depression – Page 20

The end of my vacation

Well, next week this time I’ll be back at work.

It’s been bliss for the last two weeks.

What did I accomplish?

Sweet fuck all.

And that’s a good thing.

Work is interesting, but it’s extremely stressful. And not in a good way.

People ask if I’m going to the new site when it opens.

FUCK NO.

Three people on the committee planning the new site made it very clear that I am personna non grata at the new site, so fuck it. My life has enough shit going on in it, I don’t need to go there and take a shit shower from these three.

I love it when my ideas and suggestions and ideas are “too outlandish”, and “too silly”, and “completely unjustified”. But yet they show up in the current build as someone else’s proposal.

I was so looking forward to having made my application for M.A.i.D. this past March, but the fucking milquetoast liberals got a bad case of the chicken shits at the last moment.

Basically I’m holding on to my current job as kinda a massive “fuck you!” to certain federal agencies in Canada that decided that my mental health was expendable.

I’m also holding on to my current job to spite all of the corporate bag lickers and pole smokers from my past jobs that said that I would never amount to anything because I was too damaged.

Once operations at the new site start to wind down in 2027 I should have a better idea as to whether or not I’ll be able to undergo M.A.i.D.

If the right wing tide of hate keeps sweeping across North America then M.A.i.D. will still be unavailable for persons such as myself.

If that’s the case then my intentions are to stay at the old site until it shuts down in 2030.

By that time I’ll be able to retire and walk away from it all.

Where will I go?

Who the fuck knows.

What about transitioning?

Yep, I’ll keep transitioning.

It just keeps repeating over, and over, and over again.

When will the federal government ever learn that the Canadian Armed Forces are incapable of operating their own police service.

The Canadian Forces Provost Marshal has absolutely no business whatsoever investigating or prosecuting for any criminal code offence.

Since my first tango with the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal and the Military Police Complaints Commission in 2013 I’ve always said that there is massive fuckery afoot within the confines of the Provost Marshal’s office.

What type of batshit insane lunacy allows for the provost marshal to determine what, if any, information will be handed over to the military police complaints commission?

Nothing more than poorly written legislation that allows the provost marshal to do so at whim.

Now, I fully understand that there will be those amongst you that will say “But Bobbie, why didn’t you tell the MPCC about the missing information”.

That’s not how it works.

That’s not how any of this works.

When a person makes a complaint about a military police investigation, the first place it goes is to the exact agency that you’ve made a complaint against.

And actually, a person such as myself can’t complain about an investigation or the outcome of an investigation. The only persons who can complain about interferance in an investigation are the investigators. But the MPCC pointed out previously that relying on the investigators themselves to make interferance complaints on their own may be impossible as the investigator themself may be completely unaware of any interference if the interference occurs high enough up the chain of command.

All a person like me can complain about is the actions of specific investigators.

If the investigation went off the rails due to “lawful” commands from up the chain of command, the last thing that the provost marshal will do is publically announce that the Vice Chief of Defence Staff or someone higher up gave instructions to the CFNIS about the investigation.

Remember, under the National Defence Act the Provost Marshal is directly subordinate to the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, and that the VCDS has the full authority under the National Defence Act to issue instructions to ANY CFNIS investigation.

The provost marshal has absolutely no interest in covering themselves with shit. So the first thing they do is they take the information in your complaint and use that to sanitze the complaint investigation. They know that you’re more than likely going to make a follow up complaint to the Military Police Complaints Commission so they take all of the information they have at hand and then package it up in a pretty little package with a pretty little bow on top.

Even gift wrapped, it’s still just shit.

And as luck would have it, the Military Police Complaints Commission has to accept whatever documents the provost marshal choses to pass along to the MPCC. During a complaint review the MPCC cannot subpoena documents, it cannot subpoena witnesses, it cannot administer oaths.

As recently as 2015 the Military Police Complaints Commission said that it really didn’t know how the Canadian Forces Military Police Group operated as it had never been given access to the orders and procedures governing the military police. And this means that the MPCC might not even know what evidence to ask for.

Globe and Mail interview with then chairman Glenn Stannard

From the interview of Glenn Stannard by Gloria Galloway

It’s not very confidence inspiring when the agency overseeing a particular agency doesn’t know how that agency is supposed to work.

When I was interviewed by the MPCC in July of 2012 I seriously felt sick to my stomach after the interview. I went for a very, very long walk and it took ever fibre in my body to keep from jumping off the Granville Bridge.

The two MPCC interviewers from Ottawa basically gave me a lecture on why they weren’t going to find any fault with the CFNIS investigation. They came to Vancouver with their minds made up already. The sad thing is, they’re retired civilian police officers who viewed the CFNIS as just being a military version of the civilian police and therefore their “brothers in blue”.

When I filed for Judicial Review in February of 2013, the CFNIS was required to forward to me a certified copy of all of the documents that the Provost Marshal had given to the MPCC in 2012.

It was fucking disturbing just how many records were missing and how many “errors” there were in the SAMPIS.

