I don’t remember exactly how I started working for Vince and Ravi, but it was sometime after the start of grade 8.
I was in grade 8 for the ’85 to ’86 school year.
I would have been 14.
Vincent was involved with swimming at the University of Toronto. I forget exactly what Ravi did. But for the two of them video games were a sideline from their main jobs.
I’m pretty sure that I was working for Vince and Ravi before I even met Bob Becker from Trans American Video Amusements.
I would go and do service calls after school. At first I would call Vince after school and he’d pick me up and take me to the locations that needed service. After a while though Vince got me a pager and a set of master keys for the video games.
During school I’d keep the pager in my locker. Kept it on silent so as not to attract attention. But this was back in the day when the paging service didn’t record the messages, they’d just send numeric messages to the pager. And if the pager wasn’t on you didn’t get the message.
The keys were far too much of a risk to take to school. So I used to keep the keys at home in my basement bedroom. Because of my untreated severe depression and anxiety and habit of keeping to myself I was often a target for beatings at school. And the last thing I needed was to get beat up and have the keys taken away from me.
Vince and Ravi didn’t have many locations. A couple of convenience stores on Yonge north of Sheppard. They had a few locations around Dundas and Bloor near the Junction Triangle. And a few more locations out on the Danforth. They also had games in the “Studio” arcades that were owned by a guy named Andrew. I can’t remember them all, but there was Studio ’84, and Studio ’85.
I had always hoped on getting a Platt toolkit like the real technicians, but I had to make due with a kit that I made up with a kit made from Active Surplus in Toronto.
Carried around with me a soldering iron, a desoldering pump, desoldering wick, a digital voltmeter, a logic probe, some nut drivers, and a couple of screwdrivers.
I learnt then that it was better to carry around the tools that you frequently used as opposed to carrying everything.
I’d also carry a couple of coin mechanisms, some microswitches, some blade switches.
It was fun.
As I said it before was nice feeling like I belonged and that I was needed for something.
I think that’s why I always had jobs when I was a kid.
Looking back, there actually wasn’t a single year since about 1982 that I wasn’t working somewhere.
I quickly got the nickname “the kid”.
Troubleshooting logic problems wasn’t a problem, actually tracking down logic problems was pretty simple back then. Fixing power supplies, video monitors, etc. all turned out to be within my abilities.
I remember the time Vincent insisted that I bring a machine home that I was having trouble fixing. Around 22:00 hours we pull up to the back of the PMQ on CFB Downsview in a white rental van with a Williams Space Shuttle pinball machine in the back.
Richard woke up and he wasn’t too impressed.
I got the machine set up in the basement of the PMQ and worked on it for the next couple of days. Turned out to be a broken wire under the playfield.
I’ve never known to this day why, but I had the playfield up on the prop rod while I was working under the playfield. I don’t know if it was an accident, or if it was intentional, but my brother knocked the prop rod out of place and dropped the playfield on my head and back.
The playfield isn’t light. With all of the solenoids and other hardware on it I’d say the playfield probably weighs about 50 lbs. The power for the general illumination isn’t all that great. 6.3 VAC for the general illumination. The DC power supply for solenoids on the other hand are about +28 VDC. The 28 VDC is distributed to all of the solenoids on the playfield and then the returns from the solenoids goes back to the TIP120 darlington on the logic board.
So that meant that not only was the playfield digging into my head and back with all of the solenoids underneath the playfield, I was also getting minor shocks from the machine as the terminals for the solenoids were cutting into my skin.
Never did get an explanation from my brother.
My father laughed. Said I deserved what I got for not watching my back.
One day I got a series of pages from Vince. So I called him right after school
Vince was furious. Seems the owner of the little hamburger shop on Ridge and Wilson had called Vince stating that a bunch of kids had been opening the machine and taking money out of them and had been playing free games for hours. The owner of the hamburger shop had grabbed one of the kids and grabbed the keys from him. The owner of the hamburger shop threatened to call the police if the kid didn’t explain how he got the keys. The kid, C.C. said that my brother had sold him the keys for $20.
I thought that Vince was going to fire me. Nope. He saw no reason for this other kid to have lied. But he wasn’t too happy that my brother was able to get my keys so easily. Vince said that I’d have to be more careful with my keys. Vince suggested that I should put a lock on my bedroom door. I told Vince that my room didn’t have a door.
That’s when I started to learn how to hide my personal belongings. I’d keep the keys hidden in the exhaust ducting for the dryer or even under the control panel for the washing machine. When I started doing collections at the locations I’d have to keep the money hidden. The money I’d keep hidden in a soup can that I’d hide inside the floor drain in the basement.
The only problem this hiding caused is that I’d have to be very careful that no one discovered what I was doing.
I stopped working for Vince and Ravi when I went to work for Bob Becker.
Moonlighting wasn’t tolerated too well in the amusement machine industry back in the ’80s. It was a very cut throat business with a lot of unsavoury business practices.
So, not too many company owners were willing to allow their technician to work for other companies.
I don’t know what ended up happening with Vince and Ravi.
I doubt that they’re in the amusement machine business anymore. The amusement machine industry was decimated in the ’90s with the advent of home machines that far outperformed the most expensive arcade machine.
But still, I often look back at how carrying around my toolkit and fixing arcade machine at various locations across metro Toronto made me feel like anything was possible.
I guess we’re all allowed to be fucking idiots when we’re young, right?
As a kid I learnt an odd behaviour of mine that still sort of continues on to this day.
However, now that I more or less have control over my life I find that I don’t often fall prey to this line of thinking. But it’s still there in the deep dark recesses of my defective brain.
When I was a kid, especially living on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach in Edmonton I had developed a perverse way of dealing with Richard’s stinginess and hatred-by-proxy of Marie.
When it would get close to xmas or my birthday I would secretly start wishing that I wouldn’t get what I had asked for.
And it worked.
Never once did I ever get what I had asked for, and by wishing that I wouldn’t get it I actually felt in control.
Looking back it was obviously a really weird coping mechanism, but it did allow me to cope none the less.
This obviously wasn’t a very healthy coping mechanism.
I would often pretend to not be interested in the latest and greatest thing.
And that would often set me on a collision course with the popular kids who thought that I was just trying to be “smarter than them” or who were convinced that I was just a fucking faggot loser.
At school the kids were into the Blue Jays, the Maple Leafs, the Argonauts, “pro” wrestling was a major thing in southern Ontario back then. The kids at school would have the latest jerseys, or other sports related paraphernalia.
I had nothing like this, I don’t even think my brother had anything contemporary back then.
When we lived in Edmonton from 1978 to 1983 this was practically the top of the Edmonton Oilers dynasty. Richard never once took us to a hockey game.
Our grandmother had actually taken us to some Edmonton Eskimos games with tickets that she’d get from the Bissell Centre for disadvantaged families.
Richard loved the Toronto Maple Leafs.
But in the 7-1/2 years that we lived in Toronto on Canadian Forces Base Downsview not once did we ever go to a hockey game.
And no. There was no watching hockey with Richard. If you wanted to watch hockey with Richard, that was fine, you just had to shut the fuck up and not say a single fucking thing. And don’t ask him stupid fucking questions either.
And it wasn’t like I didn’t play hockey as a kid. On CFB Namao my grandmother had enrolled me in beavers, swimming, hockey, bowling, and basketball.
Me before the fallout of the Captain Father Angus McRae child sex abuse scandal on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
Apparently I never played team sports. There was no team photo for 1979 – 1980 as I was kicked out of hockey as a result of the CFB Namao Child Sexual Abuse Scandal
“But Bobbie, what if your father had no money, he was in the Canadian Forces”.
Sure, the pay was bad in the ’60s and the ’70s. But this was offset by the lowered housing costs of living in the PMQs on base. Also, ranks tended to be very close in pay grade. Privates made one rate, Corporals made another, Master Corporals made another rate, Sergeants made another.
