Canadian Armed Forces – Page 5

No fucking shit, you don’t say!

The one thing that I’ve learnt in my life is that the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are so full of fucking shit that National Defence Headquarter in Ottawa must smell like a fucking latrine and the office of the provost marshal must smell like a port-a-potty that’s overflowing..

The sole job of the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal it seems would be to concoct lies and bullshit to feed to the Military Police Complaints Commission.

The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service and the Military Police seem to serve absolutely no other purpose than to ensure that the Canadian Armed Forces are never held to account for the actions of their members.

In 2011, even before I was interviewed by master corporal Robert John Hancock at Vancouver Police Department Headquarters, the CFNIS already had the May 1980 base military police paperwork, the June 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork, and the 1980 courts martial transcripts of captain McRae in their possession. The 2011 investigation was doomed right from the start. The entire chain of command from the CFNIS commanding officer right on up to the Chief of Defence Staff would have known about the implications of the 1980 courts martial transcript.

However, the provost marshal willingly and intentionally withheld these documents from the Military Police Complaints Commission in 2012.

There is absolutely no way that the Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of National Defence, or the Judge Advocate General would have allowed the CFNIS to conduct an investigation that would have violated the terms of the NDA that exists between the babysitter and the DOJ, the DND, and the CAF. But how could the CFNIS outright refuse to conduct an investigation they knew they could never allow to come to fruition? They couldn’t refuse. What they could do though is a “Dog-n-Pony show” investigation.

Did the provost marshal forward to the Military Police Complaints Commission a copy of this out of court settlement so that the MPCC could review the settlement to ensure that the terms of the settlement didn’t violate my rights to receive justice?

Nope, instead the provost marshal willingly withheld the existence of the out of court settlement, the existence of an NDA, plus the existence of CFSIU DS 120-10-80 and the CM62 courts martial transcripts.

This way, the provost marshal could simultaneously blow sunshine up the asses of the MPCC while at the same time ensuring that the MPCC would never learn the truth about the 2011 investigation and how it was doomed even before it started.

The Supreme Court of Canada has already rendered decisions that speak to the inappropriateness of police agencies conducting investigations that may subject their superiors to either civil or criminal actions if the investigation were to uncover actions that could be expected to lead to civil or criminal actions. This is why when there’s an officer involved shooting or traffic collision, the police from other municipalities are called in to investigate.

The simple existence of a civil action against the Canadian Armed Forces by my babysitter and the existence of a subsequent settlement between my babysitter and the CAF and the DND means that the CFNIS should have handed this matter over to the RCMP.

If the 2011 investigation had indicated that the babysitter had in fact molested me and my brother, and that the CFSIU investigation paperwork from 1980 indicated the military police in 1980 were aware of this and either did nothing to stop it or were ordered by the chain of command to limit the 1980 investigation, initiating a civil action against the office of the Minister of National Defence would have been a very simple matter.

But, as the Military Police Complaints Commission itself indicated in one of the periodic reviews of Bill C25, the MPCC noted that the Vice Chief of Defence Staff functions as the de facto Chief of Police due to the chain of command. The Vice Chief of Defence staff has the ability to direct CFNIS investigations. The Vice Chief of Defence Staff also reports to the Minister of National Defence.

The way the Military Police Complaints Commission is structured it cannot subpoena documents during a review. And in fact, in 2015 it was revealed by then MPCC Chairperson, Glenn Stannard, that the Military Police Complaints Commission has never been briefed on how exactly the CFNIS or the Military Police function and how their chain of command is structured. As Mr. Stannard said, the MPCC wouldn’t really know what documents it could ask for if it was allowed to.

So, in 2011, the CFNIS conducted a “Dog ‘n’ Pony Show” investigation. An investigation meant to make me feel like the Canadian Armed Forces gave a fuck when the Canadian Armed Forces chain of command wanted the entire captain McRae matter to stay buried in the past.

What’s even worse is the Department of Justice assisted the Canadian Armed Forces with stick handling their lies past a federal court judge.

In 2013 when I stood pleading my issue before a federal court justice, the Military Police Complaints Commission was represented by the Department of Justice. This is the same Department of Justice that represented the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence when both agencies were being sued by my babysitter in a civil action he filed in March of 2001. The DOJ knew full well what the DND, the CAF, and the CFPM were doing, but the DOJ just stood back and did nothing as doing nothing ensured that the terms of the settlement with the babysitter would not be violated.

The DOJ could have done the right and proper thing back in 2013 and informed the courts that the CFNIS and the provost marshal had intentionally and wilfully withheld documents from the Military Police Complaints Commission that would have shown that the CFNIS in 2011 was very well aware that it was the acts of the babysitter sexually abusing children on the base that brought the babysitter to the attention of the base military police which in turn initiated the investigation that uncovered the fact that Canadian Armed Forces officer captain father Angus McRae had in fact been molesting numerous children at the base chapel and was known to be giving the children he was molesting alcohol before “fooling around with them” in the rectory of the base chapel.