What an absolute fucking joke this was.

Basically what the Provost Marshal submitted to the MPCC was that I was a cheap two-bit conman looking to milk the Canadian Armed Forces for some easy money.

The MPCC really should have known better. But as it turns out it’s not allowed to know better.

“But Bobbie, why didn’t you introduce all off these missing documents during your hearing for Judicial Review”.

That’s the problem, you can’t.

Under the rules for MPCC Judicial Review you CANNOT introduce to the court ANY document or evidence that was not before the MPCC while they were conducting their review.

And the Chief of Defence Staff knows this.

And the Vice Chief of Defence Staff knows this.

And the Provost Marshal knows this.

The CDS, the VCDS, and the CFPM know that they can sell any bullshit story to the MPCC as the MPCC doesn’t have the power or authority to question what they’re being told.

And if the MPCC doesn’t like what it’s being told and instead wants to have an inquiry? That requires the permission of the Minister of National Defence.

Inquiries have too much potential to damage the Canadian Forces Military Police and that’s why they’re held so very infrequently. Just look at how damaging the MPCC review of the CFNIS investigation of the death of corporal Stuart Langridge was. The ass-whooping the CFNIS received from Michel Drapeau could never have happened anywhere outside of an MPCC inquiry.

The military chain of command does NOT allow for independent investigations.

Yes, you’ll have the provost marshal and the Chief of Defence Staff and the Minister of National Defence tripping all over themselves to exclaim that investigators with the CFNIS are free and independent of the chain of command.

This is absolutely B.S. and they know it.

There are absolutely no exceptions to the service offence of “Insubordination” in the National Defence Act. All members of the Canadian Armed Forces are subject to being charged with having committed the service offence of “Insubordination” if they disobey the “lawful” command of a superior.

And yes, there is a significant difference between “lawful” and “legal”. Basically “legal” infers that the command does not violate any criminal code statute. “Lawful” just means that the person issuing the command has the authority to issue the command, lawful does not vouch for the legal status of the command.

Insubordination is the most serious service offence that a member of the Canadian Forces can commit. Insubordination comes with an automatic sentence of life in prison or a lesser sentence.

In between when I became ensnared with the defective military justice system in 2011 and now we’ve had the External Review conducted by Madame Marie Deschamps, a retired Supreme Court justice.

Then we had another External Review conducted by the Honourable Louise Arbor.

Both reviews basically said the exact same thing. The Canadian Forces Military Police are inept and unskilled when it comes to sexual assault investigations.

Then we had the Third Independent Review of the National Defence Act conducted by the Honourable Morris J. Fish, a retired Supreme Court justice.

While Mr. Fish makes some very powerful recommendations it would appear that Mr. Fish was shielded from the fact that the CFNIS and the Provost Marshal often overstep their jurisdictional boundaries and involve themselves with investigations involving only civilians. This runs counter to the spirit of CFPM 2120-4-0.

These reviews resulted in the Minister of National Defence instructing the military police in 2021 to hand over all sexual assault investigations to the civilian police. The investigation into my complaint against the man in the sauna was retained by the CFNIS with no explanation as to why other than that I was told by the CFNIS that the CFNIS was the only police agency able to work on historical military cases.

And before my time there was the military police fiasco in Bosnia and then subsequently the military police fiasco in Somalia which led to the elimination of the CFSIU, the creation of the Provost Marshal, and the creation of the CFNIS.

And who can forget the “CFB Gagetown Rape Controversy”.

The CFB Gagetown Rape Controversy is well worth the read, and it highlights all of the long standing flaws in the National Defence Act and how civilians are an afterthought to the military justice system and how civilians are at a substantial disadvantage when navigating the military justice system.

And as the offences that are alleged to have occurred during the CFB Gagetown Rape Controversy occurred pre-1998, even if the RCMP were to become involved with this investigation they’d have to hand it right on over to the CFNIS as these offences occurred on a defence establishment making them service offences. And as we all know, there is a 3-year-time-bar on all service offences that occurred prior to 1998. Yes, Rape was a crime that was specifically excluded from prosecution by the military tribunal system, but there was nothing stopping the military police and the CFSIU at the time from investigating this matter. In fact as this occurred on a defence establishment it would have been well within the mandate of the base military police and the CFSIU to investigate. So yes, the 3-year-time-bar would apply. And as these service offences occurred prior to 1998, the commanding officer of the accused would be required to review the charges before sending these charges to the provincial crown prosecutor. There was no mechanism in the pre-1998 National Defence Act to allow for the military police or the CFSIU to bypass the commanding officer and go straight to the provincial crown.

And as luck would have it, the Military Police Complaints Commission is not allowed to look at or review pre-1998 military police or CFSIU investigations.

So here we are again. It’s now 2024 and the CFPM, the CFMPG and the CFNIS still exist.

How many more years of dysfunctional and unaccountable military police will Canadians be willing to endure? Or is this a case of “out of sight, out of mind”?

