Bees – Page 18 – Beeshive

Brothers, by law.

It should go without saying that Scott and I really weren’t close as kids.

Our family was not a family built on love.

As I’ve said before, Richard was in many ways similar to Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights in the sense that he carried a grudge for historical slights and anyone even remotely involved with those historical slights was going to pay dearly.

Unlike Heathcliff though, Richard wasn’t the victim of the disdain of others. No, Richard was the architect of his own misfortunes.

Richard carried a massive grudge against his first wife and anyone or anything associated with her was going to pay a very heavy price for her “walking out” on him even though he took advantage of the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations and had his first wife thrown out of the PMQ by the military.

Richard also carried a massive grudge against his mother for her daring to be First Nations, but that’s for another posting.

My father’s buddy from 447 squadron at CFB Namao famously asked Richard “Rick, if these fucking kids are driving you nuts, why don’t you give them back to their fucking mother and let her deal with them”. Richard’s response was “As long as the kids live under my roof, I control the costs. If I sent them to live with their mother I’d have to sign my fucking paycheque over to that bitch, and that’s not going to happen”.

Going through my email interactions with Scott, there was one email in which he noted that even our stepmother Sue had told him that Richard would tell her that Richard kept us because we were good for tax time.

Richard never took us anywhere that would require a modicum of parenting or involvement. And from about 1977 until 1981, Richard had washed his hands of my brother and I by bringing his mother on base to live in the PMQ and raise us.

This is the woman that he described to social services as being “frequently cruel” to his children and that she was frequently intoxicated and refused to admit her alcoholism.

To make matters far worse was the fact that kids from dysfunctional families that were living on Canadian Forces Bases were often shunned.

The Canadian Forces at the time, and even still today, is an extremely patriarchal which meant that the fathers of the families would never been seen to be at fault. Any problem in the household on base was always seen as the fault of the woman or the fault of the children.

So yeah, to say that Scott and I didn’t have a happy childhood would be a gross understatement.

So Scott would go off on his own, and I would go off on my own.

Because of my estrangement from Richard as a child, I never really stayed close to Richard. Scott on the other hand looked up to Richard.

When we moved to Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario in 1983 is when Scott and I started really drifting apart even further.

At that point in time I was so emotionally disturbed that I was supposed to be institutionalized whereas Scott was desperate for friendship. I preferred being left alone, whereas Scott wanted to hang out and be friends with everyone.

This led to Scott hanging out with the wrong crowd.

And Richard, being the incompetent asshole that he was would blame Sue, Grandma, myself, and his first wife for the way Scott was turning out. Not for one minute would Richard turn around and blame himself or accept responsibility for his part in this play.

This of course would stoke a lot of animosity between my brother and I.

Scott would do the crime, and I would get the beating of my life.

I wasn’t raising Scott properly

I wasn’t looking out for Scott

Another wedge that Richard drove between my brother and I was the fact that Richard blamed me for what happened to Scott on Canadian Forces Base Namao at the hands of the babysitter and possibly Captain McRae.

When Scott stole Sue’s Pontiac Acadian, Richard laid a fucking intense beating on me in my basement bedroom of the PMQ. During this beating Richard yelled numerous times at me that Scott was turning out the way he was because I let the babysitter touch him and that if I hadn’t let the babysitter fuck Scott that Scott would be normal.

And of course Scott was becoming resentful towards me because Richard’s insistence that I was supposed to raise Scott and look after Scott meant that I was allowing Scott to get into trouble.

And I know that this was a substantial issue between Scott and I even until just recently. In fact it wasn’t until the Canadian Armed Forces finally released the Court Martial transcripts and the CFSIU investigation paperwork in the summer of 2020 that Scott finally began to come to terms with the fact that Richard lied about the events of 1980 and that Richard obviously knew more about 1980 than what Richard had ever let on.

In the summer of 1984, while Scott and I were spending the summer with our grandmother, Scott said something to our grandmother about the babysitter from CFB Namao. Grandma was furious, yelling at me for allowing Scott to be raped by the babysitter while I was watching.

I moved out of the PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario in early 1988.

By this point in time Scott had been into juvenile detention numerous times and had grown substantially both in height and in mass. Scott’s uncontrolled anger and Richard’s unwillingness to control Scott and protect me from Scott is one of the reasons that I left. And it wasn’t just Scott that I was terrified of. He was hanging out with guys that I’m sure probably ended up becoming enforcers for biker gangs after they finished high school.

In a way I was very envious of Scott. Here I was, barely pushing 100 lbs and Scott had to be at least 160 or 170 even though he was 2 years younger than me. Not only that but Scott was towering over Richard. Richard once tried to backhand Scott, and Scott just caught his hand and scowled at Richard. That was the last time I ever saw Richard try to strike Scott. Me on the other hand, yeah Richard wasn’t afraid of me in the slightest.

In the summer of 1990 Richard got hold of me and invited me to move to Edmonton with him so that we could try to be a family again.

In preparation for the move, I moved back into PMQ 223F on Canadian Forces Base Downsview. But Scott wasn’t there. Scott had been incarcerated during my absence and was serving time at St. John’s in Uxbridge, Ontario.

