Don’t expect anything profound from this post. This is just my view on life and death.
Life is something that we all experience. But we all experience it differently.
Only a complete tool would expect that everyone else would have life experiences similar to their own.
To me, life is what exists from the time that you’re conceived until the time you die. There is nothing before, and there is nothing after.
This life is all that you get.
Where you end up in life is determined greatly by where you start off in life.
I get a lot of people telling me that my fascination with death is unhealthy and that I should be thankful for the life that I have.
There is nothing for me to be thankful for.
I’m not the result of some divine miracle.
3.7 billion years of evolution has insured that reproduction works fairly reliable.
My father fucked my mother, his sperm fertilized one of her eggs.
My father didn’t have to pass any tests. Neither did my mother.
There’s about 7.5 billion examples of sexual intercourse existing on this planet.
There is no divine creator.
The human brain is a curious thing. It needs answers. It doesn’t like being without answers. When it can’t discover the correct answer the human brain has no problem detouring into the land of make believe to create answers. Not knowing the answers causes the human brain a lot of stress and panic.
This is why humans have known over 3,000 imaginary friends in the sky that are responsible for or can be blamed for every aspect of human existence.
It wasn’t until the 1570s to 1580s that it was discovered that women had eggs and men had sperm. This is why historically religions had viewed women as nothing more than walking and talking incubators that simply allowed the man’s baby batter to grow into a human baby.
This is why masturbation for boys and men was always seen as wasting “god’s” precious seed, but menstruation by women was seen as just a filthy unclean punishment for eating a fucking apple. The fucking inbred goat herders couldn’t have possibly known that the woman was eliminating an unfertilized egg.
This is why back in the olden days, when a woman couldn’t conceive she was deemed to be worthless and barren. The man was never at fault.
Because of this fascination with imaginary friends instead of allowing me to end my life for personal reasons, society insists that I keep on living for another 20 or 30 years because otherwise I’d be wasting god’s precious gift and then I’d be going to hell for committing the sin of suicide.
Don’t believe me? Check out this wonderful comment that was left on my other blog by a concerned person with an imaginary friend.
This of course is all based upon religious nonsense that has carried over from a time when everything that was unexplained was magic.
And then of course there are those who wish to use outright fear because if I want to die then can life really be the cake walk that they’ve experienced?
They will go so far as to use American prisoner executions as an example of how M.A.i.D. will cause suffering, and that my death will be painful just like that of a prisoner.
In the American penal system, the death penalty is seen as a punitive punishment. The Americans aren’t simply happy with executing a prisoner, they need for that prisoner to suffer as much as possible without causing outrage and public anger. So they don’t use a humane protocol. They only use enough drugs to kill a person, but not enough to ensure a quick and humane death. It’s called the “penal” system for a reason, penal being derived from penance. Suffering and pain are supposed to make your soul learn a lesson.
What do I believe happens after death?
Nothing.
Just death.
The M.A.i.D. protocol used in Canada is comprised of three drugs. Propofol, Rocuronium, and Bupivacaine.
Propofol is an intravenous anesthetic formulation used for induction and maintenance of general anesthesia. This is what knocks a person out. One of the benefits of propofol is it seems to inhibit the brain’s ability to form memories. At the level it is introduced during M.A.i.D. it will typically cause a deep coma.
Rocuronium is a muscle relaxant that inhibits the skeletal muscles. The diaphragm is a skeletal muscle. The rocuronium stops a person from breathing. Normally not being able to breath would cause a buildup of carbon dioxide in the blood stream which would then cause great discomfort and possible panic due to the inability to expel the carbon dioxide. However, due to the propofol in the system the brain won’t be aware of the carbon dioxide levels in the blood stream.
The heart will still be beating at this point, this means the heart will still be circulating blood around the body, potentially supplying the brain with minute amounts of oxygen. The bupivacaine is administered in order to stop the heart and to cease the circulation of blood.
The human brain cannot survive more than four minutes without blood circulation. Once more than four minutes have elapsed brain damage starts to occur as the neurons and nerve fibres start to die due to a lack of oxygen and due to the build up of toxic waste products.
And that’s it.
No more pain.
No more suffering.
No more memories.
No more judgemental assholes.
No more dealing with the “smile and be happy” brigade.
72 hours elapse and then I will be cremated.
It will be just like it was before my father fucked my mother.
I won’t exist anymore.
Not existing for 13.7 billion years didn’t cause me any grief.
Not existing after won’t cause me any issues either.
Sure, there will be those in the god brigade that will wring their hand and try to shame me for upsetting their imaginary friend.
But this life belongs to me and to myself alone.
My life does not belong to you nor your imaginary friend.
My life does not belong to the Department of Justice, or the Senate of Canada, or the Conservative Party of Canada, the Canadian Armed Forces, the Catholic Church, the pope, or the imaginary friends in the sky.
You don’t like people taking their lives for “no reason”?
Don’t make people suffer.
Don’t deny people treatments for mental health issues.
Don’t deny people justice.
Don’t patronize people.
As I’ve said elsewhere, human life only seems to have value when people wish to take their own life.
We tolerate 2,000 easily prevented deaths by automobile in Canada because slowing cars down would hurt car sales.
We tolerate drug overdoses in this country because we don’t want to slow down traffic at the border as that would make day trippers sad.
And we have absolutely no problem with adventure seekers dying “do what they liked doing”.
Airlines have crashed due to management decisions to cheap out on designs or to cutback on maintenance.
And we have no problem shipping people off to foreign countries to die fighting the good fight.
Death is tolerated by society so long as it’s due to any reason other than a person taking their own life.
I think this has to do a lot with society not wanting to admit its blemishes and its failures. When someone takes their own life, society will sit back and try to assure itself that there was nothing that could be done, that we exist in Xanadu, where everything is perfect so long as you intentionally ignore all of the flaws.
People taking their own lives whether it be by their own hand or with assistance from a medical professional means that society has to reflect upon just how horrific and unfair life really is and how our society treats people as disposable objects that are the property of the state.
Okay, so it should come as no surprise that I have a fixation on Medical Assistance in Dying when mental illness is the sole underlying condition.
Mental illness has always been my constant companion.
Not since the days of my youth on Canadian Forces Base Namao have I been free of mental illness.
Having obvious but untreated mental illness is a torment that no one should ever have to go through. What’s much worse by far though is having diagnosed mental illness but being actively prevented from receiving treatment for those issues.
