Someone had posted a video clip from 1977 of sportsball player Reggi Jackson being a massive asshole and shoving people to the ground.
I commented that someone should have popped him in the mouth.
Well, the A.I. algorithm detected that I was advocating violence…….
Yeah, this is the same twitter that allows car drivers to post how they’ll run over any fucking bicycle rider that slows them down or how the laws should be changed to allow car drivers to run down protestors in the street.
So, the algorithm seems fine with advocating violence in the modern day, but is aghast at wishing that someone would have punched a sportsball player in the mouth 45 years ago.
Apparently the twitter A.I. considers this as advocating violence.
Oh well. I guess things are only going to become more entertaining from here on in the more that companies like twitter rely on A.I. to moderate their platforms.
I worked for the Elashi family from about May of 1994 until late 1999.
Ali had brought his family to Canada from Egypt in the early 1970s.
Ali had a son and daughter, Sam and Rosa respectively. Sam and Rosa had their own respective families.
Ali had built a small housing development in East Richmond and in this development he built a small plaza. And in this small plaza he built a small 12 lane bowling centre.
I had just returned from Toronto and was collecting UI. And this was back in the day when you had to stop into the office to drop off your cards to ensure that you got your UI payments on time. The UI office had computer kiosks set up where you could scan for jobs and print them off.
I came across a job posting for Lois Lanes in East Richmond.
Yes, “Lois Lanes” as in Lois Lanes from Superman…..
Yes, Lois Lanes did run afoul of the copyright that the owners of “Superman”, but an agreement was worked out and the Elashis were allowed to continue using the “Lois Lanes” moniker. If I remember correctly they weren’t allowed to use the “Superman” font or anything that represented a “superman” cape.
I called the bowling centre and arranged an interview. I got hopelessly lost on the way down so I called the bowling centre and I spoke with Rosa. She had one of the cashiers named Joey come and pick me up.
The interview wasn’t going too well.The consultant who had helped Ali build the bowling centre was there. Al was his name. I would find out later that Al had recommended to Ali that Ali not hire me as Al thought that I was far too scrawny and too unprofessional. Al was especially concerned that I didn’t have a car and that I would have to rely on public transit. Ali didn’t care though. Ali saw something in me that he was never able to fully explain.
Unlike the Brunswick A and A-2 pinsetters that dominated the bowling industry from the 1950s into the 1990s, Lois Lanes used the brand new Brunswick GS-10 pinsetter. The GS-10 was a fully computerized machine that used green polycord to distribute the bowling pins through the machine. As the machine was fully computerized it could do things that the A’s and A-2’s couldn’t such as short-cycles and setting the bowling pins in custom patterns for bowlers to practice with.
That said, the GS series of pinsetter was a very finicky machine. The A pinsetter was originally designed and built by the Otis Elevator company and as such this machine and the subsequent A-2 were designed with lots of adjustments to make up for varying tolerances. The GS machine required very precise tolerances be observed during installation or the machine was going to be a problem child.
And the GS machines at Lois Lanes were as dysfunctional as I was.
When I started at Lois Lanes, the bowling centre was having serious problems. The centre had only been open for three years, but it already had a notorious reputation for the machines breaking down and blacking out frequently. It was known in the Lower Mainland that if you bowled two strikes in a row on these machines that the machine was definitely going to black out.
The head mechanic that the Elashi’s had running Lois Lanes was a nice guy, but he had no troubleshooting skills. He also had no mechanical aptitude. He was strictly by the book and by the checklist and if the problem wasn’t solved by a trouble shooting flowchart he was lost.
I couldn’t believe that brand new machines like these were as problematic as they were. I asked Ali to get hold of the GS installation manual from Brunswick. Pat Hagarty of Brunswick got me a copy of the manual. I stared going through the basic layout, and that’s when I started to discover that various errors were made during the installation. They were small errors, but they all added up. These were errors that the A and A-2 machines could have easily overcome, but the GS machine didn’t have the wide tolerances required.
One of the first problems I eliminated there was the frequent blackouts. When the GS-10 machines are initially installed, the elevators are supposed to be shimmed up on the same thickness of material as the kickbacks (the ‘walls’ that separate the lanes). At Lois Lanes the kickbacks on average were on 1/2″ thick shim material. The elevators were up on 2″X10″ planks of wood. The elevators were up too high to allow the pins to flow into the mouth of the elevator freely. I spent one weekend removing the elevators one at a time, removing the planks, and then reinstalling the elevators on proper shim stock . No more blackouts.
Children bowling at the centre were a nightmare. The kids would roll the ball so slowly down the lane that the ball would either be caught underneath the sweep, or the sweep would drop in front of the ball preventing the ball from reaching the pins. It turns out that the Brunswick installation crew had forgotten to install the “Sweep Up” switch which would only allow the scoring system to sense the ball detector when the sweep was up, otherwise the scoring system would take score every time the sweep interrupted the ball detector beam. To make up for the fact that the “Sweep Up” switch hadn’t been installed, the installation crew moved the ball detector out in front of the machine further than it should be. This is why the sweep was dropping on slow balls. Once I got the switches installed and the ball detectors moved to where they should have been, all of the problems went away. Children’s birthday parties were no longer seen as a curse.
The machines had been installed 1-1/2″ too far forward. Not a big issues, but it made getting the transport band rollers out a massive pain. And it meant that the machines couldn’t spot pins reliably because the swing shafts had to go back too far to make up for the 1-1/2″ error.
As the machines were fully electronic I could do board repairs on them myself, which was a massive cost saver as sending the boards back to Brunswick for repair was very expensive.
The original motors on the machines for driving the tables were 3-phase metric motors with brakes. The brakes were drum brakes, and they would fail. I sourced a 3-phase metric motor locally that came equipped with a disc brake. The disc brake was far superior and was easily adjustable. Brunswick caught wind of this and it was a few years before Brunswick had switched over to disc brake motors.
These machines had problems with bowling pins entering the ball return system. I used to cut up old transport bands and made flaps that would hang down from the cushion board to keep the pins from rolling into the ball door. Brunswick came out with this kit a few years later.