By the time Scott was released, Sue and Richard had already bought a civilian house in Morinville, AB. I didn’t last too long in that house, and neither did Scott upon his release from juvie in Ontario. I think I lived in the house in Morinville for about a week before I got the boot and had to go rent my own apartment, which was no small feat at the age of 18.

One day at work I got a phone call from Richard telling me that after all he did for us as kids that I had to take Scott in until things calmed down. Scott was unceremoniously dropped off at my apartment. He ate all of my food in three days and he nearly got me evicted by fighting with the neighbours and blasting loud music. I asked Richard for help with groceries, he just laughed and said that maybe I should try hitting up our mother for groceries as he was finally done with us. Our mother ended up taking Scott out to her acreage out by Wabamum Beach.

I was introduced to my mother by my uncle Doug in the summer of 1990 just after we arrived back in Edmonton. I have no doubt that uncle Doug also introduced Scott to our mother after Scott arrived in Edmonton from Ontario after his release.

I happened to stop in to our mother’s house one weekend when she asked me if it was true what Scott said, that I had let Scott get raped numerous times by our babysitter. This was in the summer of 1991 and Scott was still framing it the way that my father had framed the events of 1978 to 1980, that I had allowed and encouraged the babysitter to molest my brother.

Between the winter of 1992 and the summer of 2012 I only saw Scott 3 or 4 times.

In the Summer of 2013 I went to go see Scott. We had some talks, but there was still an intense amount of resentment and condensation in his voice towards me. At the time Scott claimed that he hadn’t spoken to Richard or Sue for the longest time due to the suicide death of Eric Kolsteren.

On the day of my Federal Court application for Judicial Review, Scott had started texting me claiming that I had raped him along with the babysitter and that I should tell this to the judge. I did some quick sleuthing and as it turned out Richard had tracked Scott down via Sue and just the night before Scott’s outburst Richard had paid a visit to Scott and gave Scott a computer, a bunch of computer items, some camera equipment, and possibly paid for a trip to Toronto.

After that, Scott’s attitude towards me soured quite considerably. I have absolutely no doubt that Richard was pumping Scott’s head full of bullshit.

The next time that Scott would have any type of contact with me was in 2019 when he called me to let me know that Richard had died in 2017. Scott requested that if Sue ever asked how I found out Richard was dead that I wasn’t supposed to say that Scott told me.

Things again changed between Scott and myself in 2020 after the release of the Captain McRae’s court martial transcripts, and the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork. Scott began to realize that he had been lied to all of his life by Richard once my class action against the Canadian Armed Forces was initiated.

People have asked me if my brother’s death upsets me.

Not really.

I didn’t know him.

I knew him about as well as I knew my father.

I am disappointed that Scott is dead.

He didn’t live long enough to at least see official acknowledgement for no only what had happened to him on Canadian Forces Base Namao, but the fact that various members of the Canadian Armed Forces failed him such as our father Master Corporal Richard Gill, Captain Totzke, Colonel Daniel Edward Munro.

I know that Scott had been struggling with mental health issues for the longest time as when we did have email conversations early after 2012 he did say that he was seeing counsellors to try to work out his anger issues.

Drug wise, I don’t know when he started to be honest with you.

I know that he drank when we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview. Back then it wasn’t uncommon, even for the Goodie-Two-Shoes brats, to drink and smoke weed on base.

When Scott came for a visit in the summer of 2021 both him and his girlfriend at the time were doing mushrooms and weed.

When Scott started doing K is something I’ll never know.

If he was doing anything harder than weed, ‘shrooms, and K is also something that I’ll never know.

If we were closer together, would I have known?

I don’t know.

I work at a hospital in Vancouver that is basically THE hospital for Canada’s poorest postal code, the DTES. Drugs can take over anyone at anytime. The number of fresh faces coming in for treatment is astounding. Everyone seems to think that they can try the hard drugs once or twice and they’ll be okay.

I haven’t quite figured out what to do with Scott’s ashes at this point in time.

Maybe I’ll get them mixed into little cement middle fingers and have one delivered to the Chief of Defence Staff, one delivered to the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal, one delivered CFNIS Western Region, one delivered to CFNIS Pacific Region, and one delivered to RCMP K division HQ.

Inscription would say
-Fuck You –
Kids from CFB Namao
(human remain, do not dispose)

Back to Vancouver

Okay, so I’m about to fly back to Vancouver in about 1-1/2 hours.

I don’t ever want to hear anyone ever say that being a base brat was a “fun time” in their life.

This shit sucks, it honestly does.

We meant absofuckinglutely nothing to the Canadian Armed Forces when we were kids. And once we turned 18 and aged off the bases, we meant even fucking less.

We got exposed to the spousal abuse in the PMQs

We got exposed to the alcoholism in the PMQs

We got exposed to the hidden, covered-up, and totally ignored mental illnesses of our fathers.

We got fucked seven ways from Sunday my the military “justice system”, that same justice system that was an outright abysmal failure for the adults but was somehow supposed to be working for the kids and non-serving spouses on base.