Will the recommendations from Deschamps, Arbour, and Fish amount to anything or will the MoD, the CDS, and the VCDS slap a fresh coat of paint over the mildewy wallpaper without addressing the rot and disease underneath?

The Provost Marshal and the military police, including the CFNIS need to be scaled down. They need to have their responsibilities limited to offences of a purely military nature. Any crime of a civilian nature that occurs on a defence establishment or involves someone subjected to the Code of Service Discipline, especially if the victims are civilian, needs to be handed over without question or delay to the outside civilian authorities having jurisdiction.

Sure, you’re going to get a lot of naysaying from those involved with the Canadian Forces. But that’s only because the people making those complaints understand the need for the military to retain its own police agency in order for the military to hide secrets from the civilian world.

Many of our NATO allies currently operate with civilian police attending to civilian matters and the military police attending to purely military matters. Doing the same in Canada shouldn’t be out of the question, and its definately preferable to allowing the military to keep doing its own thing.

Soft………

Well, one thing that I’ve noticed over the past few weeks is how soft my skin is now.

Since I started taking estrogen a few weeks ago my skin has become noticeably softer and smoother.

And yes, this was to be expected, but I didn’t think that it would have been this noticeable.

My breasts are noticeable, but not that noticeable. I’ve seen guys with bigger Molson boobs than what I currently have.

They’re just barely large enough to show through my tops, but they are large enough to snag the shoulder strap of my laptop case.

I don’t think I’ll have to resort to the Judy Blume exercises…….

But hot damn my nipples are super sensitive.

My body fat feels different too. It’s a lot more squishy and jiggly.

Mood?

My mood is different. Can’t quite explain it, but it’s different.

I’ve got an appointment with my doc next week.

See how well my kidneys and liver are taking to the new hormones.

This will be the first of my never ending blood tests and we’ll see how much estrogen was in my bloodstream on the final day of the four day period for my patch.

We’ll decide if I stay with the same patches or if I go up in strength.

And we’ll eventually decide if I go on androgen blockers.

Then I’ll know for sure what the mood difference is between androgen and estrogen.

Sometimes when I go to apply a new patch, the exposed portion of the patch will fold over and touch itself. Because of the adhesive I can’t get that half apart. I wasn’t sure what to do with the 1/2s that were good. Well, I can actually cut off the stuck together part of two different patches and then use the good parts as one patch and cover them with Tegaderm. Just like new!

Family tree

So, getting a little bit more details about the maternal side of the family now.

My maternal grandmother was Alma Viola Zong.

She was not Chinese.

She was German.

Even though I know Alma’s name I still don’t have a birthdate for her.

Still have no idea the name of my maternal grandfather.

But that’s the same as on the paternal side of my family.

I have a pretty good tree on the maternal side of my father’s family, but the paternal side has drawn up blanks so far.

I know the connection between Arthur Herman Gill, Ladeen Gill, and the Zwolle clan in Oshawa.

But beyond that, not too much.

So, I’ll have to keep slogging away.

In other news

My legal matter involving the CAF, the DND, and the DOJ is still proceeding.

Had a bunch of documents to read and approve this week.

Had a good phone call with the law firm.

Still awhile to go before this matter is over, but at least it’s still progressing.

Fears……

What fears have you overcome and how?

WordPress sometimes prompts me to write about a certain topic. It’s geared towards “family” type events.

There are very few that actually seem to apply to me.

Today’s prompt was somewhat interesting.

I think the biggest fear that I had in my life was my father.

I overcame that fear somewhat in 2006 during a series of phone calls that I had with him.

Then there was his death in January of 2017.

That was a major relief.

My brother thinks that I’m over exaggerating my fear of Richard, but as Dr. Gabor Maté observed, “no two children have the same parents”.

The most significant fear that I had of Richard was his temper. Richard had very poor impulse control and very poor control of his anger. He also couldn’t take into account the difference in physical strength between himself and the person he was lashing out at.

My fear of Richard only grew more intense when I became involved with military social worker Captain Terry Totzke.

Richard is dead and gone. And the world is probably better off for this. But his effects still haunt me and have left their traces upon me.

My grandmother was another person that I feared as a kid.

Her anger and her impulse control were worse than Richard’s, but at least she lacked the physical strength of Richard.

Alcohol. I’ve always feared being an alcoholic.

Both my father and my grandmother were intense alcoholics. Both were happy drunks for the most part. Conversely both were intensely angry people when they were sobering up.

I’ve had so little alcohol in my life I can almost remember every exact time.

The last time that I had a drink was back in July of 2011.

Before that it was January of 2010

Before that it was August of 2006

Before that it was September of 2005

Before that it was May of 1994

Before that it was sometime in the winter of 1990 in Gagetown, New Brunswick.

Before that it was sometime around 1986.

I can’t remember all of the “sips” that my father or my grandmother would give me when they were drunk.

I do remember the beer that grandma made me drink in the summer of 1984.

Most of these were just casual get-togethers when I was changing jobs and moving up the so called ladder.