My father’s been dead for seven years now. But I did examine him for federal court back in 2013, and when questioned about my diagnoses back in 1980, he claimed to know nothing about this.
But then again he also claimed to know nothing about Captain Terry Totzke either.
Much like everything else to do with the Canadian Armed Forces and the events related to 1980, I don’t think that we’ll ever know 100% of the truth.
All I can say is that my father was a master corporal and Totzke was a captain.
And I still maintain to this day that as fucked up and depraved as the sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao was, the period of time between October of 1980 and the spring of 1983 was far worse.
In the current day it’s very hard to separate what currently is from what could have been or what should have been.
For example, my gender. Even before CFB Namao I had more or less a preference for being female. I remember being around five or six that I was upset that I wasn’t going to be a girl.
During the period of abuse on CFB Namao I had often wondered if the babysitter was doing what he had been doing because I was acting like a girl. Maybe if I had been more like a boy then the babysitter wouldn’t have touched me.
The day that I was caught being buggered in the babysitter’s bedroom, the teens that beat the shit out of me before I could get back home were calling me a homo, a queer, a fagot.
In the days and weeks after the final sexual assault the kids on base started referring to me as the babysitter’s girlfriend, the babysitter’s wife, and that if I didn’t watch out that I was going to have the babysitter’s baby.
In October of 1980, when it was obvious that I wouldn’t be able to fit it at Guthrie School on Canadian Forces Base Namao my family was moved 10 km down the street to CFB Griesbach.
I was a social pariah and an outcast from the word go. But to make matters far worse was my involvement with Terry.
Terry was adamant that I was suffering from a mental illness called “homosexuality” and that I was responsible for allowing my younger brother to be sexually abused by the babysitter. During our various sessions together Terry would remind me that boys are supposed to be attracted to girls, and that homosexuality was a crime and that I would be sent to the Alberta Hospital if I still insisted on kissing and touching boys.
Why Terry chose to ignore my diagnoses is anyone’s guess. Even if Terry was still alive these days, I don’t think that he would tell the truth.
It was during this period of time that my bed wetting started to occur at an alarming rate. The cure at home for this was to let me go to school smelling like stale piss because I was obviously wetting the bed just to get attention.
Now, you have to understand that as a child I had very little understanding of the things going on at the adult level. I lived on a military base. My father was in the military. My social worker was in the military. Matters were discussed at a level that I would never have been privileged to.
Even though I lived on Canadian Forces Base Namao during the time of the Captain McRae fiasco I never knew anything about McRae other than he was the father at the chapel and grandma took us for Sunday service.
So when Terry and my father had picked me up from school one day to go for an appointment and we drove past the military prison on CFB Griesbach and one of the two said to me that “if I stayed a homosexual” that I would end up in prison “like the priest”. At the time I had no idea of the whole Captain McRae fiasco.
I went through my teenaged years hating the fact that I wished that I was a girl, as this was obviously why the babysitter had sex with me, right? The babysitter (so far as I knew at the time) wasn’t getting into trouble because it’s perfectly normal for boys to fuck girls. Well, that is what Terry and my father were always going o about. And let’s be honest, the military was extremely misogynistic back then. So, it was obviously my fault that the babysitter abused me for as long as he did. If I didn’t like the abuse I could have stopped it at any time, right?
And while all of this was going on I was becoming more and more withdrawn.
Because of my untreated major depression, severe anxiety, and my out of control haphephobia I was not a pleasure to be around. And as one of my teachers noted, I was ostracized and often made a scapegoat.
None of this got any better when my family came to the attention of Alberta Social Services. In fact, once I became involved with Alberta Social Service in November of 1981, things at home became much, much worse. And this wasn’t due to Alberta Social Services per se, it was due to Terry’s and my father’s reactions to Alberta Social Services.
Alberta Social Services realized that I was having significant behavioural issues. But Terry and my father never once mentioned the events of CFB Namao to Alberta Social Services. Instead my father would try to convince Alberta Social Services that I was acting up because I missed my mother, or because I was just seeking attention, or because my grandmother had been cruel to my brother and I.
What didn’t help this matter was that I was told by both Terry and my father that Pat and Wayne were involved with me because of my homosexuality. Of course I wouldn’t learn until August of 2011 that Pat and Wayne were child care workers with the Alberta Government and that Terry and my father were both employees of the Canadian Armed Forces and that in hindsight Terry and my father didn’t appreciate Alberta Social Services sticking their noses in where they weren’t wanted.
My father had no issue whatsoever in the privacy of our PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach venting his frustrations on me for “fucking” with his military career. This would often be delivered by either the belt or by openhanded backhands. Or going to bed without supper.
There was a time in which the relationship between my father and his girlfriend Sue was at risk of falling apart. She had threatened to leave him. Richard sat my brother and I down and basically explained to us that if Sue left, that he was going to kill the two of us, stuff our bodies into a duffel bag, get rid of us where no one was ever going to find us, and he’d move into the barracks like nothing ever happened. The terrifying thing about this was the look in his eye meant that he was deadly serious and that he obviously had put some serious thought into this.
I remember having been expelled from school in the winter of ’83 because I apparently was still attracted to boys. And I remember the sudden move in the spring of ’83 because Pat and Wayne wanted to give me drugs to make me stop liking boys and my father didn’t want me taking those drugs so we had to move so that he could save me. Learning the truth about that in 2011 doesn’t change the pain and anguish that this caused. Nor does learning the truth about CFB Namao and CFB Griesbach change how devastating life became for me on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario.
The truth about ’83 is that I wasn’t expelled from the MacArthur Program for exhibiting “homosexuality”. Nor did Pat and Wayne even seem to know anything about my alleged “homosexuality”. No, the “expulsion” and the sudden move were due to the fact that Alberta Social Services wanted to remove me from my father’s care and place me into protective custody. As I was officially Captain Totzke’s client Alberta Social Services had to inform Totzke about their plans to place me into foster care or residential care due to my father’s outright refusal to participate in the family counselling, and that if he continued to refuse and continued to not seek treatment for his anger issues, that my issues were never going to get any better. On January 26th, 1983 Captain Totzke was told about these plans. On January 28th, 1983 Captain Totzke informed Alberta Social Services about my father posting to Ontario that had just been approved.
Alberta Social Services asked my father if he intended to tell me about the move, he said that he would not. However, both Terry and my father said that I would be placed at the Sick Kids hospital in Toronto to receive psychiatric care. This never happened. In fact there never were any applications or inquiries made to Sick Kids.