But, we now know that the provost marshal has the ability to blow sunshine up the ass of the Military Police Complaints Commission and that even if the DOJ is well aware of the wrongdoings of the Canadian Armed Forces, the DOJ would rather turn a blind eye to the truth in order to shield the government from responsibility and liability.

Now, I can hear you thinking to yourself “But Bobbie, why wouldn’t the CFNIS want to get you justice in this matter?”

As I’ve said previously, the Canadian Armed Forces cannot prosecute for service offences that occurred prior to 1998. And service offences that occurred on defence establishments could only be tried via the military justice system unless the accused specifically requested a civilian trial. Back in the day everything on the base was the jurisdiction of the military justice system.

The simple matter is that due to the 3-year-time-bar that existed prior to 1998, no matter of child sexual abuse that occurred on the bases and was committed by a person subject to the code of service discipline could ever be prosecuted in the modern day.

Think back and try to remember how many successful prosecutions there have been in civilian courts for service offences that occurred prior to 1998.

“But Bobbie, your complaint was against the babysitter, not military personnel”.

Again, the CFNIS knew of the direct connection between captain McRae and his altar boys, one of whom was my babysitter. And captain McRae was still alive at the commencement of the 2011 investigation. As the CFNIS had full access to the base military police paperwork and the CFSIU investigation paperwork, they would have known that the babysitter had been molesting various children on base.

Sure, there was nothing stopping the CFNIS from bringing charges against my babysitter. But in doing so the CFNIS, the CAF, the DND, and the DOJ would possiby be violating the terms of the settlement reached between my babysitter and the aforementioned parties when the DOJ moved to settle in November of 2008.

What were the provisions of the settlement?

The settlement is covered by a Non-Disclosure Agreement.

I’ll bet you one-thousand dollars that the provost marshal in 2011 didn’t tell the military police complaints commission in 2012 that the 2011 investigation conducted by the CFNIS of the babysitter was hampered by a settlement and subsequent non-disclosure agreement that protected the babysitter from further investigation and prosecution for his actions on CFB Namao which he committed after his 14th birthday on June 20th, 1979. After all, the babysitter wasn’t just going after my brother and I. The babysitter abused children on subsequent bases that his father was transferred to.

There had to be a reason why petty officer Steve Morris told me on November 4th that the CFNIS “just couldn’t find any evidence that the babysitter was capable of what I accused him of”

There also had to be a reason why the CFNIS told an RCMP officer that my complaint against the babysitter “was likely to go nowhere due to a complete lack of evidence”. This was months before the CFNIS talked to my father, my brother, or even the babysitter.

Oh, there was evidence. There was tons of evidence. It was all there in the CFSIU paperwork and the courts martial transcripts.

But the provost marshal knew that they could hide this information from the Military Police Complaints Commission.

And the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence both knew that the Department of Justice had locked this matter down securely with an iron clad NDA.

And both the Official Secrets Act and the Security of Information Act ensure that anything anyone wants to say is kept a secret.

Everyone knows the truth, nobody wants to tell the truth, the MPCC can’t discover the truth, and the media doesn’t care about the truth.

Today’s prompt

Daily writing prompt

How do you want to retire?

View all responses

I honestly never expected to live this long.

I obviously never put any thought into retiring.

When your adolescence and early adult years are spent trying to figure out the best way to kill yourself without looking like a loser, planning for a long life or planning for retirement aren’t really priority number one.

I still have no retirement plans.

As I’ve said before, I don’t exist outside of work.

The childhood I had didn’t lead me towards finding meaning for life within myself. The meaning for my existence has always come from working.

And to anyone who thinks of coming at me with “well, we’ve all had tough childhoods”……… you can go fuck yourself.

I’m tired.

Even more so since I got involved with the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service in 2011.

You can only be called a liar so many times by the Canadian Armed Forces before it really takes a toll on your mental health.

And let’s face it, my mental health wasn’t all that great to begin with before I sent that fateful email off to the Edmonton Police Service in March of 2011.

And believe me, getting called a scam artist by Harjit Sajjan didn’t help my depression or anxiety much either.

The only reason that Sajjan allowed the release of the courts martial transcripts and the CFSIU investigation paperwork in 2020 is he realized that somehow I had become aware of the existence of the documents and he calculated the risk that I would somehow find out the contents of those documents and he didn’t want to have the public find out that I had been telling the truth about CFB Namao while he called me a scam artist to my face.

And my brother’s death has really reinforced for me the fact that no one really gives a shit.

So yeah, I have no intention of sticking around past 2027.

I have no intention of retiring and spending more time with my constant companions of betrayal, depression, anxiety, and CPTSD.

Bobbie vs. The Negators……

My whole life has been nothing but a non-stop battle fighting with the negators.

A negator is someone who strives to do what they can to downplay or negate the contributions of someone, especially when that person is vulnerable to attacks due to circumstances beyond their control.

And in a first, I actually tried out ChatGPT and this is what it had to say when I asked it if the word “negator” could be applied to a person:

“He was a negator in the cruelest sense — untouched by hardship, yet quick to dismiss those who bore the weight of the world. He didn’t just lack empathy; he negated pain itself, as if it was a fiction made up by the weak.”

