What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?
I would never want to visit National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario.
NDHQ – where truth and integrity go to die.
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.
Both the fact that this is a common attitude amongst people, and the fact that yes, while I suffer from major depression, I can get shit done.
High functioning depression is what they call it.
And it fucking sucks.
So, last week I did yet another thing that I am totally NOT QUALIFIED* to do at work.
I know that networking is not covered in any of the 4th class Power Engineering modules that I undertook via correspondence.
At work there was a standalone building management system put in that wasn’t connected to the main network for an unknown reason.
Stand Alone Building Automation System
MOXA NAT-102
Wasn’t a concern until the system started doing funny things during the recent cold snap and we had no way of logging into it to see what was up.
It had become painfully obvious to me that this standalone system needed to be connected to the main network so that the shift engineers could get into it to manually override it if required.
I think this is the 4th MOXA NAT that I’ve installed at work in the last couple of years in order to put building automation and HVAC equipment on to the main network.
The most significant problem is the addressing for the network and the building automation equipment and the HVAC equipment have two completely different addressing schemes.
Most equipment shows up with the factory default addresses being used which typically are in the Class C range and are usually beginning with 192.168.xxx.xxx
The main network is a Class B network and starts with 172.24.xxx.xxx.
The NAT allows communication to flow between the Class C network and the Class B network without causing any headaches.
From MOXA NAT-102 manual
Basically in the NAT I have to create two VLANS (virtual local area networks) assign the WAN (wide area network) to one VLAN and the LAN (local area network) to the other VLAN and then create very specific rules to allow traffic to flow between the LAN and the WAN.
I create a 1-to-1 routing rule. The rule would look like this:
incoming -> 172.24.81.30 goes to 192.168.3.1, blocks ICMP, allows TCP and UDP.
outgoing – 192.168.3.1 goes to 171.24.81.30, blocks ICMP, allows TCP and UDP
All other IP addresses on the LAN are blocked from any type of communication with the WAN port and conversely the WAN can only see the single device on the LAN.
The MOXA device itself is set to respond to pings so at least IMIT can see the device is present, but even IMIT can’t see to the other side of the NAT.
I’ve had to use NATs before to let the Emergency Generator Control system and the Elevator Dispatcher to be accessed from the main network for access to readings, logs, and alarms.
Elevator Control SystemPneumatic Tube System12.4 kV to 600 volt transformers
Well Bobbie, the answer is clear, you need to take a course in networking if you like this so much!!!!!!
The thing is, I don’t like this.
There is absolutely nothing special about this, and the way I look at this, if an imbecile such as myself can do this, then really anyone can do this.
I had an interest in computers and electronics when I was a kid. But my father did everything that he could in order to shit all over that.
My father would spare no expense when I was a kid extolling how much of a fuck up I was, and that I was pretty fucking stupid no matter how good I was a picking up electronics and computers.
My father’s disdain for my interest in electronics and computers was legendary.
When I was in grade 8 (1985 – 1986) I had built a 5mW helium neon laser as a science project. Not going to go too far into it, but by using a pair of mirror mounted on voice coils I could scan the beam to any X-Y coordinate on a wall or screen. Or I could just feed audio into the amplifiers that drove the voice coils and I could create patterns.
My science teacher, Mr. Bowles, was blown away by this.
My brother Scott decided that he was going to sell the device that I was using to generate the X-Y scan patterns.
My father of course wasn’t concerned in the least.
Scott was acting this way because of what I had let the babysitter do to him.
Scott was acting this way because I wasn’t raising him properly.
If you’ve followed my story, you’ll know that I moved out of the house in late 1987. I really wasn’t safe in the house. Richard was absolutely unsuitable as a parent, and my brother Scott had become uncontrollable and was definitely running with a dangerous crew.
Getting work right away wasn’t an issue. Since I was about 14 I had been servicing arcade games, pinball machines, and jukeboxes for two different route operators in Toronto.
I beat a DeVry certified electronics technician at the repair of one video game that he had been stumped on for over 2 months. Took me four hours to get the machine up and running again. And it was just an 8-bit bi-directional latch that crippled the machine.
I realized quickly that although my knowledge in digital electronics had saved my bacon, without a certificate or diploma I was never going to make a living off this.
No matter how much I’ve tried to steer clear of anything to do with electronics or computers, I always get drawn back into it. And as much as I despise electronics and computers, they have saved my bacon as they offset all of my character flaws.
The last time I spoke with my father was in August / September of 2006. He brought up the topic of my laser himself and he wanted to know why the fuck that was such a big deal. It wasn’t like I had made the laser tube from scratch, or designed the power supply from scratch, I had just purchased a used laser tube and I had built the power supply using pre-made components.
When my brother came down to see me in 2021 after the public release of the 1980 Military Police investigation paperwork which proved that our father was a liar, we went for a walk around the seawall.
