Did one of those DNA tests a while ago, and the results are interesting.
The “France” area doesn’t surprise me as my mother was dyed in the wool French from Quebec.
The Indigenous Americas doesn’t surprise me as my paternal grandmother was Swampy Cree from Northern Alberta.
What is interesting is the Scots. My father always told me and my brother that we were “mutts”, a mix of Irish, French, and Cree. He never said anything about Scottish. And it’s funny seeing that my DNA matches with more DNA samples from Indigenous Americas that it does with samples with Irish DNA.
This is primarily due to how dysfunctional my past has been and how much the past has affected my life in the current day.
All my life I’ve never had anything to look forward to in the future. The future was always uncertain for me as after CFB Namao I never saw myself having a future.
The one thing that I do have to look forward to is death.
The only certainty that life has to offer is death.
Death, as has been said, is the great equalizer.
When we’re dead we’re no better and no worse than the next person.
What is the greatest gift that someone could give to me?
Four simple words
You
Have
Been
Approved
I am so fucking tired.
Tired of this life.
Tired of this existence.
Tired of fighting the lies.
Tired of learning that the truth was more insidious than what could be imagined.
I’m really hoping that my nurse practitioner tells me in 2027 that the two M.A.i.D. assessors have approved my application for Medical Assistance in Dying. “Bobbie, you have been approved”.
Those four words will bring so much joy and relief to me.
My father had to be one of the most significant anti-education people that I’ve ever seen.
He dropped out of school in grade 9 and enrolled in the Royal Canadian Navy in 1963 just after he turned 17.
To him, his single room school education was all that anyone would ever need in their life.
To him, the teachers were all idiots.
Especially if the teachers were women.
It’s not that I didn’t want to go to school, but by 1987 things had gone so far off the rails in Richard’s house that leaving home was the only thing that I could do.
So yeah, there was going to be no college, university, or even trade school in my future.
When I discovered the existence of my social service paperwork in 2011 and discovered that I had been so close to being removed from Richard’s dysfunctional household, my brain exploded.
All of these years I had absolutely no idea that when we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Toronto that my family was under the supervision of the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto and that if when home life started going to shit in the days after Richard’s rampage in 1985, I could have applied for emergency shelter and moved out of Richard’s dysfunctional household on CFB Downsview and had my room and board looked after until age 19.
But, none of that was meant to be.
So, here I am at 53 years of age despising what my life has become due to the decisions of others and hoping that I can qualify for medical assistance in dying when it becomes legal in March of 2027.
While poking around on the intertubes yesterday I came across a story related to me that flew completely under my radar.
David Pugliese of the Ottawa Citizen has actually filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the Department of National Defence in order to try to discover who ordered the CFSIU paperwork and Courts Martial transcripts to be withheld from me, and to be as heavily redacted as they were the first time that DND released these document to me in mid 2020.
I applaud David for digging deeper into this story.
At this point in my life I’ve all but given up on dealing with the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence.
If there is one thing that I’ve learnt in my dealings with the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence is the truth is whatever they want it to be no matter how many lives they destroy in the process. Collateral damage is a minor expense when it comes to protecting one’s public image.
This was the response to an ATI that I had filed back in 2018 asking for copies of any emails that I had sent to the Minister of National Defence.
First, what is the “Corp Sec DSCS”?
The Corp Sec DSCS is the Corporate Secretary in the department of the Director Strategic Corporate Services (DSCS), Department of National Defence.
Basically the DSCS-DSMS is the gate keeper for information contained within the Department of National Defence that could prove detrimental if said information were to be released to the public.
You know, like a military police report from 1980 that runs in 180 degrees of opposition to what a military police investigation in 2011 concluded.
The DSCS-DSMS also function as the creative storytellers for the Minister of National Defence / Chief of Defence Staff / Vice Chief of Defence Staff carefully coordinating and concocting the BS that comes from all three of these entities so that a unified story is presented to the Canadian public.
In this above email between Denis Paradis, Major Zenon Drebot (Zenon Drebot Canadian Armed Forces – Office of the Judge-Advocate General) and William Bain they actively discuss hiding my correspondence with the Minister of National Defence from any ATI request.
How do they do this?
The first step is to encrypt the correspondence. Encrypted data is difficult to search, especially without the required decryption key.
Basically what’s supposed to happen is any email that is sent to the government is searchable and can be located by the ATI office, once located the ATI office is supposed to go through the email to assess if it can be released to the public and make any redactions as required prior to releasing the document.
