “liking the abuse” because it went on for so long which proved that I was a “homosexual”. We couldn’t pretend like nothing happened. Something happened, and alternative realities had to be created in order to get everyone to shut up about things.
When Richard was interviewed in 2011 he forget that grandma lived with us and he completely forget about P.S. even though he named P.S. on his on in 2006. Why? I think it would have killed Richard if what he had done in 1980 became known. What did Richard do in 1980? We will never know. He died in 2017 and he took his horrific secret to the grave with him. Was it the promise of some good promotions? He was a master corporal in 1980. He became a warrant officer around 1989. He had a problem with drinking and his anger. Did the Canadian Forces promise him that there would be no disciplinary actions taken against him for pending matters or that his previous history would be over looked at promotion time?
As I said, he’s dead and we’ll never know the truth about 1980 even though the military police the CFSIU, and the chain of command knew full well what both Captain McRae and P.S. were doing.
So yeah, I guess that in the end Richard was right.
I stuck my nose into the business of the Canadian Armed Forces and I smelt some rather rancid shit and this stench doesn’t wash out no matter how much detergent you use.
I honestly can’t remember when I started wetting the bed. It was definitely in the aftermath of the sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
I can’t see me having wet the bed too frequently when grandma was living with us.
But it did start towards the end of our stay on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
By the time I was living on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach I was frequently wetting the bed. So much so that I even had plastic sheets on my bed.
Now, this period of time was right after the sexual abuse on CFB Namao and it was also when my father’s anger with me was beginning to peak because I allowed the babysitter to molest my younger brother and I had fucked with Richard’s military career. Not bad for a 9 year old, eh?
Actually, I’m pretty sure that I wet the bed one time when Richard had taken my brother and I to spend the night at Sue’s apartment by Londonderry Mall in Edmonton before she moved into our PMQ in August of 1980, so I would have been wetting the bed sometime after the summer of 1979.
So yeah, this would have been around when I was at and the abuse was starting to get bad.
They tried diapers on me. Didn’t work, couldn’t get adolescent sized diapers I guess.
Richard was supposedly looking at a device that would give me a mild electric shock when it had detected that I had wet the bed.
Sue had gotten so fed up with my wetting the bed that she rubbed my face in my own urine soaked sheets.
Initially when I started wetting the bed I’d get a fresh change of sheets and some new pyjamas. But as my bed wetting wore on I’d have to sleep on the same sheets. As there were no more pyjama changes, I started sleeping naked.
I still remember waking up in the middle of the night or the early morning with my sheets soaking wet and cold and smelling like pee. I remember learning to sleep around the wetness.
When I was allowed to take showers, no one at school would notice that I had slept in my own urine. But when it was determined that the best way to get me to stop pissing the bed was to make me go to school without a shower that when things started to get really bad at school. Who the fuck in their right mind wants to be anywhere near a kid that smell like piss?
And kids at that age can be very vocal in their opinions of someone who smells like a rancid onion.
So no, not changing my sheets, nor not allowing me to shower, nor any of the other humiliation techniques were successful in getting me to stop wetting my bed.
I did eventually stop pissing my bed.
I was 16 when I stopped.
I had found a room to rent locally and I moved out of Richard’s house.
That would have been around January or February of 1988.
I was terrified that first night that I lived “on my own”.
Know what?
My bed sheets have been dry ever since.
As a kid my beds were always the cheap disposable foam mattress type of beds. Not too long ago, actually earlier this year, I bought my first real bed. It has a frame and a box and a mattress that’s almost 8 inches thick. The box that the mattress lays upon has a solid flat surface. And there’s a head board. And real pillows. Why didn’t I buy a real bed before? I don’t know, I really don’t. Foam mattresses with cheap boxes were always what I had. Maybe that’s what I always thought that I deserved. Maybe I was also afraid that I’d just ruin a new bed by pissing on it.
To say that I was terrified of Richard would have been a grave understatement.
Did the sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao play a role. Certainly, of that there is no doubt.
With Richard being unable to take responsibility for his family, and with Richard needing to blame others for the problems with his family, it wouldn’t be too far out of line to say that the anger, disdain, and ridicule that Richard directed towards me for having allowed the babysitter to touch my younger brother as well as for me having “fucked with” Richard’s military career was taking an emotional and psychological toll on my young and developing brain.
Am I embarrassed to share this? No, not in the slightest. I’ve gone so far beyond the point of being ashamed that I no longer care.
I’ve suffered from severe anxiety since at least 1980.
I have no doubt that my anxiety comes from my mother’s side of the family. My hospital records make note that she was extremely anxious at times and was close to a nervous breakdown after the death of her father.
Just as my father’s genes have predisposed me to suffering from depression and that the events of Canadian Forces Base Namao triggered and amplified that depression into full blown major depression I have no doubt that my mother’s genes predisposed me to anxiety and the events of Canadian Forces Base Namao triggered and amplified this into full blown anxiety.
Just as when I’d have a depressive episode when I was a kid, my anxiety attacks were seen by my father as being nothing more than a childish attempt for e to gain attention. For much of my life I internalized my anxiety attacks and my depressive crashes.
Not having friends and not having close associates means that I was able to hide a lot of these episodes. When you don’t hang out with people and when people don’t visit it’s so very easy to hide your issues and to slip through the cracks.
I’m not sure which ones were worse. The anxiety attacks or the depressions.
Some of my anxiety attacks have been brutal. They typically last for about 45 minutes to an hour. And they start of suddenly out of nowhere. I can be riding my bicycle, I can be riding my motorcycle, I can be walking, I can be watching a movie, I can even be at work when suddenly I’m overtaken with a general fear of dread. Then my heart rate will start to increase. And my heart starts to pound harder. Or at least it feels like my pulse rate is increasing. I’ve checked my pulse during an anxiety attack and my heart rate only goes up a little bit. It’s just the adrenaline amplifies everything. I get tunnel vision. And my fight or flight response takes over and I have to flee where I am.
It feels like death is upon me. I know that sounds like something that I would be happy about, but not like this.
When I have an anxiety attack I usually have to get out of any building that I am in. It feels like the walls are squeezing in on me. In my apartment that means that I have to go down the stairs. All 16 flights.
Once I get outside I just head for the widest open space I can find…….
But even outside it just feels like the sky is about to collapse on me.
5 things I can see
4 things I can touch
3 things I can hear
2 things I can smell
1 thing I can taste.
This is called “grounding” and for the most part it seems to work even though some of my more recent anxiety attacks seem immune to the grounding.
The taste one is the difficult one, I usually end up skipping that.
And just as suddenly as the anxiety attack comes, the attack goes away often leaving me completely exhausted.
Not all of my anxiety attacks happen when I’m awake. I’ve woken up with such horrific anxiety attacks. It feels like I can’t breath or it feels like my heart has stopped.
One of my most recent sleep attacks ended up with me grinding my teeth so hard that I cracked a molar and had to have it removed. My dentist was pushing me to get an implant to replace the molar. I don’t see the need to. From here on if and when I crack teeth I’m just going to have them removed. I have an appointment coming up in a couple of weeks. My dentist wants to apply filling material to the insides of my canine teeth as they’re heavily worn from grinding. If the filling material doesn’t work I’ll have the canines removed preemptively to keep from cracking them.
How long has my anxiety been going on.