Out of nowhere he brought up the topic of the laser and wanted to know why it was such a big deal. Apparently while Richard was still alive between 2006 and 2017 he had talked to Scott and compared me and my laser to that kid in the states that was busted by the FBI for modifying a clock controller from a VCR and using it to control things at preset times.
I asked him if he knew what a “hacker” was and how the term originated.
I explained to him that the term “hacker” originated with people who would take electronic devices or computer devices and make them do things that they weren’t originally intended to do by “hacking” the components or the programs.
Almost everyone who is a somebody in the field of computers or electronics started off by taking things apart or decompiling code in order to see how things worked, and then making changes to make the devices work better or to do things that were more beneficial to the user.
Christ, some of the earliest hacking / phreaking involved blowing a Captain Crunch toy whistle into the receiver of a payphone in order to make free phone calls.
But, back to me. I turned my back on electronics and computers many, many moons ago.
The memories of my father’s derision, and his utter contempt towards my interests in computers and electronics was just too fucking painful.
I still work with electronics, computers, and networking even though I am NOT QUALIFIED*. I have no choice. In this day and age there is no reason for a facility like mine to not be able to extract operational data from building automation equipment and HVAC equipment.
But, every time that I do this work it tears me apart with never ending thoughts of what might have been or what could have been or what should have been.
Sure, it was my father that was an asshole.
But it was Captain McRae and his teenage accomplice what diddled about 25 children on Canadian Forces Base Namao from 1978 to 1980. It was also the Canadian Forces military social worker Captain Totzke that ensured that I knew that I was to blame for allowing myself and my brother to be abused.
And of course, my father being a lowly corporal in the Canadian Forces ensured that Captain Totzke’s opinion of me would notn be questioned by my father.
So, not only does working with electronics and networking at the hospital raise up questions about the way my father belittled my blossoming interests, but it also make me wonder how things would have turned out had my brother and I not been molested, had the Canadian Forces not buried the matter in 1980, and had I not had Captain Totzke as my social worker.
The one thing that I will never get over is how the Canadian Armed Forces wrote me off as an insignificant patsy of absolutely no consequence.
When Petty Officer Steve Morris of the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service called me on November 4th, 2011 and told me that “the investigation couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that the babysitter was capable of doing what I accused him of”. He did this with a laugh in his voice. A laugh that was meant to convey a not too subtle “fuck you”.
I think that’s the one thing that’s driven me so fucking hard to keep digging and digging.
The other thing that has driven me so fucking hard was the telephone call I had with Master Corporal Christian Cyr on May 3rd and May 4th 2011 when he let slip that the CFNIS knew about the connection between my babysitter and Captain McRae
In the August 1985 Edmonton Journal article about my babysitter, the crown prosecutor mentioned to the judge that my babysitter was already serving 2 years of probation for molesting a young child in Manitoba.
I had dealings with an RCMP constable in 2012. This constable ran a CPIC check on my babysitter based upon the information presented in the Edmonton Journal newspaper article. The constable didn’t give me any details save for that unlike what the Steve Morris told me on November 4th, 2011 the babysitter had a very extensive record of child molestation running from 1982 until beyond 1990 with many charges and convictions with many more charges withdrawn or stayed. The RCMP constable confirmed that the babysitter had been charged and convicted in Manitoba for molesting a young boy.
It was also this constable that laid to waste the lies uttered by Master Corporal Christian Cyr to me on May 3rd, 2011 when he insisted to me that the babysitter was only 12 or 13 years old in the spring of 1980. The babysitter turned 15 in June of 1980.
Anyways, last week I was as sick as a dog. So I spent time at home in bed with my laptop and my Newspapers.com subscription.
One of the many searches that I had done yielded information about the military social worker that I was in the care of from age 9 to age 11, Captain Terry Totzke.
But, I also hit upon a jackpot with the babysitter.
A newspaper article from 1985 centred on a woman who was trying to get stiffer sentences for child molesters in Manitoba. The woman, speaking under a pseudonym, mentioned that her two boys, one 2 years old and the other 4 years old at the time of the abuse, had been molested by their male babysitter who was only 17 years old at the time he abused the two boys.
She also mentioned that a 6 year old girl had been molested by the same babysitter that had molested her children and that this girl had been forced to watch the babysitter abusing other kids and was having all sorts of psychological issues because of that.
A quick bit of math shows that 1985 – 3 =1982. 1982 – 1965 =17.
What the fuck are the odds?
Oh, it gets fucking better.
The sexual abuse happened in St. James, Manitoba.
Wanna guess where St. James, Manitoba is located?
What the fuck are the odds?
It just keeps getting better and better the more time rolls onwards.
I’m doing a little bit of research right now and I’m just waiting for some information gel before being able to 100% link this 17 year old babysitter to my babysitter who would have also been 17 years of age in 1982.
And this really makes me wonder just how many times did the Canadian Armed Force move child molesters from one jurisdiction in Canada to another.
From the bit of research that I’ve done on pedophiles (people with sexual attractions to prepubescent children) and hebephiles (people with sexual attractions to children ages 11 – 14), these people tend to develop their attractions in their teen age years.