Coincidence? Probably. But at least I was ahead of the game.
It turns out that the skills I had picked up at Rainbow Games with felting pool tables was beneficial for Lois Lanes as now I could do the tables in house instead of having to call a contractor in.
In 1996 when Ali, Rosa, and Sam decided to install the “Cosmic Bowling” package from Brunswick, I did the installation of the sound system and the lighting effects.
I was an interesting job. It was a very interesting 5 years.
Lois Lanes was a small 12 lane bowling centre, and it just wasn’t going to hold my interest forever.
Towards the end I was doing more work on Ali’s plaza than I was in the bowling centre. And that’s when I decided to take a course in property maintenance, which ended up steering me into the world of commercial property management.
I was contacted by the Elashis in 2009 when they had decided to sell the bowling centre. The machines were in very rough condition as the mechanic hired to replace me didn’t really do any maintenance and let the machines get into rough condition. But this is for another blog entry.
The Elashis were also the first indication that I had that there had been something very horrifically wrong with my family.
The first wasn’t actually the Elashi family. It was the children’s parties on the weekend. I always felt uncomfortable working Saturday mornings around kids. They were always screaming and yelling and goofing off. Most of the time I had expected the parents, especially the fathers to backhand their kids or to at least yell at them to shut up and sit down. And oh were there meltdowns. Kids would have tantrums all of the time. And the parents for the most part weren’t angry at the kid for having a meltdown.
Also, the idea of celebrating birthday parties was kinda odd to me to begin with. To this day I don’t celebrate my birthday and I don’t think that any of my coworkers know which day of the year my birthday is. Shouldn’t be hard for them to figure out as I always take that day off work. But yeah, when I was younger I just couldn’t understand the concept of parents spending a couple hundred dollars on a party and presents and food. I still don’t really get it. But it is what it is.
Ali built the bowling centre with the intention that it would eventually go to his kids and possibly his grandkids. It was always supposed to be a family operation. This was a marked departure from my father who was of the opinion that he wasn’t responsible for my brother and I, that we were always somebody else’s issue.
Ali owned a house in the housing development that he built, as did his daughter and his son. No doubt those houses were built by Ali with the intentions that his family would remain close to him.
Rosa had a son that she sent to a private school in Oregon. Her daughter was a ballerina and as far as I remember her daughter went on to New York for ballet. When Rosa’s son was in Oregon, she’d drive down to visit with him periodically on the weekend.
I had often wondered where I would be now if I had gone to a private school, or even college or trade school or even had I just finished school period. I now understand that those options never would have been available to me, but still, one can wonder, can’t they?
I had never seen anything like this. Ali was building his family. Rosa was building her family. Sam was building his family. Contrast that with Richard who was the happiest when everybody would just piss the fuck off and leave him alone. At the time my brain had great difficulty processing this. This was 10 years after my father had fled the province of Alberta to avoid my apprehension by Alberta Social Services. This was about 15 years before I had obtained my Alberta Foster Care records and learnt first hand just how bad of a parent my father had actually been.
One of the things with the Elashi family that scared me at first and actually brought tears to my eyes the first couple of times I experienced it was their “passionate” discussions. Before the centre would open for the day I’d be working in the back. Ali, Rosa, and Sam would be having a meeting in the frontend. Voices would start to rise and the first time I heard this I thought that there was going to be physical violence. In Richard’s house, when voices were raised like this it meant that physical violence wasn’t too far behind. I think it was Rosa that found me shaken by one of these “passionate” discussions. She assured me that these were just discussions and that no one was angry or upset with the others. She said that if I ever had the opportunity to travel to the Middle East, discussions like this were quite common and they were never in anger, its just that when people are passionate about their thoughts and ideas they raise their voice to emphasize their passion. How true this is I’ll probably never know. But the longer I worked there the more I became accustomed to raised voices not being an indication of anger or impending physical violence.
The bowling centre is long since gone. It shut down a few years ago. Not exactly sure what is happening down there, but it looks like the entire plaza is going to be demolished and new condominiums and a new retail development will be built on the site.
Almost all of the smaller bowling centres that existed back in the 1990s are long gone now. Property values in the lower mainland reached such a fevered level that a bowling centre occupying such a massive chunk of real estate just didn’t make sense.
Bowling is a recreation that got caught between a dwindling middle class and too many other low cost entertainment options. Everyone has video games and movie theatres at home. Bowling isn’t a cheap sport for maintenance. Pins and balls are expensive. Machine parts are very expensive. Labour is expensive. Property taxes are expensive. Just too many things for bowling to contend with.
I left the Elashis in the summer of 1999 and entered the wonderful world of commercial property management.
If someone committed rape, or murder, or indecent assault in 1970, they could still be charged in the modern day as those are indictable offences, not summary offences.
Law genius at work
So here’s this guy claiming that there is a two year statute of limitations on indictable offences in Canada.
I don’t get it.
Why do people like this open their mouths?
What do they get out of flapping their traps?
What can I say?
“Military’s” not “militaries”.
Obviously not dealing with a full deck here.
“If the military say we knew nothing of his conduct then there is not culpability”.
Yeah, so much to unpack here. The military did know of his actions. The military knew what Captain McRae and P.S. were up to. The abuse occurred on a secure defence establishment. The military provided Captain McRae with his living quarters on base.
But yeah, this is why it gets so frustrating dealing with the base brat groups and why I generally stay off of Facebook.
I worked for a Jewish Cowboy when I lived in Toronto.
All of Bob’s customers called him the Jewish Cowboy because he always wore cowboy boots, khakis, long sleeved button up shirts, and a Stetson. Oh, and he was Jewish.
I don’t know too much about Bob’s origins other than he was Jewish and he was born in Poland sometime in the late 1920s early 1930s.
When I lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview I was a loner. Actually for most of my life after CFB Namao I was a loner. One of the things I loved to do was to jump onto the railway tracks that ran through the base. I’d walk up the railway tracks as far north as the rail yards north of Steeles Avenue.
I was always fascinated by the dead animals that I’d find on the tracks. How could they not hear a train coming. Even without sounding their horns trains were loud. Was it a quick death. Did the animal even know what had hit it. Was it painful. A million questions.
