anxiety – Page 9

94 days

July 22nd, 1969 was 94 days prior to the worst peace time disaster in the Canadian Navy.

July 22nd, 1969 was when my father was photographed aboard Canada’s only French helicopter destroyer, the HMCS Ottawa.

He was a half Cree / half Irish boy from Fort McMurray.

He was born in Peterborough Ontario.

His father, Arthur Herman Gill abandoned grandma, so grandma packed up and moved back to Fort McMurray with Richard and his younger brother Doug in tow.

Richard attended a single room school house in Fort MacMurray.

Two of his three maternal uncles had been members of the Royal Canadian Army during WWII.

Jimmy Waniandy

Johnny Waniandy

George Waniandy

Trooper George Waniandy died in WWII in Italy. His brother John had been wounded in Italy as well.

Lance Corporal Jimmy Waniandy, a section commander, had been interviewed during the Korean war and been involved in stopping an attack.

Richard obviously had some pretty big shoes to fill.

As grandma lived with us from 1977 until 1981 I knew that she was an overbearing and domineering person.

In 1980, I had mentioned to a psychiatrist that I had been sent to for evaluation by military social worker Captain Terry Totzke that “my brain says that I’m going to kill myself unless grandma leaves the house”. My father would later tell Alberta Social Services that he blamed his mother for the issues my brother and I were having as she was “extremely cruel to his children, especially when she was intoxicated, which was frequent”.

I could see him volunteering to serve aboard the HMCS Ottawa to prove to his mother that he was just as good as George, Jimmy, and Johnny.

Just after the unification of the separate branches of the Canadian military into the Canadian Forces in 1968 he moved from the ships to the Sea King squadron on CFB Shearwater. The HMCS Ottawa was one of the Restigouche class destroyers that were converted to have a helicopter hangar. Richard could go to sea with his former shipmates on the HMCS Kootenay, but he would go with the prestigious submarine hunting Sea Kings. And even though he was with the Sea Kings, he could still go hit the local pubs and get shitfaced with his former navy buddies when the ships pulled into port.

And wouldn’t his mother ever be impressed with his ability to learn French? Learning French might also endear him to his wife who was part of the Dagenais clan from Province Quebec.

But, fast forward to October 23rd, 1969.

The HMCS Ottawa, HMCS Kootenay, HMCS Bonaventure, HMCS Saguenay, were amongst 10 ships that had sailed to the United Kingdom a few weeks prior as part of naval exercises and they were on their way back to Canada.

The HMCS Kootenay has just been instructed to fire its boilers up to full steam and the turbines had been ordered to full throttle.

Unfortunately the HMCS Kootenay had the original version of the Restigouche class reduction gearbox. This gearbox required that the bearings for the gear shafts to be installed in a particular direction to receive lubrication. The second version of the reduction gearbox allowed the bearings to be installed in either direction.

One bearing had been installed backwards and had starved for oil and was overheating. The stress of the full speed run didn’t help the situation.

The gears in those gearboxes were of the herringbone type. This design minimizes the axial loading on the shafts and gears, but leads to a large amount of oil shear which causes a large amount of vapourized / atomized oil.

This oil vapour came in contact with the red hot bearing and caused the vapour to ignite and then explode.

Three of the eight men killed in the explosion were friends of my father that he had served with.

The Sea Kings were called in to remove the injured off the Kootenay. This of course included the Sea King from the HMCS Ottawa.

It’s of no doubt that the HMCS Kootenay incident cooked my father’s noodle.

I can also see the Kootenay incident as sparking my father’s life long hatred of French. And I don’t mean he just didn’t want to speak French. Whenever the topic of French was brought up in the house, his full hatred came out. Even when I tried to practice French at home for school he would ridicule me for trying to learn French because French was, in his opinion, a complete fucking waste of time. Only fucking frogs spoke French was his constant refrain.

I can see his superiors on the HMCS Ottawa insisting to the point of complete idiocy that French and only French be spoken.

While my father’s drinking buddies were burning to death on the Kootenay I can see my father’s superiors yelling and gesticulating wildly “Arrêtez de parler anglais Gill! Nous parlons en Français sur ce navire”.

If that’s the one thing that I know about my father, he didn’t entertain “silly decisions by silly fuckers”.

Nothing screams Canadian Armed Forces like adhering to the “rules” during times of disaster, especially if the rules are petty and useless.

In 2014 I had returned to Halifax, Nova Scotia for the first time in my life since my father was posted to from CFB Shearwater to CFB Summerside in 1976. I met a man named Chris LeGier out by the HMCS Kootenay memorial at Point Pleasant.

He said something that stuck with me all these years later.

The Canadian Armed Forces turned their backs on everyone that was involved.

The military stuck to the rules regarding PMQs on the base in that the housing could only be rented to serving members of the military, not their spouses. Accordingly non-serving spouses were told to move out of the PMQs.

Members that had been traumatized by the events were ignored by the military. And this makes perfect sense because back in the day mental health issues were pretty well a one way ticket to civvy street.