So let’s say that someone develops their attractions while they 12 or 13 years old.
A military dependent living with their serving parent could possibly have 2 or 3 moves with their serving parent between their 13th and 19th birthday. How intense this predator’s urges are will determine how many instances of abuse that they could cause.
Let’s say that a 14 year old boy living in the military housing attached to Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt molests a 6 year old girl living in the City of Victoria.
Let’s say that it’s a year before the girl works up the courage to tell her parents.
Let’s say that the boy’s father had been posted to CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick.
How would the Victoria PD ever be able to make the connection?
Let’s say that this boy molests a few more kids in the small towns around CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick.
Let’s say that this boy’s father is posted out to CFB Borden in Ontario.
How are the New Brunswick police supposed to link this boy to the crimes in Victoria, BC.
Let’s say that the boy molests some children in Barrie, Ontario
Let’s say the boy moves out of the military housing a year after arriving at CFB Borden.
How is this boy ever going to be linked to any of his crimes?
Unlike in the civilian world, the Canadian Armed Forces were using taxpayer money to move this boy’s family due to the serving parent’s transfer.
But don’t worry. It’s not just the Canadian Armed Forces that have problems with military dependents sexually abusing other military dependents in the housing provided to military families on military bases. The US Military also has a substantial issue with this.
The Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of National Defence, and even more tragically the Department of (anything but) Justice will circle the wagons, call me a loser, and carry on like nothing ever happened.
The problem comes down to the fact that the CAF, the DND, and the DOJ claim that children living on military bases have no right to expect to be safe and that the CAF and the employees of the CAF, including military police, are under no obligation to protect civilians living on defence establishments.
If that’s one thing that people have trouble wrapping their heads around is how did I have a military social worker.
But Bobbie, you weren’t a soldier. You weren’t in the military. How could you have a military social worker?
Back in my day, we couldn’t get medical care at the base infirmary. We couldn’t get dental care at the military dentist unless the base we lived on was far away from the nearest civilian dentist.
But when it came to social workers, especially in “sticky situations”, the Canadian Armed Forces had no problem with unleashing their employees onto the children of military service members.
I didn’t pay much attention to Totzke’s career after I was no longer involved with him in 1983.
I should have though.
He joined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1966. Seems to have been involved with the naval band when he first joined.
Sometime after 1983 the good captain became a lieutenant colonel.
By 1984 he was the Area Social Worker for Pacific Command.
He was involved with the Sea Cadet program on the west coast.
He didn’t seem to stay in the Canadian Forces for much longer as by 1989 he was working at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital’s Dufferin Place extended care unit as a social worker.
Nothing much more out of the ordinary with Terry Totzke. He seemed to have retired from social work in the ’90s and went on to play drums in a band.
The band had some religious connections.
The one thing that does stick out though as interesting is that one person that Totzke had direct involvement with committed suicide with a crossbow.
Not too much was publicized about the suicide other than it appears that the man who committed suicide was suffering from a mental illness and Totzke had been involved with denying this man the ability to see his mother in a nursing home as Totzke was concerned that the man’s mental illness would be upsetting to the mother.
Really, none of this is surprising.
The counselling that I received from Totzke from October of 1980 until April of 1983 had driven me to attempt suicide two times in that period of time.
Social work and military didn’t really work back then.
Social work in the military was more about control and contain.
Blame the victim.
Make sure the victim understood that they were just as guilty as the abuser.
I wasn’t a 7 or 8 year-old victim of the babysitter and captain McRae for a year-and-a-half.
No, I was a budding homosexual pervert that enjoyed being abused and enjoyed watching my brother be abused.
During our meetings or the school visits, Terry would often remind me that he had the base military police watching me to see if I ever tried to kiss or touch another boy.
Terry was the reason that I wasn’t allowed to play team sports anymore. Might be naked boys in the change room. I might lose control of myself and start having sex with these boys.
And don’t forget, as Captain Totzke’s affair, it was his responsibility to get me the treatment required for my major depression, my severe anxiety, and my haphephobia.
In fact, he just seemed to stand by and watch me deteriorate to the point that I was supposed to have been institutionalized.
Even when Alberta Social Services finally began to put the pieces together and realized that I was in danger the longer I stayed in my father’s house, Totzke appears to have been very instrumental in helping my father obtain a posting out of the jurisdiction of Alberta to avoid my apprehension.
And even at our new posting, the new military social worker, Captain Linda Tyrell, offered absolutely no assistance to the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto when CAST tried to contact my father.
When one suffers from major depression, severe anxiety, and trauma from untreated childhood sexual abuse one tends to have a lot of observations, but I wouldn’t necessarily call this complaining. Okay, maybe some of it is complaining, but fuck it.
It’s just that when one has to work so hard to get to a certain place in life while watching those who have never suffered a single bruise or blemish in their lives cruising through life and reaping all the rewards without the slightest in effort, it gets fucking annoying really quick.