Yep, this describes three people in particular.

I find myself in a really odd position where I work. And it’s not just at my current position, it’s been at each and every position that I’ve ever held.

As I’ve mentioned before, I find myself employed in positions far below my skill levels. I grew up in a household that was dysfunctional. I grew up in isolated military communities that would do whatever was required to hide the dysfunction and the abuse within the PMQs from the public eye.

My father joined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1963 with a grade 8 education. The military taught him everything he needed to know, like avionics, electronics, mechanics, etc.

Do you honestly think that a piss tank alcoholic with rage issues that lucked out when he was able to join the Royal Canadian Navy in 1963 honestly gave a flying fuck about school, or college, or trade school, or university?

Nope.

As I said before, Richard hated my teachers.

To Richard, school was nothing more than a babysitting service that was just supposed to be teaching the kids the basics. Anything beyond that was a fucking waste of his time.

Just after I left home when I was 16 I was working for a company where one of the owners was putting his son through trade school for carpentry. Kid needed tools for his apprenticeship, his father got him tools for his apprenticeship. His father helped him with the cost of living.

I worked for another business where the mother sent her son to an upper class private school in the States.

Even at work, the other guys in my department are always gushing about how far their kids are going, and what trades or business sector they’re getting into.

But I get to enjoy the negators.

And the negators are a miserable lot. At least they come off as miserable to me. I know that they enjoy negating me. You can see the joy in their smugness.

Some of the work that I’ve done recently involves adding Modbus gateways, Bacnet routers, NAT devices, and even ethernet to fibre media converters.

No doubt that if the negators found out what I’ve done that they’d make noise with IMIT and senior leadership and get all of the devices that I’ve installed yanked off the network.

List of devices that I’ve installed / Internal IP addresses cut off.

The first device that I connected to the hospital IT network was the Franklin Fuel Monitor. I did this about 2019. This had to be done. The Franklin Fuel Monitor came from the factory with a full blown webserver built in and the ability to send email messages.

For some reason when this device was installed as part of the generator upgrades someone made the decision to have the existing building automation system just monitor the status relay outputs and the 4-20mA outputs of this panel.

Having the building automation system monitor the Franklin monitor was a joke. Our two Diesel tanks are cylinders with hemispheres for ends. The 4-20 mA signal represents the fuel level in centimetres. The Franklin monitor had the built in correction tables to convert the height of fuel to actual volume. The building automation system treated the fuel tanks like they were cubes. The fuel level displayed by the building automation system was a joke. It never matched what was actually in the tanks.

Once I got the Franklin on the hospital network we were able to see the exact fuel levels, which helps the shift engineers greatly when the tanks are being filled. The system can now send out email reports once a week to our fuel supplier so that they can keep our tanks filled up. And the system can send out emergency requests to the fuel supplier in the instances where the generators have been run for an extended period of time and have dropped the tanks below 3,000 litres of ullage.

Then next came the four Amico medical gas alarm panels. Then the Dixell webservers. Then the Modbus gateways. Then the BACnet routers. Then the NATs.

Not bad for a grade 8 drop out, eh?

Not bad for someone who suffered not only gross child sexual abuse on a Canadian Armed Forces base, but also had to live through the ham fisted manner in which the Canadian Armed Forces chose to deal with it.

Not bad for someone who grew up with a piss tank alcoholic father in the Canadian Armed Forces who stood by and did sweet bugger fuck all.

The negators don’t like this.

They hate this

They despise this.

People like me are fuckups.

We’re not supposed to amount to anything.

People like me are supposed to stay in our lane.

There are three primary negators where I work. Luckily they’re all over at the new site, so I don’t have to deal with them. Unfortunately they still make their presence known. And once you’ve had an encounter with a negator, you don’t recover from this.

One of the first automation systems that I installed in the hospital was the Dixell webserver for the kitchen refrigeration.

This wasn’t supposed to involve networking or webservers or modbus gateways, it just evolved into that.

Originally electromechanical thermostats with separate thermostats for over temperature alarms controlled and monitored the refrigeration systems for the walk-in coolers and freezers in the 1st floor and 4th floor kitchen. The freezers had time clocks to run defrost cycles whether or not the coils needed it, and the time cycle was arbitrary and ended whether or not the coils were cleared of ice. The evaporator fans would stay running when the doors were open.

Because of the crappy alarm monitoring the engineers would get hit with at least two dozen false alarms every shift. And at three shifts per day, that’s a lot of false alarms.

So I hunted around for a solution and that’s when I came across the Dixell XW60K walk in refrigeration controller. Got some pricing from our local refrigeration wholesaler for 20 of these units. Put in the budget request with the required justifications and the request was approved.