According to Chris, it wasn’t unheard of for traumatized members of the HMCS Kootenay event to hit the bottle, use heroin, or even cocaine. And no, drug use in the Canadian Armed Forces wasn’t unheard of. And he said that it wasn’t just the members on the Kootenay that suffered. CFB Shearwater and CFB Halifax were a tight knit community and they all knew each other.

A risk……. that didn’t and did work out.

Daily writing prompt

When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out?

View all responses

The last time that I took a risk of any consequence was when I disobeyed my father’s wishes and I went to the Edmonton Police Service in 2011 and tried to report my former babysitter for molesting my brother and I on Canadian Forces Base Namao from 1978 to 1980.

In 2006 when, I first broached the topic of the babysitter with my father, he heavily cautioned me against trying to report the babysitter because if I insisted on sticking my nose into this I might not like the way the shit was going to smell.

For me, reporting the babysitter was extremely important. After all, up to that point in time my father had blamed me at every opportunity for allowing the babysitter to molest my younger brother. If I hadn’t let the babysitter molest Scott, then Scott wouldn’t have been in non-stop trouble with the law.

Richard was really upset that Scott was so dependent on Richard to meet his needs in order for Scott to stay somewhat functional.

I went up to Edmonton in the summer of 2003 to visit Richard after not having seen him since moving to Vancouver in 1992. I thought that he’d be pleased to see me.

After all, when Scott moved to the Vancouver area in 1996, Richard had contacted me a couple of times to help Scott out with his car. Dead starter one time. Broken throttle cable one time. Wheel bearings another time.

Nope.

I spent more time hanging out with the stepmother that I never got along with as a kid.

Richard barely had the time of day for me, except to explain to me that he was still upset with what I allowed to happen to Scott because Scott was having so many difficulties. Richard whined about having to currently pay Scott’s rent so that Scott wouldn’t try moving back in to Richard’s house in Morinville.

Richard also whined about being “forced” to give Scott his ’83 Mustang GT. Or how he had no choice but to give Scott Sue’s old ’89 Thunderbird after Scott totalled the Mustang on one of Edmonton’s many traffic circles.

When I told Richard that I had obtained my 5th Class Power Engineering certificate and that I was working towards my 4th Class Power Engineering certificate he didn’t care. Just said that no matter what certificate I had my stupid mouth and my stupid attitude were going to keep me unemployed.

I called Richard in September of 2005 to let him know that I landed a union position at a local hospital in the physical plant.

Didn’t give a shit.

Not in the slightest.

In fact he informed me that Scott had a job in a “card board box factory” and insinuated that with all of the struggles that Scott had overcome in his life that Scott’s employment meant far more than mine.

In August of 2006, after a night of drinking at various pride events in Vancouver, I called Richard and left him a couple of messages in which I unloaded both barrels on him.

I wasn’t expecting Richard to ever call back, but he did. I had never heard him whimper like this before in my life. He was like a big dog that just got the newspaper to the snout for pissing on the carpet.

It was your grandmother that hired P.S.

I didn’t like P.S. the first time I saw him.

I told your grandmother not to hire P.S.

And yes, my father used the babysitter’s name without any prompting.

My father called me every morning for the next couple of weeks, as if he was trying to make amends for the way things had been.

But everything came to a screeching halt after I told him that I was going to go to the police to report the babysitter.

“Somethings are best left in the past”

“Let sleeping dogs lie”

“If you stick your nose into this you’re not going to like the smell of the shit”

I didn’t make my complaint to the police right away.

I had legally changed my name in anticipation of transitioning and I had too many things on the go.

In February of 2011 I entered into an out of court settlement with another party in which I represented myself. The lawyer for the other party decided to make an offer to settle and after a bit of back and forth we settled.

Because of this settlement I decided to take my chances with the babysitter.

Without criminal charges it would be near impossible to bring any type of meaningful civil action against the babysitter.

And that’s how I ended up contacting the Edmonton Police Service on March 4th, 2011.

And as we all know, things didn’t work out as planned.

I did learn some interesting things though.

And learning things was better than not learning things.

I learnt for example that my father was right, that I wasn’t going to like the smell of the shit if I stuck my nose into the events of Canadian Forces Base Namao.

I learnt that no matter which base we were stationed at, civilian social services or medical staff were concerned about my father.

I learnt that my mother didn’t abandon the family, but that my father used the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations to have my mother booted out of the PMQ after she threatened to take my brother and I away due to his out of control drinking and physical violence.

I learnt that the child sexual abuse scandal on Canadian Forces Base Namao was far larger than what I could ever have imagined.

I learnt that the Canadian Armed Forces considered a 52 year old military chaplain with the rank of captain having sexual relations with children as young as four years of age after imbibing them with alcohol in the rectory of the base chapel was nothing more than “acts of homosexuality” thus implying that the victims of McRae were just as guilty as McRae was.

I learnt that Terry, my much reviled “shrink” in the days after the sex abuse scandal on CFB Namao, was actually a social worker in the Canadian Armed Forces with the rank of captain.