I think one of the things that pisses me off the most is watching those who came from supportive families cruising through life with nary a want or a encountering an unfulfilled desire.
Did my father ever show an interest in school when I was a kid?
Nope.
Did my father ever get his drinking under control?
Nope.
Did my father ever protect my bother and I from his alcoholic mother, who in his own words to social services, was extremely cruel to his children?
Nope.
Did my father stand up to the chain of command in 1980 when the decision was made by the Canadian Armed Forces to minimize the number of charges brought against Captain McRae?
Nope.
Did my father help me with my first car?
Nope.
Did my father help me with my first apartment?
Nope.
Did my father help me when I ended up on the streets after one job prematurely ended and a promised job after relocation fell through?
Nope.
Did my father write me into his will?
Nope.
Did anyone help me with the last minute and completely unexpected travel expenses and cremations expenses to dispose of my younger brother’s body?
Nope.
So here I sit, at age 53, watching all those that came from good families, that never had a single unfulfilled want in life, go through with their happy fantasy lives while I get told to be happy because my life could have been so much worse that what it actually is.
And yes, I’ve known people who have been in the foster care system. A system that I could have been placed into had it not been for the actions of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke. These people seemed to enjoy the support of their foster families. All the while I keep getting told that I should be happy that I lived with my father.
Even though my grandmother went through the Indian residential school system, and her alcoholism that led to my brother and I being sexually molested by our babysitter and Captain McRae could rightfully be blamed on the trauma she endured at residential school, do I get any sort of support for this.
Nope
Let’s face it, my father’s anger, his alcoholism, his cruelty, his complete lack of concern for anybody but himself, and his inability to take responsibility no doubt originated with his mother. The fact that she was an alcoholic during her pregnancy with him probably explains a lot of his behavioural difficulties. Do I get any type of support for this?
Nope.
In fact, when I bring up what I believe to be the root of my family’s dysfunction, I get called a “pretendian”.
I also get told that I should be thankful that I had the opportunity to grow up in a safe environment like Canadian Forces Bases and that I had the opportunity to play with military toys that kids in the civilian world would have enjoyed.
So yeah, I guess I have a lot of gripes.
However, people telling me to get over the past and simply move on with my life are probably my biggest gripe.
Fuck I hate those assholes with every fibre of my being.
If there’s one thing that the Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of National Defence, and the Department of Justice rely heavily upon it’s the public’s willingness to believe that each and every base in Canada operated in a complete vacuum from the other bases in Canada, almost as if each base in Canada was operated independently by a franchisee.
Each and every member of the Canadian Armed Forces, whether they be in the regular forces or the reserve forces, is recruited by the Canadian Armed Forces, is vetted by the Canadian Armed Forces, is trained by the Canadian Armed Forces, and employed by the Canadian Armed Forces.
Under the military’s own “unique” justice system, especially in the days prior to 1998, these members were disciplined by the Canadian Armed Forces for service offences which were comprised of military and criminal code offences.
What this means is that in days of yore the Canadian Armed Forces were able to keep its dirty laundry out of the public eye. And when the public did catch a sneak peak of child abuse or spousal abuse on the bases, it was always easy to portray that event as being a “one off” isolated event, instead of a tell-tale sign of a larger systemic problem.
Don’t let the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence hoodwink you by spinning the lack of convictions or even the lack of charges as being an indication of the low rates of crime on the bases. The chain of command was practically designed to keep these secrets hidden with the summary investigation flaw and the three-year-time-bar flaw.
My father was a piss-tank alcoholic when he joined in 1963. He didn’t get his alcoholism under control until sometime in the mid ’80s.
Russell Williams didn’t start his raping and murdering spree after he left the Canadian Forces.
Alexander Kalichuk wasn’t sexually attracted to young girls only after he left the Canadian Armed Forces
Roger Bazin didn’t become sexually attracted to young boys only after he left the Canadian Armed Forces.
Donald Jospeh Sullivan didn’t become sexually attracted to young boys only after he left the Canadian Armed Forces.
Angus Alexander McRae didn’t molest young boys only after he left the Canadian Armed Forces.
The members of the Canadian Armed Forces that killed Shidane Arone after luring the teenager on to a base in Somalia by using food set up as a lure didn’t kill Shidane after they left the military. They were already racists and white supremacists before they joined the military.
Whatever vetting process the Canadian Armed Forces had in place obviously wasn’t up to the task of keeping the baddies out of the military.
When it comes to Russell Williams you have to remember that he agreed to plead guilty to all of the charges so long as the Ontario Crown didn’t prosecute Williams for the sizeable child porn collection that he had on a hard drive hidden in his house. Most of the underwear that he stole when he broke into the houses around Tweed belong to young girls, not women. An investigator with the Tweed police department that investigated Williams noted that the level of competency that Williams exhibited even on his “first” break and enters shows that these weren’t the first break and enters that Williams would have committed. How many bases that Williams was stationed on prior to his arrest did he commit break and enters in the military housing? You’ll have to pardon me when I don’t believe the Canadian Forces when they say that their own military police investigated and couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary on any base that Williams had been at previously.