When my father was stationed at Canadian Forces Base Downsview I lived in the basement of the PMQ. My bedroom used to be upstairs, but sometime in early 1986 my bedroom got moved to the basement to make way for my step brother who had been born in August of 1985. Richard would often come over to my bed and wake me up because I was making so much noise grinding my teeth. Richard had a work area in the basement across from my bedroom. Due to housing regulations on base my bedroom wasn’t allowed to have a door because military rules said that no one was allowed to sleep in the basement for fire reasons. Richard had a problem with insomnia. Which no doubt went hand in hand with his depression. Richard would often go to bed around 10 or 11 at night. He’d be awake again by 2 in the morning. He’d come downstairs to the basement to watch TV and have some cigarettes. And if he heard me grinding, he’d wake me up.
But not once did he ever take me in to get me counselling or any other help. And this is even more upsetting now that I know that as far back as 1980 I had been diagnosed as having major depression and severe anxiety.
Was Richard really this fucking stupid?
Did I suffer my entire life because Richard was just too fucking stupid to see that his son needed help?
When I read my foster care records in August of 2011 I cried.
I could have been normal, or at least a lot more normal than I am now.
Maybe I’d have teeth.
Maybe, maybe, maybe…… so many fucking maybes.
I can only dream about what could have been because I sure as hell wasn’t allowed to have what should have been.
So yeah, much like my depression, my anxiety has been a constant companion of mine.
I wonder what life would have been like if I had known that there were medications that could have treated this.
That may sound funny, but it isn’t. See, when I was a kid living under Richard’s roof my depression was just an attempt to be the centre of attention. My anxiety was just because I worried too much.
Maybe it was the military environment. I know that back in the day mental illness was a sign of weakness. Mental illness indicated that you couldn’t get your shit together.
All I know is that I’m 50 years old now and my depression and my anxiety and my fight with the Canadian Armed Forces have worn me right down to nothing.
Yes, the escitalopram has helped, but I can hear and feel my depression and anxiety demons clawing at their cage waiting to be freed when my body builds up a tolerance to the increased serotonin levels. And I’ve been told that when my anxiety and depression come crashing out of their jail things will be worse than they were before.
One of the hardest things for me to describe is depression.
I’ve been living with depression for so long now that I really don’t remember having existed any other way.
Depression is a fairly debilitating mental illness.
I don’t think that I’ve ever been truly and honestly happy for so very long now that I’ve forgotten what happy feels like.
I’ve had days in which I am so mind crushingly numb that I feel so absolutely sick.
Depression is where you can’t accept praise from people because you “know” that they’re just saying nice things to keep you from being “sad”.
Prolonged depression can cause long term changes in the brain’s wiring and the brain’s chemistry.
As a kid I used to have so much trouble getting out of bed. It’s not that I stayed up late as a kid. It’s just the the depression had such a stranglehold on me that I wanted to stay in bed and die.
I wanted to die so badly as a kid.
Contrary to public belief, depression isn’t something that one can wish away simply by smiling or thinking happy thoughts.
My depression came from two places. I’m fairly certain that I inherited depression from the paternal side of my family. And you can’t go through what I’ve gone through in life and not be somewhat depressed.
Depression as a child is just a negative feed back loop of epic proportions. When you’re depressed as a child you don’t want to hang around with other kids. When you don’t hang around with other kids, you become marked as “odd”. Kids love teasing and antagonizing “odd” misfits.
As my grade 5 teacher said. I had become the class scapegoat and everything that went wrong the other kids blamed on me.
With Captain Totzke and my father blaming me for what had occurred on CFB Namao it just drove me into such a deep fucking depression that I never surfaced again.
Is there a fix for my depression? I honestly don’t believe so. It’s been eating away at the inside of my brain for so long. And that’s not being melodramatic. That’s the truth.
Yes, I responded pretty quick and dramatically to the escitalopram, but the escitalopram hasn’t stopped the depression. It’s just raised the floor to which I can crash down to.
The depression has stolen everything from my life.
What would I have been like if I could have found a partner earlier in life?
What would I have been like if I cold have determined what my orientation was earlier in life.
What would I have accomplished in life had depression not filled my head with so much self doubt, so much self loathing, and so much self hatred?
At work I just finished a project for trending and logging the temperatures of sixteen medical fridges and freezers. I used general refrigeration components to do this. Some Dixell Universal controllers for doing the actual monitoring, TTL to RS-485 converters to allow the Dixell Universal Controllers to communicate on a MS/TP network, NIST Certified temperature probes for measuring the temperatures, and a web server to act as the front end to allow anyone anywhere on the Vancouver Coastal Health network to log in and see the temperatures, read the logs, and generate reports.
Then there’s working with IMIT to establish an active Ethernet port, get the web server a static IP address, give IMIT the MAC address of the web server to allow it onto the hospital network, have messaging allow the web server to use the MSTP server to send emails for alarms and reports.
Dixell Fridge Monitoring Project I shouldn’t get in trouble for this video – no personal information visible…..
When this project is completed the pharmacy department will also be able to monitor the fridges at Mt. St. Joseph hospital. This will be done using a Ethernet to ModBUS converter that will allow the web server to communicate via the Vancouver Coastal Intranet with a pair of Dixell Universal Controllers at Mt. St. Joe’s.
After this, pharmacy would like to expand this through the tower to pick up all of the ward fridges.
Am I proud of this?
Nope.
I feel like an idiot even talking about this because if an idiot like me can do this, then anyone else could have done it, right? My old man always said that I was just showing off by doing stupid things.
And that’s what depression does. It steals everything fucking thing from your life.
I know that I did a good job on this. But the depression monster keeps yelling at me that anyone could have done this, that I’m not smart, that this was nothing special.
And of course once those thoughts start, then everything else starts.
I’ve aborted so many projects in the past because my depression monster knew that I was too fucking stupid to see through to completion.
Even talking about this make me feel like a stupid attention seeking crybaby.
That’s how this shit works.
I don’t make the rules.
I try not to play by the stupid rules of depression.
But I’m also not able to fight them.
Many a braver man than me has lost their battle with depression.
Or how people assume that the media runs with everything presented to it.
Just recently a Twitter user that stumbled across my opinion of Medial Assistance in Dying suggested that I contact the media. The media will grab this story lickity-split!
In the over ten years that I’ve been dealing with this matter I’ve gone to the media numerous times.
A non-comprehensive list of who I’ve talked to:
CBC National
CBC Go Public
CBC The Fifth Estate
CBC The Passionate Eye
CTV W5
Global 16X9
Global National
Maclean’s
Esprit De Corps
L’ Actualite
The Edmonton Journal
The Vancouver Sun
The Toronto Star
The Ottawa Citizen
Canada Press
Paula Simmons
Jennifer Tryon
Claude Adams
Anne Marie Owens
Rachel Ward
Jenn Blair
Frédéric Zalac (As a member of the ICIJ and as a CBC reporter)
Maya Hamovitch with CTV W5
Avery Haines
Noémi Mercier
Alec Castonguay
Aedan Helmer
Justin Ling
And many, many, many more.
The only two reporters that even touched on my story have been David Pugliese and Nora Loreto
Even after the news story broke about my class action lawsuit against the Government of Canada and the Canadian Armed Forces the media showed very little interest in me.
The most significant reason why the media refuses to run this story is the sheer amount of media consolidation in this country. At one time the newspapers in this country competed with each other and fought for subscribers. Now the major newspapers are all owned by the same companies. It’s an oligopoly really.