However, the “space saver” is a literal fucking black hole. Once documents disappear into that black hole they’ll never see the light of day again unless they prove beneficial to the Department of National Defence, the Canadian Armed Forces, or the Minister of National Defence.
To further complicate matters, my emails were almost always to do with the subject of “child sexual abuse”. The CAF and the DND probably receive 1,000s of emails every month that don’t have anything to do with “child sexual abuse”. By stripping the true subject matter of my emails from the email and replacing the subject of my emails with “concerns with the Canadian Forces” the DSCS is making it all but impossible to find any trace of my emails.
And finally, my name is spelt “BOBBIE”, not “BOBBY”.
This is important as when the ATI section scans the email servers for emails from “Bobbie Bees” it won’t indicate any traces of “Bobby Bees”. Those are two separate persons. And under ATI guidelines “Bobbie Bees” is not entitled to the personal information of “Bobby Bees”.
The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence have a knack for obfuscation.
National Post February 1st, 2019 page A6
By referring to Vice-Admiral Mark Norman as anything but his name, the Chain of Command within the Canadian Armed Forces and the hierarchy in the Department of National Defence could freely discuss Vice-Admiral Mark Norman and the military’s tactics for dealing with Vice-Admiral Mark Norman without risking their plots coming to the attention of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman or Vice-Admiral Mark Norman’s lawyers.
The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are organization the rely heavily upon being able to control the narrative and the optics.
The attitudes within the CAF and the DND are that civilians are simpering whelps that could never measure up to military standards and therefore the CAF and the DND will not be held to the same standards as mere civilians.
This attitude is endemic within the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence.
Everyone within the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service that was involved with GO2011-5754 in 2011 knew the full fucking truth about what had transpired on CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980, but they had assumed that I would never know the truth because the original courts martial in July of 1980 had been moved in-camera and everything had been sealed away from the public.
And if it hadn’t been for Master Corporal Christian Cyr flapping his trap on May 3rd, 2011 in an obvious glib attempt to show me that he knew what the truth was and that he knew that I was just trying to scam the military for money, I would never have been any of the wiser and I would never have been launched down this trajectory when Petty Officer Steve Morris told me on November 4th, 2011 that the CFNIS could find absolutely no evidence to indicate that P.S. was capable of what I had accused him of.
However, after hearing Morris basically call me a liar on November 4th, 2011, I wasn’t going to stop.
And after almost ten years, the truth came out, it was the babysitter’s abuse of younger children that brought Captain McRae to the attention of the CFSIU and that the CFSIU was in turn well aware that Captain McRae was giving children alcohol in the rectory at the base chapel and then taking them into the bedroom to “fool around” with them.
This has been a very slow battle with an extreme power imbalance between the CAF, the DND, and myself as the CAF and the DND both enjoy the ability to hide and withhold information from anyone or anything they declare to be an adversary.
I know that there’s so much more information that the DND and the CAF have related to child sexual abuse on the bases. But I also know from personal experience that the DND and the CAF can withhold any information that they want and that they do so knowing that they will face very little in the way of consequences.
I wish that I could say that my brother and I had some sort of decent relationship. But we didn’t.
That’s how we were raised.
Scott was always told that I allowed the babysitter to molest him.
I was always told that I was responsible for Scott’s misbehaviours as I had allowed the babysitter to molest him.
And of course there was Richard, not taking responsibility for anyone or anything as long as he had a scapegoat to blame things on.
His usual scapegoats were myself, my grandmother, and my mother.
It’s no surprise that these are the three people Scott hated until the day he died.
And let’s not kid anyone, Scott may have been slowly coming around to the fact that I wasn’t the bad guy. But that only happened because Richard died and because the Canadian Armed Forces finally released the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the courts martial transcripts. If those three events hadn’t occurred Scott would never have shown any change in his ideas about me.
And let’s not kid ourselves, Scott’s hatred of me could be intense at times.
When Scott wasn’t around Richard we could talk, but as soon as Richard got hold of Scott, Richard would download his version of reality into Scott’s brain.
How quickly could Richard flip Scott?
So fucking fast that it would make your distant ancestors dizzy.
Scott and I had been friends on Facebook since the spring of 2013 when I tracked him down to talk to him about his 2011 statement to the CFNIS.
Over the summer of 2013 I went up to Edmonton and hung out with Scott for a week.
Scott at that point in time said that he hadn’t talked to Richard or Sue since back in 2008 when Richard and Sue tried to pester Scott into attending Eric Kolsteren’s funeral after Eric had committed suicide.