On Canadian Forces Base Downsview my mental health continued to plummet. On CFB Griesbach and on CFB Namao, my exposure to other kids was limited to other base brats or to other kids in the Westfield / MacArthur day program. And that was it. Canadian Forces Base Downsview didn’t have a school on base for the children of military families. We were all punted off to the local North York public school like Sheppard Public, Downsview Public, Elia Jr. High, Pierre Laporte Jr. High., C.W. Jeffries, and Downsview Secondary School.
And unlike on base, where kids like me were shunned and ostracized, in public school we were targets for beatings from the civy kids.
And one thing that that I was going to become extremely familiar with is the fact that sexually abused children with emotional issues were magnets for sexual deviants and perverts. When your own father blamed you for the sexual abuse you endured previously this means that you don’t dare mention the sexual abuse that you are currently enduring as you know that you’ll just get blamed again.
Having been sexually abused meant that I was expecting just about every male adult that I was somehow involved with was going to sexually abuse me or expect sexual favours for good marks or good grades. But the truth is that none of my teachers ever tried to touch me. Even teacher that my father had called homos and faggots, like Mr. Ford or Mr. Bowles, or even Mr. Cross.
But, because of my father’s reactions to anything homosexual, I knew that I had to keep my distance from these teachers, or anyone else of the male persuasion that wanted to help me because it was obvious that they must be trying to be nice to me because they just wanted a blow job from me or to get into my pants.
So yeah, this made school very fucking awkward for me.
And by this time my depression, my anxiety, and my haphephobia were all in overdrive. The years of neglect and the mental abuse were starting to add up and to take their toll. School would keep asking my father why I was late, and why I was sleeping in classes, and why I had such a negative attitude. His response always was that I was just acting up to get attention and that he didn’t understand why I wasn’t waking up on time and why I was sleeping in class all the time. I guess that he never told my teachers or the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto about the sexual abuse I endured, about the major depression, severe anxiety, and haphephobia that I had been diagnosed with, but not receiving treatment for, and I’ll bet you that my father never once told the schools about the fact that he’d come downstairs into the basement every night where my bedroom was, and that he’d smoke and watch TV until about 02:00 to 02:30 in the morning due to his severe insomnia.
Yes, he had his own daemons to endure, but that didn’t mean that he had any right to subject me to his daemons.
So I was constantly in trouble at school which only ensured that I was going to get “corrective punishment” at home.
By the summer of 1985 his anger and his temper had reached a boiling point. Luckily my brother and I were up in Edmonton for the summer. Richard had raged out in the PMQ and went on a major destructive spree. Furniture had been thrown out the windows, holes punched in the walls, drapes and curtains torn off the rails. It took three military police officers to restrain him. Only with my father in custody and at risk of being courts martialed out of the military did the chickenshit neighbours start to tell the military police and the brass about the way in which Richard had been neglecting and beating us.
This wasn’t the first time in Richard’s military career that he was anxious about being thrown out of the military for one of his outbursts, but he wasn’t. Not the previous times and not the time in 1985.
What was odd though is that from this point of time onward there were yearly reviews noted in his service file. In 1985 he only had 8 years to go until retirement. Did someone in the forces feel sorry for him due to his involvement with the HMCS Kootenay in 1969?
Looking back I can only wonder why no one in the Canadian Forces could have shown me 1/100th the sympathy they had shown to Richard.
But again, this isn’t about Richard. This is about why I desire Medical Assistance in Dying. Unfortunately I can’t go into the reasonings for my desire for M.A.i.D. without explaining to you how I was failed by the Canadian Armed Forces, by my father who was an employee of the Canadian Armed Forces, and by Captain Terry Totzke who not only was an employee of the Canadian Armed Forces but who was by virtue of rank my father’s superior.
There is absolutely no therapy or drug that will free me from the memories of CFB Namao and how I was dealt with in the aftermath of CFB Namao.
There are no treatments or therapies that will free me from the damage of long term untreated major depression, severe anxiety, nor haphephobia.
My long term gender issues will not be solved by an apology or a settlement.
The damage is done.
In fact a settlement may actually make things worse as this will mean that things didn’t have to be as bad as they were and that I didn’t have to suffer through untreated mental illnesses due to a desire to keep things hushed, and gender confusion that was drilled into my head due to institutional homophobia.
Living a life where I am reduced to drifting along as flotsam on the ocean currents working in jobs that I fit into because of the high skills that I bring to positions that typically don’t pay the wages required for these types of skills.
Never having had the safety net of a family that I could fall back on if I tried to take a risk in life and took a misstep meant that trade school or other educational endeavours were forever out of my grasp.
Having grown up with a father that drilled into my that I was a worthless cocksucking piece of shit and that I was the cause of my brother’s sexual abuse and subsequent criminal behaviour really didn’t foster an attitude of excellence.
The only time that my father ever gave me any helpful advice was back in 2006 when we talked about the babysitter and I told him that I was working up the courage to report the babysitter to the police. He told me that I have to watch where I go sticking my nose because I might not like the smell of the shit.
Even before I started to learn the full truth about the child sex abuse scandal from Canadian Forces Base Namao I had wanted to die.
I tried with a plastic bag two times on CFB Griesbach.
When my father was posted to CFB Downsview I tried again, usually under the guise of taking risks.
I used to go to Bloor and Yonge and wait until the trains were approaching and then I’d run and jump off the platform and jump over the 3rd rails and then hop up on the other platform. The thinking was that if I got hit “accidentally” that it wouldn’t hurt as much.
I did this until a fellow cadet in sea cadets told me that his father was a motorman on the TTC and that suicide jumpers fucked up the train drivers.
Then I became fascinated with jumping. The Bloor street viaduct over the Don Valley Parkway always seemed to be a hotspot. But how does one accidentally fall from a bridge?
Bloor Street Viaduct Now with suicide barriers
When I moved back to Edmonton in 1990 I tried the High Level Bridge.
High Level Bridge Now too with suicide barriers
I really, really needed my suicide to look like an accident. My fear was that if I committed suicide that my father would just tell everyone that I was just seeking attention and that I had committed suicide to escape my responsibility for allowing my brother to be sexually molested.
Again, you don’t fall off bridges accidentally.
May of 1994 found me on the underside of the Lions Gate Bridge with a six pack of cheap ass beer. I was trying to work up the courage to get pissed drunk enough that I would no longer care about what my father would have to say about my death. And besides, it was perfect. Who takes a six pack of beer to a fucking bridge and climbs onto a service gondola underneath the bridge to get drunk. Must have been some idiot looking for a thrill, right? Definitely not a homosexual pervert looking to escape the responsibility of letting his young brother be molested, right?
