depression – Page 19

The day the media cried……

For the most part the media in Canada is finished.

Very lax CRTC rules, very biased free trade agreements, and extremely toothless foreign ownerships rules means that our media for the most part is American owned and always has a pro-corporate, pro-capitalism, anti-worker bias, and anti-socialist policies at play.

It doesn’t matter if the newsroom or the head office has a Canadian street address. If the board of directors and the majority of shareholders are Americans, then the product that they produce is American propaganda.

We don’t have to worry about the Americans launching an invasion to take over Canada, the invasion has been going on since the Mulroney years in the ’80s, some might even say that the invasion started with Dief – the – Thief’s policy of overt American appeasement.

This morning when I logged into the cesspool formerly known as Twitter I caught this tweet from Lynda Steele.

This would be depressing, except Lynda is one of those in the news media that practically ensured the death of local media.

When Lynda was with 980 CKNW her pro-automobile industry / anti-alternative transportation biases were on full display. But I guess that she was just playing to her audience. The only place I’ve ever seen people listen to AM radio is in the car. But Lynda should have realized that the days of AM radio are coming to an end. Even FM radio isn’t far behind.

I stopped listening to radio back in the early ’00s when Rock 101 was blitzing the airwaves with that Spence Shriek commercial.

MP3 players made portable music that much easier to obtain and they totally negated my need for a radio. More importantly I never had to listen to that insistent Spence Shriek or annoying crap like it again.

People in general don’t like biases in their news, and people are fairly decent at detecting biases.

During the Covid-19 lockdown, the previous park board and city council agreed to install a bicycle lane in Stanley Park that would separate the bicycle riders from the pedestrians on the seawall thus allowing the pedestrians on the seawall to distance themselves by spreading across the walking path and the bicycle path and allowing the bicycle riders to continue using the park.

Now, I don’t think we’ll ever know the truth about what happened at CKNW, but to hear Lynda describe it lycra clad MAMILs were dragging the disabled out of their vehicles and euthanizing them at the main entrance to the park. The elderly were no longer able to drive to the park. Traffic in the park was now forced to drive at the posted speed limit. Car drivers were now forced to sit behind the horse drawn carriage tours and left to contemplate the meaningless existence of being a horse pulling tourists around and around in a loop.

In reality, there were only three groups of people upset at the bicycle lanes.

Car drivers using the park to avoid north bound traffic jams on the Stanley Park causeway. Car drivers using the park to avoid the downtown core by rat racing through the park to get to Beach Ave thus avoiding West Georgia, Burrard, and Howe.

And the most important group of all, the tour bus operators. There is a metric shit ton of money made in fares and tips from tourists that come to town on the cruise ships and want to go see “World Famous Stanley Park”. And no doubt there is some form of benefit to the tour bus operators when they deliver fresh cattle to the two “major” tourist attractions in the park.

The bicycle lanes made it impossible for tour busses to fit back in to the park. Because park drive was meant to meander through the park it has some tight bends. With the concrete barriers running through the park it would have been impossible for a full size tour bus to navigate.

Under an outrage that was practically stoked by the media Vancouver got a populist mayor elected with support from just over 18% of eligible voters.

The first thing Qatari Ken did when elected was to jump on an airplane to go watch a soccer game in Qatar. Hence why I call him Qatari Ken.

Ken’s plan was to rip out all of the bicycle lanes in the park to allow the “disabled and elderly” park users to get back into the park. Ken got as far as tearing out the lanes expect for the eastern Beach Avenue exit. The problem that Lynda and Qatari Ken didn’t account for was the public uproar that resulted from the removal of the bicycle lanes in the park.

It never was about the “elderly and disabled”. If it were then Qatari Ken and Lynda would have been pressing for a “community shuttle bus” that would stop at all of the hospitals, senior homes, assisted living homes, and other care facilities in order to give ALL disabled persons and elderly persons the ability to visit the park, especially those without families or those without the means to travel.

No, what it was all about was Qatari Ken riding a wave of populism in to the Mayor’s office to ensure that the interests of a select few business owners were looked after.

Both Lynda and Qatari Ken had been buoyed in their anti-bicycle / anti-alternate transportation biases because of the dynamics of the echo chamber. Lynda’s audience was only car drivers basically. So when Jim-Bob-Joe called in from Abbotsford to say that he’s never coming back to Stanley Park because the City of Vancouver has gone woke with bicycles, that’s what she heard.

The truth is there’s far more daily traffic from bicycle riders and roller bladers in the park than there is from actual park using car drivers.

But, I digress.

My beef with the media comes from the fact that not one single local news media outlet has dare look into historical child sexual abuse on bases that used to be located within city limits.

Does Lynda believe that no children were ever sexually abused on Canadian Forces Base Jericho in Vancouver during the days when both the 3-year-time-bar and the Summary Investigation flaw were in effect?

After report after report of the failure of the military justice system looking into sexual abuse of adults, isn’t Lynda and the rest of her cohorts curious in the slightest about the sexual abuse of children living on the same bases?

Isn’t Lynda, as a reporter, curious about the fact that children who lived on Canadian Forces Bases prior to 1998 don’t have the same rights that their civilian counterparts had?

When West End MP Hedy Fry said that she was not going to look into the matter of child sexual abuse on the Canadian Armed Forces bases in Canada because there were no bases in the West End even though I had lived in the West End since 1992, isn’t this “local news”? Isn’t it news worthy when a sitting MP says that a person can only get justice for military child sexual abuse if they live in a riding with a military base?

Is Canadian Forces Base Jericho not “local”?

Yes, fine, I get it. Lynda had no control over what stories she was allowed to cover and report on when she was at CKNW. CKNW survives on automobile advertising and its listenership is comprised of people stuck in cars. Therefore bicycles are a commie plot to steal your freedomobile away from you and force you to ride a bicycle.

Reporting on a story that would cause the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces a severe amount of negative publicity is something that corporate would have frowned upon as many of the owners are well connected and don’t want to be seen as pissing on the troops.

In the end, with the exception of just a few persons in the media, if the average “journalist” wants a paycheque they have to conduct the reporting that corporate dictates. But these “journalists” shouldn’t be surprised in the end when being a corporate puppet just means that the profession that they were a part of becomes a relic of the past.

