Tag: Canadian Armed Forces

I honestly don’t know why death frightens people.

Sure, the manner in which you die can be pleasant and peaceful or horrific and terrifying.

But death is death. There is no more sensation, there is no more comprehension, there is no more awareness.

Everything stops.

And everyone dies at least once in their life.

And I really don’t understand why people get so upset about my desire to die and my desire to obtain medical assistance in dying.

You only get one life to live. There are no restarts. There are no do-overs.

My life isn’t going to suddenly get better.

My depression and my anxiety aren’t suddenly just going to disappear.

The memories of what I’ve endured aren’t going to go away.

I’m not going to instantly find a significant other.

I’m not suddenly going to take on interests and hobbies.

I wake up every morning with an intense desire to stay in bed.

On my days off I can sleep, and sleep, and sleep.

Sleep is much better than being awake as dreamland is much more interesting than reality.

There is nothing here for me, there honestly isn’t.

If I die tomorrow or if I die ten years from now, it wouldn’t make a difference other than I would endure ten more years of living with the shit from Canadian Forces Base Namao and Canadian Forces Base Greisbach in my head.

In many ways I wish I hadn’t sent that fateful email to the Edmonton Police Service in March of 2011.

Sure, I had wanted to die before then. I’ve wanted to die since 1980. But I was too afraid of the pain of dying and of botching up my death to go through with it.

But after having dealt with the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence my desire to die has become a mission.

People tell me that I am being silly. That I can’t die. That I have too much to live for.

Maybe if things in my youth had been different, then yes, maybe my desire to die would be silly.

I have absolutely nothing to live for. And that’s the truth. And I’m not being melodramatic.

I obtain no real joy from life.

Life just keeps repeating, day in, day out, the same shit. The same memories. The same depression. The same anxiety. The same hopelessness. The same worthlessness.

I don’t like the fact that one of the reasons that I’m still alive is that others have determined that I shouldn’t be allowed to determine when I’ve had enough.

Not thinking about the depression won’t work.

It’s been with me for far too long, and it wasn’t that I never wanted to seek treatment for it. It was that I was actively denied treatment for it. Fuck, I didn’t even know that I officially had issues until the summer of 2011 when I received my social service records.

Up to that point in time I had always believed what my father told me. That I was acting up. That I was doing this for attention. That I didn’t have friends because I thought that I was better than everyone. That I had fucked with his military career. That I was a cock-sucking homosexual because of what I had been caught doing with the babysitter. That I was a fucking pervert for what I allowed the babysitter to do to my younger brother.

Not thinking about the sexual assaults on Canadian Forces Base Namao won’t make them go away. I wasn’t allowed to be a victim. I was a pervert. A homosexual. I “wanted it” because I never told anyone about it.

But, there was no one to tell about it.

My grandmother was an emotionally damaged piss-tank alcoholic Indian Residential School survivor.

My father was a misogynistic womanizer who was just as much of an alcoholic and who was just as emotionally damaged as his mother.

And when people did find out about it I was labelled a pervert and a homosexual by my father and by military social worker Captain Totzke.

Knowing the truth about back then doesn’t make any of this go away.

Knowing that I was caught up in the Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse scandal in which over 25 children were abused by Captain McRae for more than two years on four different bases, doesn’t make me feel like a hero or a champion.

How can I feel good about this mess knowing that men in positions of power made a decision to sacrifice my mental health and wellbeing in order to save the image and prestige of the Canadian Forces and that even my own father stood aside and put up no resistance.

If you respect me, you will respect my desires.

I had no choice in the matter of being born.

That was a decision made by two very irresponsible adults.

I didn’t chose to be raised by my emotionally damaged grandmother.

I didn’t chose to be raised by my just as equally damaged father.

I didn’t chose to be sexually abused on CFB Namao.

I didn’t choose to have a military social worker.

At least let me have a choice over when I’ve had enough.

Respect my choice when the time comes.

Support me in my quest to obtain peace through Medical Assistance in Dying.

Don’t shame me, or ridicule me for wanting to die. Take your energy and direct it towards agencies that hide child sexual abuse. Use your energy to try to eradicate child sexual abuse.

Ensure that no male victim of child sexual abuse is labelled as a homosexual or blamed for their own abuse.

Don’t come after me for making “irrational decisions”. I’m not angry. I’m not upset. This isn’t a spur of he moment thing. I’ve wanted to die since back in 1980. I’m tired. I’m burnt out. I want to go. I want to go peacefully. I want to die with dignity as opposed to dying like an injured animal.

That’s it.

That’s all I ask.

