Tag: depression

Why the fuck am I not surprised?

Back in 2022 during one of the mediated hearings between myself and the lawyers for an entity that I cannot name, the lawyers brought up a line from my social service records that I had never seen.

“Mr. Gill appeared to be concerned about his mother’s drinking suggesting she is emotionally abusive to both children, especially when inebriated”.

That floored me as I never thought that Richard would have the fucking balls to call his mother a drunk. Never mind his fucking hypocrisy as both him and his mother were champion drinkers.

In January of 1977, Richard was arrested by the CFB Summerside military police for fighting with his own mother while they were both pissed drunk.

Well, seeing as how Richard was fucking dead since 2017, I submitted another Access to Information request, this time requesting more information if possible as both my grandmother and my father were dead.

On May 8th, 2022 I received the additional information that I requested.

Fuck, what a blast this was.

“Mr. Gill has a tendency in contact with professionals to blame the boys’ behaviour on their relationship with their grandmother who has lived with the family. Mr. Gill states that his mother is an alcoholic who refuses to seek help or treatment for her condition”.

“Mr. Gill claims that his mother is an alcoholic”.

What a fucking asshole. But he wouldn’t be Richard Gill if he wasn’t a fucking asshole.

” Another point is that Richard is resistant to Sue coming into sessions and voices concern that she ‘should be home making supper'”.

I’ll never understand why Sue stuck around.

She could have easily found someone who wasn’t an misogynistic alcoholic asshole.

I’ve seen my father naked, so it couldn’t have been the intense satisfying sex.

Richard was never subtle with his misogyny.

When Richard and Sue would get into arguments and fights in the house he’d gladly let fly with cunt this and cunt that.

When his friends were over he’d regale them with how much of a stupid bitch Sue was and how much of a fucking stunned cunt she could be.

When Sue was learning to drive stick shift on CFB Greisbach he’d get pissed off with her when she ground the gears.

If we were out in the city driving and a woman was driving slow in front of him or didn’t signal properly he’d gladly let fly with fucking cunt!, fucking dumb cunt!, fucking stunned cunt!

And he was no better with my child care workers in Edmonton, the majority of whom were women.

When my mother left in 1977 my father made sure that I understood that my mother was a whore who would spread he legs for anyone and that she ran off with a guy named Gus from the P.P.C.L.I.

I’m beginning to think that Richard probably told Marie to get into the kitchen and cook his supper one too many times.

But it’s really amazing to see exactly how much disdain Richard had for his mother.

Like, holy fuck, he’s the one who brought grandma into the house to live with us at CFB Summerside when our mother left.

He’s the one who requested the compassionate posting to move from CFB Summerside to CFB Namao when grandma returned to Edmonton to be with her husband Andy.

He’s the one who couldn’t stop his womanizing after Andy slipped in the bathtub and ended up in the long term care facility at the U of A.

And he had the fucking balls to tell my social workers that the problems my brother and I were exhibiting weren’t due to being sexually abused by our babysitter for a year and a half but were due to his alcoholic mother?

What a fucking complete asshole.

Was Richard an oddity in the Canadian Forces.

Fuck no.

The Canadian Armed Forces had a significant problem with misogyny. Actually they still have, but it’s no where near as bad as it was back in the ’70s and ’80s.

A guy like Richard would have found like minded malcontents in the military.

Remember, the canteen at 447 Squadron was plastered with fully naked centrefolds, and not just one or two pictures. They were all over the place. And when fathers would bring their sons to the squadron, they didn’t give a shit if their sons saw photos of naked women. That’s what women were for.

Marie was a woman, so as far as Richard was concerned his responsibility to raise his kids ended when he ejaculated. And cook his supper.

Grandma was a woman, so as far as Richard was concerned it was her job to look after his kids.

Sue was a woman, so it was her job to raise my brother and I.

Richard had no responsibility to raise his kids.

That’s what women were for.

Living well is the best revenge.

Bullshit.

Nothing upsets me more than that phrase and its various derivatives.

Do you think for a moment that my babysitter, that my father, that Captain Terry Totzke, that Brigadier General Daniel Edward Munro, or any of the plethora of military personnel up the chain of command give a single flying fuck that I did my best to keep my nose clean all of these years?

Do you think that they’re pissed off that I didn’t stick a knife in my femoral or that I didn’t jump off a bridge? They don’t care. They lived in their own little fantasy world.

The babysitter was Jack’s little hero when I talked to Jack in 2015.

The babysitter was the poor misunderstood victim in all of this.

Me, I was the “societal malcontent” frequently jumping from job to job and looking to scam the military for money.

Nobody in the Canadian Forces did anything wrong. They just did their best. They operated under the rules that were in place at the time. It wasn’t their fault they made poor decisions.

Do I get a fucking heavenly reward when my heart finally stops beating?

Nope.

Is there a magic do-over after I die?

Nope.

Meanwhile I’m the one living through major depression that was allowed to fester untreated for 33 years and counting.