I didn’t drink back in the day, so I was completely hammered off 3 of the 6 beers. I started to hallucinate my father and the babysitter, P.S., together at my funeral laughing their heads off at me. My father was telling me to stop blaming the babysitter for what had happened, that it was my fault. I cried for a couple of hours after that. I ended up in the hospital with pneumonia.
I was determined to jump in front of the Skytrain in 2006. That didn’t pan out.
I was determined to jump out of my apartment window in July of 2011 when Master Warrant Officer Terry Eisenmenger told me that there was very little chance of bringing charges against the babysitter as there was no evidence against him.
Again in November of 2011 when Petty Officer Steve Morris told me that the CFNIS could find absolutely no evidence to indicate that the babysitter was capable of what I had accused him of.
Then there was July 19th, 2012 when I was interviewed by the Military Police Complaints Commission for my statement. It was during this interview that both Peter Cicalo and Claude Bergeron told me that they had reviewed the 2011 CFNIS investigation and that they couldn’t find anything wrong with the CFNIS investigation and in fact the investigators with the CFNIS went above and beyond the call of duty as this was a historical case. I kept walking in circles between the Burrard Bridge and the Granville Street bridge working up the courage to jump. But again the same thing kept coming back. If I jumped then the MPCC, the CFNIS, the Canadian Forces, my father, and P.S. win. I get written off in the annals of history as being a fucking attention seeking homosexual nutcase that was trying to shirk his responsibility for what he had done on CFB Namao.
Since about 2016, I have been pinning my hopes on receiving Medical Assistance in Dying. This became even more so after the 2019 Truchon decision in the Quebec Superior Court and the Senate’s suggestion that Mental Illness be considered as one of the criteria for obtaining M.A.i.D.
Why?
To receive M.A.i.D. you have to have a verifiable mental illness. I have them and no one can deny them and no one can negate the horrific effect that they’ve had on my life.
But even more so the unquestionable evidence shows that the Canadian Armed Forces, my father, Captain Totzke, and various others knew of the full extent of the abuse that had occurred on Canadian Forces Base Namao and that instead of allowing me to be a victim, I was vilified and denied treatment all in the name of keeping a lid on the secrets of CFB Namao.
The DOJ, the DND, and the CAF can all mew and cry all they want now. And believe me, they will deny, deny, deny. They will paint me in the public eye as a societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the Canadian Forces. I should know this, they did this to me once already.
But what they will never be able to deny me is that there is a hell of a lot more to this story than just poor widdle P.S. getting touched by Captain McRae.
My hope is that win or lose, that I can be humanely put to sleep after the court decision. Because at this point in time the genie is out of the bottle. The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are no longer going to be able to portray me as a psychotic loser making up stories and lies.
I can go to sleep knowing that I did my best to get the truth out, and that it wasn’t for a lack of trying.
I can go to sleep knowing that I never have to deal with assholes telling me to fucking smile more, or to simply fucking forget about it, or suggesting that I take some responsibility for my life, or that other people have it hard in life therefore I should shut the fuck up and stop whining like a little bitch.
I didn’t ask to be born into a defective family. I didn’t ask to be molested by perverts of Canadian Forces Base Namao. I didn’t ask for untreated mental illnesses. I didn’t ask for relentless victim blaming and shaming.
I just want to go peacefully and respectfully.
No more nightmares. No more teeth grinding. No more being touched and then getting chewed out for “overreacting”. No more being told that I just need to find a boyfriend or a girlfriend. No more being told that I just have to get a degree or a diploma and my life would be so much better. No more being told that I’m too smart.
So, today I’m sailing off to Nanaimo for the weekend.
I booked this trip a few months ago completely oblivious to the fact that Taylor Swift was in town for the end of her tour. So yeah, it’s nice to bet getting out of the city.
Received a call from the medical examiner’s office in Edmonton this morning. The official cause of my brother’s death is going to be listed as “accidental” due to a fall. I would assume that due to the advanced state of decomposition that the exact cause of the fall can’t be determined. But I’m willing to go with either an O.D., a heart attack, or an epileptic seizure.
I had an unexpected interview with Wallis Snowdon of the CBC on Thursday. I first got a call from my legal team at Napoli Shkolnik advising me that this reporter wanted to talk to me.
The interview was only supposed to last a few minutes, but it went on for close to an hour.
The interest in this story seems to have been reignited by the recent decision by Justice Neufeld to both allow the class action lawsuit against the Canadian Armed Forces to proceed and for me to be the representative plaintiff.
The Department of Justice and the Department of National Defence cannot be too pleased about this.
I am also somewhat pleased that my desire for Medical Assistance in Dying has been made a more prominent aspect of this whole sad saga. I’m happy that even Judge Neufeld is aware of my desire.
From here on in I’m not going to be spending too much time going over the details of what happened from the fall of 1978 until the spring of 1980 and then how the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence reacted to the events of CFB Namao. I think that I’ve gone into great detail on the events on my various blogs that I’ve run since 2021.
I will be delving more into why I want M.A.i.D. and why I think that M.A.i.D. is the correct decision and why M.A.i.D. should be allowed for people in my circumstances.
Quick flight from YYZ to YVR. Took less than the 5 hour scheduled time.
The 777 is a nice plane.
The concert that I went to was a bust.
The artist is definitely a studio musician. Their songs and their song writing are great, but they just don’t translate into live performance songs, especially not if they’re being stripped down and performed as “acoustic” versions.
And I’m sure that the venue works very well for EDM raves and Hip-Hop shows that need to give the audience a lot of space to move to the energy, but this artist doesn’t have that type of energy to give. They’re more appropriate for a seated venue.
While partaking in some wandering around in Toronto I came across an interesting news story.
It was related to child sexual abuse in the British military.
She went through it with the British Forces as opposed to the Canadian Forces.
But same shit.
Which would make sense as Canada used to be a British colony and our justice system and our military are based upon British origins.
It’s shocking but also a relief to see that the same fuck-ups and flaws that harmed children on Canadian Armed Forces bases across Canada also harmed children on British Forces bases in the UK. What’s interesting is that the victim that is the initial subject of this story was sexually abused in Germany on a British base there. Canada had bases in Germany as well. Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest that Canadian base brats were sexually abused there as well.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if the stats for child sexual abuse are grossly under reported to the public by British military officials as is alluded to in the article. A few years ago I requested from the Department of National Defence a list of all sexual assault investigation undertaken by the CFNIS since its inception in 1998.