There have been studies conducted over the years looking at spousal abuse in military families.

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a study that has ever looked at the long term effects of being a military dependent.

How many former military dependents have ended up homeless?

How many former military dependents have ended up dead with needles in their arms?

How many military dependents committed suicide on base or committed suicide later in life due to their issues they inherited on base.

“bUt BoBbIe, MiLiTaRy DePeNdAnTs WeReN’t In ThE CaNaDiAn FoRcEs”

The
” We Had A Normal Childhood on Base”
Brigade.

The
“But it happens in the civilian world too”
Asshole

You assholes that wanna simp for the Canadian Armed Forces actually believe that our fathers left the toxic bullshit at the hangar or the garage, or the drill hall?

You wanna believe that the Canadian Armed Forces wasn’t turning a willing blind eye to the rampant alcoholism and drug abuse in the military?

Half of the Canadian Airborne Regiment on Griesbach was doing fucking coke.

Most of the guys at 447 Sqn were drinking on the job when servicing the Chinooks.

You wanna believe that the Canadian Armed Forces didn’t pull out all of the stops to “wash the laundry” in house and keep it from being exposed to the civilian world?

In 1985, after my father trashed the PMQ on CFB Downsview, the military police didn’t plead with my brother and I to call the base MPs instead of the civilian police because they cared. They just wanted to keep the civilian police and civilian social services from getting involved with the “military’s business”.

Our fathers got treated like heroes after they retired. Even if they had never seen combat and spent the majority of their career flying a fucking office desk.

Military dependents aren’t even on the radar of veterans affairs.

Bones ‘n’ Ashes

I guess it’s a good thing that Richard is long since dead and gone.

If he knew what I did to Scott, he’d kill me.

I could just hear Richard now “You goddamn little fucking cocksucker, look at what you did to Scott! You think he’d be dead right now if you fucking looked after him like you’re supposed to?”

That’s basically the same spiel I got from him during one of our “counselling sessions” in Captain Totzke’s office over by base HQ on CFB Griesbach when I was around 9 or 10.

That’s also the same speech that I got when Scott stole Sue’s Pontiac Acadian when we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario.

So yeah, it’s a good thing that Richard is dead.

I don’t expect to hear anything from Sue.

She was married to my father, we were just the baggage from the previous marriage that Richard just had to keep in order to keep the costs under control.

Our mother? Not too sure where she is. The last time I saw her she was literally just waiting to die out of boredom. She lost at the game of life, her life was destroyed by Richard, and she was just existing until the mercy of death would take her away.

I had always thought that my father was most like Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, except unlike how the reader was exposed to what drove Heathcliff to destroy everyone around him, no one, not even I, knows what set Richard on the path to destroy everyone around him, including his own sons.

When I say that we were a dysfunctional family, we were.

The fact that my brother is dead doesn’t really bother me, just reinforces for me that dying at home alone really fucks up the flooring. Hopefully I get to apply for M.A.i.D. in 2027.

What does bother me about my brother’s death is no one will connect the dots between his life as a military dependent and the fact that he ended up dead on the floor of his apartment for about a week.

What also bother’s me is that Scott won’t ever get an apology from the Canadian Armed Forces or the Minister of National Defence, and that the Department of Justice is probably cackling with glee at the prospect of one less admission of liability.

But Scott’s death does illustrate for me that his death doesn’t really matter.

Bill collectors just want his money.

Service providers just want his money.

Nobody else gives a flying fuck.

His phone is ringing off the hook with creditors and such, but not one single person has texted him to say “hey, what’s up, why aren’t you answering your phone”

I’m so emotionally damaged that his death doesn’t bother me. Not ’cause I hated or despised him, but Captain Father Angus McRae, P.S., Master Corporal Richard Gill, and Captain Terry Totzke beat all of the fucking emotions out of me before I could even develop proper emotions as a kid.

And I can’t honestly be the only former military dependent that can’t feel or express emotions, this was something that was drilled into your heads on these bases back in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and probably even still today. Emotions are for the weak, crying is for sissies, admission of mental health issues show that you’re weak.

Going back through emails and texts I can see Scott’s life unravelling.

I’m prepared for years of battle with the fucking military and their lawyers at the DOJ. I knew the Department of Justice really didn’t give a flying fuck when I went to Federal Court back in 2013 to try to get the 2012 findings of the Military Police Complaints Commission overturned. The fact that the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal withheld all manners of evidence from the MPCC in 2012 didn’t matter one fucking iota with those assholes. All they were concerned about was protecting the CFPM, the CFNIS, the CAF, and the DND from scrutiny.

The DOJ fought and fought and fought against compensating the babysitter for the abuse he endured at the hands of Captain McRae even though Captain McRae was only ever charged by Colonel Daniel Edward Munro with the crimes McRae committed against P.S.. Munro sunk all of the other charges, as was his right under the pre-1998 National Defence Act.

So, I’m prepared for the long haul with the DND, the CAF, and the DOJ.