When the devices arrived on site I was going over the wiring diagrams and programming instructions and making plans for the swap out without shutting down the refrigeration for any excessive length of time. I was going over the wiring requirements for these devices when a port on the back of the case piqued my interest. All it said was Hotkey/TTL-RS-485. I knew what the hotkey was, it was a tool that you could use to transfer the basic programming from one controller to another. And I knew that TTL stood for transistor-transistor logic. And I knew that RS-485 was a two wire serial network. So I fired off an email to Dixell asking what this was for. Dixell replied that it was their Modbus interface adapter that would allow these controllers to be networked for a monitoring system. The tech rep with Dixell also mentioned that Dixell offered a webserver that was easy to program and interface so that the refrigeration units could be viewed on graphical pages as well as having the alarms sent out based upon a call out list.

Long story short, the Dixell system was an instant hit in the kitchen.

The number of false alarms plummeted. As the controller was initiating the defrost cycle in the freezer it would ignore the rise in cabinet temperature until 10 minutes after the defrost cycle ended. The cooler and freezer fans now turn off when the doors are open. There is an alarm delay for after the door has been opened and then closed to allow for the unit to get back to setpoint after the unit has been loaded up with new product. And if the kitchen staff leave the cooler or freezer doors open for too long, the kitchen managers get an alarm page.

Here’s where things get even more interesting. As I said we have a kitchen on the 1st floor and a kitchen on the 4th floor. To monitor the upstairs kitchen I had three options. Install a second webserver upstairs. Run some RS-485 network wiring up to the 4th from the 1st. Or install a IP to Modbus gateway on the 4th and have the webserver use the existing hospital network to poll the 4th floor refrigeration.

This was my first experience with MOXA networking interfaces.

As I said, this system has been in and running since 2019 without a hitch.

The Dixell system ended up expanding through the hospital.

There’s a Dixell system in the pharmacy that not only monitors the refrigeration in the pharmacy on site, but also a pharmacy at another hospital about 4km away.

There’s a Dixell system in Transfusion Medicine that not only monitors the refrigeration on site, it also monitors refrigeration at a different hospital as well.

Yep, the Dixell system even monitors the morgue and some specimen freezers for the pathology / histology department.

All of the black blobs above are covering the hospital’s internal IP addresses. The hospital’s network is behind a massive firewall and there is no direct connection from the intranet to the internet. Everything coming in and going out passes through servers. But, once the negators catch wind that I published Class B non-routable private IP addressed on the internet, the howling would be intense.

Believe me, if my life had allowed me to take certification courses and trade qualification, do you think I would have passed on this?

Do you honestly think that if I didn’t have my father and Captain Totzke screaming in my head non-stop that I’m an imposter, that I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, that I’d be anywhere near where I am now?

You don’t think that each and every day of my fucking life is a non-stop review of what could have been.

See, the negators will always come up with arguments to explain why what I’ve done isn’t really anything special.

I didn’t create copper wire, so how can I say that I can do network wiring?

I didn’t write the RS-485 MS/TP standard, so I’m lying when I say that I’ve installed MS/TP network.

I didn’t actually build the Dixell controllers or write the programming contained within, so I’m just a desperate asshole trying to take credit where no credit is due.

But, such is my life.

Especially when the negators smell the stench of a dysfunctional childhood and come out for the attack.

A song that I like

I forget how and when I first heard Free by Mike Errico.

It’s a song that I really like.

It speaks volumes to my involvement with the counsellors and psychs from my younger days on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach.

http://Skimming by Mike Errico https://music.apple.com/ca/album/skimming/295594004

Mike Errico – Free

They sent me here to rest
to get the weight off of my chest
while they work 9 to 5
cheat on husbands and wives
and tell me I’m the one who’s depressed

And I’m left to define what’s insane
to the same folks who jailed Galileo
and explain him away

They
who are we
who are wondering which one of us
is free

free

I went places you just don’t go
I saw things you can’t tell them you know
And if they’re smiling stark naked
sometimes is just wiser
to compliment the cut of their clothes
And know they define what’s insane
based upon what makes them look good
at the end of the day

They
who are we
who are wondering which one of us
is free

free

But I’m the one chained to the bed
That’s just proof I got into their heads
And I witnessed their colourless landscapes
Saw the lovers who were too bored to stay
And walked the grey roads of their memories
that just stop at the end of the page
They’re a little too sad to hate
They’re just children who ran
out of paint

I’m up for review in a month
and I’ll watch them drink water from crystalline glasses
They’ll sit and stare like smoke damaged chairs
around a smouldering pile of ashes
And I’ll try to define what’s insane
to the same folks who consistently kill those
with something to say

They
who are we
who are wondering which one of us
is free.

free

yeah

free

The Impersonator

It was back in the winter of 1987 when I had learnt that Scott had impersonated me for the first time.

I had been a member of the Royal Canadian Sea Cadets at the Dennison Armouries on Dufferin and Wilson since the fall of 1984. I had achieved the rank of leading cadet, and with the exception of the ongoing issues involving Mr. Stevens, everything was looking up.

This was a Wednesday night parade night when the executive officer A/Slt John Potter pulled me aside and told me that my father wanted my brother Scott to join my corp. Mr. Potter said that he didn’t want my brother anywhere near the cadet corp.