The second most significant reason is the lack of investigative journalism, there really aren’t any investigative journalists anymore. The newsrooms have been cut to the bare bone. This is one reason why “press releases” are run almost 100% verbatim.
Another reason that can’t be overlooked is the sheer ignorance by those in the media towards how the Canadian Forces actually operate. Far too many members of the Canadian Media believe that military soldiers would KILL anyone that messed with a child. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Too many members of the Canadian Media grew up watching “Major Dad” on TV and think that this show illustrated the real life of a military family.
Most news reporters have absolutely no idea that children lived on military bases.
Most news reporters have absolutely no idea that military bases were self contained “company towns” where rank held sway and where the private police forces (both the military police and the CFSIU) prior to 1998 were under direct command of the leaders on base. To amplify the issues of the “company town” were certain sections of the National Defence Act that ensured that residents of the “company town” were legally required to obey the wishes and directives of their superiors least they face a lifetime prison sentence.
Most news reporters believe that military police officers and CFNIS Investigators are “real police” and not simply soldiers first and police officers second. Even nowadays the CFNIS, which are often trumpeted as being “independent” of the chain of command are actually under the direct command of the Vice Chief of Defence Staff. As the Military Police Complaints Commission has indicated, due to the Chain of Command structure within the Provost Marshal and the Military Police Group, investigators with the CFNIS may not even be aware of Chain of Command decisions that ultimately interfere with their investigation.
A poor understanding of the National Defence Act and the Criminal Code of Canada also contributes to the media being totally unwilling to get involved in a story like mine.
Flaws in the National Defence Act such as the 3-year-time-bar-flaw or the summary-investigation-flaw are such foreign concepts to most members of the media that they laugh at me when I suggest that the 3-year-time-bar alone prevents the investigation or charging of anyone who committed a service offence prior to 1998. A sixty year old man could in theory bring charges against his school teacher from back in the 1970s so long as the school teacher was still alive. A former military dependent who was sexually abused be a member of the Canadian Armed Forces in 1996 would NOT be able to bring charges against their abuser due to the 3-year-time-bar on all service offences.
Members of the media seem to think that Service Offences are only limited to “military type” offences. Service Offences also include all Criminal Code of Canada offences. Yes, the military couldn’t try for the crimes of “Murder, Manslaughter, and Rape” from 1950 until 1985. But under the pre-1985 Criminal Code, Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault, Buggery, Incest, Sexual Intercourse with female under the age of 14, Sexual Intercourse with female between 14 and 16, Sexual intercourse with Step-Daughter, or even Incest were not “Rape” and therefore the military had jurisdiction to try for these offences.
The media wants more victims. I don’t run a victim tracking service. And with the other kids from the different bases moving around as often as I did it’s a miracle that anyone remembers anyone else from childhood. By the time I was 12 years old I lived in 7 different PMQs on 5 difference bases in 4 different provinces. Military dependents were not tracked by DND or the CF. When we turned 18 and aged off the base we were very quickly forgotten about by the military.
The media wants quick and easy stories. Stories where everything fits together in one nice little package. This will not be one of those stories.
Martin Kruze was a victim of a child sex abuse ring at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, ON during the 1980s. Martin tried to get the police to listen to him, they wouldn’t. The police as it turned out were big fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs and couldn’t see past their own adulation of a professional NHL hockey team to understand that very bad things were happening in Harold’s house. It wasn’t until the Toronto Police Service assigned a pair of women to the investigation that things started going the right way for Martin. I guess the female officers weren’t so tied up in sports hero worship like their male counterparts were.
Martin tried to get the media to listen, the media wouldn’t listen. Gordon Stuckless was eventually sentenced to prison. But Martin would go on to commit suicide.
I can’t help but wonder what drove Martin that far. Was it the abuse? Was it the fact that no one believed him, even though Gordon Stuckless would go on to be convicted of molesting numerous boys. I’m going to go with the fact that no one believed him or listened to him
So far in my life I have endured:
Sexual abuse at the hands of a teenage male.
Sexual abuse at the hands of a military officer.
Sexual abuse at the hands of a retired member of the Canadian Forces.
Counselling at the hands of a military social worker designed to convince me that I was mentally ill because I “enjoyed” being sexually abused.
Counselling at the hands of a military social worker designed to convince me that I was responsible for my younger brother being molested.
The rage of my father who no doubt was placing special emphasis on what the military social worker was telling him due to the rank of the military social worker
The long term effects of untreated major depression and severe anxiety as the Canadian Forces could not risk me being cared for in the civilian system.
And many, many more issues.
Now, to be certain, I am not seeking M.A.i.D. solely because no one in the media believes me. But let’s be honest, being ignored by the media, and I mean the entire Canadian media, sure does help with making that final decision.
How many other former military dependents from the multitude of bases have committed suicide over the years because the Canadian Forces swept them under the rug and no one listened to them?
A person can only be tired and worn out for so long before forever sleep becomes irresistible.
Well, who knew. But apparently October 10th is “World Mental Health Day”.
Justin, like most politicians, can speak out of both sides of his mouth.
What’s funny about Justin proclaiming “World Mental Health Day” is that his Minister of National Defence, Harjit Sajjan, has been going out of his way to hide any historical event that would have damaged the mental health of children living on the Canadian Forces bases in Canada.
I don’t think that my mental health has ever been decent in any sense.
It’s always been so hard to try be “normal” while knowing that there was something horrifically wrong. You have to remember that from October of 1980 until August of 2011 I had absolutely no idea of the mental health issues that I had been flagged with. Everything had been hidden from me by my own father. Instead of getting me the help I needed, he drilled it into my head that I was just an immature cry-baby looking for attention.
As far as I was concerned, everything that was going wrong in my life was because I was a fuck-up.
I had no idea why I couldn’t make friends.
I had no idea why no one really liked me.
I had no idea why I always seemed to be on the receiving end of everyone’s derision.
After all, if there was something wrong with me, if I had been diagnosed as having issues, Richard would have done something, right?
Now, the laughable thing about World Mental Health day is that it is almost Im-fucking-possible to get help with mental health.
And believe me, I’ve tried.
But I think that even mental health “professionals” realize that there really is no way to actually fix mental health. Sure, you can medicate mental health issues, but you can’t fix them. You can teach a person with mental health issues how to deal with their problems, but that’s still not fixing the issues.
No, fixing mental health problems in the typical sense simply means teaching the person with the mental health issues how to keep their problems to themselves and how to internalize their problems so as to not cause others discomfort.
Tell me, how do you think the damage that Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke did to my brain from age 9 until age 11 can be undone? Just not thinking about it isn’t the correct answer. Nor does adopting the mantra “sometimes bad things happen to good people and if we just smile everything will be fine”.
How does one undo the sexual abuse that one suffered from the fall of 1978 until the spring of 1980 when they were 7 to 8 years old? Especially sexual abuse at the hands of a military officer and his 14 year old altar boy that often involved alcohol and physical and psychological abuse.
How does one undo the years of neglect and abuse at the hands of his own father who was found to be unable and unwilling to take responsibility for his own family, often blamed others for problems with his family, expected others to solve the problems with his family, changed his stories frequently, and told people what he thought they wanted to hear.
You can’t undo this type of damage.
I spent my entire youth being blamed by my father for having allowed the babysitter, P.S., to touch my younger brother.
In 2011 I was told by a case manager with the CFNIS that my complaint against P.S. was not credible. At the end of the investigation in 2011 I was told that the CFNIS could not find anything to indicate that P.S. was capable of the crimes I had accused him of.