But Scott, since about last summer, seemed increasingly anxious about getting a settlement from the class action.

At first I thought that it was just Scott making plans for a new car or something of the such.

No, it was probably his drug habit that seemed to have started to bloom back around 2015 – 2016.

I missed the comments about drugs this and drugs that and trying this and trying that.

I don’t know what he did prior to 2019, but it looks like he tried to cross into the states on his visa, but the visa was then stamped “WD in lieu of NTA”. So something happened.

I don’t blame him for unraveling.

I’m not going to chastise him for drugs.

I know what he went through.

I lived what he went through.

I want to end my life as badly as he did, if not more so.

But I just want my death listed as being due to M.A.i.D. which was administered to alleviate mental trauma and major depression which was directly linked to CFB Namao and the Canadian Armed Forces.

Maybe Richard was right, maybe I should have looked after him better.

Special K

Well, it would appear that my brother didn’t die from heart disease or epilepsy.

Ketamine is more than likely what killed him. And this is why the medical examiner said that his death certificate wouldn’t be issued until after the toxicology tests.

The medical examiner said that he had some broken ribs, which would probably be the case with ketamine. He would have dropped like a stone. And he was about 230 to 250, more than enough to break a rib or two.

Apparently Scott had started snorting ketamine quite a few years ago. I didn’t even know that you could snort this shit.

I’ve seen ketamine injected a few times at work. The emergency department will call us up periodically to help out with patient issues. Twice I was involved with removing roofing nails from body parts. Once was through a foot, and once was through a knuckle. Both time I had to explain that you couldn’t simply pull these nails out using a claw hammer as the nails a nail gun fires usually have flutes on them to prevent them from pulling out. Both times I’d get the heads of the nails cut off and then the docs would get me to pull the nail through with vice grips while they stabilized the patient’s foot or hand. Both time, before pulling, the nursing staff would administer a small shot of ketamine into the patient’s IV and out like a fucking light and off to dream land in under 10 to 15 seconds.

Also, having served on the Occupational Health and Safety Committee we had to deal with the possibility drug addiction amongst staff. Years ago there was a nurse at VGH that had been helping herself to the partially used vials of ketamine. One day she grabbed a vial of a partially used paralytic agent and took it home and injected herself with it. It’s assumed that she died instantly as this paralytic agent would have stopped her breathing. Since then drugs like ketamine are controlled in that the unused portions must be returned to the pharmacy and the surgical staff are not allowed to place ketamine into the used surgical sharps containers of the surgical carts.

The person I spoke to at Scott’s condo said that Scott had been known to have started partaking drugs years ago. He started off with weed, then graduated to mushrooms, and somewhere along the line he started into “Special K”. Ketamine isn’t a hard drug to get on the streets. It’s known to be a recreational “clubbing drug” in which users try to enter the “k-hole”.

Like any drug, it has its downfalls. And one of those downfalls is overdose and then death.

The person who let me into Scott’s apartment explained how he came to be found. No one had heard from him for a few days. Then the occupant of the condo below his started to report stains on their ceiling and then a fluid. At about this time the residents on Scott’s floor stated to notice a smell of something rotting.

The Edmonton Police Service was summonsed to do a wellness check.

A lot of force was applied to open the door.

It’s an older building that used to be apartments. It looks like at some point in time the apartment was changed from rental to condominium and Scott had purchased a suite for about $30k.

It was a mess, and not just from his death, but messy in general.

The stench of his decomposition was still heavy in the air. I don’t know how you ever get rid of that smell. This is one of the reasons that I want MAiD. I couldn’t kill myself knowing that I’d leave this type of mess behind and fuck the people up who found me. Sure, Scott didn’t mean to kill himself, but the damage was staggering .

The flooring from around where he fell had to be removed. His body has obviously gone through algor mortis, livor mortis, rigor mortis, and then into bloating, and finally decay.

The white marks on the trusses are where his fluids seeped in and couldn’t be removed. You can also see the drywall that had to be removed as it was damaged.

He was a heavy smoker, and a drinker from the looks of it.

The Gill family and alcohol are a deadly combination. Grandma was a prolific alcoholic. Her son, my father, was a piss tank alcoholic. I don’t know what Scott’s drinking level was but I was never willing to play with the alcohol gods.

Growing up in a military family living on military bases, both Scott and I started smoking at a young age. I started smoking when I was 13. Scott was already smoking before I was which meant that he started around 11. And I think it would be fair to say that about 40 percent of early teens on Canadian Forces Base Downsview were smoking. Smoking was a way to calm your nerves. With our father and stepmother we needed all the help we could get.

Richard didn’t care that we smoked in the PMQ. His only rule was that we were never to touch his smokes, and if he ever ran out of cigarettes, we had to give him ours until he could go get a new pack. And there were lots of stores around base that were willing to sell smokes to kids.

I started smoking Player’s Extra Light just like Richard was smoking. Scott was smoking DuMaurier. I couldn’t figure out why until he told me it was so that Richard wouldn’t poach his smokes. I switched to Players Unfiltered.