I learnt that Canadian Forces Administrative Order CFAO 19-20 explained why Terry had such a massive concern about my perceived willing participation in the “homosexual” abuse on CFB Namao and that if I didn’t get my “homosexual” urges under control that I would be going to the Alberta Hospital for psychiatric treatments.

I learnt that due to the military’s official policies against homosexuality which viewed homosexuality as a mental illness, a deviancy, and a character flaw, most parents did not want it known that their children had been involved with “acts of homosexuality” and kept their children out of the investigation.

I learnt that my family’s infamous move from Canadian Forces Base Griesbach, AB, to Canadian Forces Base Downsview, ON, in April of 1983 was not to avoid my social workers “giving me drugs to keep me from being attracted to other boys” like my father had said at the time, but was instead to avoid my apprehension by Alberta Social Services due to their concern for my safety in the home.

I learnt that a flaw contained within the National Defence Act prior to 1998 gave commanding officers within the Canadian Forces prosecutorial discretion over criminal code offences committed by their subordinates.

I learnt that another flaw contained within the National Defence Act prior to 1998 placed a 3-year-time-bar on all criminal code offences, including criminal code offences that do not have a statute of limitations.

I learnt that my father was described by social services as “often telling conflicting stories” from one meeting to the next, and “telling people he perceived to be in positions of authority what he thought they wanted to hear”. In other words, my father was a habitual liar and a sycophant.

I learnt from paperwork that I obtained from various agencies across Canada that everything that my father said during my childhood was basically a lie.

I learnt that the military justice system was defective, but that the CAF, the DND, and their various predecessors had always fought with parliament against reforming the military justice system.

I learnt that the CAF and the DND can use the Official Secrets Act and the Security of Information Act as cudgels to gag anyone who was ever subjected to the Code of Service Discipline to silence.

I learnt that the Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service are soldiers first and police officers second and that nothing in the National Defence Act places members outside of the Chain of Command and as such member of the base military police and the CFNIS must obey the lawful command of anyone with a rank superior to theirs.

I learnt that the Vice Chief of Defence Staff which is not a member of law enforcement has the right under the National Defence Act to direct any CFNIS investigation as they see fit.

I also learnt that the Supreme Court of Canada frowns upon the structure of the Canadian Forces Military Police Group as due to the hierarchy of the Canadian Forces the Minister of National Defence functions as the “chief of police” and has ultimate control over the military police even though it would be the Minister’s office that would be subjected to possible civil actions resulting from the outcomes of military police or CFNIS investigations. This is why civilian police always bring in police from other jurisdictions to investigate matters which may place the city of the first police agency at risk of civil actions.

I’ve also learnt that when people die, it doesn’t really matter for more than a few days, or maybe weeks, before everything goes on like nothing ever mattered.

Dark thoughts

Daily writing prompt

Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?

View all responses

I would really love to answer this one honestly, but I can’t.

It’s not that I don’t have answers.

I’ve learnt in life that some thoughts are best not released into the public realm.

But, if you know the life that I’ve endured you can pretty well imagine what actions I would have taken and when I would have taken them.

For better or worse I learnt in my youth when I was caught in the battle between captain Totzke and my civilian social workers to say what was expected, to say what was allowed, and to keep everything else in my mind.

Hold your horses and don’t get excited.

Two news stories involving military personnel have hit the media in the last few days.

CALM DOWN AND TAKE A DEEP BREATH……..

Both of these stories involve members of the Canadian Armed Forces being investigated for historical sexual offences.

This first is this one:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-police-child-pornography-armed-forces-base-1.7513492

And the other is:

https://www.orilliamatters.com/court/ex-officers-charged-with-sexually-assaulting-cadet-at-cfb-borden-10536255

See Bobbie!!! The military police CAN and DO investigate child sexual abuse matters and they don’t try to hide it!

So far as the child pornography investigation in the first matter at CFB Winnipeg, the City of Winnipeg were involved in this. And the reason the city police were involved is because starting in 2021 ALL sexual assault investigations were ordered to be handed over to the civilian authorities.

Had that order not been given I have no doubt that the CFNIS would have done their typical keystone kops style investigation.

The second matter, the “historical” sexual assault investigation against a cadet is for an assault that occurred in 2002. If this sexual assault had occurred prior to 1998 you would never hear about it because the investigation and prosecution couldn’t occur in the modern day.

What I am interested in discovering is what type of cadet was sexually abused.

Was it an officer/naval cadet from the Royal Military College or an officer in training ?

Or was it a sea, army, or air cadet between the ages of 13 and 18?

Who knows?

But the important thing to not lose sight of is that this alleged offence occurred in 2002 and the officers that are alleged to have committed the offence are not protected by the 3-year-time-bar that existed in the pre-1998 National Defence Act.

The Federal election.

Well, the 2025 Federal Election is underway.

I live in Vancouver Centre.

I’m stuck between voting for the lame duck NDP or the useless federal Liberals.

The Liberal party has been kinda my default party, although I would dearly love to see Dr. Hedy Fry tossed to the curb.

I’ve lived in the West End of Vancouver since 1993.