I told Mr. Potter that there wasn’t anything that I would be able to do. If Richard wanted Scott in cadets, then Scott was going to be in cadets. And I knew better than to ask Richard to not let Scott join my corp. If Richard thought that I wasn’t sticking up for Scott then I was in for one fuck of a beating when I got back on base.

Don’t forget, in the fall of 1983, the North York Board of Education had to separate my brother and I and send us to separate schools due to “intense sibling rivalry”.

By the time 1987 rolled around, that “rivalry” only got much worse. Both Richard and Sue had washed their hands of any responsibility for Scott, and anytime that Scott got in trouble with the Toronto Police Service it was my fault for not looking after him.

Mr. Potter took me outside of the armouries and let me have a smoke.

“Bob, do you understand the trouble that your brother gets in to?”

All I could do is sigh. Nobody knew about CFB Namao. All I needed was for Mr. Potter to find out the truth about CFB Namao and myself, that I was some crazed homosexual that made the babysitter abuse his younger brother. And to make matters even worse were the ongoing events with Mr. Stevens, which would have surely cemented my status as a perverted homosexual.

“Bob, you know that I work with troubled youth, right?”

I didn’t pay much attention other than I was trying to hold back the tears. I loved cadets, but here was Richard trying to fuck me over. I was envisioning Scott joining cadets and fucking up and getting into trouble and then Richard blaming me for not looking after Scott.

“Bob, two weeks ago I was dealing with a couple of teens from a group home that had been arrested for B&Es when I overheard that my star cadet had been arrested for theft of a car.”

You think that I stole a car?

“No Bob. It was your brother. When I heard that ‘you’ had stolen a car I had to go see this for myself. I didn’t recognize the kid in the interview room. So I asked the officer what the kid’s name was. The officer gave me your full name, your social insurance number, and your date of birth”

Oh, don’t worry, my father will say that it was my fault that he stole the car.

“Your brother wasn’t too happy with me when I told the investigator that I knew who that name and D.O.B. belonged to”

How did you find out that it was Scott. I know at least 3 of his friends that would give false names if they were arrested.

“When your father came to pick him up. Your father seemed very reluctant to give the police your brother’s name. Your father didn’t seem too concerned about what Scott had done in either stealing the car or using your name”

I lit up a second smoke. And you think that I can tell my father to not let Scott join my corp. Scott’s the little angel that can’t do anything wrong. No matter what the fuck he does, Richard and Sue blame me.

“I don’t mind working with kids that get into trouble Bob. Kids fuck up. Kids need help. But, your brother is different. He won’t admit that he’s done wrong”

Welcome to my life Mr. Potter. Anything that he’s done is my fault. Richard said that it’s my fault for not looking after him.

“Then it’s settled, just tell your father that you don’t feel comfortable with your brother in the corp. Ask your father to send your brother to another cadet corp. Preferably at a different location.”

He wasn’t listening. Just alike all of the other adults in my life up to that point in time. Just in one ear and out the other.

I went back in to the armouries, got my stuff, and left even through classes were about to begin.

I showed up the next week and got a demerit for leaving without permission the week before.

And the following week my brother showed up as a new entry.

Not too long later the CFB Borden event occurred.

And then between home life on Canadian Forces Base Downsview, the ongoing matter with Mr. Stevens, and Mr. Potter’s misdirected displeasure for not dissuading my father from making Scott join my corp., I quit cadets.

How many other times in my life did Scott impersonate me? I don’t know. Sure, finger printing should have easily cleared up any criminal investigation. But there are many types of investigations that wouldn’t necessarily result in finger prints being taken but that would tag my name and D.O.B. in these investigations.

I know that on New Year’s Eve 2000 in Vancouver, my brother gave my name and my D.O.B. when he was found riding without a fare on the Skytrain.

I only know this because the fine for this went to collections in 2006.

I get a call from a collections agency asking when I wanted to resolve the $40 fine.

I asked them for a copy of the ticket, so they sent me a copy of the ticket that was issued

It was my D.O.B. and my full complete name. The address was fake, but the postal code for the area of the address had the address actually existed was correct. The box on the ticket that said “ID Produced” was checked “N” meaning that the person giving my name didn’t produce any ID. There was a second piece of paper signed by another fare inspector stating that they witnessed the person using my name refuse to sign the fare evasion ticket.

As ICBC was responsible for the ticket in the first place, I had to go through their dispute process. They asked me why they should believe me that this wasn’t my fare evasion ticket.

Simple.

I was working from 22:00 on December 31st, 1999 until 06:00 January 1st, 2000 for a property management company downtown Vancouver as we had to be on standby for the much overblown “Y2K” bug that was expected to plunge the world into chaos. We had to be in the buildings to ensure that the automation systems didn’t crash.

And I lived in the West End of Vancouver, so being on the Skytrain heading out to Surrey at 00:30 made no sense.

“That might work for your name, but how did they get your social insurance number?”

I had been mugged in Vancouver in July of 1995. My wallet was stolen. Maybe whoever stole it used my SIN?

The collections was cancelled. But I get the sense that ICBC and Translink have a folder on hand with my name in it waiting for me to pull another fare evasion so they can jump up and down screaming “We knew you lied!!!!”.