I don’t have access to the historical pay schedules. But even going with the current pay schedule the ranks make basic monthly rates based primarily upon rank, but modified by number of years at that rank level and any special qualifications.
The end result is that my father as a Master Corporal wasn’t making $1k per month while the Master Corporal living next door was making making $2.5k per month.
Where’d his money go?
Not to my brother or I. That was for sure.
I know he had no issue spending money on the latest and greatest knickknack or computer toy for himself.
Was he paying child support on the sly? This honestly wouldn’t surprise me in the least. He did have a habit of skirt chasing.
Was he paying an out-of-court settlement for one of his drinking and driving collisions? Again this is a possibility as his insurance would have been very expensive given the number of collisions that he had over the years.
Other than that I don’t know.
But Bobbie, it’s his money, he can spend it any way that he wants to. You can’t tell him what to spend it on.
That may be true. But he should have worn a condom. Or pulled out. Or even just have asked for oral or a handjob. Would have obviously saved a lot of grief.
You don’t get someone pregnant and then wash your hands of the responsibility claiming that your responsibility ended at conception.
You don’t take your hatred of your former spouse out on your children as if being cruel to your kids was going to make your former spouse realize how much she inconvenienced you by leaving you to look after the children you fathered.
So yeah, birthdays mean nothing to me. And xmas means nothing as well.
I won’t stop you from celebrating.
But hopefully you understand why I don’t celebrate.
And no. Please don’t think that you’re going to “fix me” by inviting me to xmas parties or birthday parties. Nothing makes me feel more awkward and out of place. And it’s so fucking tiring pretending like I fit in or like I’m enjoying myself.
I honestly don’t believe that at any point in time the mental health wellbeing of military dependents has ever been a concern of the Canadian Armed Forces or the Department of National Defence.
Sure, the DND, the CF, and the Minister of National Defence will bloviate about the Military Family Resource Centre and other meaningless programs that the DND and the CF have instituted over the years.
But if they really cared, why does the CF and the DND draw such a hard line in the sand as to which dependents they will support, and which dependents can piss off and go get bent?
In my day as a military dependent the maximum age for a dependent to live in a PMQ on base was 18. The only way you could remain living in the PMQ after your 19th birthday was if you were mentally disabled or if you were attending an institution of higher learning. But even if you were attending an institution of higher learning 24 was the maximum age that you could live in a PMQ on base.
In my day dependents were officially referred to as “D.F.& E.” which means “Dependents, Furniture, and Effects”. The Office of the Ombudsman for the Canadian Forces, which only existed as of 1999, was so taken back by this callousness that they kept asking DND to stop dehumanizing the military dependents and to stop referring to them as D.F.& E. which implied that military dependents were of no more worth than the service member’s furniture.
As a kid, there were times when kids would just stop coming to school. Or kids would just one day leave the base. Never to be seen again. And this wasn’t due to postings. If it was a posting nine times out of ten the posting would occur between late June and early September. These absences were often due to their serving parent dying. Training exercise, workplace incident, health issue, it didn’t matter. PMQs could only be rented to active service members. Deceased persons cannot serve in the military. So off the base the family went.
It was rare that a base commander would intervene and make an exception, because once you’ve made one exception how can you not make another? And allowing the deceased member’s family to remain on base in a PMQ could prove to be an issue for DND and the CF. DND and the CF had fought numerous court battles over the PMQs with regard to civilian family courts granting the non-serving spouse possession of the PMQ in which to raise their children. DND would obviously have an issue on their hands if non-serving spouses were suddenly taking possession of PMQs in the PMQ patches. And schools on base prior to 1994 were run by DND and the CF. These schools were exclusively for the children of active service members. How long was the DND and the CF supposed to support the education of a deceased member’s children?
So, back in my day once a service member died, that was it, the DND and the CF washed their hands of the service member’s dependents.
There was no support.
There was no aftercare.
There was nothing.
We weren’t eligible for social programs from the provinces related to a serving parent’s death as the provinces considered that the be the responsibility of the DND and the CF.
Living on base wasn’t as easy as it’s often portrayed.
The children of dysfunctional families were often tormented and ostracized by their peers. When you live in a regimented community like a military PMQ patch you either conform or you will have trouble.
Dysfunctional parents, like my father, could easily use the Canadian Forces to stay one step ahead of civilian social services. Sure civilian parents could move to a different town, but at great expense. In the Canadian Forces your dysfunctional parent’s moving and travel expenses were covered.
Back in my day the military social workers were more concerned with containing problems. But again, that’s the way the military functioned back then and still functions to this day.
The rank of your serving parent had its privilege, especially if your serving parent was an officer or above. Anybody who says that this wasn’t the case is absolutely full of shit.
There was no way that the base military police were going to go after the son of a Lt. Col. for beating the crap out of the son of a Corporal. No Warrant Officer MP is going to risk getting transferred to CFS Alert over two kids having a donnybrook out behind the rec centre. And yes, this still holds true to today. The provost marshal himself even said that he would never investigate a senior officer of the military.
Sure, Simon Trudeau was talking about investigating his commanding officer. However, if his commanding officer is good buddies with a lower ranking officer, and the Trudeau’s commander doesn’t want the PM to investigate the other lower ranking officer who is the Trudeau to argue with a lawful command from his superior?
Don’t forget, the Canadian Forces didn’t have a Provost Marshal from about 1968 until the office of the Provost Marshal was stood up again in 1998. Prior to that, the base military police and even the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit were under the influence of the local chain of command. Yes, when the CFNIS was created in 1998 along with the Provost Marshal being stood back up, the idea was that the CFNIS and the base military police would operate without chain of command influence. That’s all fine and dandy, but someone forget to rewrite the National Defence Act and the Queen’s Regulations and Orders to exempt members of the CFNIS and the base military police from section 83 of the National Defence Act.
The Provost Marshal was stood up in 1998 as a result of the findings of the Somalia Inquiry. The Inquiry found that the base military police and the CFSIU were ripe for interference from the local chain of command and that superior officers would often put their own parochial interests above any semblance of justice. So it was suggested that the command of the base military police and the new CFNIS be transferred to the command of the freshly stood up Provost Marshal who would be of significant enough rank that they would be immune from chain of command influence. That hasn’t worked out.
How many wife beatings or child beatings were the base MPs and the CFSIU told to ignore and look away from?
And as I said, things were far worse back in my day as a military dependent.
As retired Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham told the CFNIS in 2016 when he was interviewed, the Assistant Judge Advocate General threw Cunningham and the CFSIU “to the dogs” in 1980 during the Captain Father Angus McRae Investigation and subsequent court martial.
When I spoke with retired Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham on November 27th, 2011 he said that it was the “brass” that made the decision to limit the number of charges brought against Captain McRae and that the military police had “many, many more” charges ready to go against McRae but that the “brass” wasn’t going for it, and that the military police tried to move the Captain McRae matter into the civilian system, but again the brass wasn’t going for it.
Most of Captain McRae’s victims were under 14 years of age. In 1980 the age of consent at which a child could agree to have sex with an adult was 14. P.S. was the only boy over the age of 14. If the Canadian Forces had insisted on prosecuting Captain McRae for abusing the children under the age of consent, this whole matter would have had to have been moved into the civilian courts. For obvious reasons the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces were not going to ever agree to this as in the civilian courts the DND and the CF would be hard pressed to “throw a veil of secrecy” over the trial and the evidence. A trial and evidence that would have shown that Captain McRae sexually abused over 25 children on Canadian Forces Base Namao and an untold number of children on Canadian Forces Station Holberg, Canadian Forces Base Portage La Prairie, and Canadian Forces Base Kingston.