Dr. Hedy Fry has been my federal MP since the ’90s

I needed her help back in 2012 dealing with the whole mess from Canadian Forces Base Namao. No help at all. Seriously. Her assistant was about as useless as a concrete parachute.

Then in 2020, when the Canadian Forces finally released to me the transcripts from the 1980 CFSIU investigation and the July 1980 Courts Martial which showed that the military police in 1980 and 2011 knew the full extent of the babysitter’s action, she refused to assist with my matter citing the fact that there are no military bases in Vancouver Centre.

I’ve asked to talk to her various time since the federal Liberals first flubbed on their promise to implement Medical Assistance in Dying for Mental Illness in 2023.

Yet, I have no choice but to vote for her.

In all honesty, I’d be voting for the NDP as my politics are pro-union and pro-social issue and the federal Liberals are a corporate type party. But the federal NDP has tried to drift to the right-of-centre to capture Liberal voters.

The current candidate for the NDP in Vancouver Centre, Avi Lewis, ignored the questions that I posed to him. I asked “what are your opinions on Medical Assistance in Dying for reasons of Mental Health”, and “what do you intend to do about the flaw in the pre-1998 National Defence Act that deny justice to anyone who was ever sexually abused on a military base by a person subjected to the code of service discipline prior to 1998”.

Avi Lewis never responded.

Two canvassers that were in my apartment building glad-handing for Avi refused to respond to either question and instead segued into affordable housing and other fluff of no use to me.

I’m not planning on living long enough to worry about “affording a house”.

In Vancouver Centre we’ve always had to watch out for the Conservative Party of America. Ever since the Conservatives merged with the Reform Party and the Alliance Party, marching in lockstep with American policy has always been their desire.

I used to live in Alberta, and I have relatives in Alberta, so I’m very familiar with the very weird politics in that province.

The C.R.A.Party has always posed a threat to Canada, and it will continue to do so so long as Canada refuses to crack down on American dark money in any meaningful manner.

Over the last 20 years there’s been an explosion of new condos popping up like rancid mushrooms in Vancouver Centre. A lot of these condos are investments either rented out as apartments or AirBNBs and as such the owners tend to want to vote for those who will cut taxes to the absolute minimum while allowing for the removal of zoning regulations and “red tape”. The owners of the condos tend to always vote for the CONs because they really don’t care about social issues, they just care about buying up more condos and raking in more money through rentals or through AirBNBs.

So, yet again I trundle off to the voting booth to plug my nose and fill in the circle beside Fry’s name.

Hopefully this is the last time I ever have to vote in a federal election as the next one is due in 2029 and hopefully I’m gone by 2027.

Worth less than a donkey.

And an imaginary one at that.

It’s a very good day in Canada if you’re a donkey.

Rona, a Canadian hardware and home improvement chain, ran a commercial based upon the English language slang term “half-assed” which generally means to do something poorly or ineptly.

The commercial is cute in the sense that it shows the front half of a donkey, other wise known as an ass, wandering around as people disparage jobs that are done “half-assed”.

Well, someone at a donkey sanctuary got their nose out-of-joint and had to let the public know that the term “half-ass” and “half-assed” are offensive to donkeys.

Canada’s top notch media sprang into action!

CTV actually ran a fucking news story on this.

And no, this wasn’t an April fool’s day prank, or an Onion Article.

Workers complaining about “half-assed” work.

Half-ass wandering from job site to job site.

Half-ass pulling an Iron Eyes Cody tear……

It’s shit like this that makes me realize just how completely fucked the media is in this country.

I’ve tried to get CTV NEWS and CTV’s W5 interested in the issue of how the Canadian Armed Forces handled child sexual abuse on the bases pre-1998, not the slightest bit of interest.

I’ve been trying to get the media to pay attention to the fact that the modern day Canadian Armed Forces and Department of National Defence hide behind flaws in the pre-1998 National Defence Act that make sure that crimes of a criminal code in nature stay buried in the past.

Both the DND and the CAF could ask parliament to pass legislation that would subject persons who were subjected to the code of service discipline prior to 1998 to prosecution in the modern justice system, but both the DND and the CAF just don’t seem to want to risk this.

LS-311E(1998) was authored by Government of Canada lawyer David Goetz in 1998 to explain in plain English that certain flaws in the National Defence Act had to be removed in order to prevent fiascos in the military justice system from ever occurring again like which had occurred in Bosnia and Somalia.

Two of the most grievous flaws were the 3-year-time-bar flaw, and the summary investigation flaw.

The 3-year-time-bar flaw meant that service offences could only be investigated if the investigation would lead to a summary trial, a courts martial, or a civilian trial within 3-years of the date of the alleged offence.

One thing that people completely misunderstand, and believe me there are lawyers that misunderstand this, but service offences include not only all offences of a military nature, but all criminal code offences as well.

What criminal code offences would be affected by this 3-year-time-bar?

Don’t believe me that the Canadian Armed Forces had the ability to try these crimes?

Here are the Criminal Code of Canada offences that Captain McRae was subjected to a Courts Martial in a military tribunal for.

These are all criminal code offence that are being handled as service offences.