During the 2011 CFNIS investigation it was suggested that I was a “societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military” and that I was only making my complaint against P.S. to get some easy money.
The Minister of National Defence, Harjit Sajjan accused me of playing games and of playing an angle when I asked him for help in my matter.
In 2020 the Military Police Complaints Commission released their report into their review of my complaint against the CFNIS. The MPCC came to the conclusion that the Military Police in 1980 were well aware of the actions of P.S. involving young children on Canadian Forces Base Namao, that it was P.S.’s involvement with molesting these young children that brought Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae to the attention of the military police, and that Captain McRae’s defence counsel tried using P.S.’s molestation of younger children to discredit his testimony against Captain McRae. The Military Police Complaints Commission stated that the CFNIS was in possession of these court martial records during the period of time that the CFNIS was investigating my complaint against P.S.
I get told that I should simply move on. That P.S. was the true victim in this matter, suggesting that I’m just some sort of whiny cry baby who just wants to shift the blame to P.S..
So again, please humour me on World Mental Health Day. Tell me what exactly it is that I have to do in order to make you happy and how I can keep my mental health issues from making you uncomfortable.
If you let me know, I’ll try my best to keep the damage internalized.
Well, went for a tattoo today and everything was going fine until right near the end.
Started getting really sweaty. My pulse was tripping along at about 125 bpm. I stood up, and promptly collapsed.
This isn’t the first time I’ve had syncope.
Never fainted while getting a tattoo before, but I am new to escitalopram.
So, I ventured off to St. Paul’s got an ECG and a bunch of blood tests just to make sure that it wasn’t the escitalopram causing me trouble.
Now I’m just sitting here in the waiting area for the results of a second round of blood tests.
The doctor doesn’t seem to think it’s anything serious from the results of the first test.
I’ve always wondered if my ease at hospitals is due to the amount of time I spent in hospitals when my father was stationed at CFB Shearwater or the amount of time I spent getting tested and checked out in Edmonton.
I don’t remember much about my stays at the IWK, but I do remember going to a park a lot as a kid.
In 2015 I went to Halifax, Nova Scotia for a visit. I hadn’t been back in Nova Scotia since when my father was posted to CFB Summerside in 1977.
I spent the week wandering around the city. Paid a visit over to CFB Shearwater and saw the PMQ that I had lived in.
On one of my trips downtown I visited the Halifax Public Gardens. The park just seemed so familiar. Kinda like how CFB Shearwater had a vague familiarity to it.
On my way back to Vancouver I stopped over in Calgary for a few days to see Marie. I told her about my trips around Halifax and my visits to the Citadel and CFB Shearwater. I mentioned to her my trip to the Halifax Public Gardens. I asked her how many times she had taken me there as the park had seemed really familiar to me. She said that she had never taken me to the public gardens. She said that she rarely drove to Halifax except when absolutely necessary as she hated driving over the bridges.
The answer was in my records from the IWK children’s hospital.
On each of my admissions to the hospital Richard had signed a permission for for the hospital staff to take me from the hospital for “walks”.
The IWK Children’s Hospital is one block away from the Halifax Public Gardens.
IWK Children’s Hospital
So, it wasn’t my family taking me to the IWK Children’s Hospital. It was either the staff or volunteers at the IWK Children’s Hospital. And I was in that hospital frequently.
This one always strikes one when I read it
Working in a hospital is an interesting career.
I was hired here as a 4th class power engineer in the physical plant servicing the HVAC equipment, steam systems, chilled water systems, condenser water systems, and heating hot water systems.
I still remember the first time I got called up to a ward to consult on a patient. I was over in the power house working on a regulator. The chief engineer at the time called me on the radio and asked me to head up to 7C and speak to the unit coordinator. When I got up to the ward the staff were all like “See, I told you”. I found the unit coordinator and asked them why they wanted to see me. They escorted me over to a patient room and asked me if I could show them how to remove nipple rings from a patient that needed to go for an MRI. These were segment rings. Unlike a captive bead ring, a segment ring doesn’t have a ball to pop out. The ring must be slightly stretched for the segment to release.
Over the years I’ve been called to emergency a couple of times for the same thing… how do we get this out.
Twice I’ve been called up to give advice on how to remove roofing nails from roofers. One guy had shot the roofing nail through his knuckle and the other guy had shot the nail through his safety boots and into his big toe joint. All I could say is for the ER staff to cut the head side of the nail off as close to the knuckle as possible and then use vice grips to pull the nail through. The flutes on a roofing nail make it almost impossible to pull a roofing nail in reverse without great effort and without doing damage to the bone. Yep, guess who got asked to supply and use the Dremel tool.
The funny thing about these two guys is neither of them seemed in great pain. But none the less the staff administered ketamine to the patients before removing the nails. One thing I’ll say about ketamine is that stuff acts super fast. One minute the guys are talking, the next minute their eyes roll back and their jaw goes slack.
One nightshift I had to change a control panel on an operating room table that had an open heart surgery procedure in progress.
I had to fix an HVAC mixing box in a maternity room where a delivery was in progress.
One weekend I got called up to the CCU because the code blue button didn’t work. The charge nurse directed me over to the room. When I got there I had the pleasure of watching the code blue team working on a teenager.
I’ve be on elevators when the morgue stretcher is brought on with a deceased heading to the morgue cooler.
I’ve removed hair from the garburator in the autopsy suite.
I got called into the autopsy suite one day. Pathology had called the plant office saying they had a problem with a lift. Being a lift, that was automatically assigned to mechanical. When I got to the suite there was a covered body on one of the exam tables and the battery operated lift was in the lowered position. I plugged the charger in to see if it was charging the battery. Nope, it was dead. I said that I’d go get an electrician and see if they could autopsy the charger and figure out what went wrong.
There are many more stories I could tell, but that would be a complete other blog entry.
As I’ve said previously, working has probably been the only thing that’s saved my life over the years and has made my life bearable. And I don’t just mean at St. Paul’s.
I’ve always had after school jobs, or weekend jobs pretty well since I was 10 and living on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach. Richard and Sue would pretty well kick my brother and I out of the house from the time we got home after school until bedtime. I’m not sure where my brother ever buggered off to, but I’d usually head off base to the local malls.
Cleaned pet cages, cleaned pizza pans, cleaned kitchens. The money wasn’t much. But it was just being around adults who didn’t treat me like Richard and Sue did that made the difference.
Anyways………..
I spent some time working in the pharmacy today. Finally getting the alarm monitoring system installed after much delay.
Pharmacy Dixell System
This is the first monitor. There will be twelve others. They all network together on an RS-485 bus.
Nothing too fancy, but it will allow for logging of the temperatures and generating alarm messages if coolers start to get out of range.
Me working on a pneumatic relay.
This was me servicing a pneumatic relay for a steam valve.
I’ll probably post more things from work.
Nothing too fancy as it’s a hospital and I can’t take pictures of patients, or anything that could identify a patient. And as a rule I tend to avoid taking pictures of other employees. Much easier to not hurt feelings that way. But there are a ton of fans and pumps and heat exchangers and compressors and all sorts of other things that might look interesting.
A view of Vancouver
A panorama view of a smokey Vancouver.Opened the side of the building to insert the new 3-Tesla MRI MachineSometimes the dietary elevator stops on three. You have to get out here as the elevator won’t start up again. On the other side of the door is the ICU unit.Remember our summer? 39.6C on the roof of St. Paul’s with a humidity level of 19.4%
Okay, so this topic came up in the last post, and I thought what the hell if I’m writing the story of my life can’t do it without mentioning this.