One issue that has been clear to me for quite some time is that it’s really not me that people care about.

It’s themselves that they care about.

And I don’t mean in a rude and selfish manner.

It’s just comes from from a feeling of powerlessness they feel when they can’t imagine not being able to right wrongs.

People fear death as it’s the great unknown, and people generally can’t understand how death could be an answer.

When has no real purpose other than getting up everyday to go to work, what’s the point?

People don’t tell me to get counselling so that I can feel better.

People tell me to get counselling so that they can feel better about themselves.

Empty platitudes as they say.

Me?

I’m tired, so very very tired.

As I’ve said, I will always remember what I lived through.

I will always understand what was taken from me.

I will always remember the abuse.

I will always remember how the abuse was handled.

My brain was already fried as a result of the sexual abuse and then the manner in which Captain Totzke dealt with the abuse.

But, dealing with the CFNIS from 2011 onwards fried my brain even more.

I think what made the CFNIS investigation so much more depressing was that they went out of their way to humiliate me, to discredit me, and to make sure that I understood that no one was ever going to own up for what I endured on Canadian Forces Base Namao from 1978 to 1980 or on CFB Griesbach from 1980 to 1983.

Even though they’re both dead and gone, the memories of my father and my grandmother linger on.

If the memories weren’t so fucking painful, the idea of Richard calling his mother an alcoholic that was cruel to his children would have been a fucking laugh riot.

Let me make a few things very clear.

I was never allowed to be the victim. I made things happen. I allowed things to happen. I was a pervert. I was a homosexual. I was old enough to know what I was doing. I was supposed to be raising my younger brother.

It wasn’t like nobody knew that I had been abused.

Captain Totzke knew.

My father knew.

The military police in May of 1980 started investigating the babysitter for what he had done to younger children on the base as a result of numerous parents complaining. I have no doubt that the military police back then knew about my brother and I.

The fact that both my father and Captain Totzke knew and yet blamed me means that I didn’t suffer in silence since 1980.

It means that they both shoved a sock in my mouth to keep me silent.

One did it because of orders from the chain of command

One did it to hide his dysfunctional household.

In the end, I’m the one left with the burnt out brain.

I’ve lost.

And I’ve lost big time.

The least you could do is admit that I should have the ability end my life if I want to.

I had no input in the matter of being born.

My parents had sex.

That was their choice.

The adults in my childhood were either absent, dysfunctional, alcoholic, or they had agendas.

One line from a song that has always resonated with me since I heard it is:
“You know where it ends, yo, it usually depends on where you start”, Everlast, What it’s like.

I wasn’t given every advantage in life only to piss it away in my college years because I got into drugs or drinking.

During my adolescence all I could do is sit and wonder why I was so fucking stupid and so fucking dumb. Nothing I did ever seemed to work out. Everything I did I fucked up.

In my early adult years I realized that my electronic skills and my computer skills were not going to amount to anything. No degrees, no certificates, no decent pay.

As I said in another post, I could use my mechanical reasoning, my electronic skills, and my interests in computers to get an advantage over other candidates for jobs that were basically just over minimum wage.

It was in the mid to late ’90s that I realized that I was never going to amount to anything.

All those years, wasting away at jobs that I didn’t really like, but they were jobs that allowed me to eat and sleep in a bed.

What makes this even worse is all the years of listening to people telling me that I was crazy, that I was insane, that I was a fucking retard, that I was a fucking loser, that I was psychotic, that I was an asshole, that I was a snob.

The crazy is what the kids in school called me.

The insane was what my father called me.

The fucking retard is what my stepmother called me.

The fucking loser was from my time living on the streets and in emergency shelters.

The fucking psycho was from when a female customer was trying to get a response out of me when she accused the machines of intentionally damaging her personal equipment.

The fucking asshole and the snob come from the fact that I don’t get worked up over shit, nor do I give a shit about TV programs, or sportsball teams, or movies.

And please don’t respond telling me that I’m not the above. It would be meaningless empty gesture.

All my life people have told me that I should be very happy that as shitty as my life was, that at least I wasn’t born in some 3rd world country.

I’ve never underfuckingstood what they bullshit is supposed to mean.

I wasn’t born in some mythical 3rd world country. I was born in this country. A country where children are supposed to be safe. A meritocracy where one can go as far in life as they’re willing to go. This shit all turned out to be a fucking lie. But I’m supposed to pretend that I’m the luckiest boy in the world for all of the opportunities that were thrown at my feet.

Back in 2022 during one of the mediated hearings between myself and the lawyers for an entity that I cannot name, the lawyers brought up a line from my social service records that I had never seen.