When Lynne Harper was found murdered just off base at Royal Canadian Air Force station Clinton, the RCAF failed to mention that Alexander Kalichuk had relations with the Harper family. Lynne’s father was an officer in the RCAF at RCAF Stn Clinton. Steven Truscott’s father was an enlisted man at RCAF Stn Clinton. And Sgt. Kalichuk was also working on RCAF Stn Clinton. Kalichuk had been found driving on the country roads on the outskirts of the base offering free panties to young girls if they’d get in his car and go for a ride with him. When investigated by the local police Kalichuk told the police that he had bought the box of panties as a birthday gift for the 9 year old daughter of a coworker on the base, but that the party was cancelled and he didn’t want to simply throw the panties away. The Royal Canadian Air Force was willing to keep quiet about Kalichuk even if it meant the death of Steven Trusscott.
My own father retired from the Canadian Armed Forces in 1993 with a full pension. For most of his career he was a piss-tank. Most of his postings were to outrun social services.
When I met my mother again in 1990, one of the things she asked me was if my father had ever tried to touch me in a sexual manner. I gave her a very conditional no. I told her that Richard had never touched me, but I was pretty certain that had I been a girl things would have been different. Would my own father have sexually assaulted young girls on base? I can’t say no. He loved his women young. And he also viewed women as being stupid, and dumb. Basically just objects. And he was also a womanizer. Even when he was dating Sue, he was seeing other women.
Child sexual abuse on the bases was never openly talked about, but we knew. Just like child physical abuse and child neglect.
But with child sexual abuse, child physical abuse, child neglect being classed as “service offences” if they occurred on base in the military housing or anywhere else on the base proper, it would be the base military police investigating and then the commanding officer of the accused deciding if these charges would proceed to tribunal, be converted into other charges, or would simply be dismissed.
The way that Richard was with my brother and I was just something that we accepted as normal. Not every other father was like my father, but enough were that it was normal. And what was even worse was that the “nice” fathers never stopped our fathers when our fathers were raging out of control after a night of heavy drinking or when the hangovers hit hard after numerous nights of drinking.
The closest that another member ever came to involving themselves with my family was Bill Parker on CFB Downsview in the days in the aftermath of Richard’s total meltdown in the PMQ on Stanley Green Park. Bill acknowledged that he was aware of the abuse, and the drinking, and Richard’s temper. Bill even offered up a couch in his PMQ if I needed a place to stay while Richard calmed down, just like my mother and I used to in Nova Scotia. But in the end Bill defended my father by claiming that the Canadian Forces never looked after him in the aftermath of the HMCS Kootney event. “Oh Bob, I wish you had the chance to know your father before that day”.
When I got my first job working in a bowling centre that hosted children’s parties on the weekends it really blew my fucking mind to see kids running around and screaming at each other, kids begging their parents for more money to play a video game, and just in general being kids. There were no backhands being issued, there were no orders being barked. No fathers would bellow for their kids to “shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down, and don’t move a fucking muscle until I tell you to move”. Not a single child would leave the bowling centre with a bloody lip.
Nowadays, the Canadian Armed Forces and their cheerleaders jump all around with their pom-poms yelling Rah-Rah cheers and telling us to move-on and to simply get-over-it.
How do you get over the single most horrifying time in your life?
Especially when the Canadian Armed Forces control the narrative, control the information, control the investigations, don’t ever have to worry about pre-1998 offences, and enjoy the secrecy that the Security of Information act grants to the Canadian Armed Forces.
Well, gonna head into work and get some drawings done. But before I go in, just thought that I’d say my piece about the latest news regarding the Canadian Armed Forces.
13 years ago I would have greeted the appointment of a female as the Chief of Defence Staff. But I’ve come to realize that the Chief of Defence Staff isn’t in a position to fix the issues with the Canadian Armed Forces. These issues are institutional issues that are created by how the Canadian Forces function.
Lt.-Gen. Jennie Carignan
Call me cynical, but there is no way that Ms. Carignan will be able to overcome the defects in the Canadian Armed Forces without a massive restructuring. Ms. Carignan has far too many subordinates running their own personal little fiefdoms in their own little silos to allow her to upset their decades long routes to easy retirement.
Since I had my unfortunate involvement with the defective CFNIS in March of 2011 the Canadian Forces has had 5 Chief of Defence Staff.
from Wikipedia.
In almost the same period of time there have been 9 different Vice Chief of Defence Staff.
from Wikipedia
And since 2011 we’ve had Tim Grubb, Rob Delaney, Simon Trudeau as the Provost Marshal. We’ve also had various commanders of the CFNIS such as the infamous Lt.-Col. Gilles Sansterre who was called “the incurious investigator” by the media because he didn’t want to know about the sexual abuse of young boys by the Afghan Forces on a base that was administered by the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan.