Prior to September 11th, 2001 I had frequently crossed into the United States. I’d driven down from Vancouver. I’d taken the bus down from Vancouver. I’d even walked across land crossings numerous times.

But after 9/11 when crossing the border placed one under extreme scrutiny I didn’t dare cross. Even though I knew in 2006 that it was probably Scott that had used my name, I couldn’t prove it so I didn’t push it. But outside of Mr. Potter, other people had told me at various times that Scott had claimed to be me.

And no matter how much I wanted to drop down to Portland or Seattle for a weekend, I didn’t want to run the risk that Scott had used my name and got into some sort of trouble that would have made crossing the border impossible at the least or a criminal affair at the most.

I had my passport since 2010. But I still didn’t try to cross the border.

I wouldn’t cross the border until 2013 when I was in Ottawa Ontario to drop off a letter at National Defence Headquarters. A childhood friend of mine from CFB Shearwater lived in Ottawa at the time. She wanted to meet up while I was in Ottawa. She planned a day trip for us and her sister to go to Boldt Island in New York State. Fuck was I ever nervous at the border crossing.

Nothing strikes fear into me like “Have you ever been arrested”. This doesn’t mean arrested and charged, or arrested and convicted. This means just arrested. And this also includes “has there ever been an arrest warrant issued for you”, meaning has there ever been an arrest warrant issued in your name.

Border agents don’t often have hours to sit down and listen to 40 years of a fucked up life.

I have no fucking idea of where Scott used my name.

I know that he used my name back in 1987 related to car theft charges.

I know that he used my name on January 1st, 2000 for a fare evasion ticket.

Where the fuck else has he used my identity?

Do I blame Scott for using my identity?

Not really.

Richard and Sue taught Scott that he really wasn’t responsible for anything, that everything was all my fault. So it only follows that he would take the next step and not just blame me but transfer the trouble to me.

Hit me up with the Midazolam, propofol, rocuronium, and bupivacaine. It’s been an interesting life, but I’m tired of all of this horseshit.

Yep.

Daily writing prompt

Have you ever broken a bone?

View all responses

Broke my right wrist and sprained my left wrist.

Back around the end of June in ’82 my father had borrowed a pickup truck with a camper in the bed from one of his buddies at 447 Sqn. so that he and his new wife, my stepmother, could go to Banff for their honeymoon.

They had no intention of taking Scott and I with them. We got unceremoniously dropped of with out mother in Calgary, AB. Yeah, the same mother that he told Alberta Social Services that had abandoned the family and that the same mother that he had told Alberta Social Services that he had no idea of how to contact.

When Richard and Sue were finished with their honeymoon they swung back through Calgary to pick Scott and I up. We drove back up to CFB Griesbach in Edmonton.

The truck was parked on the street in front of the PMQ.

Richard had gone somewhere and it was just Sue at home.

Scott got on top of the camper and stuffed the vents with leaves.

Just before Richard was due home Scott found me and told me that Richard was going to be pissed off with me for “me” having put the leaves into the vent on the camper.

I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, so I went to check out the camper.

I looked at the camper from the outside and I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about, but once I opened the back door and climbed inside the camper I saw what he was talking about. The wind-up vent was plugged full of leaves. There was no way that Richard wasn’t going to notice this.

So, up on the roof I went.

Tim’s truck was a raised 4X4 with proper off road tires. With the camper on the back the roof had to be about 3 metres off the ground.

I got all of the leaves cleared out. It was spick and span.

I went to climb down the ladder and I lost my footing.

I landed on the ground flat on my back.

I had the wind knocked out of me and all I could see was stars.

It took so much effort to start to breathe again.

One of the locals came over and helped me up and walked me back to the PMQ where Sue was.

Sue sent me up to my room with the warning that Richard was not going to be happy when he got home.

When Richard got home he was none too pleased to find what had happened. The fact that I did something stupid that could get him in trouble with his commanding officer showed that I didn’t care about his military career.

The fact that I allowed Scott out of my sight meant that Scott could have fallen off the roof of the camper.

The fact that I wasn’t responsible enough to look after my brother meant thatI should take this as a lesson and learn from this.

My left wrist was burning. My right hand was swollen, numb, and immovable. But neither were anything compared to the headache and vomiting.

My father gave me some of his 222s to help me sleep.

Two days went by and then he took me to the Charles Camsell hospital in Edmonton to get my wrists looked at.

That’s when it was discovered that I wasn’t faking anything.

A couple of the larger bones in my right wrist were fractured. My left wrist had hairline fractures and was sprained.

The headaches and the vomiting had stopped by this point so I don’t think that Richard had mentioned anything to the doctors.

I can’t remember what Richard told the doctors, but I know he didn’t mention anything about falling off campers.

My left wrist got wrapped in a tensor. My right arm was set in a cast.

Did you know that it’s almost impossible to wipe your own ass when your dominant hand is set in an arm cast? My left arm wasn’t much use either. Hairlines are really super sensitive to force.