So the fact that the “brass” and the “AJAG” were able to insert themselves into a criminal matter again shows that rank in the Canadian Armed Forces carries a significant amount of weight.
And according to retired Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham it was also the Assistant Judge Advocate General that made the decision to not call in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to deal with P.S. under the false assumption that P.S. was only 12 years old in 1980. P.S. was born on June 20th, 1965. P.S. turned 15 on June 20th, 1980. And as the court martial transcripts and the CFSIU paperwork indicate, it was the abuse of young children on base that brought P.S. to the attention of the base military police and it was that attention that brought Captin McRae to the attention of the CFSIU.
Again, the base military police and the CFSIU were not independent. They followed the whims and desires of the chain of command.
That’s why spousal abuse was grossly under reported on the bases.
That’s why child sexual abuse was grossly under reported on the bases.
That’s why child physical and mental abuse was grossly under reported on the bases.
Far too much chain of command influence and far too many parochial decisions.
Most of the children from CFB Namao never received any form of meaningful help. Some went on to have troubled lives. Some have attempted suicide. Some have committed suicide. And that’s only on CFB Namao. What about the other bases that McRae was at?
In 2010 retired Brigadier General Roger Bazin was investigated by the CFSIU for having sexually abused a young boy on Canadian Forces Base Borden in 1974. How many other kids, now adults, are out there that may have been abused on Canadian Forces Base Borden who have never come forward due to not knowing their abuser’s name? How many other former military dependents have never come forward because they were posted around so many times that they can’t remember on which base the abuse occurred on?
Our attempts at suicide and our suicides will never be recorded as being military related. Our deaths and our psychological trauma will always be written off as having been due to something unrelated to our time living on base as children.
When I die it won’t be recorded as being the end result of untreated childhood sexual trauma.
My death will simply be recorded as someone who sought Medical Assistance in Dying due to psychological issues caused by childhood trauma.
And that’s it.
There will be no mention of Captain Father Angus McRae;
There will be no mention of Captain Terry Totzke;
There will be no mention of Colonel Dan Munro
There will be no mention of AJAG J.D. Boan.
The media won’t really show any interest, because what’s interesting about one person seeking M.A.i.D. to get away from their demons?
Between 1950 and today, how many military dependents have attempted suicide, committed suicide, or have wound up with profound psychological issues due to the childhood spent living on military bases?
No one knows.
And the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces would love for it to stay this way.
In the past there have been murmurs and burbles of organizations noticing that children of service members or adult who once were children living on base are committing suicide.
However, sadly this latest research falls well short of other research projects in the past.
The common flaw being that these researchers overlook events that occurred on base and how these events impacted the children living on the bases. This current research looks at how events that impacted service members might lead to family members of the service member committing suicide. For example, if a serving member of the Canadian Forces commits suicide and then their parent commits suicide.
However, what this research seems to completely overlook and omit are suicides or attempted suicides that came about due to events that occurred on the base that the military dependent endured first hand and received little or no support after the event or received inappropriate support.
Like it or not, children were sexually abused on base, children were physically abused on base, children were neglected on base, children were ostracized on base, children couldn’t cope with postings, children couldn’t cope with constantly losing friends, children had to deal with serving parents that had issues made worse by military service such as excessive drinking, anger outbursts, and untreated PTSD.
Persons who lived on base between the 1950s and the 2000’s grew up in a very homophobic, LGBTQ phobic, misogynistic, environment in which psychological issues were to be hidden away and not discussed.
Is it any wonder that no one in the DND, the CF, or even the media really wants to tackle this subject.
Kids who committed suicide already will forever be silent, so the DND and the CF don’t have to worry about them ever talking.
Kids who were 8 years old on base in 1950 are now in their late 70s. They won’t be around for much longer.
Kids who were 8 years old on the bases in 1970 are now pushing 58. Even if the CF and the DND were serious about tackling issues that may have effected these persons, by the time DND and the CF have finished the requisite number of committee meetings these people will easily be in their late 60s and early 70s.
So far as the Government of Canada, the DND, and the CF are concerned, military dependents were never the responsibility of the DND or the CF. As such, they’re more than willing to play the waiting game until we’re all gone.
I’ll be gone in about 2 years. And that’ll be one less issue for the DND and the CF to worry about.
I was recently told by a distant relation of the family that one of the reasons that the media may be reluctant to touch my story is because of what I desire no matter the outcome.
There has to be a good reason why the media won’t touch it.
The Canadian Armed Forces have come out and admitted that there was a problem with sexual assaults in the military for ages.
The Canadian Armed Forces have admitted that victims of sexual assault in the military were often disbelieved, humiliated, ostracized, and blamed for their own misfortune.
The Canadian Armed Forces have agreed that the Military Police, the CFSIU, and the CFNIS were often ill equipped and ill prepared to deal with sexual assault.
As I’ve said before, I view suicide as the outcome of an irrational heat-of-the-moment decision.
Medical assistance in dying is something completely different. You have to pass psychological tests and you have to be approved by a panel before you are allowed to receive a prescription for the procedure. There is no body for a caretaker or random stranger to discover. There generally are no unanswered questions. The death is supervised. The body is removed and disposed of after death is confirmed.
You’d think that the Canadian press would be very interested to hear about a matter in which recently released documents verify that the Canadian Armed Forces knew in 1980 the true extent of Captain McRae’s crimes and that the Canadian Armed Forces knew that Captain McRae had been molesting children on the other bases that he had been stationed at but refused to at the time to investigate those matters or to even offer the victims of Captain McRae any type of counselling or help.
However it looks as if my planned death is scaring the media away.
Nora Loreto recently tweeted that she had information of a police officer that walked into a detachment and then shot themselves dead. There was no news coverage of this.
This has happened recently in Ontario and there is total silence about the circumstances of the death.
Someone on the thread mentioned that a CBSA officer at Pearson International Airport committed suicide, but the media would only say that the officer was found “dead” at the airport.
This happens more often than it reaches the news… I know it was reported once in 2016 that I saw with CBSA: https://t.co/ejJk4LokOB
And as I’ve mentioned in another post, there are a significant number of suicides in British Columbia each and every year.
This is a snapshot of the BC Coroner’s report on Suicide Deaths covering the period of 2008 until 2018.
That’s 6,002 people whom died between 2008 and 2018 that the media have decided don’t exist and never did exist.
What’s scary is that this number only reflects “successful” suicides. Suicide attempts are not included.
Even more interesting is the age group that most frequently commits suicide.
The media always tells us that they’re “saving the children” by not reporting on suicides. Except it’s the 40 to 59 year olds that are committing suicide at the highest rates, not the children.
Why does the media do this?
Is it because the media doesn’t want to encourage copy-cat suicides?
I don’t think that’s entirely true.
I think it’s because the news media would have to open its eyes and realize that the there are a lot of people out there that require help. And the way our society is currently set up, there is no help available for these people and that means that society has failed its most vulnerable.
Even though I’ve only tracked down a few people from CFB Namao that were involved with the CFB Child Sex Abuse Scandal I know of 2 successful suicides, one possible suicide, and 2 attempted suicides related to the Captain Father Angus McRae matter on Canadian Forces Base Namao. That’s five people out of an estimated 25 people that Captain McRae molested on Canadian Forces Base Namao. How many others from CFB Namao did manage to commit suicide that no one knows about? How many kids did Captain McRae molest on Canadian Forces Station Holberg, Canadian Forces Base Portage La Prairie, or Canadian Forces Base Kingston? How many of those kids would go on to commit suicide later in life.
It would be safe to say that I’m not the only one who had a bad reaction to the affairs from CFB Namao. It would also seem to be correct to say that the Canadian Armed Forces didn’t know how to properly deal with the child victims of military sexual assault and that the way in which the Canadian Armed Forces did deal with the child victims of military sexual assault may have actually made the problems far worse due to the military’s penchant for victim blaming.