As Scott and I were friends on Facebook I’d get alerted to any post that he made, so of course I was notified of this. According to Scott at a much later date, Sue had tracked Scott down because apparently Richard was freaking the fuck out about my Federal Court hearing and Richard wanted Scott to “remember” how things had “really” been after CFB Namao.
On October 3rd, 2013 I was heading into Federal Court for my hearing for Judicial Review when my Facebook page started blowing up fast with bizarre accusations from Scott.
Because I blocked him on Facebook he resorted to contacting me via text messages.
The vitriol that Richard had pumped into Scott skull must have done the trick as this was the final text message between Scott and I until 2021.
P. was our babysitter from CFB Namao.
And some of his posts between 2013 and 2021 were just as off the wall as this.
Things didn’t get any better until 2020 in the aftermath of David Pugliese’s columns about how the Canadian Armed Forces were moving mountains to keep Captain McRae’s secrets hidden.
And then once David ran the above column Scott reached out and contacted me.
We met and went for breakfast.
He was in town for a couple of days.
And that was the last time I ever saw him in person.
I’m fucking happy that Richard was dead and long gone otherwise I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Richard would have pumped Scott’s head full of complete bullshit.
I really do wish that Richard had been alive for the release of the CFSIU paperwork and the Courts Martial transcripts. I would have loved to see the fucking worm wriggle and writhe as he tried to explain just what the fuck went on back in 1978 to 1980.
But yeah, this is the environment that my brother and I grew up in.
An environment where orders trumped truth.
An environment where secrets needed to be kept no matter the cost.
The environment that Scott and I grew up in existed on each and every Canadian Armed Forces base across the country.
Each base was staffed with regular force, reserves, and civilians that were all hired by the same two employers. The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces.
The DND and the CAF were the gatekeepers for each Defence Establishment.
The DND and the CAF were responsible for the justice system that administered justice on each and every Defence Establishment.
My father wouldn’t have denied the truth about what happened on Canadian Forces Base Namao without those above him assuring him that the truth would never come out. That’s why Richard had no problem in 2011 writing our grandmother out of existence during his interview with the CFNIS. He never would have imagined that I would have discovered my social services paperwork. In 2013 I gave him sections of my social service paperwork to assist him with writing his replies to my written examination that I sent to him. This must have blown his fucking mind. And it would have scared the shit out of him. The Canadian Forces promised him in 1980 that if he played along that he’d be looked after.
When I confronted him with my social service paperwork, he must have panicked. He had Sue track Scott down so that he could pump his lies and bullshit into Scott’s head.
And Scott, not knowing any better, went along with what Richard had been saying all along. Bobbie was responsible for what happened on CFB Namao, he’s a homosexual, he wanted the babysitter to have sex with you, that’s why the babysitter was never arrested, the 15 year old babysitter was a victim of 8 year old Bobbie.
And Scott let Richard’s poison into his brain, because after all, Richard wouldn’t lie, right? Shit like this doesn’t happen on military bases, right?
No doubt that between October of 2013 and January of 2017, Richard was sticking to his guns that nothing happened on CFB Namao, that Bobbie was just doing this to get out of his responsibility for being a homosexual that allowed the babysitter to have sex with you.
Then Richard died in January of 2017.
Then came the existence of CFSIU DS-120-10-80.
Then came the existence of Courts Martial transcripts CM62
Then came my fight with DND and the CAF over those records.
Then came the release of information in October of 2020 that confirmed once and for all that the CAF and the DND knew full well fucking well what had happened on CFB Namao from 1978 to 1980.
I don’t think that Scott and I could ever patch things up.
Scott and I were victims of the desire of the Canadian Armed Forces to keep the Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse scandal under wraps which was facilitated by their spineless little minions like Colonel Daniel Edward Munro, Captain Terry Totzke, and Master Corporal Richard Wayne Gill.
What I fear the most is not losing my class action against the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence.
What I fear the most is not death. Death is a natural occurrence that we will all experience once in our lives.
What I fear the most is not being able to end my life via Medical Assistance in Dying and having to keep living with the past.
What I fear the most is being forced to end my life by suicide and not being successful at it.
“Bobbie, just move on, leave the past in the past”
Not that simple.
I know that it’s so very hard for you to fathom that someone would gladly look forward to their death to escape their mental issues.
But as I’ve said time and time again, what I went through as a child is not something that I would ever wish upon my worst enemy.