I received a document that listed hundreds of sexual assault investigations.
You know what this document didn’t list?
GO 2011-5754.
The 2011 CFNIS investigation into my complaint of childhood sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao was not included on a list of sexual assault investigations from 1998 onwards.
So, if DND withheld the existence of my own case from me, how many other cases are they hiding and refusing to acknowledge?
The article also mentions the parochial patriarchal society that existed within these military communities which would often lead to the victims of child sexual abuse being forced and intimidated into silence.
Sadly I don’t think that we’ll ever see this type of reporting here in North America.
All of our Canadian Newspapers of any importance are owned by America hedge funds. And no society based upon subordination to patriarchal capitalism will do anything to upset its military.
Men fucking and raping women in the military is apparently okay. There is still some consensus in the military community and those around the military community that blame the sexually assaulted women for their own assaults as “they knew what they were getting into”.
Men fucking and abusing children in the military can’t be acknowledged least our enemies use it as propaganda to demoralize our troops and our society.
Children that commit suicide due to military sexual abuse don’t commit suicide due to military sexual abuse. Oh no, they commit suicide because they were nutcases or societal malcontents. And as long as the military pretends that child sexual abuse doesn’t exist in the military community, military dependents that kill themselves either as children or later in life as adults are just written off as mentally unstable nutcases seeking attention.
The Canadian Armed Forces will not, under any circumstance, disturb that old timey quaint notion that children are the safest in military communities. I would never trust the military to ever properly investigate any matter involving children on defence establishments, especially not if it risked tainting the public image of the military.
This is why I really want some form of basic acknowledgement for what I went through before I die so that the Canadian Armed Forces can’t simply write me off as some insane nutcase.
I am really hoping to undergo medical assistance in dying for this exact reason. If I were to commit suicide, then the Canadian Armed Forces win. If I undergo medical assistance in dying then the Canadian Armed Forces don’t win. I get to die knowing that medical professionals agreed that the events of CFB Namao were too traumatic and more than what anyone should have ever had to go through.
I’ve been in Hogtown for a couple of days now. Just in town to see a concert, then I’ll be back off to Vancouver.
Haven’t done too much over the last few day except wander around downtown, ride some streetcars and the subway, and mainly veg out.
Yes, I used to live “here” and by “here” I mean on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in North York.
We arrived here in April of 1983 after fleeing my apprehension by Alberta social services.
We first lived at 94 Sunfield Road in the Lower Dividend Houses that were on lease to the CAF for use as military housing. In the fall of 1983 my family was moved to our new PMQ #223F Stanley Green Park that was located on the base itself.
I moved out of the PMQ and off the base in late 1987 just after I had turned 16. So in actual fact I only lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview for 4 years even though my father had been posted to CFB Downsview for 7 years.
The base is long since gone. It’s now a public park with a subway station in it.
Everything that I knew from 1983 until 1990 is pretty well gone.
I don’t know anyone out here, and to be honest I didn’t really know anyone back then either.
Places that I used to frequent as a teen on Queen Street West like Active Surplus and the other electronic surplus retailers have long since disappeared. Replaced with fine fashion and sneakers.
I often wondered over the years how things would have worked out in 1990 when I had about $40k in the bank from a 6 month contract job.
Somehow my father found out that I was in the process of trying to rent an apartment. “I’m getting my final posting back to Edmonton. I’d like you to move with us. We could try to be a family again”.
He wasn’t interested in trying fuck all. He figured out that I had some money in the bank and now it was time for me to pay him back for all of the years that he looked after my brother and I as kids.
I was a dumb 18 year old at the time. Couldn’t figure out why I was paying for all of the food and gas and stuff on the move from Downsview to Griesbach, but Richard wanted to keep the receipts “just in case”. If I was a betting man, I’d say that he submitted all of the receipts to DND for reimbursement. I know that he claimed me on his taxes even for the years that I wasn’t living with him.
I don’t know how things would have worked out had I stayed.
Far too many memories of people like Earl Stevens.
I got sexually assaulted so many times in Toronto.
I don’t know how, but the pervs always find the damaged kids and fuck them up even more. Couldn’t tell my father about Earl. Couldn’t tell my father about the man from Funland arcade. Couldn’t tell my father about the guy on the subway. Couldn’t tell my father about Al M. either.
Riding around on the subway earlier I remembered something that Scott had said about riding the subway for hours on end just to kill time. I did that myself. Get on the Subway at Wilson, find a seat, and just basically ride from one end to the other and back. And then get on the Bloor – Danforth line and ride from Kipling to Kennedy.
Back in the ’80s you could stay on the subway petty well all day and as long as you changed trains periodically, no one would be any the wiser. And as scrawny as I was back then I could easily pass for a couple years younger so it was something like $0.25 to kill the day.
I even got off the train at the Yonge Southbound platform to reminisce of all of the times as a kid that I wanted to jump in front of a train but just couldn’t work up the courage to do so. The layout of the Bloor-Yonge station gives the perfect running start.
Adam, who was a fellow cadet in Sea Cadets had asked me to never kill myself by jumping in front of a train because his father was a motorman and apparently jumping in front of a train fucks up the motorman a lot.
When you come from a family like mine you did anything you could to get the fuck out of the house and away from Richard.
As I walk around Toronto I’m not really filled with nostalgia for the place.
I remember my time downtown spent just wandering aimlessly trying to kill time. Except for places like Active Surplus, I didn’t really go shopping or browsing anywhere. With no money for food or for entertainment and no ability to make friends, Toronto wasn’t really a “home” as it was a distraction.
Maybe that’s why I’m not overtaken by feelings of nostalgia but instead feelings of sadness, despair, and boredom.
Anyways, going to see my concert and then I head back to Vancouver.
Don’t ask me what the concert is like. I keep this shit to myself.
I really don’t share this stuff with anyone as I don’t like to be judged or ridiculed for my taste in music.
If there’s one thing that I’ve had to learn in my life it’s to not to count my chickens before they hatch.
As I mentioned previously, the justice in my matter has stated that the class action has merit and that I am okay to be the representative plaintiff.
I can promise you that this very much displeases the Department of Justice, the Department of National Defence, and the Canadian Armed Forces.
The DOJ has 30 days to respond to the decision. They can accept it, which will be very unlikely. Or they can appeal the decision, which is more than likely. I see no reason whatsoever as to why they wouldn’t appeal. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain. This decision can’t get any worse for them.