But becoming an alcoholic has always been one of my fears.

Growing up on military bases I was exposed to a significant amount of alcoholism. It was as if being an alcoholic was a requirement to join the Canadian Forces back in the ’50s through the ’90s.

Being a “homosexual” and subsequently growing up to be like the babysitter was always a major fear of mine. Both Captain Totzke and my father would keep telling me that if I didn’t stop kissing, hugging, and being interested in other boys that I would grow up to be just like the babysitter and the priest from Namao.

Imagine the type of fear that would instil into a 9 to 11 year old.

Being told that you’d be going to a psychiatric hospital or jail for “allowing” the babysitter to do what he had done.

Imposter Syndrome

I think one of the most crippling aspects of my personality is the imposter syndrome that I suffer from.

I have absolutely no idea of what I could have done in life.

But it hasn’t just been my lack of formal education that has held me back.

Yes, I only have grade 8.

But I also obtained my grade 12 GED with absolutely no preparation and no studying.

My marks were in the low 50s. Which is actually quite good.

The final scores on a GED equal the percentage of graduating high school students that your grades were equal to.

On the GED you absolutely do not want 100% as your final mark.

I consider myself to actually be quite stupid.

Yes, I know that there is a lot of shit that I can accomplish, but still my brain is locked on to this idea of how absolutely stupid I am.

And this causes problems at work. Oh boy does this cause problems.

I’m a qualified 4th class power engineer.

I am the Chief Engineer of a 4th class power plant.

I oversee 5 shift engineers, 3 maintenance engineers, an assistant chief engineer, and some casual engineers.

But where my imposter syndrome causes me issues is with the other engineers.

I can do things that are so far above my qualification levels.

The most recent being the replacement of the soft starter on chiller #3.

Chiller #3 has a 600 volt 450 hp motor.

This motor cannot be started across the line.

Originally it had a mechanical reduced voltage Wye-Delta starter that had been replaced with a solid state soft starter in the 90s. Well, that soft starter up and died last year.

The service company came back with a quote of $32k to replace the soft starter.

I found a brand new soft starter for $7.5k, so I decided to go with this ABB soft starter.

I had to guide the electrical department through how to connect this drive to the chiller and interface it with the chiller.

Soft Starter running for first time

Absolutely none of my engineers would have been able to do this. And it’s not for a lack of training or explanation.

And this is where the imposter syndrome kicks in really bad.

If a fucking idiot like myself can understand how to interface the soft starter to the chiller so the chiller can command it and so it can send feedback to the chiller, why can’t my subordinates understand too? We’re all 4th class power engineers. Actually two of my guys are 3rd class power engineer, but still?

I have no special training.

I have no special schooling.

And there was even some eye rolling from the chiller mechanic when I told him what I was going to do with the chiller.

“Bobbie, make sure that you connect the MCR1 and MCR2 relays as they are or the chiller won’t start”.

So I hauled out the schematics for the old Wye-Delta starter and the MCR1 and MCR2 relays were only used with the old mechanical wye-delta starter that had been tossed in the bin in the ’90s. The relays actually had to be jumpered in such a way just to make them engage so the chiller would start.

This caused ‘discussions’ back and forth.

I’m happy to report that the chiller starts just fine without the useless MCR1 and MCR2 relays.

Originally the chiller used a current donut on one of the 600 volt phases to monitor how much power the chiller was consuming. This went through a little converter board that changed the AC current into DC and then put it through a divider network to obtain a 0 to 5 volt signal. This 0 to 5 volt signal was then fed to the chiller CPU.

I happy to report that the chiller works just fine without this convertor board and that the chiller amp display now matches the actual current consumption of the chiller.

Well Bobbie, why don’t you take training or courses and move up in the world?

I am literally the dumbest fucking person you’ll ever meet. I am not smart. I just read. That’s it. My magical skill is reading.

And this causes me issue.

If I am the dumbest fucking person that I am aware of, why can’t anyone else do what I can?

A few years ago I put together a networked monitoring system for monitoring the temperatures of the refrigeration systems in the kitchens, the pharmacy, and the blood bank. This system just uses a bunch of stand alone refrigeration controllers networked together with RS-485 and some web servers. When I try to show the other guys how to program the system, or change settings on the system, you can see the puzzled looks coming across their faces. It’s almost as if I’ve started speaking in a long forgotten language or there are tentacles popping out of my face.

Again, there’s no coding involved. It’s just logging into a system made from off the shelf components. The webserver is meant to be programmed by supermarket store managers.

Where could I have gone in life without this imposter syndrome?

Who knows?

What causes imposter syndrome?

Apparently having depression and anxiety set one up for experiencing imposter syndrome.

Upbringing also plays an important part in setting one up for experiencing imposter syndrome. Apparently inconsistent parenting and unsupportive parenting place one at risk for developing imposter syndrome.

In the mean time I guess I have to be content with being the asshole who won’t “share” his knowledge with others…….

Finally, at long last.

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.