In the civilian world there is no statute of limitations on these criminal code offences. In the military world, any child who was sexually abused on a defence establishment by a person subject to the code of service discipline only had three years from the date of the offence to bring charges.

And no, these charges can’t simply be moved into the civilian justice system. If they were committed by a person subject to the code of service discipline while that person was on a defence establishment, the Canadian Forces retained the jurisdiction for the investigation and prosecution.

The even more insidious flaw was the summary investigation flaw.

Prior to 1998 the charges involving the sexual assault of children was not handed to the provincial crown prosecutors for review. Prior to 1998, it was the commanding officer of the accused that would be required to determine the fate of their subordinate.

The disturbing aspect of this is that these commanding officers had no legal training and no legal or law enforcement background. And they were found by the Somalia inquiry to often taken improper matters into consideration when reviewing the charges that had been brought against their subordinates.

It’s right there in plain English. The commanding officer could simply dismiss any charge that had been brought against their subordinate.

When I grew up on the bases, for the most part it was the Revised Statutes of Canada, chapter C-34 Criminal Code of Canada, that was in effect.

This meant that commanding officers had the full authority to dismiss criminal code offences such as Sections 146, 148, 149, 150, 153, 155, 156, and 157. These are all sections that applied to children under the age of 16.

And yes, the Canadian Armed Forces were precluded from conducting service tribunals for Murder, Manslaughter, and Rape, rape was not a crime that could be committed against girls under the age of 16.

Rape was section 143. Sexual intercourse with girls under 16 was handled by sections 146(1) and 146 (2).

The custom in the justice system is to prosecute the offence as it would have been prosecuted at the date of the offence. The accused would have the right to enjoy the same protections that they would have enjoyed at the time of the alleged offence.

This means that as the 3-year-time-bar was never retroactively removed from the National Defence Act, it still applies to all Service Offences that occurred prior to 1998.

Don’t believe me?

This was the response from the Office of the Judge Advocate General in 2018 when I asked the CFNIS if they could talk to Daniel Edward Munro about who made the decision in 1998 to reduce the number of charges that had been brought against Captain McRae.

The Crown Prosecutor is in regard to the babysitter.
The legal advisor was in regard to Daniel Edward Munro, the commanding officer of Captain Father Angus McRae.

The three-year-time-bar posed an interesting dilemma for the CFNIS in 2011.

Angus McRae was still alive in March of 2011 when the Edmonton Police Service transferred my complaint to the CFNIS. Angus McRae didn’t die until May 20th, 2011. The CFNIS had the 1980 CFSIU paperwork, and the 1980 Courts Martial transcripts. So the CFNIS knew of the direct and irrefutable link between Captain Angus McRae and his accomplice, P.S., whom had been my babysitter in 1978 to 1980.

And while the CFNIS could charge the babysitter with sexual offences against a child under the age of 12 as the babysitter was over 14 when the majority of the crime occurred, the CFNIS could never charge Angus McRae for his sexual offences against children as the 3-year-time-bar prohibited it.

How many children were sexually abused on the bases prior to 1998 and can’t lay charges due to the 3-year-time-bar or the summary investigation flaw?

Who knows?

How many times pre-1998 did the CFSIU conduct sham dog ‘n’ pony show investigations to make the victim feel like something was being done when nothing could ever be done?

Who knows?

How many times post-1998 did the CFNIS conduct sham dog ‘n’ pony show investigations to make the victim feel like something was being done when the pre-1998 flaws meant that nothing could ever be done?

Who knows?

How many times has the chain of command interfered with CFNIS investigations to shield the Canadian Armed Forces and the office of the Minister of National Defence from civil actions related to child sexual abuse in the defence community at the hands of the employees of the Canadian Armed Forces?

Again, who the fuck knows.

I know who doesn’t want to know.

The media doesn’t want to know.

But the media sure wants to know how the donkeys feel about silly advertisements on TV.

So what now?

Now, it’s just a waiting game.

My class action is 100% at the mercy of the DOJ and the Government of Canada.

In October of 2013 the DOJ knew the truth about 2011 CFNIS investigation and the truth about the exploits of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae and his teenage accomplice, my babysitter.

Did they care?

Nope.

They were not concerned in the least with the fact that the CFNIS willingly and intentionally withheld information from the Military Police Complaints Commission in 2012.

The DOJ was more concerned with the fact that I had introduced “new evidence” into my hearing that was not put before the MPCC.

The problem with this is I had no idea what the CFNIS and the Provost Marshal had withheld from the MPCC until I filed for judicial review.

In the end, the Department of Justice didn’t care that the CFNIS had intentionally run a dog ‘n’ pony show investigation designed to convince the Alberta Crown to not recommend charges.

The Department of Justice was all about minimizing the risk to the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence. That’s it.

The babysitter sued the Minister of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces for the sexual abuse that he endured at the hands of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae.

This was a cut and dry case as out of over 25 children that the military police were aware of in 1980 as having been molested by Captain Father Angus McRae, it was only the babysitter’s charges that were permitted to proceed to Courts Martial. All other charges against Captain McRae had been dropped.