Maybe the media considers it a waste of time to report on my matter if I’m only going to die in the end anyways.
No.
I think there is such a stigmatism against suicide in our society that there can be no meaningful discussion of any topic when suicide is involved.
See, if I were to have kept my desire to die to myself, then more than likely the media would have reported on my story as they could cleve my eventual death from the CFB Namao sexual abuse scandal.
I could see the eventual reporting of my death:
“Mr. Bees passed away suddenly. There has been no official cause of death released. Mr. Bees if you will remember was the person who brought down the veil of secrecy that had shielded the eyes of the Canadian public from the child sexual abuse scandal that occurred on Canadian Forces Base Namao from 1978 to 1980.”
But as I’ve said, my death isn’t going to be so that I can make people feel guilty or ashamed. My death isn’t going to be so that I can get back at people. My death isn’t to cause the Canadian Armed Forces to suffer humiliation. My death will not be romantic nor will it be a cause célèbre.
My death will be because I am tired. I am burnt out. My death will be because of my desire to escape from the memories of P.S., Captain McRae, Captain Totzke, my father, a psychologically tormented childhood and adolescence, and a lifetime of confusion, self doubt, self hatred, and regret.
Ideally my death will be a private event with only the physician in attendance. Maybe a friend or two. Hopefully my death will be humane and it will be very quick.
It’s far too late to save me. That die was cast a long time ago. My life has been the consequence of chain of command decisions that were made in May to July of 1980 by officers in the Canadian Armed Forces. And I wasn’t even a member of the Canadian Armed Forces.
But it’s not too late to save those who have yet to be abused by trying to ensure that they don’t get abused. It’s also not too late to save those who will no doubt be abused by ensuring that they are believed and not blamed, and that they receive help and treatment in a timely manner instead of humiliation.
And not all of those who are or who will be abused will go on to seek death, but just because they don’t doesn’t mean that their abuse wasn’t painful nor does it mean that they don’t need help.
How DND apologized and made sure that they didn’t go anywhere near the children living on the bases.
Well, today was the day we were all waiting for.
I am so happy that I’ve been through this rigamarole before and I had absolutely no illusions or delusions that the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed were ever going to entertain an apology for the children who were sexually abused on base.
How long has it taken the DND and the CF to give this apology?
Well, the DND and the CF had a policy in place from 1950 until 1994 of expelling homosexuals, gays, lesbians, and others from the ranks of the military and the civil service.
The DND and the CF have known since the ’80s that there was a problem with women in the military being sexually assaulted and the assaults being dismissed by the Chain of Command and the military justice system.
So, if we go from 1994 to 2021 that’s 27 years from the time when the Supreme Court of Canada basically told the DND and the CF to stop expelling homosexuals, gays, lesbians, and others until the DND and the CF finally made their apology.
And let’s be very fucking clear about this. The DND and the CF did NOT apologize because it was the right thing to do.
Those heartless and cruel bastards only apologized because it was part of the terms of the settlement of the class action lawsuit.
If there had been no class action lawsuit, there never would have been an apology.
I’m 50 years old now.
I’ve fought with the DND and the CF for ten years now.
And in those ten years I obtained the court martial transcripts and the CFSIU investigation paperwork that shows that the CF and the DND knew exactly what the fuck was happening on Canadian Forces Base Namao from the fall of 1978 until the spring of 1980.
They knew.
In 2011 the CFNIS knew what happened on that base, yet they pulled out all of the stops to make me look like some crackpot out to juice the military for some quick money.
So as of yet, the DND and the CF haven’t even officially admitted that anything occurred on CFB Namao.
And my 27 year clock won’t start ticking until the DND and the CF admit that something bad happened on CFB Namao.
As I said, I’m 50 years old now. 27 years from now would put me at 77 years of age.
Who the fuck wants an apology at 77 years of age?
What use will an apology be to me at 77 years of age?
Lots of flags, lots of badges and coloured pins.Commander Kelly Williamson was the M.C. of the event.Anita Anand the Minister of National DefenceChief of Defence Staff General Wayne EyreJody Thomas Deputy Minister of National Defence
Well, I watched the entire livestream hoping for some sliver of an acknowledgment. But no, the lawyers who vetted or even hand crafted the apology made sure that it was known that the apology was only for members of the Canadian Forces and for very specific civilian employees of the Department of National Defence.
Every statement was so heavily qualified that there was no way that it could be misinterpreted.
This apology took pains to make sure that everyone understood that only members of the Canadian Armed Forces and civilian employees of the Department of National Defence were sexually abused, sexually assaulted, and had to endure mistreatment based upon gender, gender identity, sexual identity, and sexual orientation.
Of course, what this meant is that NO ONE ELSE was sexually assaulted, sexually abused, or endured mistreatment based upon gender, gender identity, sexual identity, and sexual orientation.
Oh well.
Time to go home, it’s a little rainy outside right now. Might actually snow a bit.
In June of 2011, sensing that my complaint against the babysitter P.S. from CFB Namao was going off the rails I started to try to locate proof that what P.S. had done to me on CFB Namao had some effect on me. And I remember that one of my counsellors named Terry had called me a “homosexual” because of what I had been found doing with P.S. on CFB Namao. And with both Terry and my father blaming me for allowing P.S. to molest my younger brother I knew that if I could get my hands on Terry’s paperwork that I could give this to the CFNIS and it would show them that something had occurred on CFB Namao.
I ended up getting the paperwork. Took some hunting, but eventually I obtained my foster care records from the Alberta Government. These records detailed quite a bit of information that I had obviously been oblivious to as a child.
Terry was Captain Terry Totzke a social worker with the Canadian Armed Forces.
I was found to be terrified of men, and especially terrified of my father.
I was afraid that my father was going to drown me in a toilet.
I was beyond depression and had severe anxiety issues.
My father had signed paperwork admitting me to the foster care system.
I was supposed to be placed into foster care or residential care.
I had become so emotionally disturbed that I was supposed to be placed into psychiatric care.
Richard refused to allow me to be placed on medication to help me with my major depression and my severe anxiety.
More interesting though was that my father was found
to accept no responsibility for his family,
blamed his mother for problems with my brother and I,
blamed my mother for problems with my brother and I,
expected others to solve his problems for him,
Frequently told different stories from one meeting to the next,
Was found to tell those in positions of authority what he thought they wanted to hear.
Needless to say I was beyond devastated when I read the social service paperwork.
I was able to get trauma counselling through work.
I needed help. The social service paperwork literally turned my world upside down.
Everything that Richard had told me as a kid was a lie.
We didn’t suddenly move in April of 1983 so that he could save me from the drugs the counsellors wanted to give me to make me stop kissing boys. He was fleeing the jurisdiction of Alberta so that he wouldn’t lose custody of me through the foster care / residential care system
I didn’t get expelled from school in February of 1983 for kissing a boy in class. Richard yanked me out of the school so that Alberta Social Services couldn’t apprehend me when I was off the base and in civilian jurisdiction.
In fact there’s not a single damn mention of Alberta Social Services having any concern about any apparent “homosexuality”. They were concerned about how dysfunctional my home life was, how emotionally disturbed I had become, and how indifferent my father seemed to be to helping me.
So, I got set up with professional counselling.
This counselling though wasn’t to help me with the past. It was just to help me cope in the here and now so that I could process the information that I had obtained and the information that I would no doubt keep obtaining from my quest for knowledge.
SCAPEGOAT.
Even though my counsellor wouldn’t be able to help me deal with the issues from my past he needed to understand the dynamics of back then so that he could understand why these documents were having such an impact.
In one of the sessions he asked me if I understood what a “scapegoat” was. I replied that beyond being someone blamed for somebody else’s fuckups I didn’t know too much about what a scapegoat was.