Usually I’d bring a book with me and I’d climb the signal platforms and read my book on top of the signals while the trains passed underneath.
On one of my journeys up the railways I saw a warehouse with video games in it. I was curious. I hopped the fence and went over to take a look.
I can’t remember how things went down, but I told Bob that I was handy with electronics and that I could solder. So as a test he asked me to solder some wires to a joystick. So I stripped the wires, fluxed the wires, tinned the wires, fluxed the switch tabs, applied a small bit of solder to the switch tab and then I applied the tinned wire into the molten solder blob, removed the soldering iron and let the solder cool. It was nice, and shiny, and perfect.
Bob then asked me to look at some video game logic boards that had some problems. I fixed them.
So I had a job. Bob paid good, just a little bit above minimum wage, which for a 13 year old wasn’t bad. And on days that I worked, Bob paid for my meals. Bob refused to buy me smokes or to let me smoke in the workshop, but he wouldn’t say anything if I stepped out for a smoke.
Bob owned two companies. Trans American Construction and Trans American Video Amusements. I don’t think he had operated Trans American Construction much by the time I started working for him. His main business was Trans American Video Amusements.
When I started working for Bob his shop was in a warehouse on Finch. A little while later he moved to a new warehouse on Steeles Ave.
Bob’s customers spanned all the way from Oshawa, Ontario to Niagara Falls, Ontario. He had agreements to put video games in all of the Holiday Inns in Southern Ontario as well as all of the Hasty Markets. Bob also had various other locations such as small convenience stores. I’d usually go in and work with Bob on Saturdays.
Bob had a Dodge Kary Van that was modified with a lift gate on the rear for lifting and lowering the video games in and out of the box.
Bob’s was red, not white and didn’t have the hazard light bar on top.
We drove in this van pretty well all over southern Ontario.
Bob wasn’t the least bit hesitant to drive on base and stop in front of our PMQ and toot the air-horns to let me know that he was waiting.
Bob didn’t like my father very much. Bob would often tell me that what concerned him the most about my father is that my father just didn’t seem to care that I was never home. What type of man lets a stranger take his son on the highway and out of the city?
By the time Bob moved up to Steeles Avenue I would come to work after school and I would stay there until 9 or 10 at night. Bob could always tell I was leaving late because Gerry, the guy who owned that auto shop next-door, would tell Bob what time I was leaving, and Bob could see what time I armed the alarms.
And this blew Bob away. He said that he’d never seen anything like this. He said if his daughter started disappearing for hours that he’d ground her.
And my smoking. Bob had never seen anything like it. The fact that my father didn’t care about my smoking shocked Bob. Bob couldn’t comprehend this.
I never could understand why Bob cared so much about my father or my home life. I guess at the time I didn’t realize just how off the rails and dysfunctional my household actually was and how apparent the dysfunction was to people outside of my family.
Bob was a good natured guy. He never really got angry or upset. I dropped a video game out of the back of the truck in the shop one day. I thought that Bob was going to be pissed off, or worse. Nope. Shit happens, just try harder next time. My father would have killed me or at least humiliated me.
One time we were driving to Niagara Falls. Antonio was with us. Antonio was another helper that Bob often employed. Bob was driving, Antonio was in the passenger seat, I was sitting between Bob and Antonio. Bob asked Antonio to clean the sideview mirror. Antonio reached into the glove box and grabbed a small “rag”, rolled down the window, and started rubbing the dirt off the mirror using the “rag”.
“Antonio! After all I have done for you, this is how you repay me!” Bob bellowed.
Antonio starts looking at Bob and then looks at the mirror thinking maybe he didn’t clean the mirror good enough.
I forget exactly how the exchange went but I clued in really quick once I saw the decorative embroidery around the edge of the “rag”. Antonio still hadn’t figured out why Bob was upset so I pointed at the “rag” and then I pointed at the back of my head. Antonio didn’t get it right away, but then the realization started to dawn on Antonio’s face. Antonio unfolded the “rag” and realized that he had just used Bob’s yarmulke to clean the mirror. When Bob saw the look of horror on Antonio’s face he couldn’t stop laughing. Antonio spent the rest of the day apologizing to Bob.
Bob got a flat tire once in the truck. I got underneath to put the jack in place under the axle. Bob didn’t realize that my legs were under the lift gate and he was in the process of unloading games off the truck to make it lighter. Bob treated me like royalty for the next couple of weeks after that.
Bob bought me a jukebox at one of the video game auctions at Starburst Distributors for my 15th birthday. Wasn’t an expensive machine, but it was more that what Richard had bought me, which was nothing.
I’m pretty sure that the summer of 1987 was the last summer that I worked for Bob. That was the year I dropped out of grade 9. And it was also the year that I started working for Ed Blah and Bruce Beveridge of Rainbow Games. But the summer of 1987 was when I learnt a little bit about Bob’s history.
We were moving games down to the CNE from Bob’s warehouse. As the CNE happened in August this was typically the most humid time of the year in Southern Ontario. Bob was sweating, and I mean really sweating. Sweating so much that I was certain that he was going to pass out from heat stroke. I kept insisting to Bob that he should take his long sleeve shirt off and wear a short sleeve shirt or a tee-shirt.
Bob was becoming visibly annoyed with my pestering. He looked over at me and asked me if he showed me something would I promise never to bother him again about short sleeved shirts. He also asked me to promise to never tell anyone about what he was about to show me.
Remember when I said that Bob had been born in Poland in the late 1920s? Remember the fact that he was Jewish.
Bob rolled up his left sleeve and there was his concentration camp number.
The Nazis had rounded him and his family up and they were sent to a concentration camp.
Bob was the only one who survived the camps. The rest of his family was gone.
After the war Bob first landed in America before settling in Canada.
And I think this is what bugged Bob the most about my father.
Bob’s family had been destroyed by hatred. Richard was destroying his own family out of indifference.
The Nazis had taken everything away from Bob and Bob in turn built a miniature empire and looked after his wife and his daughter.
Richard never had to deal with a force of destruction like the Nazis, but here he was content to exist in his little self absorbed world not caring in the slightest where his kids were getting off to.