And remember, the Provost Marshal is directly subordinate to the Vice Chief of Defence Staff.
Section 18 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985, Chapter N-5 National Defence Act
Yep, that’s right. The Provost Marshal who is supposed to be a Peace Officer as defined by the Criminal Code of Canada is under the direct command of someone who is NOT a Peace Officer.
Section 83 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985, Chapter N-5 National Defence ActSection 85 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985, Chapter N-5 National Defence Act
So there you have an entire section of the Canadian Armed Forces that is bound by the National Defence Act to dysfunction. It’s literally hard coded into the National Defence Act.
Even if Lt.Gen Carignan wanted to get to clean up the dysfunction in the Canadian Forces Military Police Group, she’s in for a massive battle. She will never hear the truth from low ranking investigators as those investigators may be under instructions by their superiors to simply blow sunshine up Ms. Carignan’s ass.
If you were an investigator with the rank of Sergeant or Master Corporal, and you had Lt.Gen. Carignan say “come talk to me if you have any issues you’d like to talk about”, but yet your direct chain of command told you to think twice about telling the Lt. Gen. anything but “happy time fairy tales” whatcha gonna do?
Remember, in the Canadian Forces you’re not simply gonna tootle off to NDHQ in Ottawa to have a chit-chat with the Chief of Defence Staff. No, first you have to ask your chain of command for leave from your duties. This of course is going to be where you have to explain to your chain of command why you’re going to Ottawa to see the CDS.
And when you explain to your local chain of command that you think that they’re incompetent and that they interfere too much in your investigations, guess what? Please see sections 83 and 85 of the National Defence Act.
Think I’m over exaggerating?
Three retired supreme court justices have reviewed the military justice system since 2014. And all three have basically pinched their noses at the stench and given the system a hearty thumbs down.
You can’t have a proper justice system when people with parochial and political agendas can simply issue orders in relation to any investigation.
The only way in which Lt. Gen. Carignan will ever be able to reform the rot within the Canadian Armed Forces is to abolish the Canadian Forces Military Police Group and to hand over the prosecution of all offences that are not of a purely military nature to the RCMP.
As long as Section 83 and 85 of the National Defence Act exist, junior subordinates will never be free to tell the truth about the interference from their chain of command.
And as long as their chain of command is allowed to interfere, issues will go unreported and uncorrected. This will always lead the military to the situation that it finds itself in right now. Unable to clean house because of its heavily compromised police agency.
As I’ve said, I’ve never really taken part in pride, and I really don’t identify with it.
I guess part of it has to do with the environment that I grew up in.
Military communities were isolated. And by isolated I mean that the Canadian Armed Forces had control over the types of people that were allowed to live in the military communities on base.
By way of filtering recruits, the Canadian Armed Forces could control the political leanings of those living on the bases. And it should be of no surprise that these military communities were very conservative and right leaning.
The thing is, when you’re living within these communities, especially if your exposure to the outside world is very limited, you come to see the political leanings of these communities as being “normal”.
Yes, Canadian Forces Administrative Order CFAO 19-20 did no apply to children living on base, it only applied to members of the Canadian Armed Forces. But as has been indicated through various studies, members of the Canadian Armed Forces often had a problems with separating their military careers from their home lives.
As the civilian social worker that dealt with my family noted during various home visits to our PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach, Mr. Gill orders his children with simple commands and answers their questions with yes or no replies and the children don’t question these decisions.
Being in the Canadian Armed Forces, Richard was nothing more than a cog in a machine that demanded his servile obedience. His was not a position to question. His was a position to do as he was told. And like many men who are stripped of the authority in their lives, he made up for this lack of authority by exerting his authority on those he could.
When it came to me and my issues from Canadian Forces Base Namao he was not going to question the authority of Captain Terry Totzke. If Captain Totzke said that I was a homosexual, that I was exhibiting signs of homosexuality, who was master corporal Gill to question this?
When I’ve talked to other base brats about how things were on base I get this Pollyannish rose coloured view of what things were like on base. This usually comes from former brats that didn’t have “issues” and therefore weren’t exposed to the underbelly of life in the “company town”.
I have encountered a few former brats that don’t participate in any of the social media groups for base brats. They want nothing to do with acknowledging their past. And I have an inkling that the brats who don’t want anything to do with remembering their pasts as base brats vastly outnumber the number of brats that celebrate their past as base brats.
The number of broken and dysfunctional families that lived on the bases was probably a high percentage, especially when you look at how the recruiting process would naturally filter out more liberal minded recruits. The military communities were rife with homophobia, racism, misogyny, victim blaming, victim shaming.
Another matter that played into the sterility of the military community was the fact that military housing could only be rented to members of the Canadian Armed Forces, and that these members had the ability to decide who could live in these houses and who couldn’t. If a service member wanted his spouse out of “his” PMQ, she was booted off the base by the military police. Same thing for his kids. As long as provincial law allowed for it, the serving member could give his kid the boot. The age that a child can live on their own varies from province to province. In Ontario a 16 year old can move out on their own.