“Mr. Gill appeared to be concerned about his mother’s drinking suggesting she is emotionally abusive to both children, especially when inebriated”.

That floored me as I never thought that Richard would have the fucking balls to call his mother a drunk. Never mind his fucking hypocrisy as both him and his mother were champion drinkers.

In January of 1977, Richard was arrested by the CFB Summerside military police for fighting with his own mother while they were both pissed drunk.

Well, seeing as how Richard was fucking dead since 2017, I submitted another Access to Information request, this time requesting more information if possible as both my grandmother and my father were dead.

On May 8th, 2022 I received the additional information that I requested.

Fuck, what a blast this was.

“Mr. Gill has a tendency in contact with professionals to blame the boys’ behaviour on their relationship with their grandmother who has lived with the family. Mr. Gill states that his mother is an alcoholic who refuses to seek help or treatment for her condition”.

“Mr. Gill claims that his mother is an alcoholic”.

What a fucking asshole. But he wouldn’t be Richard Gill if he wasn’t a fucking asshole.

” Another point is that Richard is resistant to Sue coming into sessions and voices concern that she ‘should be home making supper'”.

I’ll never understand why Sue stuck around.

She could have easily found someone who wasn’t an misogynistic alcoholic asshole.

I’ve seen my father naked, so it couldn’t have been the intense satisfying sex.

Richard was never subtle with his misogyny.

When Richard and Sue would get into arguments and fights in the house he’d gladly let fly with cunt this and cunt that.

When his friends were over he’d regale them with how much of a stupid bitch Sue was and how much of a fucking stunned cunt she could be.

When Sue was learning to drive stick shift on CFB Greisbach he’d get pissed off with her when she ground the gears.

If we were out in the city driving and a woman was driving slow in front of him or didn’t signal properly he’d gladly let fly with fucking cunt!, fucking dumb cunt!, fucking stunned cunt!

And he was no better with my child care workers in Edmonton, the majority of whom were women.

When my mother left in 1977 my father made sure that I understood that my mother was a whore who would spread he legs for anyone and that she ran off with a guy named Gus from the P.P.C.L.I.

I’m beginning to think that Richard probably told Marie to get into the kitchen and cook his supper one too many times.

But it’s really amazing to see exactly how much disdain Richard had for his mother.

Like, holy fuck, he’s the one who brought grandma into the house to live with us at CFB Summerside when our mother left.

He’s the one who requested the compassionate posting to move from CFB Summerside to CFB Namao when grandma returned to Edmonton to be with her husband Andy.

He’s the one who couldn’t stop his womanizing after Andy slipped in the bathtub and ended up in the long term care facility at the U of A.

And he had the fucking balls to tell my social workers that the problems my brother and I were exhibiting weren’t due to being sexually abused by our babysitter for a year and a half but were due to his alcoholic mother?

What a fucking complete asshole.

Was Richard an oddity in the Canadian Forces.

Fuck no.

The Canadian Armed Forces had a significant problem with misogyny. Actually they still have, but it’s no where near as bad as it was back in the ’70s and ’80s.

A guy like Richard would have found like minded malcontents in the military.

Remember, the canteen at 447 Squadron was plastered with fully naked centrefolds, and not just one or two pictures. They were all over the place. And when fathers would bring their sons to the squadron, they didn’t give a shit if their sons saw photos of naked women. That’s what women were for.

Marie was a woman, so as far as Richard was concerned his responsibility to raise his kids ended when he ejaculated. And cook his supper.

Grandma was a woman, so as far as Richard was concerned it was her job to look after his kids.

Sue was a woman, so it was her job to raise my brother and I.

Richard had no responsibility to raise his kids.

That’s what women were for.

People often ask me if I’ve tried to obtain professional help with my issues.

Surely if you only tried Bobbie, you could get help! But remember it’s all on you!

There’s a few problems with this.

First, until relatively recently I didn’t realize that I had any problems as Captain Totzke and my father had both drilled into my head that my issues were just a way for me to seek attention and that the abuse that I endured on Canadian Forces Base Namao was not really abuse but was more than likely due to me being a homosexual, which was obviously a choice.. Even my father said much the same in 2013 in response to my written examination of him for federal court. “His issues could be whatever he wanted them to be”.

Second, after a childhood of being caught in the war between two opposing factions, my father and Captain Totzke on one side and my civilian counsellors and health practitioners on the other side, I really don’t have a lot of trust for these people.

Third, medical science doesn’t understand how the human brain works. Sure, there are a ton of theories. But most monographs that accompany psychiatric pharmaceuticals stress that they don’t understand the exact mechanism that allows the drug to work, but that the drug does seem to have the desired effects.