I have in fact collected welfare a few time in life.
I’ve also collected U.I. and E.I. a few times in life as well.
The first time that I collected welfare was in Edmonton, AB. I forget the exact dates and my tax records aren’t exactly clear, but I was on welfare from around September of 1991 until February of 1992.
The thing I remember the most about applying is (a) how fucking humiliating it was, and (b) because I had been born in Nova Scotia, Alberta was willing to buy me a plane ticket “back home”. I say “back home” as I hadn’t lived in Nova Scotia since I was 5 years old.
Why didn’t I call my father for money? There is no fucking way on Earth I would have ever called him asking for money. You just learnt as a kid to never ask him for money. You just didn’t. Most times he’d just answer that he was “broke” and didn’t have money, but if you could wait for a month he might have some money then. And this would be for amounts like $20. So asking him for $300 to cover rent for the month would have been out of the question.
Marie didn’t have much money, but she did help me out with groceries a couple of times.
Edmonton was a hell hole in the early ’90s. It was in the midst of a recession. I tried delivering Pizza, but that was super risky walking into some parts of town with money in your pocket. I did “dial-a-bottle” delivery for a while. Same risk as the pizza though, but this time not only could they steal your money, they’d steal the booze too. I worked at a car wash. Nothing better than working in a car wash in Edmonton in the winter.
I moved to Vancouver in February of 1992. The job I had come down for ended up getting moved back by a couple of months because the two mechanics that were supposed to be leaving Lions Gate Lanes stayed for longer as they were having issues getting their venture going.
I applied for welfare in BC. Only thing is at the time unless you lived in BC for sixth months you couldn’t get welfare. I was given two options. A free bus ticket back to Edmonton or I could go stay at Catholic Charities Hostel for Men on the periphery of the infamous Downtown East Side. I chose the men’s hostel.
At the hostel you got a couple of meal vouchers. One for breakfast, and one for lunch. I would use the breakfast voucher and trade the lunch voucher for singles. Singles were single cigarettes.
I started smoking around age 13. My younger brother was smoking before I was. Richard didn’t care. By the time I was 18 I was up to two packs a day. By the time I hit Vancouver in ’92 I was still at two packs a day. Singles weren’t enough. So I ended up picking up butts out of ashtrays and using the unburnt tobacco to roll smokes in rolling papers. I was able to find piecemeal work, but I was only allowed to stay at Catholic Charities for 6 weeks. After six weeks you had to get out and find smoother place to stay.
Luckily the job at Lions Gate finally opened up.
I worked at Lions Gate from June of 1992 until June of 1993. The reason why the two previous mechanics left was that the owner of the shopping mall was not going to renew the lease for Lions Gate Lanes and Brunswick was shutting the centre down at the end of the ’92 – ’93 league season. I stayed on with Brunswick for the dismantling of the centre. I then got hired on by Larco to help build the new centre. When Larco cancelled the lease for Lions Gate Lanes, they thought that they would simply walk in and operate the centre for a couple of years until the redevelopment happened. The only problem with that is Brunswick had years of experience repossessing bankrupt bowling centres. We had Lions Gate Lanes stripped to the bare walls in 12 days.
This left Larco in a lurch as they had promised the leagues that there would be bowling for the ’93 – ’94 bowling season. But Lions Gate Lanes was an empty shell.
Warren Flanagan with Brunswick Corp said that there was a job waiting for me in Mississauga if I wanted it.
Phil had been hired on by Larco to oversee the construction of the centre. Phil called me and asked me if I wanted to help build the new centre. I said sure. Larco hired a company from the states to supply lanes, pinsetters, scoring equipment, and the rest of the capital equipment. It took about six week, but we built that 36 lane centre. The only problem was the pinsetters were a mishmash of used American and Japanese Brunswick machines. Some of them even came from a flood damaged centre in the states and were super rusted. The electrics were iffy on the machines and not a single one of them had been overhauled.
The bowlers were rightfully pissed off. The lanes weren’t ready for the start of the season. In fact, the lanes weren’t ready until about 2 weeks later. But the pinsetters were in such rough condition that they were having jams and blackouts non-stop.
One of the machines couldn’t detect standing pins. And this was the lane that the League President was bowling on. He told Phil that if the machine screwed up once while he was bowling on it he was taking the entire league and they’d move to a different centre. Phil begged me to keep it running. I tried to keep it going without having it shut down or sweep standing pins. Unfortunately I got my arm crushed in the machine.
After I got my arm free of the machine I stumbled my way up to the front and I asked Phil for a ride to the hospital. He told me to take the bus. I quit then and there. The next morning I called Warren and asked him if the job was still open in Ontario.
Because I had opened an U.I. claim when Lions Gate Lanes closed and we were all laid off, my claim was still open. When I went to the U.I. office a couple of days later I explained what had happened. They considered that I had already been through the waiting period and therefore they would get my payments underway right away.
With my final cheque from Park Royal Lanes and my U.I. cheque, and my savings I moved to Toronto in late November of ’93.
The job waiting for me was at Brunswick Mississauga lanes. I went in and met the manager. The manager said that he had heard excellent things about my from both Warren and my previous centre manager Wendy. I can’t remember the manager’s name, but I can remember the head mechanic’s name. Don W. The manager got on the intercom and called to the back. As soon as Don emerged from the walkway I could tell this wasn’t going to work. “I told you, no one from the fucking West Coast is going to tell me who the fuck I have to hire”. Don and the manager went into the office and had a yelling match. Don emerged and look at me and said “get your stuff, we’re going to the back, and don’t get comfortable because the first time you fuck up I sending you out the fucking door.” I lasted at Mississauga lanes for about three weeks. U.I. reviewed my termination and determined that it wasn’t justified. As my claim was in British Columbia they’d have to transfer the paperwork over. In the meantime I was now collecting welfare in Ontario. Once the U.I. office got the paperwork sent out it was a few weeks for the the processing to take place. Once that was done I was back on U.I. again.
To keep rent down as low as possible I had been staying at the Salvation Army down by Moss Park.
Toronto wasn’t great at the time. Job interviews weren’t leading to job offers. So I ended up heading back to Vancouver. The only thing I hadn’t counted on was the 6 weeks that it was going to take to change my mailing address. They would also have to re-evaluate my claim as I had moved to a different claims jurisdiction. And of course, they’d have to transfer my paperwork back to British Columbia.
So I ended up receiving emergency welfare from the BC Government. No wait period this time, but it would be clawed back from my U.I. cheques when they started showing up.
Why didn’t I call Richard and ask Richard for money? Not worth it. Not worth the humiliation. Not worth the degradation.
I ended up getting a room at the Salvation Army Dunsmuir House for Men. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was wrong with this place. Someone broke into my room and stole my knapsack and when I called the VPD the Sgt. responding laughed at me when I said I wanted to file a report.
Most of the men in this place were angry. And I mean really angry. Fights would start over the slightest issue.
In 2011 I would learn that the Salvation Army Dunsmuir House for Men was a Federal half-way house and housed men who had just been released from prison. At the time when I moved into the Dunsmuir I just needed a cheap room. No one ever told me that this place also housed freshly released prisoners.