And if they do appeal, they’ll file their documents 30 minutes before the deadline.
The power imbalance that exists between myself and the Department of Justice is incalculable.
I have already made it clear that I want my name made public, this is why my name shows in the decision.
The DOJ still has the ability to request all names be censored.
The DOJ and the DND could also make applications to move this matter “in-camera” for reasons of National Security. This is the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces that we are talking about.
The Department of Justice has access to records and documents that I wouldn’t even know exist.
And don’t forget, but the DOJ also represented the Military Police Complaints Commission and by extension the Canadian Armed Forces Provost in February of 2013 when I filed my application for Judicial Review of the heavily flawed 2012 MPCC review of the 2011 CFNIS investigation.
The DOJ knew then exactly what the Canadian Forces hid and buried, but the DOJ was more than happy to sweep everything under the rug and assist the Canadian Armed Forces with further hiding their dirty laundry from the public eye.
If the DOJ had any ethics or morals it would have requested the RCMP become involved in reviewing historical matters of child sexual abuse on the bases in the days of the pre-1998 National Defence Act once it saw the wealth of documents that indicated how much the CFNIS had willing and intentionally withheld from the Military Police Complaints Commission.
Nope, the DOJ was more than happy just to argue about “new evidence” and “rules”.
You can be certain that the lawyers with the DOJ have already talked to the current and historical Minister of National Defence, the current and historical Chief of Defence Staff, the current and historical Vice Chief of Defence Staff, the current and historical Provost Marshal, the current and historical Judge Advocate General, etc. They’ve probably already had meetings with Daniel Edward Munro.
The DOJ will have access to internal communications that my lawyers and I will never have access to.
These communications will allow the DOJ to formulate an attack and a defence that will not be made clear during discovery.
And I know that documents like this exist. In my case I have records of emails with subject lines being changed to reflect less serious issues and that these files were further relegated to “encrypted files” so that they avoid any searches triggered Access to Information requests.
I also know that the Department of National Defence has a very strict retention period of 7 years for documentations and files.
And you can bet your bottom dollar that the DOJ is not beyond urging the DND and the CAF to follow their retention policy posthaste.
Okay, so I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but the justice reviewing the certification portion of my class action against the Canadian Armed Forces has agreed that the class action has merit to proceed.
The justice has also stated that I am okay to be the representative plaintiff.
I don’t know if the Department of Justice and the Canadian Armed Forces will try to appeal these decisions. I don’t know if they will be allowed to appeal. So I’ll have to wait and see.
If there’s one thing that I’ve learnt in my life it’s that nothing usually goes as planned.
Maybe it’s the eternal pessimist in me, but I have a very good reason to expect things to fail.
I come from a very long line of systemic failures.
It’s like my life has been falling through each and every crack imaginable.
My grandmother going through residential school
My father joining the Royal Canadian Navy.
The HMCS Kootenay incident.
The military’s lack of acknowledgment of PTSD and stigma to mental illness
The military’s culture of self medicating with alcohol and other substances
The military’s rules and regulations that put non-serving spouses at great disadvantage on the bases, especially in matters of child custody.
The military’s defective by design justice system.
The flaws in the National Defence Act
The “blame the victim” culture that existed on the bases.
The rampant homophobia that existed on the bases and which was condoned by Canadian Forces Administrative Order 19-20 which really made it almost impossible for male victims of sexual assault to be taken seriously.
The ability for dysfunctional military parents to use the transfer system to skip out on social services.
The fact that civilians such as civilian law enforcement and civilian social services needed permission to enter defence establishments.
So, will I continue to fall through more cracks?
Or will long overdue acknowledgements be forthcoming?
I came across this video on TikTok yesterday and it really blew me away as to how naive people, especially adults, can be.
I can assure you that this is not the way it worked on any military base in Canada. Especially not if you had the misfortune of coming from a dysfunctional family such as mine.
My mother left in 1977 while my father was stationed at CFB Summerside. It wasn’t her choice to leave.
Military housing could only be rented to the serving member, the non-serving parent had no legal rights to remain in the house if the serving member didn’t want them there. In fact the language in the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations meant that the non-serving spouses were only able to remain in the military housing so long as they had the “permission” of their serving spouse. If the serving spouse didn’t want the non-serving spouse there, the non-serving spouse had no options but to leave.
In the aftermath of my mother leaving my grandmother came to Summerside to live with us from the spring of 1977 until the spring of 1978. When she returned to Edmonton my father requested a posting to Edmonton specifically so that his mother could look after his children as his “wife had abandoned him”.
As I mentioned elsewhere in my blog, my grandmother had been through Indian Residential school as a child. She didn’t have much of a formal education having entered school when she was 13 and leaving school when she was 15.
From all accounts she was an alcoholic by the time my father was born in 1946.
When she came to live with us in the military housing in Summerside she was mostly drunk and would often haul my brother and I off to the Royal Canadian Legion or other pubs while she drank.
When my father received his posting from Summerside to Namao he brought her and her husband Roy (Andy) Anderson into the PMQ on Namao to raise my brother and I while he literally buggered off to who knowns where.
It was grandma’s and Andy’s drinking that landed Andy in long term nursing care when he slipped in the bathtub and cracked his skull open. It was because of this that my brother and I ended up in the care of the babysitter.
My father was asked by Alberta Social Services after we became involved with civilian social services in 1981 if he knew why my brother and I were having emotional and behavioural issues.
My father explained to social services that his mother was “extremely cruel to his children, especially when she was intoxicated, which was frequent”.
He would further tell social services on different occasions that his mother would not admit to being an alcoholic, and that she refused to seek help for her alcoholism.
There’s a couple of “not so funny things” about my father’s statements to the CFNIS in 2011 which serve to illustrate just how fucked up the military justice system actually is.
First, my father seemed to imply that my grandmother never lived with us, and even if she did it was just a very brief period of time.
The CFNIS in 2011 knew from my statement to them that grandma had raised my brother and I from the spring of 1977 until the spring of 1981 and that even before we moved to Downsview in 1983 we’d spend a lot of our weekends at grandma’s apartment.
And when I obtained a copy of my social service records from the Alberta government in August of 2011, I gave the CFNIS a copy of the entire set of records.
The CFNIS never attempted to question my father about the discrepancies between his statement and the contents of the social service records. Instead the CFNIS gave Alberta Crown prosecutor Jon Werbicki my father’s statement with absolutely no mention of my father’s statement to social services after Alberta social services became involved with my family.
