In no particular order:
Would this have to be a civilized dinner or could this be something straight from the pages of “The Game of Thrones”.
A civilized dinner?
Can’t think of anyone.
A “Game of Thrones” themed dinner.
Yeah, far too many people involved with the Canadian Armed Forces………
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.
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.
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 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 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 last time that I took a risk of any consequence was when I disobeyed my father’s wishes and I went to the Edmonton Police Service in 2011 and tried to report my former babysitter for molesting my brother and I on Canadian Forces Base Namao from 1978 to 1980.
In 2006 when, I first broached the topic of the babysitter with my father, he heavily cautioned me against trying to report the babysitter because if I insisted on sticking my nose into this I might not like the way the shit was going to smell.
For me, reporting the babysitter was extremely important. After all, up to that point in time my father had blamed me at every opportunity for allowing the babysitter to molest my younger brother. If I hadn’t let the babysitter molest Scott, then Scott wouldn’t have been in non-stop trouble with the law.
Richard was really upset that Scott was so dependent on Richard to meet his needs in order for Scott to stay somewhat functional.
I went up to Edmonton in the summer of 2003 to visit Richard after not having seen him since moving to Vancouver in 1992. I thought that he’d be pleased to see me.
After all, when Scott moved to the Vancouver area in 1996, Richard had contacted me a couple of times to help Scott out with his car. Dead starter one time. Broken throttle cable one time. Wheel bearings another time.
Nope.
I spent more time hanging out with the stepmother that I never got along with as a kid.
Richard barely had the time of day for me, except to explain to me that he was still upset with what I allowed to happen to Scott because Scott was having so many difficulties. Richard whined about having to currently pay Scott’s rent so that Scott wouldn’t try moving back in to Richard’s house in Morinville.
Richard also whined about being “forced” to give Scott his ’83 Mustang GT. Or how he had no choice but to give Scott Sue’s old ’89 Thunderbird after Scott totalled the Mustang on one of Edmonton’s many traffic circles.
When I told Richard that I had obtained my 5th Class Power Engineering certificate and that I was working towards my 4th Class Power Engineering certificate he didn’t care. Just said that no matter what certificate I had my stupid mouth and my stupid attitude were going to keep me unemployed.
I called Richard in September of 2005 to let him know that I landed a union position at a local hospital in the physical plant.
Didn’t give a shit.
Not in the slightest.
In fact he informed me that Scott had a job in a “card board box factory” and insinuated that with all of the struggles that Scott had overcome in his life that Scott’s employment meant far more than mine.
In August of 2006, after a night of drinking at various pride events in Vancouver, I called Richard and left him a couple of messages in which I unloaded both barrels on him.
I wasn’t expecting Richard to ever call back, but he did. I had never heard him whimper like this before in my life. He was like a big dog that just got the newspaper to the snout for pissing on the carpet.
It was your grandmother that hired P.S.
I didn’t like P.S. the first time I saw him.
I told your grandmother not to hire P.S.
And yes, my father used the babysitter’s name without any prompting.
My father called me every morning for the next couple of weeks, as if he was trying to make amends for the way things had been.
But everything came to a screeching halt after I told him that I was going to go to the police to report the babysitter.
“Somethings are best left in the past”
“Let sleeping dogs lie”
“If you stick your nose into this you’re not going to like the smell of the shit”
I didn’t make my complaint to the police right away.
I had legally changed my name in anticipation of transitioning and I had too many things on the go.
In February of 2011 I entered into an out of court settlement with another party in which I represented myself. The lawyer for the other party decided to make an offer to settle and after a bit of back and forth we settled.
Because of this settlement I decided to take my chances with the babysitter.
Without criminal charges it would be near impossible to bring any type of meaningful civil action against the babysitter.
And that’s how I ended up contacting the Edmonton Police Service on March 4th, 2011.
And as we all know, things didn’t work out as planned.
I did learn some interesting things though.
And learning things was better than not learning things.
I learnt for example that my father was right, that I wasn’t going to like the smell of the shit if I stuck my nose into the events of Canadian Forces Base Namao.
I learnt that no matter which base we were stationed at, civilian social services or medical staff were concerned about my father.
I learnt that my mother didn’t abandon the family, but that my father used the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations to have my mother booted out of the PMQ after she threatened to take my brother and I away due to his out of control drinking and physical violence.
I learnt that the child sexual abuse scandal on Canadian Forces Base Namao was far larger than what I could ever have imagined.
I learnt that the Canadian Armed Forces considered a 52 year old military chaplain with the rank of captain having sexual relations with children as young as four years of age after imbibing them with alcohol in the rectory of the base chapel was nothing more than “acts of homosexuality” thus implying that the victims of McRae were just as guilty as McRae was.