I’ll save this for another post, but my return to Vancouver was when I tried to work up the courage to jump off the Lions Gate Bridge. Instead of working up the courage to jump off the bridge, I worked up a case of pneumonia.
I ended up getting work at a small bowling centre in East Richmond around the end of June. I was there until 1999 when I got into commercial property management. And as they say the rest is history.
So yeah, the first part of my 20s was very, very rough.
Which is why when I read Richard’s statement that he gave to the CFNIS 2011, I choked. He made it sound as if I kept calling him non-stop for money and that he had been giving me money whenever I asked for it.
Did the CFNIS suggest to Richard what he should say?
Was Richard really so keen to play the victim that he said what he said?
Was Richard just vengeful?
This will always be one of life’s little mysteries because Richard is dead.
In this post I talk about my mother. Not much to say as I really don’t know much about her.
But one thing I have learnt after having talked to her in 2013 to 2015 is that Richard Wayne Gill destroyed just about every life that he came in contact with.
Marie Annette Jacqueline Wudrich is my mother.
She was born in Hull, Quebec in December of 1946. The same year that Richard was.
Similar to my father, I know nothing about her really.
I know nothing about her parents other than her father died around 1974 due to a heart attack and her mother died from an epileptic seizure.
She had two brothers. Jean-Yves and Albert.
Albert Dagenais and my father had to take the same educational upgrading prior to joining the Royal Canadian Navy in 1963. In 1965 when Marie went to visit Al in Halifax that is where she met Richard. At the time Al told Marie to steer clear of Richard as Richard was a good guy, but he messed around with women. Marie didn’t listen. Richard’s skills were too good for her to resist.
Marie and Richard were married in 1968.
After the HMCS Kootenay incident in 1969 Richard became like an animal. His drinking was out of hand and his anger could be set off with little provocation.
Marie was having second thoughts about the marriage but she ended up pregnant with me around the end of December 1970. This apparently happened in a snow bank because Richard couldn’t wait until they got back to the apartment they were living in.
I don’t remember much of my childhood with her. She left around the summer of 1977 on CFB Summerside. I would have been about 5. I do remember that she used to do yoga a lot, and one of her moves was to have me stand on her feet as she was laying on her back. She would then straighten up her legs and lift me up.
She bowled in one of the 5-pin leagues at the base recreation centre.
She was the one that would read books to me, I don’t ever remember Richard reading a book to me.
I very vaguely remember the fights and the arguments between Richard and Marie. I also very vaguely remember the sleep overs and visits that I would often have.
I remember Marie driving the big black Thunderbird whereas Richard was always riding his motorcycle. I remember her always getting panicky driving over the two bridges in Halifax.
Once we arrived on CFB Summerside I do remember her crying a lot. There was a lot of door slamming and yelling.
Then one day Marie took my brother and I over to another PMQ. She said that no one loved her, that I didn’t love her, that my brother didn’t love her. And then she was gone.
I was 5. My brother would have been about 3. This is probably one reason he doesn’t have any memories of her or what Shearwater and Summerside were like.
The next time I saw Marie was just after we had moved to CFB Namao in Alberta, so this would have been after August of 1978. I’m fairly certain that this was before Andy Anderson slipped and fell in the bathtub. Grandma had told me about the visit. Grandma also said that I was never to tell Richard about the visit otherwise this would be the last time that Marie would come to see us.
Richard wasn’t living with us on base, it was just grandma and Andy. After Andy’s fall in the bathtub then it was just grandma. So, for grandma to arrange a visit with Marie wouldn’t have been an issue, but grandma knew there would be trouble if Richard found out that grandma had allowed Marie to see my brother and I.
Fr L to R: Margaret Anderson, Marie Gill, my brother, me. I remember this picture being taken. For obvious reasons we were never given copies of this I got this in December of 2013.
In the late spring of 1982 Richard and Sue got married. My brother and I were given $50 each and told to go to the mall and hang out for the day and not come back until it started to get dark.
In the summer of 1982 Richard dropped my brother and I off in Calgary with Marie. I honestly have no idea how the hell this got worked out. But Richard wanted to take Sue to Banff for camping. I wouldn’t find out until after Richard picked my brother and I up that Richard and Sue had gone for their honeymoon.
The next time I would see my mother was on my birthday in 1982. We were living on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach at the time. If it wasn’t for my foster care records I would never have known the details of this.
Marie showed up to take me out for my birthday. Richard was away on a training exercise otherwise Marie would never have dared to step foot on a military base. Sue allowed Marie to take me, but Sue was not going to allow Marie to take my brother as well. Was Sue being spiteful or was Sue just worried that Marie might run off with Richard’s kids? Either is possible.
What I remember the most about the day is that Marie slammed on the brakes of her car before we drove off base. She was angry. Very angry. I could see the anger seething out of her. Her friend Karen was asking Marie to calm down. Marie threw the car in reverse and drove backwards back to the PMQ. She slammed on the brakes again and told me to get out. Then she drove off again.
The social service reports talk about this and how I had emotionally crashed and wouldn’t talk to anyone for about a week.
I wouldn’t see Marie again until the summer of 1990 when I took my father up on his invitation for me to move back to Alberta with him on his final posting so that we could “try to be a family again”.
Just after we got settled into PMQ #120 at 13711 – 102nd street uncle Doug showed up. His truck had broken down north of the city and his pregnant wife was with the truck and he needed someone to replace the water pump. Richard voluntold me to go fix it. So I took Doug over to Crappy Tire, we bought water, coolant, a new water pump, a new thermostat, gaskets, RTV Sealant, and a new belt. And when I say we, I mean me.
Doug and I drove up to Bon Accord in my Plymouth Horizon.
Two things we talked about on the way up was if I wanted to see my mother. Doug knew where my mother was but Marie wasn’t sure if I wanted to see her. So I told Doug that I was up for a meeting. This is also when Doug wanted to know if I wanted to get my metis papers. Doug said that I was not to tell my father about Marie or the metis papers as both would enrage Richard.
Marie and I met at the food court in North Gate Mall.
There were no tears, or hugs, or crying.
We were both heavily damaged and it showed.
I went to see Marie a few times at the acreage she and her husband Art owned out by Wabamum Lake.
Richard had bought a house in Morinville off of one of his airforce buddies.
I didn’t last too long in that house, maybe a week or two, before Sue and I had a row over a telephone call. There was probably more to Sue kicking me out of the house than just that phone call. I think Richard had lied to her and said that I was going to go back to school.
I ended up staying at the YMCA in downtown Edmonton for a few days. Luckily I still had my money from the Canshare job.
I ended up staying with Marie out at the acreage. Marie and her husband Art had separate bedrooms. When I came to stay Marie gave me her bedroom and she took the fold out in the living room.
Marie had poodles.
One of the first things that became apparent was that Marie was very racist as was Art. At the time Marie worked for the “Alberta Report” which was part of the lunatic right. It wasn’t uncommon for the words n***er or c**n or p**i to be said in their household.
One time Marie and I were coming back to the acreage from Edmonton. We stopped at a Dairy Queen in Stony Plain. As we were eating our food Marie started to get a look of disgust on her face. She kept nodding for me to look behind me. So I turned around and looked. There was an older East Indian couple having burgers and fries. I looked back at her and asked “what?”. She said “those people don’t belong here. They’re going to ruin this country”.
I spent the next few days after work looking for an apartment in the city.
Sometime after my brother arrived from Ontario, Sue kicked him out of the house in Morinville as well. Richard dumped my brother off at my place stating that looking after my brother was the least I could do considering how much my father had done raising my brother and I. My brother didn’t last too long at my place, three days tops.