I wasn’t Sue’s kid, so that was out of the question. After Richard and Sue got married Sue wasted no time in telling Scott and I that we were to address her as Sue only that we were never to call her “mom” or refer to her as our “mother”. So yeah, wiping my ass wasn’t on her list of agreed upon tasks.

Richard only kept my brother and I because “it was cheaper than paying child support”. Wiping my ass was not very high on his list of priorities.

And as much as I feared my grandmother, she had moved out of the PMQ back in the spring of 1981. Walking from the PMQ at 10215 – 138 Ave over to my grandmother’s apartment at 10611 – 111th St. to get my butt wiped wasn’t in the cards.

Many creative ways were tried and tested to wipe my ass that didn’t involve using my hands.

The cast was only supposed to stay on my right arm for six weeks, but it ended up staying on for the entire summer as Richard insisted that this was the best way to teach me to not fuck around.

This is an interesting one.

Daily writing prompt

What sacrifices have you made in life?

View all responses

I would have to say that my mental health is probably the single most significant sacrifice that I’ve made. Sure, this wasn’t a conscious sacrifice that I made, it was more of a sacrifice that was made for me, but sure.

Most of my “sacrifices” were predetermined for me.

But let’s roll with them being willing sacrifices.

This makes everyone feel better.

Do I have a quote?

Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?

Quotes, idioms, maxims and the like have never been my forte.

I’m not what you’d call “well read”. I’ve read books from John Irving, Clive Barker, Stephen King, John Grisham. I’ve even read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.

I didn’t have much of an exposure to music as a kid.

To be honest my interest in novels and music didn’t pick up until after I left home when I was sixteen. But even at that I never really gleaned anything that I would consider to be a quote that I “live my life by or think of often”.

The closest that I would ever consider to be a quote that I think of often is a lyric from a song that was released in 2011

“As much as I’d like the past not to exist…….
……it still does” – Lost in Paradise – Evanescence.

I like this lyric because it sums up an issue that I have.

I’m stuck in the past.

And there is no moving forward.

What I went through as a kid on Canadian Forces Base Namao is not something that can simply be moved on from.

It’s not that no one knew about the abuse.

Everyone knew what was going on.

Various parents on Canadian Forces Base Namao knew what the babysitter was doing as they made complaints to the base military police.

The base military police knew as when they questioned the babysitter and asked him who had shown him how to do what he was doing, he named captain father Angus McRae.

The other parents knew who I was and that I had been found being buggered in the babysitter’s bedroom as I was no longer allowed to play with the other kids on base. I was “dirty”

Just months after the abuse ended I was diagnosed with major depression, severe anxiety, haphephobia, and a host of other issues that would become so severe that I was supposed to have been placed into a psychiatric hospital for children.

But for some reason my military social worker, captain Totzke, along with my father, master corporal Richard Gill, were functioning as road blocks to my receiving treatment.

Even when my father was posted to CFB Downsview in Ontario from CFB Greisbach in Alberta, he made a promise that he would have me placed into psychiatric care in Ontario.

Nothing ever came of this.

Age 7 and 8 I was sexually abused by a very angry at the world 14 year old. This also included various visits to the chapel when the babysitter would escort me over. From age 8 until age 11 I was caught in a battle with my father and captain Totzke on one side and Alberta Social Services and various psychiatrists on the other side. One side wanted to help, one side wanted to hinder.

From age 11 until age 16 I lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview with my father who was still having issues with his alcoholism and his hair trigger temper.

And from age 16 until the present day I’ve been surviving.

It’s not that I like living in the past.

It’s that I was never allowed to move on from the past.

The past is all that I have ever known.

All I knew was my father’s anger for having “fucked” with his military career.

All I knew was that it was my fault the babysitter abused my brother.

According to captain Totzke, it was my “homosexuality” that made me go along with the babysitter.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to escape the past.

It was that I was never allowed to forget the past.

When I was about 14 my father beat the shit out of me when Scott stole our stepmother’s car and went for a joy ride. Richard was kicking me in the back as I was trying to crawl under my bed to get away from him. It was my fault that Scott was acting the way he was acting because I let the fucking babysitter touch him.

Again, it’s not that I want to be stuck in the past.

It’s that I was never allowed to even consider leaving the past.

And with the modern day Canadian Armed Forces being hellbent on ensuring that the truth never comes out about CFB Namao I never will be allowed to move on.

But, even if by some miracle the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence were to admit that bad things happened to about 25 children on CFB Namao that should never have happened, this won’t change things for me as I’ve lived each and every day since May of 1980 wondering what the fuck I did that was wrong.

That’s 16,441 days or 45 years and 5 days since I was forced to live with this.

What gives me direction in life?

What gives you direction in life?

What gives me direction in life is cleaning my name before I die.

That’s it

That’s all

The only thing keeping me alive at the moment is knowing that if I do die then the Canadian Armed Forces win be default.

Other than that I have no direction in life.

It’s not an obsession.

It’s all that I have

Ever since colonel Daniel Edward Munro signed his name to captain McRae’s charge sheet in June of 1980 dominoes were being set up, one by one, day by day, year by year, until March of 2011.