I’m not sure what the rules are any more, but in my day living on the bases, 18 was the absolute oldest a base brat could be. Once you hit 19 you were expected to get off the base. There were exceptions to this rule, care givers could live in military housing so long as it was to look after military dependents, persons with disabilities could live on base past their 19th birthday, and students obtaining a higher education could continue to live on base until their 24th birthday.
As you can imaging, there wasn’t a lot of diversity. Everything was sterile. Everything was the military mindset.
Queer kids just learnt to stay in the closet.
Queer kids learnt that they were defective and a national security threat.
Kids on base learnt that there were no victims, that it always took two to tango.
Kids on base learnt that compassion was a liability.
Living on base there were no “others” like us.
Living on base we only had exposure to adults that passed the requirements of the Canadian Armed Forces recruiting agents.
Our view of the world was shaped by the monochromatic views of the world espoused by these serving soldiers that passed the conformity tests.
You know all of those soldier that have been implicated in hazing rituals over the years? Yeah we grew up amongst those people.
I lived on the base that was the home of the Canadian Airborne Regiment. We grew up amongst the mindset and the racism that lead to the death of Shidane Arone in Somalia.
All those sexual assaults that occurred in the Canadian Armed Forces? Those were committed by men of the Canadian Forces, many of whom were our fathers.
The misogyny and homophobia that were rampant in the Canadian Armed Forces back in the day? The men espousing these views were often our fathers.
I grew up in a community that allowed everyone up the chain of command to escape responsibility for the murder of Shidane Arone and allowed a lowly private, private Kyle Brown, to be made the scape goat for the whole sordid affair.
I grew up in a community that allowed sexually abused children to be blamed for the abuse they suffered at the hand of members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
I grew up in a community where the chain of command could determine who was a victim and who wasn’t a victim.
I grew up in a community that had the legal power to investigate itself and its members for sexual assaults against children.
I grew up in a community in which officers with no legal training and no legal background could summarily dismiss service offence charges that had been brought against their subordinates.
I grew up in a community in which a 3-year-time-bar applied to all service offences, including service offences of a purely civilian nature.
I grew up in a community which claimed criminal code offences related to children as service offences to be dealt with solely through the military justice system.
I grew up in a community served by such a compromised justice system that it was dismantled and restructured due to horrific miscarriages of justice.
Well, it looks as if the Minister of National Defence has finally grown a pair and is stripping the Canadian Armed Forces of its ability to investigate and prosecute sexual offences.
This is great news.
But it should go much further. The CFNIS and the base military police MUST be prohibited from investigating any crime on base in which civilians are the victims. This would officially remove both domestic child abuse and domestic spousal abuse from the purview of the Canadian Forces military police group.
Sadly it’s too late for the kids of CFB Namao to receive justice.
The settlement from the class action will be the only acknowledgement that we will ever receive.
There will be no admissions of guilt.
There will be no prosecution.
There will be no admission that the military justice system outright failed us.
There will be no investigations to see how extensive child sexual abuse was on the bases in Canada and how often these matters were mishandled by the military justice system.
In my matter the police force investigating this matter was guided by all sorts of wishy-washy policies enacted by the various National Defence Acts.
And none of these policies dealt directly with child sexual abuse.
For example in 1998 the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal put order CFPM 2120-4-0 into effect that stated that in the matters of sexual assault that occur on base when both the victim and the abuser are civilians, the matter is to be handed over to the outside civilian authorities having jurisdiction.
One military dependent sexually abusing other military dependents would be a perfect trigger for this order.
That policy was outright ignored by the CFNIS in March of 2011, and it was ignored by the Federal Court of Canada in 2013.
Yes, CFPM 2120-4-0 instructed the military police and the CFNIS that matters involving civilian on civilian crimes and sexual assaults involving civilians be handed off to the outside civilian authorities, but as the CFPM 2120-4-0 wasn’t hard written into the National Defence Act according to the Federal Court, the Provost Marshal in 2011 was free to ignore this directive at will.
The Provost Marshal and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service can whine and cry and protest all they want.
They fucked up.
Yes, they may have had no choice in the matter, but they fucked up nonetheless.
In 1980 the military police were not allowed by the chain of command to call in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to deal with the babysitter.
Why didn’t the base commander allowed the RCMP to be called in? Remember, the Canadian Forces moved heaven and earth to keep this investigation and prosecution within the military justice system and out of the prying eyes of the Canadian public, even going so far as to move the court martial “in-camera” and sealing the transcripts. The military would have lost all of this power had the babysitter been investigated, arrested, and then prosecuted in the Juvenile Delinquents Court. One peculiarity of the Juvenile Delinquents Act was the fact that the juvie court could find an adult responsible for the delinquency of a minor and issue summary fines and sentences. All of the work that the Canadian Forces undertook in 1980 to keep Captain McRae a secret would have been all for naught if the babysitter went to juvie court.