I learnt that Terry, my much reviled “shrink” in the days after the sex abuse scandal on CFB Namao, was actually a social worker in the Canadian Armed Forces with the rank of captain.
I learnt that Canadian Forces Administrative Order CFAO 19-20 explained why Terry had such a massive concern about my perceived willing participation in the “homosexual” abuse on CFB Namao and that if I didn’t get my “homosexual” urges under control that I would be going to the Alberta Hospital for psychiatric treatments.
I learnt that due to the military’s official policies against homosexuality which viewed homosexuality as a mental illness, a deviancy, and a character flaw, most parents did not want it known that their children had been involved with “acts of homosexuality” and kept their children out of the investigation.
I learnt that my family’s infamous move from Canadian Forces Base Griesbach, AB, to Canadian Forces Base Downsview, ON, in April of 1983 was not to avoid my social workers “giving me drugs to keep me from being attracted to other boys” like my father had said at the time, but was instead to avoid my apprehension by Alberta Social Services due to their concern for my safety in the home.
I learnt that a flaw contained within the National Defence Act prior to 1998 gave commanding officers within the Canadian Forces prosecutorial discretion over criminal code offences committed by their subordinates.
I learnt that another flaw contained within the National Defence Act prior to 1998 placed a 3-year-time-bar on all criminal code offences, including criminal code offences that do not have a statute of limitations.
I learnt that my father was described by social services as “often telling conflicting stories” from one meeting to the next, and “telling people he perceived to be in positions of authority what he thought they wanted to hear”. In other words, my father was a habitual liar and a sycophant.
I learnt from paperwork that I obtained from various agencies across Canada that everything that my father said during my childhood was basically a lie.
I learnt that the military justice system was defective, but that the CAF, the DND, and their various predecessors had always fought with parliament against reforming the military justice system.
I learnt that the CAF and the DND can use the Official Secrets Act and the Security of Information Act as cudgels to gag anyone who was ever subjected to the Code of Service Discipline to silence.
I learnt that the Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service are soldiers first and police officers second and that nothing in the National Defence Act places members outside of the Chain of Command and as such member of the base military police and the CFNIS must obey the lawful command of anyone with a rank superior to theirs.
I learnt that the Vice Chief of Defence Staff which is not a member of law enforcement has the right under the National Defence Act to direct any CFNIS investigation as they see fit.
I also learnt that the Supreme Court of Canada frowns upon the structure of the Canadian Forces Military Police Group as due to the hierarchy of the Canadian Forces the Minister of National Defence functions as the “chief of police” and has ultimate control over the military police even though it would be the Minister’s office that would be subjected to possible civil actions resulting from the outcomes of military police or CFNIS investigations. This is why civilian police always bring in police from other jurisdictions to investigate matters which may place the city of the first police agency at risk of civil actions.
I’ve also learnt that when people die, it doesn’t really matter for more than a few days, or maybe weeks, before everything goes on like nothing ever mattered.
I would really love to answer this one honestly, but I can’t.
It’s not that I don’t have answers.
I’ve learnt in life that some thoughts are best not released into the public realm.
But, if you know the life that I’ve endured you can pretty well imagine what actions I would have taken and when I would have taken them.
For better or worse I learnt in my youth when I was caught in the battle between captain Totzke and my civilian social workers to say what was expected, to say what was allowed, and to keep everything else in my mind.
What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?
I would never want to visit National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario.
Not that I would ever be invited.
But it is an organization of liars and deceivers.
The ultimate impenetrable boy club dedicated to buffing their own public imagine using the blood of its many victims.
It’s an organization that is more concerned about its own prestige and reputation than it is about justice and truth.
NDHQ in Ottawa is the seat of power and policy for the Canadian Armed Forces.
It is where the decisions are made.
Decisions like keeping the investigation of the death of a trans military dependent in the grasp of the dysfunctional CFNIS.
Decisions like willfully allowing the CFNIS to conduct dog ‘n’ pony show investigations while knowing full well that prosecutions for pre-1998 service offences are fully impossible.
Decisions like fighting a group of former army cadets since 1974 over compensation for an officer of the Canadian Armed Forces allowing a 14-year-old cadet to play with a live grenade citing that as these kids were cadets the military wasn’t legally responsible for them.
Decisions like refusing to acknowledge the fact that as children living in military housing on military bases we were often exposed to the same chemicals and hazardous materials that our serving parents were due to provincial safety regulations not being applicable on the bases across Canada.
It’s where political favours are called in, and where truth, decency, and honour go to be sacrificed on the altar of military pride and tradition.
National Defence Headquarters is not a place that I would ever go visit.