And so far the “alternative media” is no better than the corporate media.

Brothers, by law.

It should go without saying that Scott and I really weren’t close as kids.

Our family was not a family built on love.

As I’ve said before, Richard was in many ways similar to Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights in the sense that he carried a grudge for historical slights and anyone even remotely involved with those historical slights was going to pay dearly.

Unlike Heathcliff though, Richard wasn’t the victim of the disdain of others. No, Richard was the architect of his own misfortunes.

Richard carried a massive grudge against his first wife and anyone or anything associated with her was going to pay a very heavy price for her “walking out” on him even though he took advantage of the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations and had his first wife thrown out of the PMQ by the military.

Richard also carried a massive grudge against his mother for her daring to be First Nations, but that’s for another posting.

My father’s buddy from 447 squadron at CFB Namao famously asked Richard “Rick, if these fucking kids are driving you nuts, why don’t you give them back to their fucking mother and let her deal with them”. Richard’s response was “As long as the kids live under my roof, I control the costs. If I sent them to live with their mother I’d have to sign my fucking paycheque over to that bitch, and that’s not going to happen”.

Going through my email interactions with Scott, there was one email in which he noted that even our stepmother Sue had told him that Richard would tell her that Richard kept us because we were good for tax time.

Richard never took us anywhere that would require a modicum of parenting or involvement. And from about 1977 until 1981, Richard had washed his hands of my brother and I by bringing his mother on base to live in the PMQ and raise us.

This is the woman that he described to social services as being “frequently cruel” to his children and that she was frequently intoxicated and refused to admit her alcoholism.

To make matters far worse was the fact that kids from dysfunctional families that were living on Canadian Forces Bases were often shunned.

The Canadian Forces at the time, and even still today, is an extremely patriarchal which meant that the fathers of the families would never been seen to be at fault. Any problem in the household on base was always seen as the fault of the woman or the fault of the children.

So yeah, to say that Scott and I didn’t have a happy childhood would be a gross understatement.

So Scott would go off on his own, and I would go off on my own.

Because of my estrangement from Richard as a child, I never really stayed close to Richard. Scott on the other hand looked up to Richard.

When we moved to Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario in 1983 is when Scott and I started really drifting apart even further.

At that point in time I was so emotionally disturbed that I was supposed to be institutionalized whereas Scott was desperate for friendship. I preferred being left alone, whereas Scott wanted to hang out and be friends with everyone.

This led to Scott hanging out with the wrong crowd.

And Richard, being the incompetent asshole that he was would blame Sue, Grandma, myself, and his first wife for the way Scott was turning out. Not for one minute would Richard turn around and blame himself or accept responsibility for his part in this play.

This of course would stoke a lot of animosity between my brother and I.

Scott would do the crime, and I would get the beating of my life.

I wasn’t raising Scott properly

I wasn’t looking out for Scott

Another wedge that Richard drove between my brother and I was the fact that Richard blamed me for what happened to Scott on Canadian Forces Base Namao at the hands of the babysitter and possibly Captain McRae.

When Scott stole Sue’s Pontiac Acadian, Richard laid a fucking intense beating on me in my basement bedroom of the PMQ. During this beating Richard yelled numerous times at me that Scott was turning out the way he was because I let the babysitter touch him and that if I hadn’t let the babysitter fuck Scott that Scott would be normal.

And of course Scott was becoming resentful towards me because Richard’s insistence that I was supposed to raise Scott and look after Scott meant that I was allowing Scott to get into trouble.

And I know that this was a substantial issue between Scott and I even until just recently. In fact it wasn’t until the Canadian Armed Forces finally released the Court Martial transcripts and the CFSIU investigation paperwork in the summer of 2020 that Scott finally began to come to terms with the fact that Richard lied about the events of 1980 and that Richard obviously knew more about 1980 than what Richard had ever let on.

In the summer of 1984, while Scott and I were spending the summer with our grandmother, Scott said something to our grandmother about the babysitter from CFB Namao. Grandma was furious, yelling at me for allowing Scott to be raped by the babysitter while I was watching.

I moved out of the PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario in early 1988.

By this point in time Scott had been into juvenile detention numerous times and had grown substantially both in height and in mass. Scott’s uncontrolled anger and Richard’s unwillingness to control Scott and protect me from Scott is one of the reasons that I left. And it wasn’t just Scott that I was terrified of. He was hanging out with guys that I’m sure probably ended up becoming enforcers for biker gangs after they finished high school.

In a way I was very envious of Scott. Here I was, barely pushing 100 lbs and Scott had to be at least 160 or 170 even though he was 2 years younger than me. Not only that but Scott was towering over Richard. Richard once tried to backhand Scott, and Scott just caught his hand and scowled at Richard. That was the last time I ever saw Richard try to strike Scott. Me on the other hand, yeah Richard wasn’t afraid of me in the slightest.

In the summer of 1990 Richard got hold of me and invited me to move to Edmonton with him so that we could try to be a family again.

In preparation for the move, I moved back into PMQ 223F on Canadian Forces Base Downsview. But Scott wasn’t there. Scott had been incarcerated during my absence and was serving time at St. John’s in Uxbridge, Ontario.

By the time Scott was released, Sue and Richard had already bought a civilian house in Morinville, AB. I didn’t last too long in that house, and neither did Scott upon his release from juvie in Ontario. I think I lived in the house in Morinville for about a week before I got the boot and had to go rent my own apartment, which was no small feat at the age of 18.

One day at work I got a phone call from Richard telling me that after all he did for us as kids that I had to take Scott in until things calmed down. Scott was unceremoniously dropped off at my apartment. He ate all of my food in three days and he nearly got me evicted by fighting with the neighbours and blasting loud music. I asked Richard for help with groceries, he just laughed and said that maybe I should try hitting up our mother for groceries as he was finally done with us. Our mother ended up taking Scott out to her acreage out by Wabamum Beach.

I was introduced to my mother by my uncle Doug in the summer of 1990 just after we arrived back in Edmonton. I have no doubt that uncle Doug also introduced Scott to our mother after Scott arrived in Edmonton from Ontario after his release.