So he explained to me that in biblical times a scapegoat was a goat that was cursed with all of the sins and impurities of the village and then chased off into wilderness to carry away the sins and impurities with it.
I was my father’s scapegoat. Probably chosen because (a) I was the eldest, (b) I most resembled my mother, the woman he despised, (c) I had caused trouble for him on CFB Namao when I got molested by the babysitter.
Why did Richard need a scapegoat? The reasons are multiple:
He needed to shield himself from the blame of my brother and I being molested on CFB Namao by our babysitter.
Richard was frequently away on training exercises for 6 to 8 weeks at a time.
Even when Richard wasn’t on training exercises he was often staying off base with his various girlfriends.
Vicki in Westakawin
A woman on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach
Sue out by Londonderry Mall.
Richard was frequently absent from the house between September 1978 and August 1980.
Richard knew that his mother was an alcoholic and had issues.
Richard was an alcoholic and had issues.
So instead of my brother and I having been molested over 1-1/2 years because of Richard’s very poor parenting skills and very poor decision making, my brother was sexually abused because I allowed the babysitter to molest my younger brother. I was sexually abused because as Captain Terry Totzke said, I had a mental illness, I was a homosexual.
And over time Richard dumped his entire parenting responsibilities upon my shoulders. He even said this to Alberta Social Services, that he expected me to look after my younger brother.
When we arrived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview things started to get worse for me the more my brother started to get into trouble.
My father called me self centred for not spending more time with my brother.
My father said that it was my fault that my brother was getting into trouble because I wasn’t looking after him.
I forget exactly when, but my brother did something that ended up with Richard dragging me out of bed and laying a good beating on me. During this beating Richard made it very clear that my brother was “doing these things” because I let P.S. touch him. Yes, Richard named the babysitter himself around 1986ish.
The more trouble my brother got into, the more I got blamed and chastized for not raising him right and being a good example to him.
The counsellor asked me who my brother’s father was. I said “Richard”. Whose responsibility was it to raise your brother? “Richard?” Whose responsibility was it to discipline your brother? “Richard?” Whose responsibility was it to keep you and your brother safe from that child molester? “Richard?” Yes, Richard was his father just as Richard was my father. I didn’t impregnate my mother with my brother, so why the hell was it my responsibility to raise him and to protect him? It wasn’t. It was Richard’s responsibility. And as Richard couldn’t and wouldn’t take responsibility he needed someone to blame. I became his scapegoat. All of Richard’s failings, shortcomings, inadequacies, and fuckups became the failings, shortcomings, inadequacies, and fuckups of an 8 year old boy.
My brother has asked why he doesn’t remember Richard being like this, why he never remembers Richard blaming me for things that went wrong.
As my counsellor said, Richard only needed one scapegoat to absolve himself of any problems with his family. Marie wasn’t around, so he couldn’t blame her. He knew better than to try to blame his own mother to her face, so he couldn’t blame her, there’s no way that Sue was going to wear my brother or I. Richard couldn’t blame my younger brother as that would be absolutely batshit insane even for a clown like him.
I was Marie’s son.
I was the oldest.
I became the scapegoat by default.
Richard could carry on as the poor guy just trying his damnedest to raise his children that had been abandoned by their mother. It obviously wasn’t his fault that his sons were being sexually molested, or having psychiatric issues, or getting into trouble with the law.
Fuck no. It was Robert’s fault.
Robert wasn’t suffering psychological trauma from 1-1/2 years of sexual abuse at the hands of P.S. and Captain McRae. Robert wasn’t having psychological issues due to the unwarranted “conversion therapy” at the hands of Captain Terry Totzke. Robert wasn’t suffering psychological trauma because of his dysfunctional family. No, Robert was just “acting up” for attention.
When I had gone to visit my brother in Edmonton in the summer of 2013 we sat down for coffee in a coffee shop.
We hadn’t really talked much in the years prior. Even when he was living in the Vancouver area from the mid ’90s to the early ’00s we didn’t talk that much.
While we were talking, one thing that came up was Richard’s stinginess around birthdays and christmas.
My brother blurted out “Socks and Underwear day”.
I laughed. Not because “Socks and Underwear day” sounded funny, but because up until that point in time I had almost convinced myself that I was over exaggerating what I remembered.
It took me a while in my adult years to realize that as kids my brother hadn’t been smashing up my toys just as I hadn’t been smashing up his.
This was Richard’s go to excuse as to why he wasn’t buying us anything. We couldn’t look after our toys and we always broke our toys.
Richard always had an excuse as to why he wouldn’t buy us toys. We didn’t look after out toys. We’d break our toys. We’d take our toys apart. We wouldn’t show him gratitude for buying us toys.
When I had my first apartment in Edmonton in the fall of 1990 and I was away from Richard and I started becoming exposed to co-workers whom had families the more I began to realize that there was something terribly wrong with Richard.
I started to realize that he wasn’t buying us toys because he didn’t want to waste his money on us. And like usual, because he couldn’t take responsibility for his own decisions he had to blame others for his decisions. My brother was breaking my toys. I was breaking my brother’s. And seeing as how we couldn’t look after our stuff, neither of us would get a damn thing. I wonder if this is where our intense sibling rivalry came from.
On CFB Summerside I had a decent model railway. I don’t remember too much about it other than it fit on a sheet of 4’X8′ plywood. It was literally here one day and gone the next. Richard’s excuse always was that I smashed it apart and there wasn’t anything left of it.
In 2013 I managed to track down my mother whom I hadn’t had contact with since March of 1992. I had to track her down after the PEI courts had stated that Richard had never been awarded custody of my brother and I.
I went to see her over the 2013 xmas holidays. And I asked her about this infamous train set. She laughed when I told her that Richard had told me that I smashed the train up. Nope. Wasn’t the case. Richard had been out drinking, first at the base mess, then at the Royal Canadian Legion in town. When he came home he went downstairs into the basement with a bottle of rum. The next morning when Marie went down to get him, everything in the basement was damaged. The washer and dryer were smashed and needed replacement. Richard’s drafting table was in pieces. His work bench was in pieces. And the railway was smashed all apart.
She said that his anger and his drinking had really increased since we left CFB Shearwater and this is one of the reasons she was trying to get us back to Nova Scotia to stay with Albert Dagenais while Richard sorted out his shit.
She said that we had xmas and birthday parties before Marie left, but Richard really wasn’t into these types of events and almost felt embarrassed by them.
I don’t remember my brother having much in the way of birthdays when we were kids. I know I didn’t.
I can’t remember any birthday parties on CFB Shearwater or CFB Summerside, but that’s more to do with my age than anything. I turned 7 on CFB Namao in 1978. I can’t remember a party then.
The one and only birthday party that I do remember was when I turned 14 in 1985. I came home and there was a cake on the table. Just said “Happy Birthday” with no name. There was a card and I think $50 in it. Richard said that he knew he hadn’t been a good father, but that he was going to try harder and that he would never again forget my birthday. This was the last birthday of mine that he ever celebrated. At the time I had no idea what this party was all about. Richard told me on previous missed birthdays that I didn’t deserve a party because I was going to special school or special classes and until I smartened up and learned to behave I wasn’t getting anything.
It wouldn’t be until August of 2011 that I would learn why out of nowhere I had a birthday in 1985.
Unbeknownst to me, my family was under the supervision of the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto. We had been ever since we fled Alberta in April of 1983. Richard and Sue had a massive domestic dispute in the PMQ in August of 1985 while my brother and I were in Edmonton with our grandmother for the summer.
Not too sure what the domestic was about, but it appears that it had something to do with divorce papers.
According to the base military police it took three military police officers to bring my father under control. Even my next door neighbour Tanya said the amount of damage to the PMQ was significant. Furniture and paper out the windows. Most ground floors windows smashed out.