It shocks me now to look back on all of the people I had interacted with as a child. People who I liked. But people who I though were wrong about my father. It wasn’t that my father didn’t care, my father was in the Canadian Armed Forces. He was a busy man defending Canada. Besides, I made the babysitter molest my younger brother, so maybe he was right to not like me very much.
I didn’t know that my father was being physically or mentally abusive. My father’s attitude was common on the bases amongst the other fathers. In fact when I saw civie kids “getting away with murder” I thought it was their parents that were abnormal or just too weak to discipline their kids properly.
Now I fully realize that men like Bob Becker were right. There was something horrifically wrong with my family. My family was a dysfunctional and self destructive military family.
I honestly can’t remember how I started working for the Casson family at their pizza shop in Kingsway Garden Mall.
I know that it was before the summer of 1982 when I started in the Westfield Program.
There was Jackie Casson, Bonnie Casson, and Colleen Casson.
Jackie was the matriarch of the family. Bonnie and Colleen were Jackie’s daughters.
I know that I was working for them prior to the summer of 1982 as when I was in the Westfield program we had a school trip down to a Boston Pizza shop that was on 118th Ave and 127th Street. This trip occurred between the summer of 1982 and January of 1983. We were there to make our own pizzas. I already knew how to oil the pan and spread the dough, so this is how I know that I was working at Pizza Plus already.
My “duties” at Pizza Plus were to wash the pans. Oil the cleaned pans. Measure and cut the dough for the pans. And then stack the pans in the undercounter cooler. I’d also help with getting supplies out of the storage locker under the loading bay.
It wasn’t much of a job really. But it did give me a little spending cash and all of the pizza slices that I could eat.
I had a bicycle that I would ride down from Canadian Forces Base Griesbach at 137th Ave and 97th Street to Kingsway Garden Mall at 109th Street and Kingsway.
Even after grandma moved out, Richard would frequently drop my brother and I off with grandma to spend the weekend. Grandma lived over at 107th Ave and 111th Street. So walking over to the mall was easy enough.
I think that Jackie let me “work” there because she knew something was wrong at home and she felt sorry for me.
Jackie had a house in the west end of Edmonton and she had let my brother and I come swimming a couple of times.
I honestly can’t keep her two daughters straight in my mind, the ol’ brain is getting tired. I think that it was Colleen that owned a Triumph TR-7 sports car and she used to take me for rides around the city. And I’m pretty sure that it was Bonnie that owned the Pizza Plus that was in the food court at Cadillac Fairview place downtown.
In the summer of 1984 and 1985 when Richard had sent my brother and I up to Edmonton to spend the summer with grandma I would spend most of my time either working at Pizza Plus or pedalling the ice cream carts for Dickie-Dee.
In the summer of ’84 I went up north with a woman who was somehow involved with the Cassons. She ran a small pizza shop at a board of education building. I can’t honestly remember what town this was in. I’m thinking Bon-Accord. I would have been 12 at the time. I think I was gone for about a week. Funny thing was when we got back to Edmonton, my grandmother vaguely remembered me going but she was sure that I’d turn back up again.
The Cassons were great. Even though I couldn’t have been much value to them, they always made me feel welcomed. Which was far better than what I was getting at home. They kept me fed. And they gave me enough spending money to keep me out of trouble. The money I was making from the Cassons was enough to pay for games at the arcades or to let me go see a movie. It was money from the Cassons that allowed me to catch the city bus up to CFB Griesbach and then the shuttle bus up to CFB Namao when I tried to report P.S. to the military police for the first time in 1984.
In my foster care records it’s mentioned that my child care worker asked me in January of 1983 if there was anyone in particular that I wanted to go stay with after they removed me from the home.
This lady would have been Jackie Casson.
I didn’t want to go live with my mother. I didn’t want to go live with my grandmother. I didn’t want to go live with my uncle. I wanted Jackie to adopt me.
And see, it’s stuff like this stuck in my head that haunts me to this day.
I could have been free of Richard. I could have been clear of the Gill family dysfunction. I could have received treatment for my major depression, my severe anxiety, and the effects of 1-1/2 years of sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
I could have gone to live with someone who was nice and who actually cared and who would have treated me the same as she had treated her own grown daughters.
There would have been absolutely no way that Jackie would have tolerated anything less than grade 12 for my education.
What my life would have been like or could have been like? I don’t know. All I can say for sure is that it would have been a hell of a lot more meaningful if the Canadian Armed Forces hadn’t interfered with my removal.
I could have had a normal life, but secrets needed to be kept.
One of the oddest things about growing up in Richard’s house is how defending myself often put me at the risk of being on the receiving end of Richard’s rage.
Being a child with severe depression and severe anxiety meant that I liked to keep to myself a lot. There were two boys on Canadian Forces Base Downsview that used to take extreme pleasure in beating me up. One of the kids lived at the end of the row house that I lived in. And we both attended Pierre Laporte Junior High. This kid I’ll refer to as “G”. The other kid that “G” hung out with was “S”.
Military bases were like the proverbial “company town”. Everybody knew everybody’s business and everybody knew everybody’s issues. If you came from one of the many dysfunctional families that lived on military bases in Canada, you may as well have had a scarlett D tattooed on your forehead.
There were four kids that attended Pierre Laporte Junior High that made my life a living hell to the point that one more than one occasion I contemplated stepping in front of the CN train that ran through the middle of the base just behind the PMQs or even the TTC subway train. “G”, “S”, “R.K.”, and “R.A.”
And the thing was, these four would often gang up on me. So it was never a fair one-on-one fight.
These four and their girlfriends were always taunting me about my lack of a girlfriend and my apparent “funny walk”. Also, my father’s frequent anger outbursts and the domestic dispute which occurred in the summer of 1985 seemed to feed these kids even more.
On one occasion I was coming home from school when both “G” and “S” caught me behind Downsview Secondary School. What I didn’t anticipate was that my only friend at the time, John, saw what was happening and he intervened to keep “S” out of the fight. I don’t know if “G” didn’t put as much effort into the fight because “S” wasn’t able to help him, or if I just realized that I had a once in a life time chance to fight back. But I landed a few good punches and “G” decided he wasn’t interested in fighting me.