I happened to stop in to our mother’s house one weekend when she asked me if it was true what Scott said, that I had let Scott get raped numerous times by our babysitter. This was in the summer of 1991 and Scott was still framing it the way that my father had framed the events of 1978 to 1980, that I had allowed and encouraged the babysitter to molest my brother.

Between the winter of 1992 and the summer of 2012 I only saw Scott 3 or 4 times.

In the Summer of 2013 I went to go see Scott. We had some talks, but there was still an intense amount of resentment and condensation in his voice towards me. At the time Scott claimed that he hadn’t spoken to Richard or Sue for the longest time due to the suicide death of Eric Kolsteren.

On the day of my Federal Court application for Judicial Review, Scott had started texting me claiming that I had raped him along with the babysitter and that I should tell this to the judge. I did some quick sleuthing and as it turned out Richard had tracked Scott down via Sue and just the night before Scott’s outburst Richard had paid a visit to Scott and gave Scott a computer, a bunch of computer items, some camera equipment, and possibly paid for a trip to Toronto.

After that, Scott’s attitude towards me soured quite considerably. I have absolutely no doubt that Richard was pumping Scott’s head full of bullshit.

The next time that Scott would have any type of contact with me was in 2019 when he called me to let me know that Richard had died in 2017. Scott requested that if Sue ever asked how I found out Richard was dead that I wasn’t supposed to say that Scott told me.

Things again changed between Scott and myself in 2020 after the release of the Captain McRae’s court martial transcripts, and the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork. Scott began to realize that he had been lied to all of his life by Richard once my class action against the Canadian Armed Forces was initiated.

People have asked me if my brother’s death upsets me.

Not really.

I didn’t know him.

I knew him about as well as I knew my father.

I am disappointed that Scott is dead.

He didn’t live long enough to at least see official acknowledgement for no only what had happened to him on Canadian Forces Base Namao, but the fact that various members of the Canadian Armed Forces failed him such as our father Master Corporal Richard Gill, Captain Totzke, Colonel Daniel Edward Munro.

I know that Scott had been struggling with mental health issues for the longest time as when we did have email conversations early after 2012 he did say that he was seeing counsellors to try to work out his anger issues.

Drug wise, I don’t know when he started to be honest with you.

I know that he drank when we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview. Back then it wasn’t uncommon, even for the Goodie-Two-Shoes brats, to drink and smoke weed on base.

When Scott came for a visit in the summer of 2021 both him and his girlfriend at the time were doing mushrooms and weed.

When Scott started doing K is something I’ll never know.

If he was doing anything harder than weed, ‘shrooms, and K is also something that I’ll never know.

If we were closer together, would I have known?

I don’t know.

I work at a hospital in Vancouver that is basically THE hospital for Canada’s poorest postal code, the DTES. Drugs can take over anyone at anytime. The number of fresh faces coming in for treatment is astounding. Everyone seems to think that they can try the hard drugs once or twice and they’ll be okay.

I haven’t quite figured out what to do with Scott’s ashes at this point in time.

Maybe I’ll get them mixed into little cement middle fingers and have one delivered to the Chief of Defence Staff, one delivered to the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal, one delivered CFNIS Western Region, one delivered to CFNIS Pacific Region, and one delivered to RCMP K division HQ.

Inscription would say
-Fuck You –
Kids from CFB Namao
(human remain, do not dispose)

Back to Vancouver

Okay, so I’m about to fly back to Vancouver in about 1-1/2 hours.

I don’t ever want to hear anyone ever say that being a base brat was a “fun time” in their life.

This shit sucks, it honestly does.

We meant absofuckinglutely nothing to the Canadian Armed Forces when we were kids. And once we turned 18 and aged off the bases, we meant even fucking less.

We got exposed to the spousal abuse in the PMQs

We got exposed to the alcoholism in the PMQs

We got exposed to the hidden, covered-up, and totally ignored mental illnesses of our fathers.

We got fucked seven ways from Sunday my the military “justice system”, that same justice system that was an outright abysmal failure for the adults but was somehow supposed to be working for the kids and non-serving spouses on base.

There have been studies conducted over the years looking at spousal abuse in military families.

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a study that has ever looked at the long term effects of being a military dependent.

How many former military dependents have ended up homeless?

How many former military dependents have ended up dead with needles in their arms?

How many military dependents committed suicide on base or committed suicide later in life due to their issues they inherited on base.

“bUt BoBbIe, MiLiTaRy DePeNdAnTs WeReN’t In ThE CaNaDiAn FoRcEs”

The
” We Had A Normal Childhood on Base”
Brigade.

The
“But it happens in the civilian world too”
Asshole

You assholes that wanna simp for the Canadian Armed Forces actually believe that our fathers left the toxic bullshit at the hangar or the garage, or the drill hall?

You wanna believe that the Canadian Armed Forces wasn’t turning a willing blind eye to the rampant alcoholism and drug abuse in the military?

Half of the Canadian Airborne Regiment on Griesbach was doing fucking coke.

Most of the guys at 447 Sqn were drinking on the job when servicing the Chinooks.

You wanna believe that the Canadian Armed Forces didn’t pull out all of the stops to “wash the laundry” in house and keep it from being exposed to the civilian world?

In 1985, after my father trashed the PMQ on CFB Downsview, the military police didn’t plead with my brother and I to call the base MPs instead of the civilian police because they cared. They just wanted to keep the civilian police and civilian social services from getting involved with the “military’s business”.

Our fathers got treated like heroes after they retired. Even if they had never seen combat and spent the majority of their career flying a fucking office desk.

Military dependents aren’t even on the radar of veterans affairs.

Bones ‘n’ Ashes

I guess it’s a good thing that Richard is long since dead and gone.

If he knew what I did to Scott, he’d kill me.

I could just hear Richard now “You goddamn little fucking cocksucker, look at what you did to Scott! You think he’d be dead right now if you fucking looked after him like you’re supposed to?”

That’s basically the same spiel I got from him during one of our “counselling sessions” in Captain Totzke’s office over by base HQ on CFB Griesbach when I was around 9 or 10.

That’s also the same speech that I got when Scott stole Sue’s Pontiac Acadian when we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario.

So yeah, it’s a good thing that Richard is dead.