And that’s why I had a birthday party in September of 1985. Richard wasn’t trying to make up for having missed out on my previous birthdays. Richard was buttering me up just in case the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto found out about the domestic dispute.
Remember, CAST said in their paperwork that due to budget cuts and staffing issues they couldn’t really become too involved with my family unless they heard about issues in the home from outside agencies. And here is a massive domestic dispute. Probably also explains why the base military police didn’t want us to call 9-1-1 the next time Richard blew up and instead call base switchboard and ask for the military police. It wasn’t because the base military police could respond quicker. It’s because the Metropolitan Toronto Police would have been required to notify social services. The base military police were under no obligation to notify children’s aid. More of the “washing the laundry in house” mentality.
It was my conversations with Marie over the xmas holidays that I learnt that Uncle Doug had been buying gifts for my brother and I on Marie’s behalf and that Uncle Doug was the only reason why her gifts would show up in our house at all.
So if you’ve ever wondered why I schedule time off from work around my birthdays, this is why. My birthday is always a painful event for me. Xmas isn’t much better, but at least those are statutory holidays and I get to be alone for those.
I don’t hate xmas mass. I am atheists. I don’t believe in the invisible magical sky daddy. It just doesn’t mean anything to me. I like looking at the coloured lights and the non-over-the-top decorations. But anything beyond that I don’t get too worked up about.
Birthdays are much the same. I don’t resent people having birthdays. I do sign cards at work and I do slip $20s into the kitty, but I just find the whole idea of celebrating birthdays to be childish and immature.
Sure, maybe Grandma didn’t give Richard much in the way of xmas and birthdays when he was a kid. But that doesn’t explain why uncle Norman and uncle Doug seemed to have no problems with celebrating xmas and birthdays.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and state emphatically that Richard viewed my brother and I as remnants of Marie, and seeing as how he couldn’t punish Marie he was going to exact his revenge on Marie by proxy.
Was Richard a modern day Heathcliff?
Was Richard exacting his revenge on Marie by taking out his anger on my brother and I?
I have no doubt.
To Richard it must have been amusing watching his two kids at each other’s throats. Just proved how insane their mother was and how much he had to sacrifice to raise her hell spawn.
As I work in a hospital with a large psychiatric department, I’ve had the opportunity to ask “off the record” what the most significant cause of intense sibling rivalry is, rivalry so intense that kids have to be sent to separate schools. The most common cause? Dysfunctional parents. And no, no matter how much Richard insisted, it was not my responsibility to raise my younger brother.
A police review agency that takes its directions from the agency that runs the police agency that the MPCC reviews.
I’m not going to get too involved with the Military Police Complaints Commission in this blog other than to point out some important findings from the Final Review released in 2020.
After Sgt. Tenaschuk informed me in July of 2018 that the 2nd portion of CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754 I gathered up all of my evidence and all of my paperwork. Unlike my 2012 complaint to the MPCC, this time I was aware of what documents I would need and how I would obtain those documents.
During the 2015 to 2018 portion of the CFNIS investigation I made sure to audio record phone calls between myself and the investigators. I sent all communications to the CFNIS via email that also went to a cc: address. Important information was sent to the CFNIS via certified courier.
All the stuff that I didn’t do in my first go-round with the MPCC.
I also knew that the MPCC’s hands were tied. The Canadian Forces Provost Marshal, by way of the National Defence Act has an extreme amount of control over the MPCC by way of controlling which documents are released to the MPCC and which documents are.
Unlike the Canadian Forces Ombudsman, the MPCC cannot compel DND, the CF, nor the Provost Marshal to hand over documents to the MPCC.
The MPCC did fault the CFNIS for telling the Alberta Government that no crime had occurred when the MPCC found that internal communications within the CFNIS back in 2011 indicated that my complaint against P.S. was in fact FOUNDED. The MPCC said that the CFNIS had erred when it relied on the Alberta Crown to determine if a crime had occurred. The MPCC said the internal communications within the CFNIS had in fact indicated that a crime had occurred but that the Alberta Crown has a very high bar set before it will lay charges. That bar is determined by the age of the offences, the benefit to society by trying those charges, and the cost of trying those charges.
Here are some really interesting pages from the MPCC final report:
Mr. X is my former babysitter, P.S.
What is interesting about this is that the CPIC check doesn’t show this.
P.S. is noted as being 20 years old on August 27th, 1985. This would put his as being 15 years old at the time of Captain McRae’s Court Martial on July 18th, 1980 This would also go along with what and RCMP Constable told me in August of 2012, that P.S was born on June 20th, 1965 and that the boy in Manitoba was only 8 years old.
So, five charges of child sexual assault between 1982 and 1985?
How many children does a child molester usually abuse before they get caught?
X is my former babysitter from CFB NamaoX is P.S., my former babysitter from CFB Namao
Page 13 and Page 14 from the MPCC Final Report are quite interesting.
I initially spoke with Fred Cunningham on November 27th, 2011 in this conversation he mentioned the following:
P.S. was not 12 or 13 in 1980 as Mcpl Christian Cyr had told me on May 3rd, 2011. P.S. was 15 years old at the time of Captain McRae’s court martial on July 18th, 1980
“There definitely was something wrong with P.S. and he should never have been allowed to babysit children”
It was because of complaints to the base military police about P.S.’s sexual behaviour to younger children that Captain McRae came to be investigated.
Captain McRae was facing charges related for not only molesting P.S., but for molesting a boy named Fred Aitken and one other boy that Cunningham couldn’t name.
At the last minute the “brass” dropped all of the charges related to Fred Aitken and the other boy and as a result of this there was a very serious falling out between P.S. and Fred Aitken with Fred under the false impression that P.S. had stabbed Fred in the back. Cunningham insisted that it was the “brass” that made the decision.
In the 2015 to 2018 portion of CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754 Fred Cunningham stated to a CFNIS investigator that the “AJAG threw the CFSIU to the dogs”
In the 2015 to 2018 portion of CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754 Fred Cunningham refused to participate in any type of a recorded interview. He would only talk “off record”.
Fred asked me to never mention to anyone what he had told me as he was afraid of getting into trouble as the court martial had been moved in-camera and the evidence sealed and no one was supposed to talk about it.
In December of 2011 I sent a letter to the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal detailing some of my conversation with Cunningham. In January of 2012 I received a telephone call from the Provost Marshal himself assuring me that Fred Cunningham didn’t know what he was talking about, that Fred couldn’t have had access to the court martial, and that Fred might be repeating information that he heard second or third hand.
As I would learn in February of 2018 when I received Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit report CFSIU DS 120-10-80, Fred Cunningham was Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham in 1980. He was the Acting Section Commander of the CFSIU. And 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.
Also, this is quite interesting in the sense that it proves that the CFNIS had access to all of this paperwork in 2011. When Mcpl Christian Cyr kept trying to tell me that P.S. was only 12 or 13 at the time of the abuse in 1980, Cyr was obviously going by what was contained in CFSIU DS 120-10-80. So even in 2011 the CFNIS knew full well what P.S. had done.
Again X and Mstr X are P.S., my babysitter from CFB NamaoAgain X is P.S., my babysitter from CFB Nama.X is P.S., my former babysitter from CFB Namao
Well, there you have it. It’s all in Section 80. “From all of this information, there can be little question that, at the very least, base military police were well aware of P.S.’s abuse of other children at the time of the investigation and prosecution of Captain Father McRae. Indeed, it appears to have been P.S.’s behaviour with other younger children, which led the military police’s pursuit of Captain McRae in the first place”. Doesn’t get any plainer that that, does it?
THEY FUCKING KNEW IN 1980 WHAT P.S. WAS DOING.
And yet I’m the piece of shit that allowed P.S. to molest his younger brother. I received 2-1/2 years of conversion therapy at the hands of military social worker Captain Terry Totzke. I’m the homosexual that enjoyed what P.S. was doing to me because I let the abuse go on for so long according to Captain Totzke and my father. And you wonder why I so desperately need to die.