This resulted in Jon Werbicki stating that “it was very significant that Mr. Bees never told anyone in a position of authority about the abuse”.
And of course in 2012 the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal did not make the existence of these records known to the Military Police Complaints Commission. So these records became “new evidence” that the MPCC wasn’t able to review. And these records became “new evidence” that couldn’t be introduce during my application for Judicial Review in federal court.
Long story short, unlike in the video there was no one at home that I could run to tell.
My father was living off base with whatever girlfriend he had at the moment. He honestly barely lived with us in PMQ #11 on 12th street on CFB Namao. He didn’t move back into the PMQ until August of 1980.
His mother came to live with us on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach. She looked after my brother and I until the summer of 1981 when she moved out and got her own apartment.
My father’s drinking was just as bad as my grandmother’s drinking. And when the two got drunk together there would often be swearing, yelling, and shoving. If my uncle Doug showed up and the three of them were drinking things would really get out of control.
The thing was alcoholism on the bases in the PMQ patches back in the day was always seen as normal. “It’s a tough job”. “It’s a hard life”. “It’s camaraderie and cohesion building”.
It wasn’t until I moved off base and started living in the civilian world that I began to realize that not every weekend was supposed to be a booze fuelled festival.
The dirty secret of the Canadian Forces is that there was a lot of “trailer trash” living on the bases back then.
My new stepmother didn’t like any of this and she decided to try to put an end to my father’s drinking. She blamed my grandmother for my father’s drinking and the relationship between my stepmother and my grandmother was described as “frosty”. One of them had to go, and it wasn’t going to be my father’s girlfriend.
There was one time that I asked my uncle Doug why my father always believed everything that my stepmother said over what I had said. His response was that the father slept with her, not with me. It would be a few years before I would truly understand what that comment meant.
My grandmother lived by two maxims, and no doubt this was beat into her during her stay at Holy Angels in Fort Chipewyan. “Children are to be seen and not heard” and “Children only speak when spoken to”. And yes, Richard was the exact same. Richard did not under any-fucking-circumstance want to be disturbed. You only spoke when he said it was okay to speak. You stood silently beside him and waited for him to acknowledge you before you said anything. And when you said something to him, it had better not be a stupid waste of his fucking time.
Grandma was the same. If you talked at the kitchen table you either got rapped on the knuckles with the wooden spoon, or you got smacked across the mouth.
But yeah, tell me again who exactly I was supposed to tell about the abuse.
My alcoholic grandmother?
My alcoholic father?
My stepmother, who no no doubt had been told nothing about CFB Namao by her new husband, but had been told that his kids were acting up like they were because they liked their mother better than her?
And besides, with the comments of my father and Captain Totzke, everyone knew what had happened.
It wasn’t like I should have had to tell anyone. That base was a secured defence establishment. How the base chaplain and at least one of his altar boys could molest over 25 children for over 2 years is something that I will never understand.
But whatever. It doesn’t matter if my father lied to the CFNIS in 2011 or if the CFNIS guided my father into saying what he said, the CFNIS accomplished what it needed to do. And that was to sever any potential connection to myself and the babysitter as the babysitter and the babysitter’s documented abuse of young children on the base is what led to the discovery of Captain Father Angus McRae.
If there’s one thing that the public misunderstands about base brats it’s that as kids we moved around a lot. And not only were we moving, but the other kids on base would move as well.
Kids from dysfunctional families were pretty well segregated and ignored on base.
The Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence will bray endlessly that your serving parent’s rank had no influence in the PMQ patch and that your serving parent would drop their military mindset at the front door of the PMQ.
That was absolute bullshit.
The PMQ patches were in all sense of the word the ultimate company town.
And as such children from dysfunctional homes were pretty well isolated from the others.
Sexually abused children, especially males, were seen to be willing participants in their own abuse and as such they were seen to be a risk to the other kids on base.
In the days after the CFB Namao child sexual abuse sex scandal my family, like others, were posted off CFB Namao. The babysitter’s family was the first to move. This more than likely had to do with rumblings on base that some of the junior ranks wanted to lynch the babysitter.
My family was punted off CFB Namao and down to CFB Griesbach in October of 1980. This was a total trip distance of 10 km, paid for by the Canadian tax payers.
So, how am I supposed to know who the other kids are or how to find them.
The DND, the CAF, and the DOJ all have access to the listings of military families that resided on the base from the summer of 1978 until the summer of 1980, but this is “protected” as personal information.
The CFSIU investigation paperwork and the courts martial transcripts contain the names of the other potential victims, but again this is “personal information” and can’t be released to protect the victims.
There was a crime stoppers appeal for victims of sexual assault on the base between 1978 to 1980 that was released in 2018. According to the MPCC paperwork this provided “hits”, but nothing that could be directly tied to me. This could be used to find other victims. But the DOJ, the DND, and the CAF would fight this tooth and nail.
Why don’t I go on line to the facebook groups? or Xitter, or Bluesky, or Threads?
The one problem with that is there is a certain contingent of former military dependent that will not acknowledge that bad things happened to children on the bases because if they did then they would have to face the fact that they were often the ones shunning, teasing, taunting, and isolating the hurt kids.
So, here we are in 2024.
My clock is quickly winding down.
And the DOJ knows full well well that they have nothing to fear as the organization that I am squaring off against controls all of the information required for my claim to be successful.
Unlike the kids who got diddled by sports players, priests, police officers, school teachers, etc., I have to contend with an agency that can legally silence potential witnesses that were part of the military back in the day. The security of information act / the official secrets act is so extremely vague when it comes to persons who were subject to the code of service discipline when they learnt about “information” on a defence establishment.
The section of the official secrets act / security of information act that deals with members of the Canadian Armed Forces on base isn’t limited to “secret” or “classified” documents, plans, sketches, etc. These acts cover “all information” which could include “police investigations”, “reasons for chain of command decisions”, “orders to subordinates”, etc.
Also, the 3-year-time-bar legally protects anyone who was subjected to the code of service discipline in 1980 from any modern day legal action, and I would also interpret that to also protect these people from any civil liabilities.
Even if the RCMP wanted to go have a chit-chat with retired Canadian Armed Forces officer Brigadier General Daniel Edward Munro, the National Defence Act protects Munro from any criminal investigation.
Charges against McRae pg1Charges Against McRae pg2
The above two pages are from the 1980 courts martial of Captain McRae. They are what are known as the “charge sheets”.