I was up to two packs a day by the time I was sixteen. But that plummeted to less than a pack a day after I moved out of Richard’s PMQ.

I quit smoking when I was 25 and I haven’t smoked since. But it looks as if Scott wasn’t able to shake the cigarette habit.

What does concern me is the butane torch. Scott was no pastry chef, so it wasn’t like he was making crème brûlée, and I don’t think that he was using the torch to sear his steaks.

Was he using this for a water bong for weed, or was he cooking something a little harder with this? Guess I’ll have to wait for the toxicology reports.

I know that Scott had issues. I grew up in the same defective family that he did with the same defective parents that he did.

And having lived through what we lived through it’s no surprise that he had issues.

I’m no saint, but the one thing I was able to do was stay clear of drugs. The only needles that I’ve ever done for pleasure are my tattoos.

It’s obvious that for whatever reason, Scott wasn’t able to stay clear.

I know that there were indications when we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview that Scott was doing something, but neither Richard nor Sue seemed to concerned about it. They would literally lock themselves in their bedroom and spend the evening watching TV.

As Scott’s drug use seems to have ramped after 2011 when the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service contacted him for a witness statement. Was it bringing the past into the modern day that set him on the path to self destruction?

I know that in 2013 after I had given Richard his written examination for Federal Court, Richard had tracked Scott down and talked to him, Scott even admitted as much. And that’s when Scott started accusing me of letting the babysitter molest him, just as Richard and Captain Totzke had blamed me years ago. Did Richard lie to Scott in 2013? Did Richard tell Scott the “official Canadian Forces approved version” of what happened from 1978 to 1980?

When it was revealed in 2020 that I had told the absolute truth about the whole CFB Namao affair and that it was in fact a much larger scandal than just Captain McRae having consensual homosexual sex with the 14 year old babysitter, did this shatter Scott’s world as Richard had built it for him?

Doesn’t matter much now, does it?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I’ll never understand why I didn’t get addicted to drugs, be it booze, pot, opioids, etc. Why Scott got addicted and I didn’t is always going to be a fucking mystery. We both grew up is the same fucked up dysfunctional military family living on military bases. We both lost our mother due to abuse of military procedures. We both got sexually abused and swept under the rug by defects in the National Defence Act.

I have no one to impress, but then either did Scott. I don’t have a “dad” that I always wanted to impress, and neither did Scott. I couldn’t give a flying fuck what Sue has to say, and I don’t think Scott cared for Sue either. And Marie was never around. This is why I really want to donate my brain to science after I die.

If my brain can offer clues as to why someone who went through the shit I went through never got addicted to drugs, then giving my brain to science would be worth it.

Interesting day

So, I flew up to Edmonton from Vancouver this morning.

Very quick flight.

Never have flown on an Airbus before, but now I did get to hear the infamous Airbus Barking Dog noise. And as I was over the wings it was quite loud. It’s nothing to be worried about, it’s just a hydraulic pump trying to equalize the pressure between two different hydraulic circuits.

I was waiting for the 747 bus to take me from YEG to one of the LRT stations.

While I was waiting a fellow passenger came up to me and introduced herself.

She said that she had loaded my blog onto her phone and read the blog on the flight.

Skye had discovered my blog when she googled my name that I have on my carry-on luggage.

It’s odd, outside of a few people related to the CFB Namao matter, and outside of a very select few people in Vancouver, no one has ever come up to me to talk about my blog.

She offered to drop me off on her Uber ride into Edmonton and she kept apologizing the whole time reassuring me that she wasn’t a stalker.

So, we talked on the way up to Edmonton. I’m sure the Uber driver thinks that I’m insane.

Skye had just come back from Australia. She’s actually a conductor for one of the railways, can’t remember if she works for CP or CN. She took some time off work to help her sisters run the family lumber mill after her father died a few years ago.

We’ll probably meet up for coffee or lunch in the next day or two.

I didn’t get much sleep last night, too many things ruminating in my skull to let me have a decent sleep last night.

Shout out to my stepmother Sue for not wanting to help out with this, Richard would have been so proud of her.

I’m almost 100% certain that Scott didn’t have a will. The police didn’t indicate that they found anything of the such.

So the first thing I have to do tomorrow is go pick up his ashes and his personal belongings from the crematorium. The I guess I’ll have to go to his apartment and see what’s up there and see if there’s any paperwork indicating what his finances were like. If he had a financed or leased car I’ll probably have to make arrangements for the dealer to come pick it up. I’ll see if there’s any documents and paperwork or photos of interest that I want and then the rest of his belongings will be going to wherever.

And then I’ll fly back to Vancouver.

In the meantime I’ve ridden around the city on the little Lime Scooters. Those things are a blast. They’re a lot more sketchy and jittery than my Segway scooter, but in a way that lends an interesting quirkiness to them.

I don’t know what I’ll do with Scott’s ashes. I could put them inside of a Jack-in-the-box and send the Jack-in-the-box to the Chief of Defence Staff.

alt text: Executive assistant to the CDS turns the crank while the CDS awaits.