In 2011 the CFNIS had the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the court martial transcripts, both of which heavily implicated the babysitter with the abuse of numerous children on the base. In fact as Fred Cunningham stated in 2011, and as the babysitter’s own father stated to me in 2015, it was the babysitter’s abuse of children that triggered the investigation of Captain Father Angus McRae.
Yes, the existence of the paperwork wouldn’t have proved the babysitter’s guilt, but the fact that he had been investigated by the military police and was found to have been sexually abusing children during the exact same time period that I accused the babysitter of molesting me and my brother would have probably encouraged the crown to request a more in depth investigation.
Remember, it wasn’t that the babysitter had been cleared during the military police investigation, or that the charges had been dismissed against the babysitter , the chain of command on Canadian Forces Base Namao prevented both the base military police and the CFSIU from calling in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to deal with the babysitter.
And yes, when I requested in 2017 that the CFNIS question the former base commander of CFB Namao, retired brigadier general Daniel Edward Munro, as to why he dismissed the majority of charges against Captain McRae and why he wouldn’t allow the RCMP to be brought in to deal with the babysitter, the CFNIS obtained a legal opinion from a legal officer in Ottawa that stated that due to the 3-year-time-bar that existed prior to 1998 no charges could be brought against Daniel Edward Munro so therefore no investigation was to occur.
However the CFNIS failed to pass any of this information on the Albert Crown prosecutor’s office. In fact the CFNIS seemed to have withheld numerous bits of information from the Crown.
This was a tactic that the military police employed in the ’90s during the CFB Gagetown Rape Controversy in which a military spouse was gang raped by numerous soldiers in a barracks on the base. The general consensus was that the military police would give a case to the crown that the military police knew the crown would not prosecute. The military police would then blame the crown for the failure to bring charges.
During the 2012 MPCC investigation of my complaint against the CFNIS, the Provost Marshall willingly withheld the existence of the CFSIU paperwork and the court martial transcripts from the MPCC. In fact the Provost Marshal withheld numerous documents from the MPCC.
Federal Court rules state that an applicant for judicial review cannot enter into evidence any documents that were not before the tribunal in question.
This means that I was unable to enter into evidence anything that the Provost Marshal hadn’t given to the MPCC. Which was a lot. If I had to guess, I’d say that the Provost Marshal withheld from the Military Police Complaints Commission over 80% of the documents from the 2011 investigation.
Even though the 2nd CFNIS investigation was conducted much better as an inspector with the RCMP had set down some ground rules and directions for the CFNIS to follow, in the end the CFNIS basically resubmitted the same brief word for word to the Alberta crown that the CFNIS submitted in 2011. The second time around that CFNIS again failed to notify the crown of the existence of the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork or the 1980 court martial transcripts that indicated that the babysitter was known to have molested numerous children on the base during the same frame of time that I had made my allegations against him.
And I know that the exact same brief was filed because when I filed for judicial review in 2013 I was given a certified copy of the documents before the MPCC. In 2019 when I appealed the findings of the Alberta Victims of Crime decision that no crime had occurred based upon the CFNIS investigation, I was given a certified copy of the documents before the Alberta Victims of Crime. This included the 2018 submission to the Alberta Crown. It was identical to the 2011 submission.
See, the problem with the military police is that they are soldiers first and police officers second.
The investigators with the CFNIS must obey the lawful commands of their superiors. Their superiors must obey the lawful commands of their superiors. And so on, and so on.
The military basically….
This means that investigations conducted by the CFNIS can be exposed to political interference.
Children who were sexually abused on military bases in Canada were of absolutely no concern to the brass at NDHQ. And the brass at NDHQ was certainly not going to allow a bunch of base brats sully the public image of the Canadian Armed Forces.
What would the public think if they discovered that children were not entirely safe while living on allegedly secure defence establishments?
What would the public think if the public were to be told that children who lived on bases in Canada prior to 1998 and who were sexually abused by members of the Canadian Forces could not obtain justice due to the existence of the 3-year-time-bar?
What would the public think if the public were to be told that due to the principles of “double jeopardy” military service personnel who sexually abused children on base prior to 1998, and who had their charges dismissed by their commanding officer, could never be tried again on the same charges by either a civilian or military tribunal. I would like to think that the Canadian public would blow a collective gasket if they were to discover that these commanding officers that had the power to dismiss and charge brought against their subordinate had no legal training, no legal background, and prior to 1997 didn’t even have to consult with a legal officer before dismissing charges.
And what would the public think if they discovered that the likelihood of charges being brought against an abuser in the pre-1998 days had a lot to do with the rank of the victim’s serving parent versus the rank of the abuser and ultimately the rank of the abuser’s commanding officer.
A corporal’s demand that charges be brought against a captain when the captain’s commanding officer is a colonel isn’t going to go too far. Especially not when that commanding officer is the base commander and had the ultimate authority over everyone on that particular defence establishment. This would include the corporal, the corporal’s commanding officer, the base military police, and the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit detachment located on the colonel’s base.
Beeshive 