Yes, the Canadian Forces have ALWAYS had the authority to try service members on Code of Service Discipline matters, and that the National Defence Act allowed the military to try Criminal Code offences as Service Offences.
This also meant that the crimes of Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault, Buggery, and just about every other charge related to sexual offences against children were subject to the 3-year-time-bar that stipulated that no person that committed a service offence could be prosecuted for that offence if the tribunal for said offence commenced more that 3 years after the date of the offence.
The fact that the Canadian Forces could try sexual assaults against children as service offences meant that the summary investigation flaw would also apply. The Summary Investigation Flaw required that the commanding officer of the accused review the charges that had been brought against their subordinate. If the charges would result in a sentence of less than 2 years and not dismissal from the Canadian Forces , the commanding officer could conduct a summary trial where the commanding officer would be the judge.
If there was the risk that the charges would in charges of more than two years or dismissal from the Canadian Forces the commanding officer would cause the charges to proceed to courts martial or the civilian justice system.
However, the commanding officer could also chose to simply dismiss any or all of the charges brought against their subordinate. And once dismissed, those charges or similar charges arising out of the same or similar facts could never be brought against the subordinate at a later date by either a military or civilian tribunal.
When I asked the CFNIS in 2018 if they could talk to Daniel Edward Munro, whom was residing in the vicinity of the CFNIS detachment at CFB Esquimalt, this was the response the CFNIS investigator received from Ottawa.
3 year time bar pg13 year time bar pg2
So, not only is Munro immune from explaining to the military or civilian police what he did in 1980 and who may have possibly ordered him to do what he did, but he would also be silenced by the Security of Information Act as anything that he did on CFB Namao related to the investigation and prosecution of Captain McRae would be considered “information”.
As I mentioned in other blog postings, I had become acquainted with Fredrick R. Cunningham on November 27th, 2011. He filled me in on numerous details of the Captain McRae fiasco. He wouldn’t name names, but he would state that the military police were prevented by the “brass” from calling in the RCMP to deal with the babysitter, and that the military police had many more charges against Captain McRae but that the “brass” reduced that number of charges to those only related to the babysitter, all other charges related to other children had been dropped. Cunningham also noted that the military police at the time wanted to move this case into the civilian justice system but that the “brass” refused their requests. Cunningham wouldn’t say what his rank was or what unit that he was involved with, but he also begged me not to tell anyone that he had told me anything about the babysitter and Captain McRae.
I mentioned the contents of my conversation with Cunningham in a letter to the Provost Marshal. Weeks later Gilles Sansterre, the commander of the CFNIS telephoned me to say that the CFNIS couldn’t find any evidence to substantiate what this “Cunningham” guy said. Sansterre said he doubted that Cunningham could have known anything about the 1980 investigation and that Cunningham probably heard about this information 2nd or 3rd hand.
In 2020 with the release of the CFSIU investigation paperwork I would learn that Cunningham was in fact the Acting Section Commander of the CFSIU on CFB Namao and that he had been personally tasked by the base security officer, Captain David Pilling, with investigating Captain McRae for having committed “Acts of Homosexuality” with young boys on the base.
Everything that Cunningham had told me had been backed up by the CFSIU paperwork.
How powerful are the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence at keeping secrets?
In 2016, during part 2 of the CFNIS investigation into my complaint against the babysitter, the CFNIS tried to talk to Fred Cunningham. Fred outright refused to go for an interview at the CFNIS detachment located on Canadian Forces Garrison Steele Barracks (formerly CFB Namao). He would only talk to the CFNIS as long as no audio or video recordings were made. That’s an odd thing for the lead investigator of a major child sexual abuse scandal involving more than 25 children to say.
What was Fred afraid of?
Well, I think that Fred was afraid that if what he told the CFNIS in 2016 came anywhere near close to what he told me in 2011, then that meant that we would have run afoul of the security of information act / official secrets act. The actual penalties aren’t anything too serious under the acts.
BUT……..
What if the Canadian Forces were to retroactively dishonourably discharge Fred from the Canadian Forces effective the time period of the Captain McRae fiasco. I don’t know when Fred retired, but that would be a hell of a lot of pension money, wages, and housing allowances to have to pay back to the government.
Do I think it would have resulted in that? No. But who the hell would want to go against a government agency governed by intentionally vague and overreaching acts and regulations and spend all sorts of retirement money and retirement time fighting the government?
And this is the problem facing any lawyer dealing with matters against the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces. You’re not dealing with acts and regulations that are set in concrete. You’re dealing with acts and regulations that are so vague that they can be whatever the DND and the CAF want them to be from one day to the next.
The catholic church or even the scouts can be required to hand over the names of members of their organizations to police investigators, prosecutors, and even civil litigants. The DND and the CAF don’t have to meet those obligations as any information they have is considered “personal information” as the abusers and the serving parents of the victims were members of the Canadian Armed Forces and as such were “employees” and as such they would need to seek the permission of the involved parties to release said information.
So back to the topic at the start of this post, “why don’t I simply find other brats”? The secrecy surrounding the CAF and the military communities guards the military community with a large impenetrable wall of secrecy.
Throw into this the number of frequent relocations across the country, and then the children moving off and on their own when they “age off” the bases, and you have former brats scatted all over the country.
In the day and age that I lived on the bases children could only live in the PMQs on base until the 19th birthday. There were exceptions for children going to college or university. They had until 24 to get out of the military housing. The only other exception was for handicapped children.
I lived in 7 different PMQs, on 5 different bases, in four different provinces by the time I was 12. Might not be a lot of moves in and of itself, but when the other kids are also moving around this creates a lot of churn.
As I said, dysfunctional families on base were a dime a dozen. I spoke to my father only a handful of times between 1990 when I moved out of the house for the second time and 2006. I never spoke to my father again between 2006 and when he died in 2017. I suspect that there were a lot of other brats like this.
I know of another department manager at work that was a base brat as a child. They absolutely refuse to talk about their childhood as they’re ashamed of what they went through and they’re afraid of others finding out.
And this is why I don’t think that the Canadian Armed Forces or the Department of National Defence will ever have to own up to the full extent of child sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao nor any other defence establishment across Canada.
The impenetrable walls of secrecy, and the online army of flying monkey base brats ensure that the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence never have to worry their pretty little heads off. When the tools of secrecy can’t conceal the child sexual abuse, the legion of flying monkey base brats will attack the abused brats.
Beeshive 