When I got home my shiner was starting the develop.
Let’s not kid anyone. At that point in my life I was on the scrawny side. “G” was much more developed than I was. Christ, even my younger brother was taller and more muscular than I was. I didn’t actually break 120 lbs until I quit smoking in 1996 when I was 25. At the time I lived on CFB Downsview I’d be very surprised if I broke 90 to 100 lbs. During my adolescence my chest muscles and body fat were so thin that you could easily see my ribs.
I thought that Richard would have approved of me standing up for myself instead of getting the shit beat out of me as usual. Nope. I got a nice back hand across my face and he told me that I had to stop doing things to get myself beat up. He said that he was getting tired of me picking fights and then playing the victim.
I can only look back and wonder if Richard was projecting.
Projection in the psychological sense is where you take all of your flaws and superimpose them onto someone else.
In 2011 when I received my foster care records from the Alberta Government I would discover that both the psychiatrist hired by the Canadian Forces as well as my civilian child care workers had noted that my father refused to accept responsibility for his family, blamed others for his problems, felt victimized, expected others to solve his problems for him, often told conflicting stories, and often told those he perceived to be in positions of authority what he thought they wanted to hear.
Richard had already made it known to me at various times between the summer of 1980 and the fall of ’87 when I moved out that I was at fault for allowing the babysitter to molest my younger brother. As an adult I full well realize that this is the stupidest thing that Richard could have ever said. But as a child this cut right to the bone.
So was that it? Was Richard projecting all of his shortcomings and failings on me? Richard wasn’t home like he was supposed to have been and he left my brother and I in the care of his alcoholic mother. Did Richard blame me because otherwise he’d have to step up to the plate and take responsibility for his two kids being sexually abused on a secured defence establishment?
Richard would often “rage out” and get so violent, but then turn around mere hours later and forget all about it. Did Richard view me standing up to “G” and fighting back as me “raging out” like he was prone to?
I forget what rank “G’s” father was at the time, all I know is that he outranked my father. Was my father just afraid of catching flack from “G’s” father or from a superior of “G’s” father?
Richard’s refusal to allow me to defend myself has had repercussion well into my adult life.
Not being allowed to defend myself fostered a very low self esteem.
Not being allowed to defend myself taught me to appease others and just go with what others wanted as this would avoid confrontation.
This will always be a mystery to me as Richard is long since dead.
And honestly whether or not I ever got an answer from Richard would be pointless as the damage has long since been done.
Over the course of time that I have been running my blogs people have come forward and have suggested that I just need to seek counselling to deal with the cancer in my brain and that everything will be just fine. And I know that these people mean well. But sometimes there is nothing that can be done.
I know that I am going to sound like a broken record, but sometimes the damage is unfixable due to the severity of the damage, the spectrum of the damage, and how long the damage was allowed to fester.
In my case not only did I come from a family with intergenerational dysfunction, I was sexually abused repeatedly from 1978 until 1987 by various people. I was blamed for the abuse which occurred from 1978 until 1980. I was blamed for my brother’s abuse that occurred from 1978 until 1980. I was labelled a homosexual even though I more than likely was not one. I was pitted in a war between my military social worker and my civilian social workers. I grew up being spoon fed lies by my father. My educational endeavours were severely curtailed due to my father’s belief that what was good enough for him was more than good enough for me.
My father also seemed to be the kind of person that would destroy anyone he felt was a challenge to his intellect or authority. Sarcastic putdowns were a hobby of his. He could wield his putdowns like a machete and inflict massive wounds.
I know that my untreated depression and my untreated anxiety were probably what led to me being sexually abused frequently as a kid. How many times was I sexually abused? More than you’d probably care to know.
See child sexual abuse, dysfunction, and mental illness go hand in hand.
A dysfunctional household means that you often have no one to confide in as the adults in your house are wrapped up in their own drama and are dealing with their own demons.
My mental illnesses meant that I was often alone, scapegoated, and ostracized. Kiddie diddlers and perverts love ostracized children. They’re often alone and by themselves. Children who are depressed often have such low levels of self esteem that these creeps and perverts only have to make basic overtures to these kids in order to get these kids to comply. Also these creeps and perverts know that children with low self esteem can be made to believe anything and can be easily manipulated. All they have to do is offer a compliment on how handsome you look or how smart you are and they’ve got you in their traps.
If I had been allowed to receive treatment for my depression and anxiety would I have not appeared so odd and bizarre to the other kids? And if I had been accepted by the other kids would I have been such an easy target for the creeps and pervs?
I remember as a kid frequently crying because I couldn’t figure out what the fuck was wrong with me and why I was such a fucking freak. The last time that I had actually broken down and cried with these thoughts was back in 2008.
Dying was a frequent wish of mine as a kid. I would often hope that I would get kidnapped and murdered and that during the police investigation my father would go to jail for neglect. I remember the 1984 McDonald’s shooting in San Ysidro , California and how I wished that I could be killed in a similar manner. I really didn’t want to live as a kid. I was just too chicken to do anything about it.
I wish that I could say that “talking” was going to fix my issues. But I know that I can’t be honest with counsellors. After all I spent three years of my childhood being manipulated by military social worker Captain Terry Totzke and my very own father. And by being manipulated I mean that every time that we went to counselling sessions at the Westfield Program my father and Terry would tell me to be very careful with what I said to the counsellors and that I should check with them before saying anything to my counsellors. Sure, I’ve learnt recently that both my father and Terry had their own agendas. The fact that I now know of these agendas doesn’t change the fact that the rot and cancer of mental illness was allowed to permeate the far reaches of my brain from 1980 until 2011. And I understand that my father may have had no option but to follow the instructions of Terry as Terry was a captain in the Canadian Forces and my father was only a master corporal.
Another problem with talking freely with counsellors is that they honestly don’t listen.
Children don’t live on military bases.
Military bases would have been the safest place for children to live.
Military police are real police officers and can’t be interfered with.
All you had to do was tell someone.
You’re successful, you can’t have any mental issues.
You never sought help before, how bad can your issues be.