I could go up to Edmonton Garrison and sprinkle his ashes at our old PMQ and other places around the base.

alt text: Bobbie sprinkles Scott’s ashes on a Defence Establishment while unimpressed CFNIS investigator stands around.

Anyways, enough for today.

I gotta go find some place to grab a bite to eat.

Luckily Whyte Ave is just a block away.

Flights are booked

So, the flights are booked. The crematorium has been paid.

I leave Vancouver at 08:30 on Sunday and fly back from Edmonton on Thursday at 06:00.

I don’t know what I’m going to do once I get to Edmonton. Probably go check in at the crematorium first to see what they have. Next I’ll be heading off to Scott’s apartment to see what needs to be taken care of there.

Never really had any plans of stopping back in Edmonton, but I guess life throws a curve ball every now and again.

I’ll be staying at Hostelling International just south of Whyte Ave.

Should be able to get around by the LRT, bus, and by foot.

The last time that I was in Edmonton was in 2013. Prior to that I was in Edmonton in 2003. Prior to that I was in Edmonton from 1990 until 1992. And then prior to that I was in Edmonton from August 1978 until April 1983.

Scott and I also spent the summer of 1984 and 1985 staying with our grandmother. Wasn’t our choice.

I’ll have to go see my brother’s apartment and see what I can make of his paperwork. Hopefully this doesn’t turn into a nightmare with creditors and such. If he was leasing a car or bought a car with a loan, I guess this goes back to the dealer.

I’ve already told the landlord that they can dispose of furniture, clothes, and other miscellaneous materials, but that I want access to any computers, paperwork, statements, etc. that might be in the apartment.

Probably have some paperwork to sign off with the Edmonton Police Service. And might have some paperwork to sign with the Medical Examiner’s office.

I always thought that I was going to die long before he did. But I guess he won the race and beat me to the escape first.

Still sucks that he didn’t even get an apology from the Department of National Defence or the Canadian Armed Forces for what they had subjected him to as a child.

Sick humour time……………

Skeletor always had choice observations.

What a weird week.

Never had to make cremation arrangements before, but here I am.

Gotta take some time off work next week to fly up to Edmonton to go through my brother’s paperwork to see what comes next.

Air Canada has bereavement flights.

I gotta book a hotel room for a few nights, the sad thing is that Edmonton is not a very transit friendly city. The good thing is my brother’s apartment seems to have been located near an LRT stations, so as long as I book a hotel near the LRT I should be okay.

The cremation facility is going to take care of notifying all of the required government agencies and credit bureaus. If he’s financed a car guess I’ll have to tell the dealership to come pick it up.

As I said previously, contact between by brother and I has been almost as non-existent as contact between my father and I.

I honestly don’t know very much about him, where he worked, what his hobbies were, etc.

But, that’s the way that Richard raised us.

I once told Scott that we pretty well lived feral on the bases and he chuckled about that.

And it wasn’t that Richard was just a neglectful and absent parent.

Richard loved to play mind games. It was my fault whenever Scott got into trouble, and it was Scott’s fault whenever I got into trouble. I guess that men like Richard will do anything to avoid taking responsibility for their issues.

And Richard saw absolutely no problem with allowing his mother to live on base to raise my brother and I. She was a woman that he described to Alberta Social Services as being “extremely cruel to his children, especially when she was drunk, which was frequent”. But he was okay with that as that meant that he didn’t have to personally spend time raising his kids.

So Scott and I grew up in a household where you kept your back turned to the wall at all times so that you didn’t get attacked from behind in a surprise ambush.

There were no emotions to be expressed as kids least Richard or Grandma would rage out. And on military bases, whenever the parents or guardians were raging out it was obviously because the kids deserved it.

So yeah, Scott and I spent as much time out of the PMQ and as far away from each other as possible as kids so that one wouldn’t catch the beating the other was receiving. Beatings, beratings, and derision were common place things in our household. Well, truth be told, in the military company towns that the PMQ patches were, child abuse and child neglect was rampant, it’s just that the Canadian Armed Forces had its way of “washing the laundry” in house so that no one on the outside world would ever learn about what was going on in the closed military family communities that were isolated from pubic view.

The Edmonton Police Service constable who is handling Scott’s file has agreed to try to contact my stepmother Sue to let her know about Scott.

I’m the only one left

On Tuesday evening I was about to settle down on my bed and watch some Netflix before going to bed.

As I was about to lay down there was a rapid knock at the door. I walked over to the door and opened the peephole but I couldn’t see anyone so I said “Hello?”

A voice answered back ” Hi, this is the Vancouver Police Department, we’d like to talk to you, you’re not in any trouble”

I opened the door.

The one constable introduced himself and he asked me if I knew why they were here.

I invited them in.

I told the one constable that I was pretty sure that it had something to do with my brother as just about everyone else in my family was dead.

He asked me what my brother’s name was and I told him.

He said that beforehe could tell me anything more that he’d need to check my ID. So I provided him with my ID. He said that the name on my ID card didn’t match what they had on record. So I told him my birth name.