I don’t expect to hear anything from Sue.

She was married to my father, we were just the baggage from the previous marriage that Richard just had to keep in order to keep the costs under control.

Our mother? Not too sure where she is. The last time I saw her she was literally just waiting to die out of boredom. She lost at the game of life, her life was destroyed by Richard, and she was just existing until the mercy of death would take her away.

I had always thought that my father was most like Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, except unlike how the reader was exposed to what drove Heathcliff to destroy everyone around him, no one, not even I, knows what set Richard on the path to destroy everyone around him, including his own sons.

When I say that we were a dysfunctional family, we were.

The fact that my brother is dead doesn’t really bother me, just reinforces for me that dying at home alone really fucks up the flooring. Hopefully I get to apply for M.A.i.D. in 2027.

What does bother me about my brother’s death is no one will connect the dots between his life as a military dependent and the fact that he ended up dead on the floor of his apartment for about a week.

What also bother’s me is that Scott won’t ever get an apology from the Canadian Armed Forces or the Minister of National Defence, and that the Department of Justice is probably cackling with glee at the prospect of one less admission of liability.

But Scott’s death does illustrate for me that his death doesn’t really matter.

Bill collectors just want his money.

Service providers just want his money.

Nobody else gives a flying fuck.

His phone is ringing off the hook with creditors and such, but not one single person has texted him to say “hey, what’s up, why aren’t you answering your phone”

I’m so emotionally damaged that his death doesn’t bother me. Not ’cause I hated or despised him, but Captain Father Angus McRae, P.S., Master Corporal Richard Gill, and Captain Terry Totzke beat all of the fucking emotions out of me before I could even develop proper emotions as a kid.

And I can’t honestly be the only former military dependent that can’t feel or express emotions, this was something that was drilled into your heads on these bases back in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and probably even still today. Emotions are for the weak, crying is for sissies, admission of mental health issues show that you’re weak.

Going back through emails and texts I can see Scott’s life unravelling.

I’m prepared for years of battle with the fucking military and their lawyers at the DOJ. I knew the Department of Justice really didn’t give a flying fuck when I went to Federal Court back in 2013 to try to get the 2012 findings of the Military Police Complaints Commission overturned. The fact that the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal withheld all manners of evidence from the MPCC in 2012 didn’t matter one fucking iota with those assholes. All they were concerned about was protecting the CFPM, the CFNIS, the CAF, and the DND from scrutiny.

The DOJ fought and fought and fought against compensating the babysitter for the abuse he endured at the hands of Captain McRae even though Captain McRae was only ever charged by Colonel Daniel Edward Munro with the crimes McRae committed against P.S.. Munro sunk all of the other charges, as was his right under the pre-1998 National Defence Act.

So, I’m prepared for the long haul with the DND, the CAF, and the DOJ.

But Scott, since about last summer, seemed increasingly anxious about getting a settlement from the class action.

At first I thought that it was just Scott making plans for a new car or something of the such.

No, it was probably his drug habit that seemed to have started to bloom back around 2015 – 2016.

I missed the comments about drugs this and drugs that and trying this and trying that.

I don’t know what he did prior to 2019, but it looks like he tried to cross into the states on his visa, but the visa was then stamped “WD in lieu of NTA”. So something happened.

I don’t blame him for unraveling.

I’m not going to chastise him for drugs.

I know what he went through.

I lived what he went through.

I want to end my life as badly as he did, if not more so.

But I just want my death listed as being due to M.A.i.D. which was administered to alleviate mental trauma and major depression which was directly linked to CFB Namao and the Canadian Armed Forces.

Maybe Richard was right, maybe I should have looked after him better.

Special K

Well, it would appear that my brother didn’t die from heart disease or epilepsy.

Ketamine is more than likely what killed him. And this is why the medical examiner said that his death certificate wouldn’t be issued until after the toxicology tests.

The medical examiner said that he had some broken ribs, which would probably be the case with ketamine. He would have dropped like a stone. And he was about 230 to 250, more than enough to break a rib or two.

Apparently Scott had started snorting ketamine quite a few years ago. I didn’t even know that you could snort this shit.

I’ve seen ketamine injected a few times at work. The emergency department will call us up periodically to help out with patient issues. Twice I was involved with removing roofing nails from body parts. Once was through a foot, and once was through a knuckle. Both time I had to explain that you couldn’t simply pull these nails out using a claw hammer as the nails a nail gun fires usually have flutes on them to prevent them from pulling out. Both times I’d get the heads of the nails cut off and then the docs would get me to pull the nail through with vice grips while they stabilized the patient’s foot or hand. Both time, before pulling, the nursing staff would administer a small shot of ketamine into the patient’s IV and out like a fucking light and off to dream land in under 10 to 15 seconds.

Also, having served on the Occupational Health and Safety Committee we had to deal with the possibility drug addiction amongst staff. Years ago there was a nurse at VGH that had been helping herself to the partially used vials of ketamine. One day she grabbed a vial of a partially used paralytic agent and took it home and injected herself with it. It’s assumed that she died instantly as this paralytic agent would have stopped her breathing. Since then drugs like ketamine are controlled in that the unused portions must be returned to the pharmacy and the surgical staff are not allowed to place ketamine into the used surgical sharps containers of the surgical carts.

The person I spoke to at Scott’s condo said that Scott had been known to have started partaking drugs years ago. He started off with weed, then graduated to mushrooms, and somewhere along the line he started into “Special K”. Ketamine isn’t a hard drug to get on the streets. It’s known to be a recreational “clubbing drug” in which users try to enter the “k-hole”.

Like any drug, it has its downfalls. And one of those downfalls is overdose and then death.

The person who let me into Scott’s apartment explained how he came to be found. No one had heard from him for a few days. Then the occupant of the condo below his started to report stains on their ceiling and then a fluid. At about this time the residents on Scott’s floor stated to notice a smell of something rotting.

The Edmonton Police Service was summonsed to do a wellness check.

A lot of force was applied to open the door.

It’s an older building that used to be apartments. It looks like at some point in time the apartment was changed from rental to condominium and Scott had purchased a suite for about $30k.

It was a mess, and not just from his death, but messy in general.