“But Bobbie, children have always been subject to child sexual abuse.”
Yes, that is quite true. And for so long as child sexual abuse exists so will child, teen, and adult suicide. Especially when victim blaming and/or victim shaming are involved.
What I fear the most is that even if Medial Assistance in Dying when Mental Illness is the Sole Underlying Medical Condition (M.A.i.D. MISUMC) is finally legalized in March of 2027 that I will be excluded.
The guidelines for M.A.i.D. MISUMC seem to require documentation to illustrate a “life long” suffering from mental illnesses such as Major Depression or Severe Anxiety.
I have the documentation for the diagnoses. But what I don’t have is the documentation showing a “life long” attempt to deal with the diagnoses through counselling, therapy, or drugs.
But as I’ve said before, between Captain Totzke and my father, these diagnoses were hidden from me and instead I was blamed for my own misfortune.
I never sought treatment from October of 1980 until August of 2011, not because I wasn’t experiencing any issues, I never sought treatment as it had been drilled into my head when I was younger that my issues were made up, that I was acting up just to seek attention, that my “issues” were just attempts for me to shift the blame for what “I” had done on CFB Namao.
Due to my untreated mental illnesses there never were significant others in my life that would have flagged my issues and urged me to seek treatment. There was just an internal desire to hide and mask my flaws so that I could hold employment.
For the most part my adult medical needs were taken care of by walk-in clinics. Walk-in clinics really aren’t the greatest for following up with issues like mental health issues.
And besides, I had no safety net to fall back upon. Asking for help in my younger days would have more than likely entailed a stay or two at a psychiatric facility, which would have been the end of any employment that I had. Being on my own since I was 16, and not having a family to fall back on for support, meant that I had to ensure that I was always employed.
And back in the ’80s , the ’90s, and even the aughts, stays at psych facilities would have been a definite red flag on most employment applications.
Seeking help for my mental issues would be something that I would have avoided at all costs. Primarily due to my ignorance about having been diagnosed at age 9 with some pretty serious mental illnesses, but also because the military environment that I had grown up in at the time made it well known that mental health issues were signs of failure and that only weak crybabies went to the head shrinker.
After I obtained my social service paperwork in 2011, I did avail myself to counselling. But this did absolutely nothing as the counsellors just couldn’t wrap their heads around what I was telling them about my childhood.
Dying with Dignity Canada https://www.dyingwithdignity.ca/advocacy/maid-for-mental-illness/ has initiated a court challenge. But I don’t really have faith in this organization. DWDC seems to support criteria to qualify for M.A.i.D. MISUMC that may actually serve as a barrier to those such as myself who desire to obtain M.A.i.D.. Yes, I understand the need for criteria, but there MUST be exceptions made for persons such as myself who were willfully denied treatment for mental illness.
When it comes to obtaining mental health treatment in this country there aren’t really any organizations that specialize in anything beyond the most absolute archaic attitudes towards mental health.
The usual attitudes that the “experts” espouse are:
You’re faking this / being overly dramatic.
You can’t be mentally ill if you’re working.
If your family / relatives / significant others don’t voice concerns about you then you really can’t be suffering.
If you don’t get better it’s because you’re faking this for attention
If you don’t consent to taking brain altering drugs, you’re not serious about getting better.
If you don’t participate in meaningless hippy-trippy feel good therapy then you’re just a self-centred asshole that cares nothing about those around you.
If you don’t allow yourself to be committed for in-patient treatment and lose your employment and your ability to obtain security clearances then are you really committed to getting better.
Depression isn’t a real disease and can be cured by smiling more and pretending to be happy.
I had been a supporter of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health CAMH in Toronto prior to the Senate hearing for M.A.i.D. for Mental Illness when I was absolutely sickened and blindsided by their outright refusal to endorse Medical Assistance in Dying for circumstance in when metal illnesses such as depression were too much for the person requesting M.A.i.D. to endure.
Sadly it looks as if CAMH is more concerned with getting all of those prescriptions filled and all of their beds filled.
All mental health treatment / therapy programs are like this. Nothing but 100% feel good bullshit designed in such a way that they are never at fault if their patients don’t get better.
And it’s not like I haven’t tried to get help before.
However one problem with mental health professionals is that they let their preconceived notions get in the way of seeing the patient before them.
It’s very hard to get treatment when “professionals” are dismissive of what you’re telling them.
Children never lived on Canadian Armed Forces bases
Why would civilians live on military bases?