He then said that he was sorry to inform me that Scott had been found deceased in his apartment. The last he had been seen was on August the 8th and the police had been asked to do a welfare check on the 13th. And Scott was found on the floor of his apartment.

I told the constable that I wasn’t surprised. Scott did suffer from Grand Mal Epilepsy and he also had five stents in his heart.

He asked me if I was going to be okay. I told him that I’d be fine. And I guess the way that I said this took him by surprise a little. So I gave him an extremely brief “Reader’s Digest” version of my dysfunctional family and how my brother and I only started talking in 2013 after I went to Federal Court for judicial review. I said that prior to that Scott and I really had no use for each other, and that was the way that Richard raised us.

Currently the Alberta coroner is conducting the autopsies and toxicology testing and once they’re finished they’ll give me Scott’s death certificate. The only thing the medical examiner has said so far is that Scott’s heart was pretty well plugged solid.

Once I have his death certificate I can go to Edmonton and check out his apartment to see what I want to keep, what can be donated, and what can go to the trash.

It also looks like I’ll have to figure out what to do with his body. Creamation is probably what I’ll end up giving him.

Then I guess I have to settle out his finances. I’ve never had to look after anyone’s affairs before so this ought to be interesting.

I’ll have to check to see if he had a will. If he’s like me, he probably lived day to day without any longterm plans for the future as quite honestly we never expected to have a future.

It’s just too bad that he doesn’t get to find out if we prevail against the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence. That’s one thing that he had been looking forward to.

Growing up as nothing more than glorified trailer trash living on Canadian Armed Forces bases in the hidden squalor of the PMQ patches with out of control alcoholism and angry men with untreated PTSD and other issues meant that life sucked for a lot of kids.

Sure, there were the good families on base, but more often than not they’d turn a blind eye to the dysfunction that was going on all around them.

When we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downview in Ontario, my father Richard pretty well abandoned Scott to the little thugs, wannbe gangsters, and outright shitheads that ran riot in the civie houses around the base.

As such, Scott was involved with the juvenile justice system in Ontario.

But, Richard just didn’t give a fuck.

As I said previously, Richard didn’t keep my brother and I because he loved us. Richard kept my brother and I because, as he told his friend Jacques one evening, “As long I they live under my roof, I control the costs. If I send to live with the bitch mother of theirs I may as well sign my paycheque right over to that cunt. And that’s not about to happen”.

The Canadian Armed Forces knew that they had a problem with spousal abuse. But the Canadian Forces turned a blind eye to it. When it came to child abuse and child neglect on the bases, the military did everything it could to pretend it didn’t happen.

Scott had tried to get on the right path over the years, but he always ran into the same ghosts from the past that I had. I think that once Scott realized just how horrible of a father Richard really was and how defective Scott’s childhood had been becuase of Richard, he started to change.

And so it goes, with Scott’s death I’m the last of the Gill / Waniandy clan.

The reality sets in.

I think that the reality of the situation is starting to set in for people that are involved with my matter.

The Department of Justice has access to the following documents:

All the CFSIU investigation paper work from 1980, this includes documents that have never been released to the public.
All of the 1980 correspondence between Colonel Daniel Edward Munro, his superiors and his subordinates.
All of the CFNIS GO 2011-5754 paperwork from 2011 and 2015 to 2018 including all paper work that was never released to the Military Police Complaints Commission in 2012.
All of the correspondence between myself, the Provost Marshal, the Chief of Defence Staff, and the Minister of National Defence.

In a court matter, the complainant and the defendant need to submit to the court the documents that they intend to use to argue their case. The DOJ doesn’t have to supply copies of the records that they used, but by reading the documents indicated above, the DOJ can formulate a plausible defence and they wouldn’t have to submit copies of what they have accessed to the court.

And the thing is that my lawyers would never have any idea of what the DOJ has accessed as we have absolutely no idea of what documents the Department of National Defence supplied to the Department of Justice.

Another issue that stymies my case and puts the sexually abused children from CFB Namao at a severe disadvantage is the spectre of the Official Secrets Act / The Security of Information Act.

There are those who will say that I am blowing things out of proportion with the Official Secrets Act / the Security of Information Act.

The Security of Information Act replaced the Official Secrets Act.

The Official Secrets Act specifically applies to ALL persons who were ever subjected to the Code of Service Discipline.

Section 4(1) states that anyone who was subject to the code of service discipline at the time they became aware of information while on a defence establishment is guilty of an offence if they ever tell anyone outside of persons they are authorized to pass that information on to.

“Having in his possession or control any secret official word” -comma- “password” -comma- “sketch” -comma- “password” -comma- “sketch” -comma- “plan” -comma- “model” -comma- “article” -comma- “note” – comma- “document” -or- “information that relates to or is used in a prohibited place”. The adjective “secret” applies only to “official word”. The commas do not apply the adjective secret to every subsequent clause.

In other words the first sentence of Section 4(1) reads as “Having in his possession or control any secret official word” or “password” or “sketch” or “password” or “sketch” or “plan” or “model” or “article” or “note” or “document” or “information that relates to or is used in a prohibited place”.