The babysitter and his lawyer started their Action in the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench in March of 2001.

The Department of Justice dragged the babysitter’s matter out until November of 2008.

My matter hasn’t even really started yet.

My matter is still in the early stages of getting the class established.

And if the DOJ dragged the babysitter’s matter out for 7 years, I can see mine going on for at least 10 to 15 years.

And at the end the award will be chump change and a condescending pat on the head from the DOJ and the DND.

No one will admit fault, no one will acknowledge what I’ve suffered through for the last 45 years.

I can safely say that I will be around until at least September of 2027.

If the government of Canada follows through with expanding Medical Assistance in Dying to include reasons such as Mental Illness in March of 2027, I intend to apply as soon as I can.

What if the government of Canada caves to the far right and doesn’t expand Medical Assistance in Dying to include mental illness?

That’s just something that I’ll have to deal with in 2027, but I do have alternatives plans in mind.

An interesting one.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Where do I see myself in 10 years.

Hopefully not alive.

I truly and honestly cannot keep going on with this.

When Medical Assistance in Dying for mental health reasons becomes available on March 17th, 2027 I intend to be one of the first applicants.

Of course there’s still the chance that the disabled rights groups in this country will hijacked by the far right conservatives and manipulated to take to the streets in a thinly veiled astroturf campaign to stop the government from forcing the disabled to undergo M.A.i.D. in order to save costs.

The irony about the far right using the disabled is that the far right have never cared about this disabled, the marginalized, or the impoverished.

I’m tired.

Considering what I’ve gone through in this life, if I want to die in order to put an end to the daily misery and the overwhelming pointlessness, that should be a choice that I’m allowed to make.

And being as smart as I am is a double edged sword.

Sure, it’s kept me from a life of drugs on the street, but it’s also masked my suffering. People don’t see my daily suffering. They just see what I can do and they choose to ignore what I’ve gone through or what I am going through.

Justice?

“It was a different time back then”

“There were different mindsets”

“People’s attitudes were different”

Even in the modern day government entities such as the Department of Justice are trying to deal with me using the prevailing attitudes of the day from back then.

“The Canadian Forces are not responsible for the illegal activities of their service members”

“Military dependents such as spouses and children live in the military housing on military bases solely at their own risk”

From what I’ve seen of the Department of Justice both in my interactions with the DOJ in Federal Court in 2013 and my current day interactions with the DOJ, truth and justice are the least of their concerns. Their goal is to dodge and deflect and keep the government of Canada from owning up to the messes the National Defence Act created on military bases across Canada.

The DOJ knows from the records that I submitted in 2013 painted the 2011 CFNIS investigation into my complaints against the babysitter as a very flawed investigation, but the DOJ fought me tooth and nail.

Even after the Military Police Complaints Commission confirmed in 2019 that the CFNIS had in its possession the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the 1980 Courts Martial transcripts that confirmed that the military police, the CFSIU, Captain McRae commanding officer, and the Courts Martial panel all knew that it was the actions of the babysitter molesting younger children living on base that eventually brought Captain McRae to the attention of the CFSIU, the DOJ still wants to lean heavily upon the 2011 CFNIS investigation.

Am I going to stick it out with the DOJ until a settlement is reached?

I can’t see that happening.

Will a settlement bring closure?

Definitely not.

There is no dollar figure that will undo the suffering that I have endured over the last 45 years. The suffering has festered and metastasized. And you can sure as hell bet that as part of any settlement the DND and the DOJ will require very strict NDAs to be signed and the settlement, if reached, will portray the DND as having been very shocked and concerned about this one time anomaly in the military justice system.

And people want me to move on and just get over it?

Imagine being sexually abused so badly that within 2 years of the abuse ending you’re supposed to be locked up in a psychiatric hospital for emotionally disturbed children.

Imagine your father and your military social worker conspiring to move you from one jurisdiction in Canada to another jurisdiction in Canada to avoid your apprehension by social services. An apprehension that is being driven by the concerns of social services of your father’s anger issues and your safety within your father’s house.

Major Depression.

Severe Anxiety.

Haphephobia.

Sure, my father’s anger and my father’s temper and my father’s physical abuse helped me to learn how to mask this shit, but it’s alive and well.

Politicians?

Dr. Hedy Fry, the MP for Vancouver Centre absolutely refuses to become involved in my matter stating that “there are no military bases in the riding of Vancouver Centre”.

Avi Lewis, the candidate for the NDP in Vancouver Centre has no opinion on child sexual abuse in the Canadian Armed Forces or Medical Assistance in Dying. Or at least I don’t know if he does as I’ve never heard from him after filling out a memo form at his constituency office on Hornby St. near my dentist.

Health Care professionals

Even my current nurse practitioner is beginning to cause me to have some concern. When I first started seeing him around 2021 he assured me that he would be willing to help me apply for M.A.i.D. in 2023 and 2024.

In recent conversation though I feel that his questions seemed to be geared toward me having been “cured” with the escitalopram and the hormone therapy.

The escitalopram just takes the edge off the depression and the anxiety. I still wake up various times every night grinding my teeth. The depression is still there as I can sleep for days on end with absolutely no desire to get out of bed.