Why were they so desperate in 1980 to paint P.S. as being only 12 or 13.
Under the Juvenile Delinquents Act, 14 was the minimum age that one could be held criminally responsible. As long as the brass on CFB Namao claimed that P.S. was only 12 or 13 they could justify not bringing in the RCMP to deal with P.S..
Why is this important?
The Canadian Forces had pulled out all of the stops to move the court martial of Captain Father Angus McRae “in-camera” thereby ensuring that the public would never discover that McRae and P.S. had molested well over 25 children on CFB Namao.
If P.S. had been investigated by the RCMP and the RCMP had laid charges, P.S. would have gone to Juvenile Court to be dealt with. And this would have negated all of the work that the CF and the DND had put into moving McRae’s court martial “in-camera”.
In Juvenile Court the court had the power to try any adult who had contributed to the delinquency of a minor. The DND and the CF would have been unable to move a civilian tribunal “in-camera” and thus the doings of Captain McRae and P.S. would have been available for the public to see.
The public would have learnt the McRae was bringing children over to the chapel and “fooling around” with them after giving them alcohol.
The public would have learnt that McRae was suspected of molesting well over 25 children.
The public would have learnt that during his ecclesiastical trial with the Catholic Church he admitted to having molested children for years wheich meant that he probably molested children on Canadian Forces Station Holberg, Canadian Forces Base Portage La Prairie, and Canadian Forces Base Kingston.
The Public would have learnt that Captain McRae had been investigated for “Acts of Homosexuality” at Royal Military College Kingston which is directly adjacent to Canadian Forces Base Kingston.
So the Canadian Forces stood to lose a lot if they allowed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to deal with P.S..
Instead the R.C.M.p. were not called in and P.S. would go on to have a very lengthy criminal record for child molestation. In addition to the charges and convictions in his CPIC file, there are many more charges that were either dismissed or dropped.
How many of these instances of child sexual abuse didn’t need to occur if the RCMP had been called in as they should have been.
There is no moving on from this.
This isn’t just a slight “hiccup” or a tiny “boo-boo”
The Canadian Forces chain of command may not have intended to my life to have been affected in so many ways by the decisions made in 1980.
But it was.
And it’s not as simple as not thinking about it, or moving on from it.
The damage is done.
There’s no erasing it.
There’s no moving on from it.
It’s like you see those guys who were wrongfully convicted, and they spent 30 or 40 years in prison. And when they get out everyone just expects them to move on with their life even though they were sent to prison on lies, their friends long since abandoned them and their families have moved on, technology has moved on, the life they had was long since obliterated. There’s nothing for them to go back to. No matter how many apologies they get or they receive it won’t undo what was done.
That’s where I am. Due to my dealings with Captain Totzke and the 1-1/2 years of abuse at the hands of Captain McRae and P.S. I have absolutely no idea of what I am.
Am I gay?
Am I queer?
Am I a homosexual like Captain Totzke called me?
Am I straight?
If Captain Totzke hadn’t fucked with my brain would I be married?
Would I have had a wife?
Maybe a husband?
A boyfriend?
A girlfriend?
Now that I know the truth about 1980 it doesn’t make things any better.
As an adult I fully understand that I didn’t make P.S. abuse my younger brother, I didn’t allow P.S. to abuse my younger brother. P.S. abused my brother because my grandmother was a piss tank alcoholic and my father was living off base chasing skirts.
From August of 1980 until the last time I spoke with my father in September of 2006 he made sure that I understood that my brother’s issues were because I let the babysitter touch him.
You don’t get over that.
“But death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man’s best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free.”
Or how an Independent at arms length agency is controlled by the agency that it is supposed to be overseeing and is supposed to be independent from.
It looks as if the Canadian Forces is getting slagged in the media again. This time not for its abysmal ability to investigate matters of sexual assault within the Canadian Armed Forces.
No, the Canadian Forces is getting slagged for interfering with the Office of the Ombudsman for the Canadian Forces.
The Office of the Ombudsman has powers that the Military Police Complaints Commission doesn’t have. The Ombudsman can compel members of the Canadian Armed Forces to appear before any of its investigations. One would think that this matter would also extend to retired service members who were subject to the Code of Service discipline at the material time of the investigation.
The Ombudsman is supposed to have unfettered access to DND and CF records and can compel the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence to hand records and documents over to the Ombudsman for their investigation.
Why does the Ombudsman have these powers? Because no criminal charges can flow from a Ombudsman review. The Ombudsman can only make non-binding recommendations to the Minister of National Defence, the Department of National Defence, and the Canadian Forces.
For example
In 1974 there was a group of teenagers on Canadian Forces Base Valcartier in the province of Quebec. These teenagers were all between the ages of 12 and 18 and were members of various army cadet corps from across Canada. Somehow a live grenade found its way into the hands of one of the teenagers during a class session on ordnance. One cadet even asked the instructor, a captain of the regular force if it was a real grenade, the captain responded that no it wasn’t. So the teenager did what any curious teenager would have done, they pulled the pin and released the handle.
In 2013 the Office of the Ombudsman for the Canadian Forces received the permission of the then Conservative Minister of National Defence Rob Nichols to undertake an investigation of a pre-mandate issue.
I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Ombudsman would not have been allowed to conduct this pre-mandate review in the era of Harjit Sajjan or for that matter Justin Trudeau. After all, it was Harjit Sajjan that accused me of playing games and having an angle when I went to speak with him in February of 2016 just after he became the Minister of National Defence.
Even my local MP, Dr. Hedy Fry says that she can’t become involved in my matter because there are “no military bases” in Vancouver Centre.
And it was under Sajjan’s command that the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces refused to release to me the court martial transcripts of Captain Father Angus McRae along with the Canadian Forces Special Investigations paperwork all because they indicated that the Canadian Forces chain of command was well aware in 1980 that my babysitter, P.S. had been molesting numerous children on Canadian Forces Base Namao and that Captain Father Angus McRae, who the MPCC called a known pedophile in 2020, was enticing children over to the rectory at the base chapel and getting them drunk before “fooling around” with them.
I have absolutely no idea as to why the Liberal Party of Canada refuses to allow the Office of the Ombudsman of the Canadian Forces to conduct an investigation into historical child sexual abuse in the era of the pre-1998 National Defence Act but neither Harjit Sajjan, Dr. Hedy Fry, nor Justin Trudeau seem to show any inclination to uncover what was hidden by a well known defective military justice system.
And I’m not imagining this interference.
Lo-and-Behold, it would appear that the Minister of National Defence and the Deputy Minister of National Defence have been interfering with the Office of the Ombudsman of the Canadian Forces.
A few years ago Randal Garrison, the MP for Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke and then the Vice Co-Chair of the Standing Committee on National Defence asked Lt. General. Christine Whitecross during a committee hearing who had jurisdiction for the investigation of child sexual assaults on the bases in Canada. She blathered out some meaningless drivel about all child sexual abuse matters being handed over to the civilian authorities.
Sure, I wasn’t a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. But my father was. And under the Ombudsman’s mandate I am allowed to ask the Ombudsman to review a matter in relation to my involvement with the military justice system back in 1980.
Section 12(f) allows me to avail myself to the CF Ombudsman
These are the policies that guide the office of the Ombudsman.
DND and the CF SHALL provide……..Hrrmmmm. So the Ombudsman can review military police investigations. Interesting.During a Military Police Complaints Commission investigation the CFNIS and the MPs can tell the MPCC to go piss up a rope. Not so with the CF Ombudsman.The Military Police Complaints Commission has no such authority.A very interesting annex.