Children were never sexually abused on military bases
Sexually abused children were never looked after by military social workers
The Canadian Armed Forces never interfered with the mental health treatments of children.
The Canadian Armed Forces never facilitated the postings of serving parents from one province to another province to avoid the apprehension of their children by provincial social services.
When dealing with counsellors and therapists in the past it was always assumed that if something as horrific as I had implied had happened that my father or other authority figures would have seen to it that I received treatment for my issues.
What these counsellors and therapists refused to believe was that the people who should have helped me were instead more interested in keeping my need for help a complete secret so as to keep the events on CFB Namao out of the media.
The Canadian Armed Forces and the chain of command made decisions that my mental health meant nothing compared to the public image of the Canadian Armed Forces.
And now I have to deal with organization such as CAMH that believe that all mental health issues can be medicated away and therefore M.A.i.D. for mental illness should never be allowed.
What does untreated depression or anxiety feel like?
It’s hard to describe.
My brain feels like it’s being compressed. Sometimes my brain only feels slightly compressed while at other times my brain feels like it’s about three or four times bigger than my skull.
Fire. My brain will sometimes feel like it’s on fire. This will often happen if my train of thought is disturbed.
Swimmy. My brain often feels like it’s swimming inside my head.
Dizzy. There are times when the memories come back that my brain feels like I’ve been spinning around.
When I get distracted, it feels like someone has punched my brain.
There may have been a time when I was younger that therapy and medication may have had benefits. But those days are long behind me.
And no, simply not thinking about matters makes my brain feel any better.
Touching grass?
Grounding myself?
Come back and talk to me when you’re not living in the fantasy world of make fucking believe.
I can only wonder if my depression was the cause of the two cardiac issues that I’ve had. Take for example the first time my heart put me in the hospital back in 2012.
When I went in blood testing showed that I was in the midst of a heart attack. The cardiac stress test I had the next morning showed that I had heart damage. The MiBi scan that I had next showed that my Left Anterior Descending artery was blocked. I got put on meds to slow my heart down to let it rest and relax. And I was scheduled for an angiogram to place a stint.
When I went in for the angiogram the Dr. performing the procedure was shocked to find that my LAD was wide open and my heart had excellent circulation and that there didn’t appear to be any damaged heart tissue.
I was booked in to do a treadmill stress test. I ran on the treadmill for 25 minutes without a hitch. Good blood pressure, good heart rate, good O2 levels.
The cardiologist that I had seen in 2012 had discussed with some of his cohorts the possibility of a “coronary vasospasm”
I had another incident similar to this around 2018.
Except this time they kept drawing blood samples every four hours. It was found that my troponin levels were abnormally high, but then plummeted back to normal a few hours later. I was sent for another treadmill test and ran that fine for 20 minutes.
It turns out that depression can have nasty effects on the heart.
Coronary Vasospams can be caused by depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues. In a coronary vasospam one of the arteries involved with supplying oxygenated blood to the heart contracts and restricts blood flow to the heart muscles. The is the exact same way that a typical heart attack works, but instead of being caused by material blocking the artery, the artery constricts by itself.
All arteries in the human body are muscular. This is how the body can regulate blood pressure. And by being able to restrict blood flow to the extremities, the body can retain warmth in the core when the extremities become too cold. The interesting thing is that the muscle in the artery can respond to more than just a requirement to regulate blood pressure.
The links between depression, anxiety, mental health issues, and cardio vasospasm / Prinzmetal’s angina are known, but they aren’t truly understood.
Long term untreated major depression and severe anxiety have other ill effects on the human body which often manifest as actual physical symptoms.
I think that I am the most happiest when I am asleep and dreaming.
In dreamland I can be anything I want and I can make my reality into anything that I want.
I am also happy when I think about my death.
I know that it may sound odd, but the thought of the peaceful slip into the dark abyss of nothingness appeals to me. It’s something that I want and it’s something that I crave.
To not ever feel anything, or to be aware of anything, or to remember anything, this would make me happy.
Well, it wouldn’t really make me happy.
Yes, in death I would never experience happiness, joy, sunshine, or other pleasant things.
But I wouldn’t exist any more so it’s not like I would have any form of awareness as to what I am missing out on.
And by not existing any longer I wouldn’t be forced to remember all of the shit that I’ve been through.
Dreamland is nice, but it doesn’t last. Every morning that I wake up is another day of never ending suffering.
And that’s why the thought of my death makes me happy.
Beeshive 