The first sentence of Section 4(1) DOES NOT read as “Having in his possession or control any secret official word” ,” secret password” ,” secret sketch” ,” secret password” ,” secret sketch” ,” secret plan” ,” secret model” ,” secret article” ,” secret note” ,” secret document” or ” secret information that relates to or is used in a prohibited place”.

What is a “prohibited place”?

Basically, any Canadian Armed Forces base in Canada is a prohibited place. Any chapel located on a Canadian Forces Base is a prohibited place. Any military police detachment located on a Canadian Forces Base is a prohibited place. Any CFSIU or CFNIS detachment is a prohibited place. Any private married quarters located on a defence establishment is a prohibited place. Any military social worker’s office located on a defence establishment is a prohibited place. Any school located on a defence establishment prior to 1994, would also be considered a prohibited place.

What is “information”? Information is not specifically defined in the Act, so I will go with the dictionary definition of “information”.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/information

Merriam-Webster defines “information” as “knowledge”, “intelligence”, “news”, “facts”, “data”.

So……… anyone who was an active member of the Canadian Armed Forces and who was subject to the Code of Service Discipline back in the period of time between 1978 and 1980 and knew about the exploits of Captain Father Angus McRae or the babysitter, or knew any of the details of the investigation, or knew why the brass didn’t call in the RCMP to deal with the babysitter, or knew who exactly it was that limited the charges against Captain McRae to only those charges related to the babysitter, is forever prohibited from discussing these facts or observances with anyone at anytime without the expressed permission of the Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of National Defence, and the Department of Justice.

This explains why Fred R. Cunningham had no problem telling me what he knew about the events in 1980, but shut his mouth pretty damn quick when I told the Provost Marshal in December of 2011 what Fred had told me in Nov of 2011. This is the same Provost Marshal that told me in January of 2012 that they couldn’t figure out who Fred Cunningham was and that I couldn’t put faith in what he had to say even though it would turn out that Fred Cunningham was the Acting Section Commander of the CFSIU in 1980 and was personally charged by Base Security Officer Captain David Pilling with investigating Captain McRae for “acts of homosexuality with young boys on the base”.

Fred even refused t0 be interviewed by the CFNIS in 2016 stating that he would only talk to the CFNIS if there were no records or recordings. The only thing that Fred did state as a matter of fact was that the “Provost Marshal threw the CFSIU to the dogs” in 1980. Reading the court martial transcripts and the CFSIU investigation paperwork, it appears that the Chain of Command was upset with the CFSIU for digging up more victims than was required.

If you’ve ever wondered why there aren’t more victims of military child sexual abuse from the military communities coming forward. It was all treated as a secret back then, and it’s all treated as a secret in the modern day with the people who could be our champions forever silenced by the Official Secrets Act and its very overly broad application to members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

And then there were three…..

Was at the doctor this morning for my monthly check-up.

My blood work is progressing along nicely.

He doesn’t think that the collapse that I had last month had anything to do with me being on anti-depressants or taking estrogen for my hormone therapy.

I’ve had a long running history of syncope. BP was 112 over 73. Not bad.

And my liver seems okay with the estrogen.

My testosterone results were online at the time of my appointment and they were around 1.1. I’d like to get those down as low as possible, but we’ll have to wait and see whether I can do this chemically or if I can do this surgically.

So, I’ve graduated up to three patches twice a week. That’s 150 microgram of estradiol per day. Whooo-Hoooo!

My most recent blood test revealed that I am at 479 pmol/l which is the same as a woman in her early 20s

I’m aiming to go for an estradiol level of 800 pmol/l which is about 210 pg/ml. This is equivalent to a woman in her late 20s.

Puberty to maturity in less than 6 months.

And then there’s going to be the eventual tapering off.

My body is old. Usually human bodies only undergo one sexual development and maturity per lifetime. Putting my body through a second sexual development and maturity is gonna be tough on it.

Is it worth it?

I think so.

I get a taste of what could have been.

I realize that there was absolutely no way that I could have transitioned early in life, especially not as a kid living on Canadian Armed Forces bases.

And even in my adult life, there would have been very few chances I could have had to have transitioned previously.

In a way, no matter how much psychological trauma I had to endure being involved with the Canadian Armed Forces “justice” system from 2011 until 2020, I wouldn’t have ever been able to contemplate transitioning until I came to realize just how damaged and fucked up the Canadian Armed Forces are and how as an organization they’re willing to destroy the lives of those they deem to be inconsequential so long as the CAF can persevere its public image.

Once I realized just how ethically damaged and psychologically challenged members of the Canadian Armed Forces such as Colonel Daniel Edward Munro, Captain Terry Totzke, and Master Corporal Richard Wayne Gill were I began to realize that all of the hose shit that Captain Totzke and Mcpl Gill had shovelled into my head from age 9 to age 16 was nothing more that the military’s standard bullshit that was deployed to keep secrets.

As I said previously, when my brother called me in 2019 to let me know that Richard had died in 2017, I felt an honest sense of relief knowing that the silly fucker was dead and gone.

And that was when I started putting some serious thought into transitioning.