In March of 2011, after reviewing the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the transcripts from captain McRae’s court martial, it was the Canadian Armed Forces itself that knocked the first domino over.

The Canadian Armed Forces had the ability to do the right thing in 1980.

They chose not to.

The Canadian Armed Forces had the ability to do the right thing in 2011.

They chose not to.

The RCMP urged the Canadian Armed Forces to do the right thing in 2015.

The Canadian Armed Forces still chose not to.

After the release of the courts martial transcripts and the CFSIU investigation paperwork in 2020 the Canadian Armed Forces could have done the right thing.

The Canadian Armed Forces still chose not to.

Is it my job to bring to light all of the pre-1998 subterfuge that the Canadian Armed Forces have been allowed hide due to the flaws that existed in the pre-1998 National Defence Act?

Not my circus, not my monkeys.

If a member of the Canadian public wants to stick their nose into criminal code offence events that occurred prior to November of 1997, knock yourself out. Have at it.

Is it my job to make sure that people understand that I didn’t want the abuse on CFB Namao, that I didn’t want the babysitter to abuse my brother, that I had nothing to do with the babysitter molesting the little six-year-old blond haired girl?

That’s my job.

Is it my job to make sure that people understand that the CFSIU knew in 1980 that Captain McRae had been running a kiddie diddling ring on the base right under the nose of the base military police and that the CFSIU and the chain of command knew that McRae had been molested a great number of children on the base but that parents were reluctant to let their children be interviewed due to the view of the military police that captain McRae had been committing “acts of homosexuality” with the children that he was molesting thus implying that their children had been participating in “acts of homosexuality”?

Yes, that’s my job.

Is it my job to point out to people in the civilian world that “lawful” commands by superiors also include superiors instructing subordinates to not talk to the military police?

That’s already public knowledge, so not really my job.

Is it my job to make sure that the public understands that an untold number of children living on the bases were “involved with” the military social workers and that these social workers had a very negative and detrimental effect on the mental health and wellbeing of these abused children?

Yes, that’s my job.

I can’t fix all of the fuck-ups that the Canadian Armed Forces were allowed to keep hidden from the public eye via the National Defence Act, the Official Secrets Act, and the Security of Information Act.

But, I can at least do what I can to clean my name before I die.

And that is my direction in life.

The mysteries of M.A.i.D. and the general fear of death.

I was recently in the midst of conducting an inventory of the outdoor air cooled condenser units at my facility that needed to be added to the building maintenance management software at work.

These need to be in the system so that when I request quotes from some of our local HVAC contractors to send someone in to clean the condenser coils for the upcoming cooling season I can just print out a list and give each contractor the same list so that I can compare apples to apples.

Also, they need to be added to the maps that indicate where all of this equipment is located. It’s pretty easy to lose track of 87 air cooled condenser units that are located on 15 different roofs and various compounds around the entire facility.

I had just popped around to the new addition to the facility where I work. This addition is where those wishing to undergo M.A.i.D. can do so. The maintenance for this addition is supposed to be looked after by another health authority, but seeing as how my crew would be the “first responders” to deal with any type of HVAC failure I agreed to include the condenser unit for this facility to the building maintenance management system so that it would be cleaned at the same time that all of the other units are.

As I was leaving via the hearse driveway two of my shift engineers came up to me and asked me what this facility was for. I guess that they weren’t on shift when we had our tour of the facility prior to its opening.

So, I took them on a tour of the facility.

I could see that these two were generally uncomfortable with being in the facility.

And they had a lot of questions.

“Why are there so many chairs?”

Well, that’s for family members, loved ones, or anyone else that the person undergoing M.A.i.D. wishes to have present.

“People can watch this????”

Yes, they get a chance to say goodbye. And the person undergoing M.A.i.D. doesn’t die alone.

“Do they have to give the patient the shot?”

Who?

“The people watching?”

No. It’s either a doctor or a nurse practitioner.

“But what about when they execute prisoners and they say that the prisoner suffers why would anyone want to see this?”

Nope. This isn’t an execution. Four drugs. Midazolam, Propofol, Rocuronium, and Bupivacaine.

“What if they don’t want to undergo the procedure and they don’t want to die?”

Huh? You mean that they change their mind?

“No, let’s say that somebody wants them to die but they don’t want to die.”

No, that’s not how M.A.i.D. works. The patient has to request it. The patient has to undergo review and consultation. And the patient can stop the procedure at any point right up to when they lose consciousness.

Even with all of that explanation and all of the assurances I could see that these two were still ill at ease with the whole subject of M.A.i.D..

Death in and of itself is an unnerving topic as well.

I have engineers working under me that outright refuse to go into the morgue cooler to deal with refrigeration issues.

Even going into the autopsy suite elicits fears of being forced to watch an autopsy….

Autopsies are so rarely performed at this facility these days that the observation platform in the autopsy theatre has been used for file storage for ages.

“What if they start performing an autopsy while I’m in there”

Leave.

Come back later.

I’ve even had engineers get out of the elevators or refuse to get on an elevator if the morgue stretcher is in or boarding the elevator.