You’re blowing things out of proportion.
You’ve adapted to your depression, you can tough it out.
Also, I have various people residing in my skull. And they’re not going anywhere. And no, they’re not there for trivial reasons. Who are these people?
P.S. a 14 / 15 year old male from CFB Namao
Captain McRae from CFB Namao.
The mystery man from the sauna on CFB Griesbach.
The man from CFB Griesbach
The man from Kingsway Garden Mall in Edmonton, AB.
Earl Ray Stevens, the retired member of the Canadian Forces who was a commissionaire at the Dennison Armouries in North York.
The guy who lived on Centre Island.
The University of Toronto student who conned me into a “human sexuality” study.
A guy from North York who tried to get me to participate in the filming of a child porn video.
The married guy who threw me out of his apartment when his wife came home.
The man who tried to strangle me in his car in High Park in Toronto.
A guy that I worked with in Toronto who threatened to “out me” to my employers if I didn’t look after him.
So, while I appreciate the urgings for me to “get help”, there honestly is no help.
One of my “gifts” if you will is that I am extremely pragmatic. Not everything can be fixed. Not everyone can be “cured”.
Sometimes the best thing to do is to learn how to cope. But sometime even coping isn’t good enough.
If you want to prevent people from suffering from complex mental health issues, the best thing to do is to prevent those issues from occurring in the first place.
The one thing that I have learnt over the last ten years is not to blame myself for what happened.
The other thing that I learnt over the last ten years is that our lives are so intricately. There’s a collective delusion in North America that everyone is their own person and that everyone is responsible for their own destiny. That I can promise you is the furthest thing from the truth.
Persons involved with the Government of British North America and later Canada, as well as members of the various Catholic organizations decided how to deal with the Indians. This of course had massive repercussions for the paternal side of my family.
Members of the Canadian Armed Forces from NDHQ in Ottawa, ON, to Western Command in Winnipeg, MB, as well as the local chain of command on Canadian Forces Base Namao decide that the best way to protect the image of the Canadian Armed Forces was to sweep the Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse scandal under the rug.
In 2011 members of the Canadian Armed Forces all the way from NDHQ in Ottawa, through the Provost Marshal in Ottawa to the CFNIS Western Command at Edmonton Garrison were fully aware of the connection between the person I accused of molesting my brother and I, and Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae, but the decision was made to gaslight me and try to convince me that there was no way that P.S. could have ever possibly sexually abused me.
As you can see, there are many people, people whom I’ve never seen in my life, people that I’ve never met, that have made decisions that have had drastic effects on my life. I guess the “one man army” appeals to a lot of people because they don’t like the idea that they are not in control of their lives.
The truth is none of us are truly in control of our lives. Our lives are so interdependent on others.
My father was a grade 8 drop out who had a successful career in the Canadian Armed Forces. He went to school in a single room school house in Fort McMurray where science class was probably spent learning the boiling and freezing temperatures of water and music class consisted of signing “God Save the Queen”. So my educational career was determined for better or worse by my father.
Where could my life have gone if my father had encouraged my academic adventures?
The Canadian Armed Forces chain of command in 1980 decided that they needed to limit the fallout from the Captain Father Angus McRae child sex scandal and evoked the “protection of public morals” to hide the court martial and the evidence “in-camera”. How would my life have ended up had I been acknowledged to be a victim of Captain McRae and of P.S. and that I wasn’t responsible for P.S. molesting my younger brother?
Captain Totzke didn’t work on his own. His agenda with me would have been set by the Canadian Forces. What would my gender identity and sexual orientation be like today if Captain Totzke’s mission back then hadn’t been to convince me that I was sexually abused because I had exhibited signs of homosexuality?
If the decision wasn’t made to get my family out of Alberta before I was placed into foster care, what would my life have been like today? Again, another decision made by people who were working against people who were trying to help me.
So many people made decisions about my life, and they made these decisions without any concern for the consequences of their decisions.
And the reality is, there are a lot of people that make decisions on a daily basis that affect the lives of others.
Yes, people can make decisions that affect their own lives, but these usually work in conjunction with the decisions that others had made.
As a kid, my father Richard would often tell me that I needed to be really careful with the questions that I asked suggesting that I wasn’t going to like the answers that I was going to discover.
Even when I had my series of telephone calls with Richard back in 2006 he suggested that I forget about the babysitter from CFB Namao and just “move the fuck on” and quit worrying about the past. The past was the past and there was no changing it.
At the time I didn’t understand what he meant. Well, I kinda understood what he meant, I made the babysitter molest my younger brother, and therefore I was just trying to blame the babysitter for something that I was ultimately responsible for.
None the less, I had to go and kick the hornet’s nest in 2011.
Do I regret kicking the hornet’s nest.
No. Not one bit.
As soul crushing as this has been, I’ve learnt that I was a victim, just as my brother was. I didn’t make the babysitter molest my brother. If anyone was responsible for my brother being molested it was ultimately Captain Father Angus McRae and the Canadian Forces chain of command that was responsible for transferring Captain McRae to CFB Namao even though they knew he was having issues.
So, in a way I’m happy to know the truth.
But the truth also kills me.
Knowing the truth has shattered some very longstanding illusions that I grew up believing. These were illusions that formed my life.
Now, let’s be very clear, it’s not knowing the truth that makes me want to seek M.A.i.D. in 2023. It’s all of the mental health issues surrounding my untreated major depression and my severe anxiety that were known about and left untreated between 1980 and 2011. It’s all of the memories of the sexual abuse of not only me, but of my brother, and of the other kids that P.S. would abuse and the manner in which he would abuse them.
Yes, learning the truth has been a very painful journey. But it also has been very liberating at the same time too.
Some of the truths that I now know that I didn’t prior to 2011 are:
Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae confessed in 1980 during an ecclesiastical trial to having had sexual relationships with young boys for years prior to his arrest and court martial in 1980.
The Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit were both aware of the fact that P.S. was sexually abusing children on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
The Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit were both aware that Captain McRae had been bringing children to the rectory at the base chapel and that Captain McRae was giving these children alcohol and then “fooling around” with them.