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.

Anyways, enough for now…….

2 weeks to go

Two weeks from now, at around this time I’ll have anti-androgens and estrogen coursing through my blood stream.

I received the results of my blood test earlier this week. Nothing out of the ordinary. My cholesterol is a little high, but nothing to worry about.

My testosterone levels are on the low side. Probably a side effect of my anti-depressants. But again, nothing to worry about.

I really don’t know how things are going to play out at work.

I have a pretty secure position, but still.

For the most part I don’t think that I’ll have any problem.

I know my life in the great outdoors is gonna get a little more complicated.

But complicated is what I seem to do the best.

To not be male is my primary goal.

As I’ve said, I’ve never identified as male.

But nonetheless male is what I have been.

Was never really masculine enough.

And people have always accused me of not being straight.

Captain Terry Totzke was the first person in my life to accuse me of being a homosexual.

For years after the abuse I had always wondered if Totzke was right. Maybe I got abused because I was gay or because I acted too much like a girl.

School wasn’t too bad, until grade 7 when everyone’s hormones started switching into overdrive, then I was a target for the real boys who didn’t want a faggot in their midsts. I could never figure out what it was. Was it the way I walked? Was it the way I talked? Was it the fact I never acted like horndog around girls and that I never showed any interest in girls?

When I worked for Ed, Bruce, and Dirk at Classic Billiards, Ed was always quick with the gay humour. I got sent to do a service call at the Hotel Isabella by myself with Ed asking me if I got any “action” when I came back to the shop. Ed even sent me off to see a rather interesting promoter in the city. Ed kept asking me if he made any advances to me and if I did anything with him.

In my teen years I would periodically find myself being groped by random men. I never could figure out why I was being groped and no one else was. Like I’d be riding the subway and some dude would make a bee line for me on an empty car, sit down beside me, make some small talk, and then his hand would be massaging my crotch. One time I was downtown at Funland Arcade, I was playing pinball, and the guy wasn’t even being coy about it, he just came up from behind, stuck his hand between my legs, and he wasn’t even coy about it. And as he’s doing that he asks me if I want to go back to his place as he finds me really cute.

I got mugged back in 1995 down at Burrard and West Georgia in downtown Vancouver. The first thing that the investigating officer wanted to know is was this actually a fight between me and my boyfriend or perhaps I tried to pick up a straight guy in a bar.

I had a manger in the early ’00s who would frequently refer to me as “Freddie” as in Freddie Mercury. He would often urge me to use protection when I had sex as he didn’t want me to catch AIDs.

While I was working for this same manager, one of the contractors that did construction projects for the company used to wait until no one was around, then he’d call me a faggot, or a fucking queer. I’d go talk to the manager and he’d laugh it off and tell me that I had to grow a thicker skin if I wanted to survive in the world.

When I first started working at the hospital my department was managed by an outside management firm. I had two mangers that worked for this outside contractor. One of these managers refused to acknowledge me. The other manager, who was the first manager’s manager said that I was far too flamboyant and that if I toned it down maybe the other manager would begin to tolerate me.

But through all of this, never once did I feel “gay”.

I just never really was attracted to women.

And actually, I was never really attracted to men either.

Since I was a kid I was certain that I was going to have nice breasts. Not big ones, nothing like Dolly Parton or Jane Mansfield. Just nice ones.

All the other stuff I wasn’t too concerned about because I really wasn’t aware of the other stuff yet.

Around age 5 on CFB Shearwater, me and three of my female friends were playing in the garage attached to one of their PMQs. I can’t honestly remember how it came to this, but the three of them were tying to help me push my penis back inside because the consensus was that I must have peed too hard one time and that’s why everything popped out and why I didn’t look like them.

But the differences down below never really caused me any issues until later.

In the years that I lived on CFB Griesbach in the aftermath of CFB Namao I really despised what I had between my legs. I didn’t like it and I didn’t want it.

Even though I had been sexually abused for 1-1/2 years, I’m certain that the disdain that I felt towards my junk wasn’t because of the abuse.

About that time I had started going through the early parts of puberty.

And I really didn’t like what was going on.

The feelings of phantom breasts were becoming more intense. It’s like I felt like these should be developing, but they never did.

And at the same time it felt like my hips were supposed to be widening, but they never did. It’s an odd sensation that still persists to this day.

I used to cry myself to sleep every night hoping that I’d wake up as a girl the next day, but childhood hopes can’t overcome physical realities.

It was just after we moved to CFB Downsview in Toronto that my nipples started to secrete a milky white liquid. Finally! I thought that I was finally going to get my breasts. Nope.

Apparently some boys experience this leakage and it’s quite normal.

Transitioning isn’t something that I just decided to do on a whim.

I legally changed my name back in 2008 as a first step in the process.

Bobbie was supposed to eventually become Bobbi.

I even wrote my father a detailed letter explaining what I wanted to do and why I was doing it. He never wrote back or called after that.