According to the above Annex B, the Canadian Forces are preventing the Ombudsman from conducting criminal investigations. But the Canadian Forces are also stating that there is nothing stopping the Ombudsman from conducting an investigation while a Military Police or CFNIS investigation is underway. So there would have been nothing stopping the Ombudsman from reviewing how military dependents are treated by the military justice system which is set up to deal primarily with perpetrators and victims that are subjected to the Code of Service Discipline and not civilians with no connection to the Canadian Forces other than they were military dependents at the time of the alleged crimes.
For instance the Ombudsman could review how the 3-year-time-bar or the Summary Investigation flaw actively prohibits the Canadian Armed Forces or any civilian court from bringing Code of Service Discipline charges against any person who was subject to the Code of Service Discipline prior to December of 1998.
The Ombudsman could also review how military dependents and other civilians availing themselves to the military justice system receive no actual victim services from the Canadian Forces as they are not members of the Canadian Forces and how often these military dependents receive no help from the provinces as the provinces consider sexual abuse on the military bases to be a Ottawa issue.
The Ombudsman could also initiate an inquiry to look at the rates of child sexual abuse on the bases prior to 1998 and determine if the 3-year-time-bar and the Summary Investigation flaw denied justice to children and also served to present an artificially low incidence of child sexual abuse on the bases in Canada.
The Ombudsman could also look into how the appalling homophobic attitudes of the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence resulted in male children being subjected to “conversion therapy” at the hands of the Canadian Forces military social workers.
I never wanted to CF Ombudsman to judge P.S. and determine if P.S. was guilty of what I accused him of.
I only wanted the CF Ombudsman to review child sexual abuse on the Canadian Forces Bases in the era of the pre-1998 National Defence Act and to have the CF Ombudsman urge the Minister of National Defence and the Department of National Defence to do the right thing.
And you wonder why I am so looking forward to my date with death in 2023.
A person can only be told “Up” is “Down” and “White” is “Black” for so long before all of the demons from the past urge one to just give in an fall into the eternal slumber where none of this shit will ever haunt a person again.
There were a couple of songs that still stand out from my youth.
It wasn’t until my father fled from Alberta to Ontario in April of 1983 to avoid my apprehension by Alberta Social Services that I started to become exposed to popular music outside of what my uncle Doug would buy for me.
Up until we arrived at Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario I had never gone to a public school. My education up to the point was at schools for military dependents on base.
My grandmother had the stereo system glued to 790 CFCW. Richard was much the same. He really only listened to country music.
My first taste of music that wasn’t country and western was the kid’s disco that used to be put on every Sunday at the Lamplighter Pub on CFB Namao for the military kids that lived on Lancaster Park on CFB Namao.
When we arrived in Toronto this was the first time that I had been exposed to music that wasn’t country.
There was Pop, Rock and Roll, Heavy Metal, New Age, Progressive Rock, Hip-hop, Rap, Reggae, Top 40, you name it and the kids at Sheppard Public School listened to it.
It was also at this time that I began to realize that songs could tell stories. And more than just about rusty pickup trucks, dead dogs, and cheatin’ wives.
Whenever I hear the opening saxophone on “Overkill” by Men At Work I can visualize myself looking over the ravine out of the bedroom window of our PMQ at 94 Sunfield Road where we lived prior to moving to 223F Stanley Greene Park. I can also kinda smell and feel the humidity of that first summer living in Toronto.
Another song that will take me to back is “Come Dancing” by the Kinks. My brother absolutely hated the line “It’s only natural”. “Our House” by Madness is another one that would drive him bonkers if I sang along with it.
One of the first songs that I noticed that kinda spoke to me about what things were like at home was “Where is this love?” by the Payolas.
As psychologically damaged as my grandmother was, my father was even worse. My father had his anger, his depression, his PTSD, his alcoholism, and his physical strength. Under no circumstance did you ever want Richard upset with you. Living with him was like walking on egg shells.
If things had gone to shit at work for Richard you didn’t want to bother him. If he had too much to drink at the mess he wasn’t too bad when he was pissed drunk, but the next day when he was having his hangover you just steered the fuck clear of him. Sometimes when Richard was a little too pissed drunk for Sue’s liking she’d kick him out of bed and banish Richard to the living room to sleep. Usually not on the couch though. He’d usually be on the floor, rolling around stark naked and screaming at the top of his lungs. Even when we’d try to take Richard a blanket or try to calm him down Sue would come down and tell us to leave him alone, that he had to learn his lesson. So, it would usually be a sleepless night listening ti him yell and howl from the living room.
It was a few years after this that I heard another song that kinda spoke to me. It was “Luka” by Suzanne Vega.
The third song that I had heard of was actually introduced to me by someone else. I didn’t hear this song on my own as it was slightly before my time.
I was working for Ed Blaha, Bruce Beveridge, and Dirk Verdoold at Rainbow Games. Ed worked for the Metropolitan Toronto Police at Central Traffic. Dirk was an officer at 14th Division. Bruce was Ed’s childhood friend from when they grew up together in Montreal.
The three of them had purchased a pool hall at Keele and Sheppard on the North East corner of the base. Initially there was a fourth partner, Gary Mountjoy, but he sold his interest in the business very early on. I started working there in late ’87 – early ’88.
One of the things that Ed noticed right off the bat is that even though I was 16. Richard really didn’t seem to give a fuck where I was or how late I was out to. I would frequently sleep overnight in the work shop. And not once would Richard come looking for me.
And things were getting rough at home for other reasons as well.
Rainbow Games provided video games, pinball machines, and juke boxes to bars and donut shops across the Greater Toronto region.
One day Ed came back from the records wholesaler with an assortment of records for the various juke boxes.
He handed me one 45 and told me to put it in the juke box and play it.
Ed told me to sit down and listen to it.
So I lit up a smoke and drank my coffee and listened to the song as it came on.
It was “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin.
This song, as touching as it was, only kinda touched on my family life at home.
See “Cat’s in the Cradle” is about a father who is so tied up in his work that he doesn’t have time to spend with his son like his son wishes that he would, and then when his son has grown up and the father wants to spend time with him, it’s now his son that is to busy to be there for his father. The song doesn’t seem to be about physical or mental abuse.
When the song was over Ed said that as a police officer he had worked with street kids before, and street kids don’t go there because they want to be there, they go there because there’s no one to guide them away from the streets.
Ed said that if his son was ever working for someone and his son wasn’t home for bed before 21:00 that there’d be hell to pay. The fact that my father didn’t give a shit if I didn’t return home for days on end told Ed that something wasn’t right at home.
Ed said that I was bright, that I was smart, and it was my smarts that were keeping me off the streets. Ed asked me if I felt safe at home. I told him no. I told him that in addition to my father I now faced another physical threat in the house.
Ed arranged a room for rent in a house just across the street from the pool hall. The house was a PMQ that was rented by a service member of the Canadian Forces. This guy had just broken up with his wife and his wife had left him and taken their children. He had already rented out one of the children’s bedrooms to another person. This arrangement worked fine until the summer of 1988 when the CF Housing Authority found out that he was renting rooms.
But anyways, from early 1988 until the summer of 1989, almost a year and a half, I had peace. I didn’t have to worry about physical violence or threats of physical violence. I could sleep in peace. In fact I never wet the bed again after I moved out of Richard’s house.
And while “Cat’s in the Cradle” didn’t really focus on my relationship with my father, it did have some similarities.
My father wanted nothing to do with me. And as an adult I wanted very little to do with my father.
My father really didn’t want kids. I have no kids. I don’t think my brother has reproduced either. All I know is that I’m taking this rancid Gill DNA to the grave with me.
What has stuck with me all these years about “Cat’s in the cradle” is the fact that Ed went out of his way to buy this one 45 to act as an icebreaker meant that my dysfunctional home life was actually visible for all to see.
I just wish that the right people had seen the dysfunction and reacted properly.
Beeshive 