That P.S. was molesting children was of no doubt as Captain McRae’s defence counsel was trying to discredit the testimony of P.S. by bringing up the fact that P.S. himself had been molesting young children on the base, in many cases performing anal intercourse on children under 10.
Prior to 1998 there existed two flaws in the National Defence Act which meant that even if I had come forward prior to 1998 with complaints against P.S. and Captain McRae that Captain McRae could never be charged for any crime he committed against a child which occurred on a defence establishment while he was subject to the code of service discipline.
Even though the Canadian Forces were prohibited from holding a service tribunal for the crimes of Murder, Manslaughter, and Rape from 1950 until 1985 and Murder, Manslaughter, and Sexual Assault from 1985 to 1998, they could oddly enough hold a service tribunal for sexual crimes committed against children.
My father was known to be a liar who would frequently change his stories.
My father was known to tell people he perceived to be in positions of authority what he thought they wanted to hear.
My father had issues with his role as a parent and showed very little in the way of responsibility towards his own family.
It was known since 1980 that I was a severely mentally ill child in need of help, but Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke for some reason didn’t ever seem to follow through with the recommendations that I receive help.
I was actually in the foster care system and it appears that Captain Totzke assisted my father with obtaining a posting out of the jurisdiction of Alberta so that Alberta Social Services couldn’t apprehend me and place me into care.
My mother hadn’t abandoned the family. Flaws in the National Defence Act and the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations meant that spouses and children were defect “visitors” on base that were only there at the pleasure of the serving member.
I can only wonder what my father truly knew about the events on CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980. Events he knew of but pretended that didn’t happen.
How could my father “forget” in 2011 that he was rarely home from 1978 until 1980 and that he had brought his own mother into the PMQ on CFB Namao to raise my brother and I. This seems like quite the omission does it not? It’s not like grandma popped in for a weekend or two and babysat my brother or I once or twice in the two years we lived on CFB Namao. She moved into the PMQ on the same day we moved in. She moved with us from CFB Namao to CFB Griesbach in October of 1980. Her husband Andy Anderson didn’t die until 1983.
My brother suggests that maybe the CFNIS leaned on Richard to get Richard to say what the CFNIS wanted him to say. I have a different thought. I remember when Richard was dating Vicki, he kept asking my brother and I if we would like to live in Wetaskiwin and he would get a job working as a mechanic locally. There were times when Richard was home for visit before he and Sue moved into the PMQ in August of 1980. We’d go for drives around the base and he always seemed to be certain that he was going to be out of the military and that he’d have to get a civilian job.
I think that in 1980 Richard sold my brother and I down the river in trade for what ever deal the Canadian Armed Forces was offering to service members if they would keep their mouths shut about what happened on CFB Namao. This would explain why I had to be blamed for my brother being sexually abused as well as me “liking the abuse” because it went on for so long which proved that I was a “homosexual”. We couldn’t pretend like nothing happened. Something happened, and alternative realities had to be created in order to get everyone to shut up about things.
When Richard was interviewed in 2011 he forget that grandma lived with us and he completely forget about P.S. even though he named P.S. on his on in 2006. Why? I think it would have killed Richard if what he had done in 1980 became known. What did Richard do in 1980? We will never know. He died in 2017 and he took his horrific secret to the grave with him. Was it the promise of some good promotions? He was a master corporal in 1980. He became a warrant officer around 1989. He had a problem with drinking and his anger. Did the Canadian Forces promise him that there would be no disciplinary actions taken against him for pending matters or that his previous history would be over looked at promotion time?
As I said, he’s dead and we’ll never know the truth about 1980 even though the military police the CFSIU, and the chain of command knew full well what both Captain McRae and P.S. were doing.
So yeah, I guess that in the end Richard was right.
I stuck my nose into the business of the Canadian Armed Forces and I smelt some rather rancid shit and this stench doesn’t wash out no matter how much detergent you use.
I honestly can’t remember when I started wetting the bed. It was definitely in the aftermath of the sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
I can’t see me having wet the bed too frequently when grandma was living with us.
But it did start towards the end of our stay on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
By the time I was living on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach I was frequently wetting the bed. So much so that I even had plastic sheets on my bed.
Now, this period of time was right after the sexual abuse on CFB Namao and it was also when my father’s anger with me was beginning to peak because I allowed the babysitter to molest my younger brother and I had fucked with Richard’s military career. Not bad for a 9 year old, eh?
Actually, I’m pretty sure that I wet the bed one time when Richard had taken my brother and I to spend the night at Sue’s apartment by Londonderry Mall in Edmonton before she moved into our PMQ in August of 1980, so I would have been wetting the bed sometime after the summer of 1979.
So yeah, this would have been around when I was at and the abuse was starting to get bad.
They tried diapers on me. Didn’t work, couldn’t get adolescent sized diapers I guess.
Richard was supposedly looking at a device that would give me a mild electric shock when it had detected that I had wet the bed.
Sue had gotten so fed up with my wetting the bed that she rubbed my face in my own urine soaked sheets.
Initially when I started wetting the bed I’d get a fresh change of sheets and some new pyjamas. But as my bed wetting wore on I’d have to sleep on the same sheets. As there were no more pyjama changes, I started sleeping naked.
I still remember waking up in the middle of the night or the early morning with my sheets soaking wet and cold and smelling like pee. I remember learning to sleep around the wetness.
When I was allowed to take showers, no one at school would notice that I had slept in my own urine. But when it was determined that the best way to get me to stop pissing the bed was to make me go to school without a shower that when things started to get really bad at school. Who the fuck in their right mind wants to be anywhere near a kid that smell like piss?
And kids at that age can be very vocal in their opinions of someone who smells like a rancid onion.
So no, not changing my sheets, nor not allowing me to shower, nor any of the other humiliation techniques were successful in getting me to stop wetting my bed.
I did eventually stop pissing my bed.
I was 16 when I stopped.
I had found a room to rent locally and I moved out of Richard’s house.
That would have been around January or February of 1988.
I was terrified that first night that I lived “on my own”.
Know what?
My bed sheets have been dry ever since.