Crazy Walter, the perverted landlord had called me at work one day at the Bronx complaining about the loud music coming from my apartment. And in three days he had eaten all of the groceries in my apartment.
Marie picked my brother up and took him out to the acreage. He wouldn’t be at the acreage too long before he’d be sent back to Morinville. I don’t exactly understand how that worked out other than my brother would have been 16 at the time and after all these years of claiming to have sole custody Richard couldn’t just throw a 16 year old out on the streets. I’m thinking that If my brother stayed with my mother Richard would have had to cough up child support until my brother’s 18th birthday. I was 18 when Sue kicked me out, so tough titty for me.
I worked at the Bronx Bowling centre on 127th street from August of 1990 until June of 1991. At the time I only had grade 8. But I had good skills in electronics and I could repair the circuit boards in the pinsetting equipment, so I was a good find for Sports Holdings Ltd. But the job didn’t pay much above welfare wages.
Marie embarrassed the fuck out of me when she hired an exotic signing dancer for my birthday in September of 1990. To be honest she didn’t know about what I had been through for the previous ten years. Marie also probably didn’t know that except for my 14th birthday in September of 1985 I really hadn’t had any birthday parties since she left in 1977. But it was embarrassing none the less. Marie had set this up with Kathy Forrester, the manager of the centre, and Val, the league coordinator.
One of the bowlers in one of the leagues had told me that I could become a courier and make lots of money and that this would be a great fit for someone who didn’t have technical diplomas or a strong educational background.
Art helped me to modify my car into a miniature car van by removing the rear seats and building a plywood parcel platform.
Marie asked me why I quit a job where everyone liked me. I told her that I was sick and tired of not ever being able to get above welfare wages with the exception of the Canshare Cabling job. She asked me why I didn’t just apply to technical school to get my certificates. When I told her that I only had a grade 8 education she went through the roof. “That fucking asshole Richard! What the fuck has he done? Grade 8 was good enough for him so it’s good enough for you?”.
She got me the phone number and the address of the office where I’d have to go to apply for my grade 12 G.E.D. In two months I had my grade 12 G.E.D..
Sometime after my brother had arrived in Alberta and had visited Marie a few times at the acreage I went to the acreage for a weekend. As soon as I walked in the door, she said “Sit down, we need to talk”. She was fucking pissed. She said “Tell me about this fucking babysitter”. I looked at her in shock. I never told her about P.S.. The only person who would have told her would have been my brother. I said “What babysitter?”. She said “The one who molested your brother, did this asshole touch you too?”
At that point in time it was about ten years since the abuse on CFB Namao had come to an end. At that point in time it was less than 7 years since my last session with Captain Terry Totzke who had insisted that I was a homosexual and that I had allowed P.S. to molest my younger brother. At that point in time it was less than 4 years since Richard had laid a massive beating on me because my younger brother was getting in to trouble that Richard had deemed was obviously a direct result of me having allowed the babysitter to touch my younger brother.
I got up from the kitchen table. I walked out the door. She kept yelling at me for me to come back and tell her what had happened to my younger brother.
I drove back to Edmonton. It was so fucking tempting to drive the my car into an overpass embankment or an overpass support. I pulled over to the side of the Yellowhead and I cried for a while realizing that I was never going to be free of CFB Namao, it was always going to be coming for me, and now here was my own mother blaming me for what I had obviously made the babysitter do.
I went up to CFB Namao for the final time and talked to the military police about laying charges against P.S.. Nope, he’s a civilian, blah-blah-blah…..
I didn’t talk to my mother for a while after that.
We met up somewhere, I can’t remember where, but we went out for dinner.
On the way back she asked me a very peculiar question. A question that still haunts me to this day.
As we pulled into the driveway of the acreage she said she wanted to ask me a question. She said that she didn’t want to upset me like the last time but she wanted an answer.
“Did your father ever touch you?”
It took me a bit before I answered. All I could say to Marie is that I was pretty sure that he never touched me, but that if I had been born a girl I don’t think that I would have been safe from Richard.
Marie never pushed that question again. She would never say why she had asked me that question in the first place.
I ended up on welfare not too long after I started working for the courier company. The one thing they never tell you about being a courier driving your own vehicle is that it is deadly expensive for the first couple of years until you establish yourself.
Marie helped me with the welfare applications.
She didn’t understand why I didn’t want to do a refrigeration apprenticeship with Art.
At that point in my life I still had a very low opinion of myself and I didn’t think that I would ever find meaningful employment.
Lynnwood Lanes in Edmonton was advertising for a head mechanic for their Brunswick pinsetters. I didn’t have the Brunswick factory certification required, but the centre manager who interviewed me said that he knew of a few centres in the Vancouver area that would probably hire me and send me for certification in Michigan if they liked me.
I had no money other than my welfare cheque so Marie agreed to drive to Burnaby, BC with me to go for an interview at Brentwood lanes.
On the way down and on the way back we fought like cats and dogs. I was too much like my father apparently. I wasn’t telling her the truth about the babysitter. Why wasn’t I interested in women? Was I an alcoholic like Richard?
I didn’t get the job at Brentwood, but during the interview the manager gave me the phone number for a Brunswick owned and operated bowling centre in West Vancouver. He said to call the centre in about one month as he heard that two of their mechanics were leaving to open their own bowling centre.
When I got back to Edmonton I called the phone number. I gave Phil some of my references and contacts for him to check. I called back a couple of days later. I was told that if I wanted to start at the end of the month the job was mine. So I decided to not pay rent with my last welfare cheque. I quietly cleared out and cleaned my apartment. And without telling anyone I moved to Vancouver.
When I got to Vancouver I telephoned Marie to let her know where I was.
She fucking exploded. “You goddamn little bastard, you don’t care who you walk over, you’re just like Richard”. She then told me that she never wanted to hear from me again and that I was never to contact her again.
She slammed the phone down.
I decided to wait a couple of months before trying to call her back.
The acreage where she lived was on a party line. I called her a couple of times, and after letting the phone ring for a while one of the other residents on the party line would pick up and ask me to not let the phone ring for so long.
In 2013 I had to track Marie down to ask her some questions in relation to a series of answers that I had received from my father when I examined him for my application for judicial review in the Federal Court of Canada.
I knew the company that Art had worked for and as it turns out Art’s son had purchased the company years ago and was now the president. I gave them my phone number to pass on to Terry. Terry called me and gave me Marie’s phone number.
I called Marie. I used my dead name when I spoke with her. There was no way she would have even known that I had legally changed my name and I didn’t want to confuse her. The first thing she said is “I thought you were dead”. The news that I was in fact still alive and not dead didn’t seem to impress her too much. I got the sense the she had long ago resigned herself to leaving the past in the past and never thinking about it much anymore.
She went on to explain that when she hit 65 and retired she had to prove that she had had children when she applied for CPP. When she applied for my birth certificate she was told that my certificate was sealed and unavailable.
I explained to her that I had changed my name and why I had changed my name.
She asked me if I was gay. I didn’t answer. She said that she suspected that my father was and that there had been some questionable incidents on Shearwater, but that that type of stuff happens when guys spend so much time together on the ships with no women.