Hobbies?

Nothing appeals to me.

In 2015 I made contact with my babysitter <P.S.> and his father <J.S.>. It was actually <J.S.> that I spoke to first.

<J.S.> loved his son. <J.S.> needed his son.

The fact that <P.S.> sexually abused children on CFB Namao, CFB Petawawa, CFB Winnipeg, and CFB Namao again didn’t phase <J.S.> nor did the fact that <P.S.> continued to molest children well after the DND and the CAF kicked <P.S.> out of the military housing in 1985. None of this mattered to <J.S.>. He blamed the military for what had happened to his son. His son would have been fine if the military had looked after him.

My father? Yeah, Richard died in January of 2017 never acknowledging that he was wrong for having blamed me for “fucking with is military career”. Richard never apologized for having blamed me for “allowing the babysitter to molest Scott”. And Richard never did apologize for not protecting me from the desires of the Canadian Armed Forces and the malpractice of Captain Terry Totzke.

Media?

Except for a very few stories, no one gives a shit.

I had always thought that a story like mine, a story where I lay out how the documented flaws in the pre-1998 National Defence Act have such a horrific impact on modern day CFNIS investigations into past events on Canadian Forces Bases in Canada.

The media often ask “but Bobbie, if this was happening, where are all of the other victims? Surely you’re not the only one who got abused on the bases”. This is usually accompanied by massive eye rolling on the reporter’s behalf.

I myself would never have gone on a deep dive like I did except for when master corporal Christian Cyr opened his trap on May 3rd, 2011 and told me about Captain Father Angus McRae’s involvement in this matter.

I don’t know why Cyr did this. Master corporal Robert John Hancock was more discreet during our interview at VPD headquarters in March of 2011. He didn’t come out and blurt anything about McRae, he just kept asking over and over again “if there was anything else I wanted to talk about, anything the might be connected to this matter”.

I guess the problem with Cyr was that when he was handed the file he must have concluded that I was a money grubber just out to make a quick buck or two off the military so he decided that he wasn’t going to mince words and he was going to let me know point blank that he knew the truth about 1980 and that I was scamming the military.

What he probably didn’t anticipate is that due to the use of alcohol, I have no memories of what occurred at the base chapel after I was given the “sickly sweet grape juice”, and he probably didn’t anticipate the internet providing me with access to the lawsuit between my babysitter and the DOJ from back in 2001 when my former babysitter sued the Minister of National Defence for his abuse at the hands of Captain McRae.

If master corporal Christian Cyr had just kept his fucking mouth shut I never would have gone digging into the whole captain father Angus McRae matter on CFB Namao, which never would have led to me obtaining my social service records from across Canada, and so on.

If master corporal Christian Cyr had just kept his knowledge of CFSIU DS-120-10-80 and CM 62 to himself, then when the CFNIS told me in November of 2011 that “they just couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that the babysitter was capable of what I accused him of”, I would have left if there.

And I think that in the majority of CFNIS investigation the investigators with the CFNIS are able to keep their cards close and to keep their poker faces on, unlike Cyr. So most victims of military child sexual abuse never get an inkling that the investigation into the complaints was nothing more than a “dog ‘n’ pony show”.

Has the media shown any concern at all that persons who were sexually abused on military bases prior to 1998 are unable to have charges laid against their abusers due to a statute of limitations in the pre-1998 National Defence Act that does not exist for persons who were sexually abused as children by members of the general public?

Nope.

The media couldn’t care less.

I’ve been trying to get the media interested in this story since 2012. 2021 was when I had enough of the facts together to present a story that should have started alarm bells ringing.

Nope.

Absolutely no interest.

Even in 2014, when Macleans was running their series of stories on sexual abuse in the military, not a single bit of interest. Actually, that’s not true, there was some interest, but that interest got dropped due to pressure from Macleans upper mgmt. I was supposed to stop in and have a meeting with Anne Marie Owens, but on the day of the meeting I showed up to Macleans and was told that she suddenly no longer worked at Macleans and that Macleans was now going in a completely different direction and that these stories were no longer an interest to Macleans.

And it’s not just Macleans, pretty well all of the media, including our so called “independent” media.

If you were to listen to the media in this country you’d swear that children never got sexually abused on base, that if they did, the military justice system would make everything right again.

Somehow the military justice system that couldn’t properly investigate rape against female service members was suddenly capable of investigating child sexual abuse?

Somehow the military justice system that failed miserably in Bosnia and Somalia due to chain of command interference was now somehow immune to chain of command influence when children were sexually abused on base?

The same military justice system that was under orders to ignore child sexual abuse committed by Afghan military forces in Afghanistan is suddenly free to investigate historical child sexual abuse on bases in Canada?

You would think that the media would show an interest.

nope.

nada.

zilch.

The usual excuses given by the media are some variation of “we’ve never heard of this before”, “where are all of the victims”, or ” the media spokesperson for DND and the CAF said that children were never sexually abused on base”.

But yeah, back to the original question posed by today’s prompt.

“Where do you see yourself in ten years?”