As a kid my beds were always the cheap disposable foam mattress type of beds. Not too long ago, actually earlier this year, I bought my first real bed. It has a frame and a box and a mattress that’s almost 8 inches thick. The box that the mattress lays upon has a solid flat surface. And there’s a head board. And real pillows. Why didn’t I buy a real bed before? I don’t know, I really don’t. Foam mattresses with cheap boxes were always what I had. Maybe that’s what I always thought that I deserved. Maybe I was also afraid that I’d just ruin a new bed by pissing on it.
To say that I was terrified of Richard would have been a grave understatement.
Did the sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao play a role. Certainly, of that there is no doubt.
With Richard being unable to take responsibility for his family, and with Richard needing to blame others for the problems with his family, it wouldn’t be too far out of line to say that the anger, disdain, and ridicule that Richard directed towards me for having allowed the babysitter to touch my younger brother as well as for me having “fucked with” Richard’s military career was taking an emotional and psychological toll on my young and developing brain.
Am I embarrassed to share this? No, not in the slightest. I’ve gone so far beyond the point of being ashamed that I no longer care.
I’ve suffered from severe anxiety since at least 1980.
I have no doubt that my anxiety comes from my mother’s side of the family. My hospital records make note that she was extremely anxious at times and was close to a nervous breakdown after the death of her father.
Just as my father’s genes have predisposed me to suffering from depression and that the events of Canadian Forces Base Namao triggered and amplified that depression into full blown major depression I have no doubt that my mother’s genes predisposed me to anxiety and the events of Canadian Forces Base Namao triggered and amplified this into full blown anxiety.
Just as when I’d have a depressive episode when I was a kid, my anxiety attacks were seen by my father as being nothing more than a childish attempt for e to gain attention. For much of my life I internalized my anxiety attacks and my depressive crashes.
Not having friends and not having close associates means that I was able to hide a lot of these episodes. When you don’t hang out with people and when people don’t visit it’s so very easy to hide your issues and to slip through the cracks.
I’m not sure which ones were worse. The anxiety attacks or the depressions.
Some of my anxiety attacks have been brutal. They typically last for about 45 minutes to an hour. And they start of suddenly out of nowhere. I can be riding my bicycle, I can be riding my motorcycle, I can be walking, I can be watching a movie, I can even be at work when suddenly I’m overtaken with a general fear of dread. Then my heart rate will start to increase. And my heart starts to pound harder. Or at least it feels like my pulse rate is increasing. I’ve checked my pulse during an anxiety attack and my heart rate only goes up a little bit. It’s just the adrenaline amplifies everything. I get tunnel vision. And my fight or flight response takes over and I have to flee where I am.
It feels like death is upon me. I know that sounds like something that I would be happy about, but not like this.
When I have an anxiety attack I usually have to get out of any building that I am in. It feels like the walls are squeezing in on me. In my apartment that means that I have to go down the stairs. All 16 flights.
Once I get outside I just head for the widest open space I can find…….
But even outside it just feels like the sky is about to collapse on me.
5 things I can see
4 things I can touch
3 things I can hear
2 things I can smell
1 thing I can taste.
This is called “grounding” and for the most part it seems to work even though some of my more recent anxiety attacks seem immune to the grounding.
The taste one is the difficult one, I usually end up skipping that.
And just as suddenly as the anxiety attack comes, the attack goes away often leaving me completely exhausted.
Not all of my anxiety attacks happen when I’m awake. I’ve woken up with such horrific anxiety attacks. It feels like I can’t breath or it feels like my heart has stopped.
One of my most recent sleep attacks ended up with me grinding my teeth so hard that I cracked a molar and had to have it removed. My dentist was pushing me to get an implant to replace the molar. I don’t see the need to. From here on if and when I crack teeth I’m just going to have them removed. I have an appointment coming up in a couple of weeks. My dentist wants to apply filling material to the insides of my canine teeth as they’re heavily worn from grinding. If the filling material doesn’t work I’ll have the canines removed preemptively to keep from cracking them.
How long has my anxiety been going on.
When my father was stationed at Canadian Forces Base Downsview I lived in the basement of the PMQ. My bedroom used to be upstairs, but sometime in early 1986 my bedroom got moved to the basement to make way for my step brother who had been born in August of 1985. Richard would often come over to my bed and wake me up because I was making so much noise grinding my teeth. Richard had a work area in the basement across from my bedroom. Due to housing regulations on base my bedroom wasn’t allowed to have a door because military rules said that no one was allowed to sleep in the basement for fire reasons. Richard had a problem with insomnia. Which no doubt went hand in hand with his depression. Richard would often go to bed around 10 or 11 at night. He’d be awake again by 2 in the morning. He’d come downstairs to the basement to watch TV and have some cigarettes. And if he heard me grinding, he’d wake me up.
But not once did he ever take me in to get me counselling or any other help. And this is even more upsetting now that I know that as far back as 1980 I had been diagnosed as having major depression and severe anxiety.
Was Richard really this fucking stupid?
Did I suffer my entire life because Richard was just too fucking stupid to see that his son needed help?
When I read my foster care records in August of 2011 I cried.
I could have been normal, or at least a lot more normal than I am now.
Maybe I’d have teeth.
Maybe, maybe, maybe…… so many fucking maybes.
I can only dream about what could have been because I sure as hell wasn’t allowed to have what should have been.
So yeah, much like my depression, my anxiety has been a constant companion of mine.
I wonder what life would have been like if I had known that there were medications that could have treated this.
That may sound funny, but it isn’t. See, when I was a kid living under Richard’s roof my depression was just an attempt to be the centre of attention. My anxiety was just because I worried too much.
Maybe it was the military environment. I know that back in the day mental illness was a sign of weakness. Mental illness indicated that you couldn’t get your shit together.
All I know is that I’m 50 years old now and my depression and my anxiety and my fight with the Canadian Armed Forces have worn me right down to nothing.
Yes, the escitalopram has helped, but I can hear and feel my depression and anxiety demons clawing at their cage waiting to be freed when my body builds up a tolerance to the increased serotonin levels. And I’ve been told that when my anxiety and depression come crashing out of their jail things will be worse than they were before.
Beeshive 