And it’s not like he didn’t know what was coming down the pike. In August of 2006 we had an in depth conversation about the events on CFB Namao in which he blamed his mother for hiring the babysitter and that I just had to understand that none of it was his fault.

I told him that I wanted to go after the babysitter and Richard cautioned me against doing that as I might not like the way the shits smells.

After we had that initial telephone call he called me on a daily basis for almost 2 months, but then the calls just suddenly stopped.

I think maybe I had mentioned the verboten topic in casual passing in one phone call.

When I got my name change in 2008 I was so geared up towards taking the necessary steps, but then in 2009 I got an offer of employment that would steer me off course.

The new job disappeared due to a dispute between two factions of shareholders that owned the company. One faction wanted to keep the business operating, the other faction just wanted to sell the property and get the money and get out of there.

I ended up taking some of the shareholders to the Supreme Court of BC. Took a few months of legal back and forth but we ended up settling out of court.

Armed with this, I decided to take on the babysitter.

That was a fucking mistake.

I could have transitioned years ago, but instead I got ensnared in the shit my father warned me about. For 13 years I got derailed on my gender adventure by a military hellbent on keeping their dirty laundry out of sight of the public.

They lied, and they lied, even though they knew the truth.

They called me a societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military.

The Minister of National Defence accused me of being a scammer looking for a quick buck.

So, here I am waiting for two weeks.

Two weeks for me to get my first dose of anti-androgen meds and my first dose of estrogen.

I won’t truly be a woman, and I’m fine with that.

Just so long as I can no longer be considered a male, I’m happy with that.

If this works and there are no adverse effects, then I do plan to have all traces of my male genitalia removed. No penis, no testicles, no scrotum. Just nothing.

I’ve often wondered what it would be like if humans were born genderless and then had to choose a gender on the 16th birthday, what gender would I have chosen.

The sad thing about being a human being is having to endure other human beings that “know more”.

“God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” blah, blah, blah.

There’s only two genders……. blah, blah, blah.

Boys are supposed to have sex with girls, not with other boys (Totzke said this)…… blah, blah, blah.

You can’t have a penis and testicles and long for your phantom breasts and phantom hips….. blah, blah, blah.

I’m not a brainologist, or a genderologist, or a sexual attractionologist, I’m just a XY that’s never felt like an XY or identified as an XY.

The Justice System in this country is in shambles and is horrifically broken if you’re the victim

The justice system in this country is broken, of that there is absolutely no doubt.

And sadly, it’s the victims of crime that get the proverbial boot to the balls.

Most, if not all, victim assistance programs are geared towards victims in which a conviction has occurred or where there exists the likelihood that a crime was committed.

But what if the police department that is conducting the investigation is compromised?

What if the system that you are ensnared in is not set up for dealing with civilian victims?

If you’ve followed my blog you’ll see that I’ve been engaged with the Canadian Armed Forces and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service since March of 2011.

March of 2011 is of course when I decided to deal with the babysitter.

Yes, I had from 1980 to 2011 to deal with the babysitter, that is true, but if you’ve followed along with my blog you’ll realize that from 1980 to 1983 a military social worker was blaming me for allowing myself to be abused and for allowing the babysitter to molest my brother.

In March of 2011 I was finally ready to deal with the babysitter against the wishes of my father.

I made my complaint with the Edmonton Police Service. The EPS passed the matter off to the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service.

As the certified tribunal records illustrate, that investigation was an absolute joke. But that wasn’t surprising at the time as the military police were being dragged through the mud for their inability to investigate sexual assaults involving women in the military.

And if it hadn’t been for a series of questions that Master Corporal Christian Cyr asked me on May 3rd, 2011 I would have never put 2 & 2 together with respect to the babysitter and Captain McRae, the base chaplain. Nor would I have known that the babysitter had sued the Minister of National Defence for the sexual abuse at the hands of Captain McRae.

The investigation concluded on November 4th, 2011 with Petty Officer Steve Morris calling me and telling me that the CFNIS couldn’t find any evidence at all to indicate that the babysitter was capable of what I accused him of.

In December of 2011 I filed a complaint with the Military Police Complaints Commission. The MPCC conducted a ‘review’, but during a review the MPCC relies solely upon documents submitted to it by the Provost Marshal. The MPCC is not allowed to subpoena documents. In fact, during an MPCC review the MPCC cannot administer oaths.

In 2012 I filed my first of many FOI requests to obtain the court martial transcripts of Captain McRae.

In February of 2013 the MPCC gave the CFNIS a solid TWO-THUMBS-UP for a very detailed investigation that spanned 30 years.

However, what the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal failed to hand over to the Military Police Complaints Commission in 2012 was the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the transcripts from the July 15-18 courts martial of Captain Father Angus McRae. I know about this paperwork because an investigator with the CFNIS would later inform me about the existence of this paperwork and that it corroborated everything that a retired military police officer had told me on November 27th, 2011.