The stench of his decomposition was still heavy in the air. I don’t know how you ever get rid of that smell. This is one of the reasons that I want MAiD. I couldn’t kill myself knowing that I’d leave this type of mess behind and fuck the people up who found me. Sure, Scott didn’t mean to kill himself, but the damage was staggering .

The flooring from around where he fell had to be removed. His body has obviously gone through algor mortis, livor mortis, rigor mortis, and then into bloating, and finally decay.

The white marks on the trusses are where his fluids seeped in and couldn’t be removed. You can also see the drywall that had to be removed as it was damaged.

He was a heavy smoker, and a drinker from the looks of it.

The Gill family and alcohol are a deadly combination. Grandma was a prolific alcoholic. Her son, my father, was a piss tank alcoholic. I don’t know what Scott’s drinking level was but I was never willing to play with the alcohol gods.

Growing up in a military family living on military bases, both Scott and I started smoking at a young age. I started smoking when I was 13. Scott was already smoking before I was which meant that he started around 11. And I think it would be fair to say that about 40 percent of early teens on Canadian Forces Base Downsview were smoking. Smoking was a way to calm your nerves. With our father and stepmother we needed all the help we could get.

Richard didn’t care that we smoked in the PMQ. His only rule was that we were never to touch his smokes, and if he ever ran out of cigarettes, we had to give him ours until he could go get a new pack. And there were lots of stores around base that were willing to sell smokes to kids.

I started smoking Player’s Extra Light just like Richard was smoking. Scott was smoking DuMaurier. I couldn’t figure out why until he told me it was so that Richard wouldn’t poach his smokes. I switched to Players Unfiltered.

I was up to two packs a day by the time I was sixteen. But that plummeted to less than a pack a day after I moved out of Richard’s PMQ.

I quit smoking when I was 25 and I haven’t smoked since. But it looks as if Scott wasn’t able to shake the cigarette habit.

What does concern me is the butane torch. Scott was no pastry chef, so it wasn’t like he was making crème brûlée, and I don’t think that he was using the torch to sear his steaks.

Was he using this for a water bong for weed, or was he cooking something a little harder with this? Guess I’ll have to wait for the toxicology reports.

I know that Scott had issues. I grew up in the same defective family that he did with the same defective parents that he did.

And having lived through what we lived through it’s no surprise that he had issues.

I’m no saint, but the one thing I was able to do was stay clear of drugs. The only needles that I’ve ever done for pleasure are my tattoos.

It’s obvious that for whatever reason, Scott wasn’t able to stay clear.

I know that there were indications when we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview that Scott was doing something, but neither Richard nor Sue seemed to concerned about it. They would literally lock themselves in their bedroom and spend the evening watching TV.

As Scott’s drug use seems to have ramped after 2011 when the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service contacted him for a witness statement. Was it bringing the past into the modern day that set him on the path to self destruction?

I know that in 2013 after I had given Richard his written examination for Federal Court, Richard had tracked Scott down and talked to him, Scott even admitted as much. And that’s when Scott started accusing me of letting the babysitter molest him, just as Richard and Captain Totzke had blamed me years ago. Did Richard lie to Scott in 2013? Did Richard tell Scott the “official Canadian Forces approved version” of what happened from 1978 to 1980?

When it was revealed in 2020 that I had told the absolute truth about the whole CFB Namao affair and that it was in fact a much larger scandal than just Captain McRae having consensual homosexual sex with the 14 year old babysitter, did this shatter Scott’s world as Richard had built it for him?

Doesn’t matter much now, does it?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I’ll never understand why I didn’t get addicted to drugs, be it booze, pot, opioids, etc. Why Scott got addicted and I didn’t is always going to be a fucking mystery. We both grew up is the same fucked up dysfunctional military family living on military bases. We both lost our mother due to abuse of military procedures. We both got sexually abused and swept under the rug by defects in the National Defence Act.

I have no one to impress, but then either did Scott. I don’t have a “dad” that I always wanted to impress, and neither did Scott. I couldn’t give a flying fuck what Sue has to say, and I don’t think Scott cared for Sue either. And Marie was never around. This is why I really want to donate my brain to science after I die.

If my brain can offer clues as to why someone who went through the shit I went through never got addicted to drugs, then giving my brain to science would be worth it.

Interesting day

So, I flew up to Edmonton from Vancouver this morning.

Very quick flight.

Never have flown on an Airbus before, but now I did get to hear the infamous Airbus Barking Dog noise. And as I was over the wings it was quite loud. It’s nothing to be worried about, it’s just a hydraulic pump trying to equalize the pressure between two different hydraulic circuits.

I was waiting for the 747 bus to take me from YEG to one of the LRT stations.

While I was waiting a fellow passenger came up to me and introduced herself.

She said that she had loaded my blog onto her phone and read the blog on the flight.

Skye had discovered my blog when she googled my name that I have on my carry-on luggage.

It’s odd, outside of a few people related to the CFB Namao matter, and outside of a very select few people in Vancouver, no one has ever come up to me to talk about my blog.

She offered to drop me off on her Uber ride into Edmonton and she kept apologizing the whole time reassuring me that she wasn’t a stalker.

So, we talked on the way up to Edmonton. I’m sure the Uber driver thinks that I’m insane.

Skye had just come back from Australia. She’s actually a conductor for one of the railways, can’t remember if she works for CP or CN. She took some time off work to help her sisters run the family lumber mill after her father died a few years ago.

We’ll probably meet up for coffee or lunch in the next day or two.

I didn’t get much sleep last night, too many things ruminating in my skull to let me have a decent sleep last night.

Shout out to my stepmother Sue for not wanting to help out with this, Richard would have been so proud of her.

I’m almost 100% certain that Scott didn’t have a will. The police didn’t indicate that they found anything of the such.

So the first thing I have to do tomorrow is go pick up his ashes and his personal belongings from the crematorium. The I guess I’ll have to go to his apartment and see what’s up there and see if there’s any paperwork indicating what his finances were like. If he had a financed or leased car I’ll probably have to make arrangements for the dealer to come pick it up. I’ll see if there’s any documents and paperwork or photos of interest that I want and then the rest of his belongings will be going to wherever.

And then I’ll fly back to Vancouver.