The Escitalopram that I’m on is interesting, but it’s like using numbing cream on the site of a tattoo. Sure, the numbing cream will keep the pain of the tattoo to a minimum, but the tattoo is still gonna cause trauma to your skin and even after the numbing cream wears off you’ll still feel pain.

Mental health funding in this country often looks like this:

A pretty sign, but nothing more than an out of order shit-house.

Counselling usually consist of being warned not to trauma dump on your counsellor. Just tell them enough that they feel like they know more than you, but don’t tell them so much that they run up on to the roof of the building to jump off.

I actually had one counsellor in a preliminary session tell me that he didn’t want to hear about my past as we live in the here and now.

I swear that most counsellors get into this field with the doe-eyed misconception that everyone’s trauma is the result of their goldfish dying when they were 10 years old, or their puppy got run over by a car when they were 12.

Then there are assholes like me that show up with multifaceted trauma. Sure, kids got sexually abused out in civvy land, and sure, some of this abuse occurred in the Catholic Church which could use its influence to hide things from the public eye. But that influence only went so far. Eventually enough stories became public that the church could no longer use its influence to hide this shit. The gates were opened and all of the crap came bursting through.

The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence OWN the bases and employ just about everyone on the bases. They even have their own law enforcement agency and their own judicial system. This is why you very rarely hear of child sexual abuse from the bases. It’s much easier to control a company town when you own everything and employ everyone in that company town.

My father and Captain Father Angus McRae worked for the same employer. On Canadian Forces Base Namao they had the same base commander who had control over the base military police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit. Even Captain Terry Totzke, the military social worker whose care I was under from October of 1980 until April of 1983 was under the command of Colonel Dan Munro, the base commander of CFB Namao.

How do I explain to a counsellor that my father’s employer pulled out all of the stops to ensure that the Captain McRae fiasco didn’t blow up beyond Captain McRae being charged with just molesting his teenaged accomplice?

How do I explain to a counsellor that the rejection and derision that I faced from my father came no doubt from his shitty parenting skills and his obedience to the Canadian Forces chain of command?

I learnt a while ago to not even mention my grandmother’s stint in Indian Residential School. Sure, her shitty childhood in a racist country run by the church and corrupt politicians obviously impacted my father’s shitty childhood, which of course impacted my childhood and my brother’s childhood. And sure, it was my grandmother’s frequent intoxication while she was raising my brother and I that no doubt led to my brother and I needing a babysitter, which led to our abuse. But bringing up my grandmother leads to accusations of me trying to be a full blood pretendian.

Basically my brother and I aren’t the end result of intergenerational trauma.

We’re not the victims of 1-1/2 years of sexual abuse on CFB Namao because our primary abuser was the sole victim of Captain McRae*.

I didn’t really have major depression, severe anxiety, or a host of other issues that I was diagnosed as having, because my military social worker said that I didn’t.

I wasn’t a victim of childhood sexual abuse because my military social worker declared that I was a homosexual and therefore I was a willing participant.

On base, child neglect and child abuse were verboten subjects that no one dared speak about. Everyone just minded their own business as you had no idea who the abuser’s chain of command was and how this could impact your own chain of command.

And you can’t go into a counsellor and talk about this shit. They don’t understand what life was like for military dependants and what a hell it could be when your serving parent could use compassionate postings to stay one step ahead of provincial social services.

Due to the over saturation of feel good depictions of the military and military life on television, no one in the civvy world believes that children were in any type of danger living on the bases and that in fact living on a military base was probably the safest place for a child to grow up.

And even if I did luck out and find a counsellor that has first hand military experience and understands that military life was far from perfect and that people in or around the military who found themselves in need of help were often neglected and ridiculed, what would that accomplish?

I have understood for quite some time that I am not at fault for what happened.

I understand what caused the issues that plague me to this day.

I fully understand that the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are far too massive of an opponent for me to ever have any influence over.

Talking isn’t going to fix anything.

I know the things that will forever be broken.

I know the things that will forever be beyond my grasp.

I know the things that were taken from me by others simply because they need to hide things.

Even if my lawyers are able to reach a settlement with the DND and the CAF, that settlement and any accompanying apology (if issued) isn’t going to undo things.

There’s one thing in particular that the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces will never be able to get for me. This is partially due to me never being able to believe a single fucking thing that would ever come from their collective mouths, and this is due to the fact that my father is long dead.