After the MPCC review was over I quickly assessed my options. I tried to obtain a lawyer with federal court experience, specifically experience with dealing with the Military Police Complaints Commission. The clock ticks pretty fast when one wants to file for judicial review. You literally have 90 days from the day the findings of the tribunal are released to file your application.

The lawyers that I was speaking with all wanted retainers in the neighbourhood of $15k to $20k.

But more importantly, most of these lawyers were hung up on why a civilian wanted to have the federal court quash the findings of a military tribunal.

Something doesn’t make sense.

You’re not telling us the truth.

You’re hiding something.

The military never investigates child sexual abuse

The military police never investigate civilian on civilian sexual abuse.

You should get the RCMP to look at this matter

You should get the Edmonton Police Service to investigate this matter.

So, I ended up representing myself in Federal Court.

When I received the certified tribunal records from the MPCC it was very obvious that the CFNIS and the Provost Marshal had excluded a vast amount of documentation and records from the records that were given to the MPCC.

Could I introduce my copies of these documents to the federal court? Nope. Well, I could, but I’d have to put the federal court matter on hold and appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Any lawyers willing to take that on?

Nope, not a single fucking lawyer wanted to look at this. Retainers for this were quoted around $20k

So in the end all of my documentation was excluded and the justice could only take into account documents that were before the MPCC and not documents that were withheld from the MPCC by the Provost Marshal. So the justice found in favour of the MPCC. The DOJ sent me a bill for about $2k for wasting their time.

In 2017, during the second CFNIS investigation into my original complaint against the babysitter, the investigator the with CFNIS let slip the existence of the court martial transcripts and the CFSIU investigation paperwork both of which heavily implicated the babysitter and both of which verified what Cunningham had told me in 2011 and that Cunningham was in a position to know exactly what he was talking about.

I started new FOIs for the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the Court Martial transcripts.

In 2018 the 2nd CFNIS investigation was concluded, so I filed a request for a MPCC review of the 2nd CFNIS investigation. The Provost Marshall objected to this.

Due to the MPCC requesting copies of the court martial transcripts and the CFSIU investigation paperwork, DND could no longer refuse to give me a copy. It took some bad publicity from David Pugliese with the Ottawa Citizen to finally get DND to cough up the documents.

What did the documents show:

The babysitter’s molestation of children is what triggered the investigation of Captain McRae
The investigation of the babysitter occurred in his family’s PMQ and was conducted by military police officers Mossman and Clark.
Much like what the babysitter’s father told me in June of 2015, the military police had received complaints from numerous parents.
The babysitter had forced anal intercourse with three 10 year old boys behind the recreation centre.
The babysitter was known to have had sex with children much younger
The babysitter was receiving psychological counselling for his attraction to young children.
It was colonel Daniel Edward Munro’s decision as to what charges Captain McRae was charged with, this shows that the summary investigation flaw in the National Defence Act had very real world consequences for child sexual abuse matters.
The court martial transcripts also proved once and for all that the Canadian Armed Forces could and would conduct courts martial for child sexual abuse matters.

The MPCC released the review in October of 2020. And they observed a few things.

The babysitter had more criminal convictions for child sexual abuse than what the CFNIS indicated in their documents to the crown.
The CFNIS relied on the Crown’s reluctance to prosecute on insufficient evidence as their being “no evidence”.
The CFNIS didn’t inform the Crown of the CFSIU paperwork that showed that there was an investigation of the babysitter at the time for sexually abusing children.
When Master Corporal Christian Cyr kept telling me on May 3rd, 2011 that the babysitter was only 12 or 13 at the time of the abuse, he was obviously getting this wrong age from the CFSIU paperwork as that is the only place the error occurs. The babysitter was born in June of 1965 and was 14 in the spring of 1980 and was fully within the jurisdiction of the RCMP and the juvenile delinquents court. But more importantly, the fact that Mcpl Cyr was quoting the wrong age showed that the CFNIS did have these documents from the start of the investigation.

It was only after I received the court martial transcripts and the CFSIU paperwork and the October 2020 MPCC findings that I was able to finally obtain a lawyer willing to take this matter on, and on a contingency basis.

But this isn’t the way that it should be.

No one in this country should have to square off against a tax payer funded agency like the Canadian Armed Force on their own.

No government agency should be allowed to use the short timelines provided by the various tribunals to stickhandle complainants.

I think the most significant reason why lawyers were willing to take on my matter so far as it related to the CFNIS and the MPCC is that these lawyers make a metric fuckton of money representing military members. When these ex-JAG lawyers represent members of the Canadian Forces, their bills are guaranteed to be paid. And paid at very well-off rates. A piss-ant civilian like me? What the fuck can I offer them?

And believe me, when you are going up against the Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of National Defence, and the MIlitary Police Complaints Commission, you need a lawyer not only with federal court experience, you need a lawyer with a very good and detailed understanding of military law and the various iterations of the National Defence Act over the years.

To this day I still get lawyers who are outright adamant that the military could never investigate child sexual abuse and the military courts sure as fuck could not conduct a courts martial for child sexual abuse. This even though I have Captain McRae’s court martial transcripts, and a good dozen decisions from the Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada in which service members were appealing their charges of child sexual abuse.