In the meantime I’ve ridden around the city on the little Lime Scooters. Those things are a blast. They’re a lot more sketchy and jittery than my Segway scooter, but in a way that lends an interesting quirkiness to them.

I don’t know what I’ll do with Scott’s ashes. I could put them inside of a Jack-in-the-box and send the Jack-in-the-box to the Chief of Defence Staff.

alt text: Executive assistant to the CDS turns the crank while the CDS awaits.

I could go up to Edmonton Garrison and sprinkle his ashes at our old PMQ and other places around the base.

alt text: Bobbie sprinkles Scott’s ashes on a Defence Establishment while unimpressed CFNIS investigator stands around.

Anyways, enough for today.

I gotta go find some place to grab a bite to eat.

Luckily Whyte Ave is just a block away.

The reality sets in.

I think that the reality of the situation is starting to set in for people that are involved with my matter.

The Department of Justice has access to the following documents:

All the CFSIU investigation paper work from 1980, this includes documents that have never been released to the public.
All of the 1980 correspondence between Colonel Daniel Edward Munro, his superiors and his subordinates.
All of the CFNIS GO 2011-5754 paperwork from 2011 and 2015 to 2018 including all paper work that was never released to the Military Police Complaints Commission in 2012.
All of the correspondence between myself, the Provost Marshal, the Chief of Defence Staff, and the Minister of National Defence.

In a court matter, the complainant and the defendant need to submit to the court the documents that they intend to use to argue their case. The DOJ doesn’t have to supply copies of the records that they used, but by reading the documents indicated above, the DOJ can formulate a plausible defence and they wouldn’t have to submit copies of what they have accessed to the court.

And the thing is that my lawyers would never have any idea of what the DOJ has accessed as we have absolutely no idea of what documents the Department of National Defence supplied to the Department of Justice.

Another issue that stymies my case and puts the sexually abused children from CFB Namao at a severe disadvantage is the spectre of the Official Secrets Act / The Security of Information Act.

There are those who will say that I am blowing things out of proportion with the Official Secrets Act / the Security of Information Act.

The Security of Information Act replaced the Official Secrets Act.

The Official Secrets Act specifically applies to ALL persons who were ever subjected to the Code of Service Discipline.

Section 4(1) states that anyone who was subject to the code of service discipline at the time they became aware of information while on a defence establishment is guilty of an offence if they ever tell anyone outside of persons they are authorized to pass that information on to.

“Having in his possession or control any secret official word” -comma- “password” -comma- “sketch” -comma- “password” -comma- “sketch” -comma- “plan” -comma- “model” -comma- “article” -comma- “note” – comma- “document” -or- “information that relates to or is used in a prohibited place”. The adjective “secret” applies only to “official word”. The commas do not apply the adjective secret to every subsequent clause.

In other words the first sentence of Section 4(1) reads as “Having in his possession or control any secret official word” or “password” or “sketch” or “password” or “sketch” or “plan” or “model” or “article” or “note” or “document” or “information that relates to or is used in a prohibited place”.

The first sentence of Section 4(1) DOES NOT read as “Having in his possession or control any secret official word” ,” secret password” ,” secret sketch” ,” secret password” ,” secret sketch” ,” secret plan” ,” secret model” ,” secret article” ,” secret note” ,” secret document” or ” secret information that relates to or is used in a prohibited place”.

What is a “prohibited place”?

Basically, any Canadian Armed Forces base in Canada is a prohibited place. Any chapel located on a Canadian Forces Base is a prohibited place. Any military police detachment located on a Canadian Forces Base is a prohibited place. Any CFSIU or CFNIS detachment is a prohibited place. Any private married quarters located on a defence establishment is a prohibited place. Any military social worker’s office located on a defence establishment is a prohibited place. Any school located on a defence establishment prior to 1994, would also be considered a prohibited place.

What is “information”? Information is not specifically defined in the Act, so I will go with the dictionary definition of “information”.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/information

Merriam-Webster defines “information” as “knowledge”, “intelligence”, “news”, “facts”, “data”.

So……… anyone who was an active member of the Canadian Armed Forces and who was subject to the Code of Service Discipline back in the period of time between 1978 and 1980 and knew about the exploits of Captain Father Angus McRae or the babysitter, or knew any of the details of the investigation, or knew why the brass didn’t call in the RCMP to deal with the babysitter, or knew who exactly it was that limited the charges against Captain McRae to only those charges related to the babysitter, is forever prohibited from discussing these facts or observances with anyone at anytime without the expressed permission of the Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of National Defence, and the Department of Justice.

This explains why Fred R. Cunningham had no problem telling me what he knew about the events in 1980, but shut his mouth pretty damn quick when I told the Provost Marshal in December of 2011 what Fred had told me in Nov of 2011. This is the same Provost Marshal that told me in January of 2012 that they couldn’t figure out who Fred Cunningham was and that I couldn’t put faith in what he had to say even though it would turn out that Fred Cunningham was the Acting Section Commander of the CFSIU in 1980 and was personally charged by Base Security Officer Captain David Pilling with investigating Captain McRae for “acts of homosexuality with young boys on the base”.

Fred even refused t0 be interviewed by the CFNIS in 2016 stating that he would only talk to the CFNIS if there were no records or recordings. The only thing that Fred did state as a matter of fact was that the “Provost Marshal threw the CFSIU to the dogs” in 1980. Reading the court martial transcripts and the CFSIU investigation paperwork, it appears that the Chain of Command was upset with the CFSIU for digging up more victims than was required.

If you’ve ever wondered why there aren’t more victims of military child sexual abuse from the military communities coming forward. It was all treated as a secret back then, and it’s all treated as a secret in the modern day with the people who could be our champions forever silenced by the Official Secrets Act and its very overly broad application to members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

And then there were three…..

Was at the doctor this morning for my monthly check-up.

My blood work is progressing along nicely.

He doesn’t think that the collapse that I had last month had anything to do with me being on anti-depressants or taking estrogen for my hormone therapy.

I’ve had a long running history of syncope. BP was 112 over 73. Not bad.

And my liver seems okay with the estrogen.