Dead for eight years and no longer bothered by this warped and twisted existence.

A Blast from the Past

Here’s something that I never expected to see.

I had been going through searches on Newspapers.com when I came across a picture of my father from 1969.

The fact that Richard would have been a member of a ship’s company when that crew was expected to speak French at all times is fucking mind blowing to say the least.

He was a prairie boy growing up in Fort McMurray, AB before enlisting in the Royal Canadian Navy in 1963 at a stone frigate in Edmonton, AB. I can’t see him as ever having learnt French at home. When grandma came to live with us I can’t ever remember her speaking a single word of French, and I don’t think that she would have learnt French in the two years that she attended Indian Residential School.

When I was a kid, Richard had absolutely no time for French. Even though the schools on base were giving military dependents French classes, Richard would get upset if I tried speaking French in the PMQ.

The photo answers a bunch of questions. The HMCS Ottawa DDH 229 was fitted with a landing pad and a hangar for the Sea King helicopter. And the HMCS Ottawa was amongst the ships that had sailed to the United Kingdom and were involved with the HMCS Kootenay incident on October 23rd, 1969.

As Bill Parker had said to me in August of 1985 on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario, “I wish you had known your father before the Kootenay, he was a much different man then, I think you would have liked him”.

This photo was taken on July 22nd, 1969. That’s almost 3 months before the events of October 23rd, 1969 when the HMCS Kootney suffered a massive explosion due to overheated oil vapour in one of its reduction gearboxes. 9 men died that day, and according to Bill Parker in 1985, and my mother in 2013, three of those men were close friends of my father that he had served with in the Royal Canadian Navy before unification in 1968.

This photo was taken two years and two months before I was born. The man in the photo is not the man I grew up with. The man in the photo looks calm and inquisitive. The man that I grew up with was a piss tank alcoholic with rage issues and a hair temper trigger who had copious amounts of contempt for just about everyone else around him.

Looking at this photo I can only wonder what Richard would have been like had the HMCS Kootenay event not occurred. Or even if it had still occurred, I can only wonder what home life would have been like had the Canadian Armed Forces treated mental health as a priority instead of simply turning a blind eye to mental health issues and expecting the guys to deal with it on their own and self medicate through abusive behaviour, alcoholism, or hard drugs.

I know from my personal involvement with military social worker Captain Terry Totzke that the mental health and wellbeing of military members was the least of the military’s concern.

Does seeing this photo make me change my opinion of my father.

No.

He was still a broken inconsiderate self centred man who should never have been allowed to father children.

But what this photo does show is that Bill Parker and my mother weren’t lying when they said that Richard was a completely different person before the HMCS Kootenay disaster.

Nothing.

Daily writing prompt

Describe something you learned in high school.

View all responses

What did I learn in high school?

Absolutely nothing……

I dropped out of school at the start of grade 9. That’s junior high school. I never made it as far as high school.

Had to get out of the PMQ.

1987 was the start of the grade 9 school year for me.

September of 1987 was also two years removed from the summer of 1985.

The summer of 1985 was the last summer that my brother and I spent with our grandmother.

The summer of 1985 was also the summer that my father went on a rampage in the PMQ on CFB Downsview. He did some very significant damage to the PMQ. It took three military police officers to subdue him.

When my brother and I arrived back in Toronto from Edmonton my father was required to notify the base military police of our arrival so that they could come speak with us. When they did come to speak with us they told us that during their investigation they grew very concerned when they couldn’t find us so they started talking to the neighbours and that’s when they started hearing about Richard’s yelling and screaming and his physical abuse. The military police said that if my father ever lost his temper again that we were to flee the house before calling the base switchboard to ask for the military police.

In September of 1985, my father bought me a birthday cake. This blew my fucking socks off as he had never acknowledged a single birthday of mine since 1976, the year before my mother left. Even though he promised to never forget my birthday again, he never acknowledged my birthday again thereafter.

And his temper started to get out of control again by the spring of 1986. He just knew how to hide his outbursts better as he was under supervision of the military.

By the summer of 1987 my brother had graduated to credit card theft, B&Es, and car theft. He had also grown significantly larger than me and he was even physically larger than Richard. Richard could no longer control Scott. And Scott was now running with a group of thugs. Kids who had been in and out of the juvie system.

As Richard had given up on trying to control Scott, he instead turned to lashing out at me for allowing Scott t have been molested by the babysitter on CFB Namao and this is why Scott was acting as violent as he was.

So yeah, by the time September of 1987 rolled around, I had to get the fuck out of the house.

What would really piss me the fuck off is that in the summer of 2011, when I obtained my social service records from across Canada, I would learn that my family was actually under the supervision of the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto from the time we arrived in CFB Downsview in the spring of 1983.

This pissed me off because when I moved out I had to take my employment from part time to full time so that I could afford to rent a place to live.

Had I known about my family having been under the supervision of the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, I could have applied to CAST for emergency accommodation. I could have even arranged for the courts to make it mandatory for my father to pick up my bills until age 18. Either of these would have allowed me to finish off school while living in a safe environment.