So when the military law lawyers can’t even get their shit together, what fucking chance do I stand?

None.

Does the justice system work?

Nope, it’s fucking broken.

Victims are left on their own to navigate the systems, systems that quite often do not work.

Victim rights are often an afterthought.

Legal aid for victims? Doesn’t exist.

Pro-bono assistance with federal court matters? Nope, doesn’t exist.

Civilian lawyers set up to assist civilians with navigating the Canadian Forces justice system and the peculiarities of the National Defence Act? Nope, doesn’t exist.

The fact that the babysitter doesn’t even have to apologize and in fact gets to keep playing the role of the sole victim while I’m condemned to the role of the bad guy is what irks me the most.

Car driver willfully runs a red light, causes a collision, and kills a 2 year old on the sidewalk and the judge is practically tripping over themselves to absolve the driver of any fault because the driver didn’t intend to kill the baby even though it was his foot on the accelerator and his hands on the steering wheel. And our fucked up no fault insurance system ensures that the parents are only getting about $20k for the death of their child.

Another car driver runs over and kills a police officer in Toronto and a jury of 12 people with no legal training and no legal back ground decide that a car driver shouldn’t have to be aware of their surroundings and that if someone “fears for their life” it’s okay to run anything over.

I just wish that victims had this much sympathy from the justice system.

Sure, locking up the wrong person is never a desirable outcome, but letting everyone walk because of the most tenuous of plausible arguments is absolutely wrong as well.

We seriously need to revamp the justice system.

No more jury trials. Juries should be replaced with panels of lawyers. Trials should not be left up to the whims of people with no legal understanding who are easily manipulated by the appeal to emotion. Anyone could have run over a bump on the ground……

Courts should be allowed to find guilt or assign guilt, without having to assign a sentence. If incarceration places the bar of evidence so high that the International Space Station is at risk of crashing into it, drop incarceration.

If your hands are on the steering wheel of a car that ends up running over someone, you shouldn’t be able to skip out of court scot-free.

Did my babysitter molest my brother and I and at least four other kids that I am aware of? Yes. The odds of probability lean very heavily in that direction. It’s not like I made my complaint against someone with no criminal record. And it’s not like I had access to the courts martial transcripts or the CFSIU investigation paperwork. The babysitter was under investigation for molesting children and the only reason he never went to juvie for what he did is that the base commander refused to allow the RCMP to be called in. So it wasn’t that the babysitter was innocent. Other issues at play allowed the babysitter at the time to escape responsibility. The problem with that is the Canadian Armed Forces chucked us under the fucking train.

Anyways, that’s my rant for now.

3 weeks to go

Well, it’s three weeks until my appointment with my nurse practitioner.

This of course is when I get my prescription for testosterone / androgen blockers and estrogen.

Is my goal to be a woman?

Nope.

I just have really never identified as anything. And I’ve never felt at home in my masculine body. In fact there are a lot of things that I hate and despise about with being a male.

If I had to say that I identified as anything, it would be non-binary. Something in the middle. A little bit of both. But not much of either.

I’ve always identified women as being smarter and superior to men.

I hate my genitals. I really do. I’ve hated this junk for as long as I can remember.

At first I’ll be on the testosterone / androgen blockers, but eventually I will undergo orchiectomy.

If I can get a penectomy, that would be nice, but it’s not a deal breaker.

Definitely not going for vaginoplasty.

I got fucked enough when I was a kid. If I never see another penis for so long as I live I’ll consider that to be “mission accomplished”.

Having nothing down there would make me happy.

I’ve wanted breasts for as long as I can remember, so much so that when I was about 11 or 12 and finally understood that I wasn’t going to develop breasts, I was devastated.

What will I develop?

Probably nothing more than an ‘A’ cup. Which is more than enough for me. If I had started this back in my teens or 20s I probably would have grown a bit more, but this will be fine.

I probably won’t show much at first, but around 6 months I should be sprouting. By about 14 months I’ll get as much as I’ll ever develop.

I’ll get softer skin, my facial hair will somewhat thin out. Other body hair will probably remain unchanged

I’ll lose muscle mass. My body fat will redistribute.

I’ve never felt at home in this body, and that was even before the events that occurred on Canadian Forces Base Namao.

My lack of breasts weren’t the only thing that I’ve felt was wrong since I was a kid. My hips don’t feel right. It’s like my hips should be much wider than what they are. The disconnect between my body size and what I feel my body size should be has haunted me all of my adult life. It’s hard to explain, but when I look in the mirror and see my body, my body feels as if it belongs to someone else. So when I say that I’m looking forward to losing muscle mass, I mean it.

Do I blame this gender / body dysphoria on the sexual assaults and subsequent counselling from CFB Namao? No. If anything the abuse and the subsequent counselling just conspired to delay me in taking action.

These issues are literally issues that I was born with.

Anyways, enough for now.