My testosterone results were online at the time of my appointment and they were around 1.1. I’d like to get those down as low as possible, but we’ll have to wait and see whether I can do this chemically or if I can do this surgically.

So, I’ve graduated up to three patches twice a week. That’s 150 microgram of estradiol per day. Whooo-Hoooo!

My most recent blood test revealed that I am at 479 pmol/l which is the same as a woman in her early 20s

I’m aiming to go for an estradiol level of 800 pmol/l which is about 210 pg/ml. This is equivalent to a woman in her late 20s.

Puberty to maturity in less than 6 months.

And then there’s going to be the eventual tapering off.

My body is old. Usually human bodies only undergo one sexual development and maturity per lifetime. Putting my body through a second sexual development and maturity is gonna be tough on it.

Is it worth it?

I think so.

I get a taste of what could have been.

I realize that there was absolutely no way that I could have transitioned early in life, especially not as a kid living on Canadian Armed Forces bases.

And even in my adult life, there would have been very few chances I could have had to have transitioned previously.

In a way, no matter how much psychological trauma I had to endure being involved with the Canadian Armed Forces “justice” system from 2011 until 2020, I wouldn’t have ever been able to contemplate transitioning until I came to realize just how damaged and fucked up the Canadian Armed Forces are and how as an organization they’re willing to destroy the lives of those they deem to be inconsequential so long as the CAF can persevere its public image.

Once I realized just how ethically damaged and psychologically challenged members of the Canadian Armed Forces such as Colonel Daniel Edward Munro, Captain Terry Totzke, and Master Corporal Richard Wayne Gill were I began to realize that all of the hose shit that Captain Totzke and Mcpl Gill had shovelled into my head from age 9 to age 16 was nothing more that the military’s standard bullshit that was deployed to keep secrets.

As I said previously, when my brother called me in 2019 to let me know that Richard had died in 2017, I felt an honest sense of relief knowing that the silly fucker was dead and gone.

And that was when I started putting some serious thought into transitioning.

It’s all my fault……..

The fun thing about being the chief engineer at work is that bad designs by professional engineers for projects that were put in well before my time in the Captain’s chair are somehow my fault.

Friday was a 17 hour day and Saturday was a 6 hour day dealing with the A/C for a freezer room that hadn’t been designed correctly from the start, had absolutely no redundancy, and had been packed with more biological -80 freezers than it was designed to accommodate.

Had to bring in 70 kW of emergency cooling to deal with the room. This emergency cooling was comprised of four 17.5 kW water cooled A/C units.

Water hoses all over the place distributing city water to the A/C units to cool the compressors in the A/C units with the warm water going down the drain.

Had to get electrical in to install four 208 volt 3 phase plugs for the A/C units.

These units got the room under control and are cycling on and off which means that they have ample cooling capacity. More than the four 12.5 kW split A/C units that are in the room.

When sizing mechanical refrigeration for an area, if the unit is running 100% of the time and it can barely maintain its set point, the unit is grossly undersized. If the unit only comes on for 5 minutes and shuts off again, the unit is grossly oversized. For a simple reciprocating compressor with no capacity control a 20 minute run cycle with 10 to 15 minutes off between runs is about right.

So, tomorrow I gotta propose a solution for this.

Most of the system I’ll design.

I’ll propose using either four water cooled 17.5 kW units or four water cooled 35 kW units. Four 35 kW units would give the best option for redundancy. If I can get them to spring for four 35kW units, then I can have N+1 redundancy with the ability to do Lead / Lag alternating with extra capacity for out-of-the-ordinary extreme days.

I’d have to get the appropriate fluid coolers for this setup. Again, nothing too fancy, just some adiabatic coolers. I could also get some air coils put into the air handler for the Emergency Department or the 2 East unit so that the heat from the freezer room could be used to pre-heat the fresh air in the cool weather thus reducing our steam bills for these two air handlers. When pre-heat isn’t required for the Emergency Department or the 2 East unit the adiabatic cooler would just reject the heat to the atmosphere.

Pipes would have to be installed up the side of the building, but they’re tearing the place down in about 6 years, so………. And I’ve always been a function over form type of guy. And it’s not like they’d look horrible. Probably be a pair of 76mm pipes.

So, we’ll see what I’m up for tomorrow when I get in to work.

The one that got away

Okay, so the babysitter matter seems to be winding its way through the lawyers, which is nice.

But one matter that won’t ever get taken care of is the ’95 mugging.

As I mentioned previously in other postings, I had been to a late show at the Capitol 6 on Granville St. I went to see Congo at the Capitol 6.

Going to the late shows was something that I got into the habit of when I first moved to Vancouver. This was due to the fact that most of the jobs I had were evening jobs.

Most of the theatres on Granville were running late shows. The theatre on the south west corner of Granville and Smyth was forever showing Bob Guccione’s “Caligula”, the Caprice was showing films like Clockwork Orange, 2001 A Space Odyssey, and old black and white films.

Once the City of Vancouver turned Granville Street into Booze Can Alley in the early 2000’s all of the theatres were converted into booze cans / night clubs. The Capitol 6 was shut down in the early 2000’s to make way for condos. The Granville 7 ceased operations in the late 2000. Outside of the Vogue theatre, which itself was at risk of being gutted and converted into a bar, there are no movie theatres left on Granville St.

In July of ’95 I was working for Elashi developments / Lois Lanes Bowling & Billiards out in East Richmond on Gilley Road. I got off work as I usually did at 22:00 and I caught the #410 to 22nd street station. And like I did every Friday previously, I took the train downtown instead of into New West.

I forgot what I wanted to see, but I ended up seeing a movie called “Congo”. This movie was panned and reviled by the critics at the time, but the film that I had wanted to see wasn’t going to be shown as the film hadn’t arrived on time.

Young kids these days will never know the frustration of showing up to a theatre and being unable to see a film because it didn’t arrive in time, it got sent to the wrong theatre , or it got so damaged that the theatre had to request a new print. Nowadays theatres get their movies either via digital satellite download, or by a hard drive package.

Before leaving the bowling centre, Rosa had given a fist full of Canadian Tire money as she knew I was planning on going to Canadian Tire the next day to pick up some parts for a car that I was trying to get running.