She asked me why I hadn’t tried to call her before. I told her that I had tried to call their acreage in the summer of 1992 after I thought she would have calmed down but there was never any answer. She explained that Art and her sold the acreage that spring. They went off to Regina and stayed in one of Terry’s houses there while Art was working on a gas compressor. After that they moved to Kelowna and stayed at another one of Terry’s houses while Art was working on an ammonia refrigeration plant. Then they moved to Calgary and stayed in one of Terry’s houses again. Then they moved up to Edmonton and stayed in another one of Terry’s houses while Art was doing a refrigeration job for Labatt’s. Then they were off to Peachland, and a few other places before both Marie and Art retired and moved into another one of Terry’s houses in Calgary.
I told her about the judicial review and that I wanted to ask her some question and that I’d like to come out to visit her.
I saw her over the xmas holidays of 2013.
Art and Marie were living in one of Terry’s houses. Terry had purchased various houses in cities throughout western Canada for the technicians with his refrigeration company to stay at when they were in town servicing equipment. And I should clarify, Terry’s company didn’t service refrigerators or air conditioners. They serviced ammonia refrigeration plants in hockey rinks and breweries, they also serviced natural gas compressors at natural gas plants. Big ticket items. So having these houses made sense.
Anyways, the house was barren. Not too much in the way of furnishings. Marie had a stockpile of pictures that I never knew existed which we took to Staples and had scanned.
Sadly Art and Marie were even more racist than the last time I had seen them in the early ’90s.
I think that old age and resentment had turned her into a bitter person.
Marie didn’t really venture out anywhere except to smoke on the front porch.
Marie and Art were content to watch Fox News and COPS all day long. It was fucking weird. When COPS was on Marie would make the obvious comments that n***ers weren’t as advanced as whites and that’s why they’re always being arrested. Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi was apparently a muslim terrorist who had no business being the mayor of a Canadian city.
Art hauled out some cassettes that he was proud of. David Allen Coe and a bunch of other overtly racist “novelty country and western signers” that were so racist in their lyrics that even the profoundly deaf could hear the dog whistles.
I got the answers that I needed of the past that I needed. But there were many more that Marie feigned ignorance about. It wasn’t until after I showed her the conversations that I had with Pat Longmore that she had admitted that Richard got physically violent with not only her, but with my brother and I as well. She admitted that we had gone to stay with various people until Richard would cool down.
I showed her the email I had received from the PEI government stating that Richard had never been granted custody of my brother and I. She said that it was because it wasn’t the civilian courts that had granted Richard custody. It had been the Canadian Forces Judge Advocate General that had issued Richard custody of my brother and I. I explained to her that the Judge Advocate General never became involved with civilian matters in Canada, especially not matters of child custody.
She explained that Richard started drinking hard on Summerside. The posting to Summerside wasn’t one that Richard really wanted, but he was wearing out his welcome on Shearwater with his antics. Richard had started getting even more physical on Summerside with Marie as Marie’s brother Al was no longer around to serve as a deterrent to Richard. After Richard had come home one night after drinking and smashed up everything in the basement out of frustration she decided that she needed to get my brother and I away from Richard. She was going to take my brother and I to stay with Uncle Al in Dartmouth. She told Richard that she was leaving for a while and that she was taking my brother and I. She said that a couple of days later the military police from CFB Summerside attended the PMQ and told Marie that if she attempted to leave the island with my brother and I that the military police from CFB Halifax would be waiting for her on the other side and that she would be charged with child endangerment and kidnapping. Marie said that a few days later that an officer from the Judge Advocate General’s office had come to the PMQ and served her with papers that showed that the office of the JAG had just granted Richard sole custody and that she was to vacate the PMQ and that if she ever came back that she’d be charged with trespassing on a defence establishment.
I should clarify something peculiar about the house we lived in while my father was stationed at CFB Summerside. The house, which is at 353 High Street in the City of Summerside is not on what was Canadian Forces Base Summerside. So how could the military police have had jurisdiction? The housing development that we lived in was part of the Hillcrest Housing Development. It was built in the late ’50s by a private company specifically for the Canadian Armed Forces. The housing development was then leased to the Department of National Defence on a perpetual lease which ended when CFB Summerside shut down in the ’90s. Due to language contained in both the National Defence Act and the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations any property that the Department of National Defence leases is then considered to be a defence establishment and the military has jurisdiction.
The famous story Richard used to regale everyone with about how I hated my brother so much that I pushed him and his walker down the basement stairs in Shearwater was a wee bit of an exaggeration on Richard’s part. Richard was getting drunk and watching hockey on TV. Marie was in the basement doing washing. Richard was yelling at me to get my mother to come get my brother as my brother was bothering Richard while Richard was watching his hockey. Being that I was 3 years old at the time I opened the door to the basement to go tell my mother that my father wanted her to come get my brother. According to Marie, before I even got two steps down the basement stairs the walker came crashing down the stairs. Richard was furious because now his hockey game was interrupted for a trip to the hospital. She knew who was to blame, but Richard would never own up to it.
Another story she laid to waste was the crashing of the Thunderbird. First, she corrected me with the fact that the T-bird belonged to Richard and not her. Then she said that the crash was not caused by another driver like Richard had told me. No one ran a red light. No one rear ended him and pushed him into the intersection. No one had cut him off. He had been drinking at the mess and wanted her to come pick him up. When she got to the mess Richard insisted that he was going to drive home. The crash happened on the base. Richard got off the base proper and onto the PMQ patch. He was speeding and he missed a curve in the living quarters area. He totalled the T-bird in an area where the speed limit was 10 km/h. I didn’t go to IWK Hospital for stitches. I went to the base infirmary for stitches. Bill Parker and Bob Wrightson took the car over to a garage that Richard, Bill, and Bob owned out in Western Passage. The car was scrapped as Richard couldn’t afford to fix it.
I asked her if she had ever heard about the fight between Sue and Richard in the summer of 1985. She said no. But she also said that her and Richard had finally signed their divorce papers that summer. Apparently Richard was refusing to sign the papers until Marie agreed to not make a claim against the land he owned in Nova Scotia. Marie never did say what agreement her and Richard ever came to over this land. But apparently in the summer of 1985 the divorce papers were signed. This one has always caused me to laugh a little. Was Richard a bigamist? In Canada it’s illegal to be married to two persons at once. The courts had never nullified Richard’s marriage. Richard married Sue in a private ceremony on base in our PMQ. Did Sue, who was on the verge of giving birth to her own son, discover in the summer of 1985 that Richard had never in fact divorced Marie? This of course would mean that Richard and Sue’s marriage was illegal. Yeah, I could see this launching a massive domestic dispute.
When I started asking Marie about her family life she wasn’t too forthcoming.
Marie wouldn’t talk too much about her past.
I’ve found out more about her family from others related to the Dagenais clan who knew her than I’ve ever found out from her.
After CFB Summerside she had very little relationship with her siblings. Her parents were both dead by the time she was 28. And her extended family wasn’t great. The Dagenais’ had a lot of baggage in that branch of the Dagenais family tree.
When uncle Al died, Marie wasn’t even mentioned in his obituary.
I would visit her two more times. But both time she really didn’t want to leave the house. And she didn’t really want to talk. So I’d go exploring Calgary on my own.
I haven’t spoken to her since the summer of 2017.
There is no relationship there. There is nothing to salvage. Sure, I came out of her body, but I was nothing more than a removed appendix.
It’s like anyone who was ever related to Richard has ended up extremely emotionally traumatized and mentally unwell.
There’s just something toxic and evil in the Gill DNA.
Beeshive 