Around 1987ish, my brother took our stepmother’s Pontiac Chevette for a joyride. Richard beat the shit out of me for that because it was my fault that I wasn’t keeping an eye on my brother and I wasn’t raising my brother right. During that beating my father kept freely bringing up the babysitter’s name and that it was my fault that my brother was acting up because I let the babysitter touch him.

In 2006, during our infamous phone calls, Richard pleaded with me to understand that he didn’t hire the babysitter. The it was our grandmother’s fault. She kept hiring the babysitter even through he told her that he didn’t like him. He said that he even paid for the babysitter on a couple of times because grandma didn’t have the money to pay the babysitter. He also said that I was partially to blame as I didn’t tell anyone and that I should have done more to protect my brother from the babysitter.

In 2011 he would give a statement to the CFNIS in which he completely forgot to mention to the CFNIS that he wasn’t living at home with us on the base and that his mother was raising my brother and I. He also told the CFNIS that he was certain there was never a babysitter in the house, just some rando woman from across the street that would keep an eye on his kids periodically.

In 2013 when I examined my father for Federal Court in his written response to my examination he now all of a sudden remembers that his mother was raising his children at the time in question, and why yes, there was a male babysitter, but his mother hired the babysitter, not him.

My social service paperwork from the period of time of November 1981 to October 1983 which also includes my paperwork from October 1980 to November 1981 when I was solely in the care of Captain Totzke makes frequent mention of my grandmother as having been brought into the house to raise my brother and I. This paperwork also contains an observation from a psychiatrist hired by Captain Totzke to evaluate my family in which my father was found to take no responsibility for his family, blamed problems with his family on others, and expected other to solve his problems for him. In this same paperwork my father tells Alberta Social Services that the issues being exhibited by my brother and I were due to his mother “who was very cruel to his children, especially when she was inebriated, which was often”. I gave a full copy of my social service paperwork to the CFNIS in August of 2011.

My brother says that I have to forgive my father because maybe the Canadian Forces forced him to give that statement in 2011, or maybe the Canadian Forces edited his statement to be what they wanted it to be.

No.

My father was a liar. Nothing was believable coming out of his mouth when I was a kid.

Birthday parties? Sure you can have a birthday party, I promise.

From 1977 until 1985 not a single birthday party. Apparently kids with depression and suffering from child sexual abuse aren’t allowed to have parties.

Had a birthday cake in 1985. Richard made a promise that he’d never forget my birthday again. Never had any type of birthday acknowledgment after that until 2006. What was behind the birthday cake in 1985? I didn’t realize at the time that my family was under supervision from the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, but we were. And I guess that Richard was buttering my ass up just in case that Children’s Aid found out about the domestic outburst that he had that required 3 military police officer to bring him under control.

He promised and he swore up and down that he’d pay for my driver’s training for my 16th birthday if I stayed in school. Well, birthday time rolled around, and all of a sudden he just realized that he couldn’t let me get my driver’s licence as it would affect his car insurance.

He invited me in June of 1990 to move to Edmonton with him and we could try to be a family again. That lasted for one month before him and my stepmother bought a house in Morinville and my stepmother made it very clear that I wasn’t welcome. What pissed me off the most about the whole move from Toronto to Edmonton was that I paid for most of the meals on the way and I paid for some new office furniture for my father’s work area in the basement of the PMQ. He told me to give him the receipts from the meals and that he’d submit them to the DND and give me the money when he was reimbursed. He also told me that he’d pay me back for the office chair and desk that I bought him. He never did pay me back. Claimed that after all he paid raising my brother and I that I owed him.

He called me up a couple of times in the ’90s when I was living in Vancouver. Said that he’d give me some money if I helped my brother fix his car. Helped my brother. The promised money never came.

I’ll never get an apology from Richard. Did he lie to the CFNIS in 2011 because he was pressured by the CFNIS? Or did he lie to the CFNIS in 2011 because he was ashamed of the fact he participated in a cover up in 1980? And even if it wasn’t a coverup that he participated in, was he ashamed to admit that his children were abused because he left his children in the care of his very dysfunctional mother?

But then again, even if Richard was still alive today, would I be able to believe anything that came out of his mouth?

And this is why I am tired.

And this is why I am burnt out.

And this is why I am disillusioned.

Everyone keeps telling me to move on.

To let the past stay in the past.

Even my father said in 2006 the if I went sticking my nose into this that I might not like the smell.

Everyone makes the depression out as being my fault because I just don’t want to be happy.

My anxiety attacks are nothing more than ploys for getting attention.

If I honestly wanted to get better, all I’d have to do take “x” therapy and all would be great.

My desire for M.A.i.D. is nothing more than melodrama.