I’ve gone into detail on this matter before, so I’m not going to go into the details again. But to quickly recap, some guy and his girlfriend in the concession stand line mistook the Canadian Tire money in my pocket as high denomination bills.

Security tape from the theatre showed them leaving the concession line as soon as I did, and they followed me right into the theatre. The same tape also apparently showed them leaving the theatre and following me right out the front doors.

The movies would end around 01:30 to 02:00 and as is still the case these days, there is no Skytrain back east at these hours. The only way to get home to New West was to catch the #19 which would make its way from downtown to Stanley Park. And the only way to get a seat on the #19 would be to board the bus over at Pender and Burrard. And that’s where I was heading after the movie was over.

The blue asterisk is where the Capitol 6 used to be. The Yellow dot at Pender and Burrard was my intended destination. The black star is as far as I made it.

Looking south on Burrard to West Georgia.

This is where I got “clubbed”.

Didn’t hear much except for somebody running up behind me. As I had just passed the bus stop in the photo I assumed that it was just someone running either for the bus or was running down to Pender to get the #19.

The guy was about 6′ tall, East Indian male, beard, well built.

The female was white, about 5’6″, white heels, white mini-skirt.

He was armed with a red steering wheel club.

From what I can remember, he didn’t have this is the theatre.

The female was armed with a fair sized kitchen knife. I distinctly remember the three rivets in the handle.

I don’t think that most people walk around with a 10″ chef’s knife in their purse.

The only thing that I can think of is that they had a car parked nearby. And if they were this quick to arm themselves, this probably wasn’t the first time they had jumped someone.

He kept striking me with the club as I was on the ground and kicking me in the back and in the head. As he tried to search my pockets for the “money” he’d keep telling the female to stab me with the knife if I tried to fight back or tried to hit him.

All they managed to get was my wallet that didn’t contain much in money. The security guards from the Hyatt Regency raced over and chased them two suspects away.

Hyatt Regency hotel across the street where the two security guards came from.

I spent Saturday morning getting stitches in my scalp from the blows from the club.

The Vancouver Police Department officer, Constable Gil Puder, was a complete jerk. Even the nurse putting my stitches in was getting upset with him and told him that his questions were inappropriate and that he’d have to leave.

As he walked away he tossed the statement sheet on my stretcher and said that when I felt like telling him the truth I could fill the form in and get it back to him

When I was released Rosa came to pick me up and drove me back to my apartment.

My jacket had so much blood in it that when it dried out it was not flexible. I had to crunch it up to get it into the washing machine.

I went back downtown on Monday. I was hoping to find my wallet as it had all of my identification in it. When I got to the place where I had been mugged, the maintenance crew from Park Place were outside using the pressure washer to clean my blood off the sidewalk. I guess it had dried on Saturday and Sunday and was proving difficult to clean off.

I traced my steps from the Saturday morning and I figured out that it had to be someone from around the movie theatre. It was just by chance that I decided to ask the theatre if they had a video tape of the Friday night.

The manager was nice, she asked me for a description of the people, and then she went to view the video tape. She came back about 20 minutes later and said that she saw the two people I had described and me. She said that they were in the concession lineup next to me, they seemed to get excited when I pulled something out of my pocket, and then the left the lineup and followed me right into the theatre. When the movie was over they followed me right out. When I went to the washroom, he followed me into the washroom, and then he followed me right out.

What did they get excited about?

The Canadian Tire money.

The manger said that she would put the tapes aside and if the VPD officer wanted to come by and pick them up that they’d be waiting.

I called constable Puder.

Nope, he wasn’t buying it.

He had made up his mind that I was a gay male prostitute and that I tried picking this guy up in a gay bar and that until I admitted the truth he wasn’t going to waste his time.

Now, after having spent three years in the care of Terry Totzke for issues related to the apparent homosexuality that I had exhibited when I “allowed” myself to be molested, I wasn’t in the right mindset to deal with this.

I still don’t know what it was that made Puder think that I was gay, let alone a prostitute.

First, I didn’t drink, so I wouldn’t be anywhere near a bar.

And at that point in my life, you couldn’t have found me anywhere near Davie Street. I would have gone out of my way to stay away from any place like Davie street.

Second, I was still quite fucked up from having been dealt with by Terry Totzke, so I wasn’t even sexually interested in anything back then.

Was it the way that I dressed?

Was it some sort of lisp that I wasn’t aware that I had?

Was it my moustache that I had at the time?

Was it my haircut?

At the time I had been mugged it would have been 12 years since being dealt with by Terry Totzke for being a “homosexual”.

I survived working at Classic Billiards with my sexuality being questioned by the two co-owners who were police officers with the Metropolitan Toronto Police service.

I lost a job that I had moved to in Toronto for because my manager hadn’t been told that he was getting a fruit.

So, to have constable Puder literally blame me for getting myself mugged it was the CFB Namao matter all over again.

When cops tell you that there is no such thing as the “thin blue line”, they’re full of shit. The problem with cops is they’re trained in the “us vs. them” mentality. They’re trained, and it’s drilled into their skulls, that they are the only ones standing between law & order and the complete collapse of society.

And the VPD had all sorts of problems back in the ’90s. The dysfunction within the VPD is what led to Robert Pickton’s murder spree in the DTES.

When I went into the VPD on Main Street and tried to make a complaint against Puder and to ask for the case to be transferred to another constable I was literally shown the front doors of the Main St. station and told to get out and that if I came back again that I’d be charged with trespassing and harassment.

Puder died in the late ’90s.

I had someone I knew suggest that Puder’s brain tumour had fucked him up so badly that his brain was fried.

So whaddya think?

Was it Puder’s brain tumour that fucked up his common sense?

Or is “gaydar” a real thing and that gay/bi/trans people give off “signals”?

I mean, the babysitter and McRae, Totzke, Earl, Ed, Dirk, Don, Puder, Ron, Alex, and others can’t have just been randomly guessing that I was “gay”.

Even the kids at Pierre Laporte in North York often claimed that I was gay, a fag, a homo, that I walked like a girl, etc.

I do have the VPD incident report, and except for the notes from the morning that I was in the hospital, there’s nothing else to the investigation. I guess that Puder really did kill the investigation.

And so this one will go down as another unsolved crime.