I’m the one living with severe anxiety that was allowed to fester untreated for 33 years.

I’m the one living with the psychological trauma and genophobia gifted to me by Captain Terry Totzke and the sexual abuse.

I’m the one living in a life of solitude due to my anxiety, my haphephobia and my general mistrust of people.

Powerful people in the DOJ, the DND, and the CAF are running different scenarios at the moment trying to figure out if they should throw me and the other kids from CFB Namao a pittance in the hopes that we shut-up and go away, or if they should tie us up in court for 10 to 15 years while they wait for everyone involved to die off from old age.

The media as it currently exists is not the same media that existed in the ’90s and the ’00s when child sexual abuse was a cause célèbre being championed by just about every news desk around the country. Now the media is mostly foreign owned and consolidated with investigative journalism being reduced to investigating major controversies such as “Are Cadbury creme eggs getting smaller”, and “what new shows is Netflix airing the fall”. With the exception of David Pugliese and Jill Croteau not a single person in the media showed any interest at all, even when the Canadian Forces were tripping over themselves to minimize the fallout from the sexual abuse scandal that got kicked off around 2014, not one single fucking person with the media showed even the slightest interest in who exactly was investigating child sexual abuse on the military bases in Canada.

You would think that when it was revealed in 2020 that the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service had in their possession the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the 1980 court martial transcripts which both implicate the babysitter in molesting numerous children on the base even though the CFNIS had said in 2011 they couldn’t find ANY evidence at all that the babysitter was capable of committing the crimes that I accused him of that the media would be beating down the fucking door at NDHQ trying to get DND and the CAF to admit that children were sexually abused on military bases and had their matters handled by the same defective military police that couldn’t protect adult service members.

Nope.

Outside of David Pugliese, not a single fucking interest.

Jenn Blair had tried back around 2012 through 2015, but she got shut down by CBC Go Public brass. The CBC will argue differently, but the reporter they assigned to my story after they removed Jenn was put on my story to close it down and put it to bed. The video interview that was conducted between Jenn and I was destroyed. My story was to become an “interactive timeline” that people could click on if they visited the Go Public website. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that the CBC doesn’t believe that males can be the victims of child sexual abuse. It’s either that or they were worried about jeopardizing their funding or losing access to press releases from NDHQ.

Jennifer Tryon of Global’s 16X9 was interested, but short of the military admitting that there was a problem of child sexual abuse in the military Global didn’t feel free to make baseless accusations that could cause them legal issues.

So, here I am.

Treading water on my own.

People will tell me that they know how I feel and they know what I am going through. But they don’t. And the fact that they would dare try to claim they know what I am going through upsets me greatly. They don’t know what I am going through. They just want to make themselves feel better. Kinda like the “thoughts and prayers” that get passed around after another gunman goes on a rampage.

So no, living well isn’t the best revenge.

Brigadier General Daniel Edward Munro has led a very comfortable life since his retirement from the Canadian Forces regardless of the hand he played in the Captain McRae fiasco.

Captain Terry Totzke, same thing. I don’t know if he’s still alive or not. But he probably retired and lived well off of his officer’s pension.

Warrant Officer Richard Gill. Yeah, he no doubt enjoyed his NCO’s pension.

Living well?

That would have required me receiving treatment for all of my issues and being able to have enjoyed a normal life from 1980 onwards.

I survived.

And that’s about it.

I survived.

But I’m tired.

The only things that I am really good at are converting oxygen into carbon dioxide and converting food into shit and piss.

Mental Health

People often ask me if I’ve tried to obtain professional help with my issues.

Surely if you only tried Bobbie, you could get help! But remember it’s all on you!

There’s a few problems with this.

First, until relatively recently I didn’t realize that I had any problems as Captain Totzke and my father had both drilled into my head that my issues were just a way for me to seek attention and that the abuse that I endured on Canadian Forces Base Namao was not really abuse but was more than likely due to me being a homosexual, which was obviously a choice.. Even my father said much the same in 2013 in response to my written examination of him for federal court. “His issues could be whatever he wanted them to be”.

Second, after a childhood of being caught in the war between two opposing factions, my father and Captain Totzke on one side and my civilian counsellors and health practitioners on the other side, I really don’t have a lot of trust for these people.

Third, medical science doesn’t understand how the human brain works. Sure, there are a ton of theories. But most monographs that accompany psychiatric pharmaceuticals stress that they don’t understand the exact mechanism that allows the drug to work, but that the drug does seem to have the desired effects.

The Escitalopram that I’m on is interesting, but it’s like using numbing cream on the site of a tattoo. Sure, the numbing cream will keep the pain of the tattoo to a minimum, but the tattoo is still gonna cause trauma to your skin and even after the numbing cream wears off you’ll still feel pain.

Mental health funding in this country often looks like this:

Typical mental health facility in Canada.

A pretty sign, but nothing more than an out of order shit-house.

Counselling usually consist of being warned not to trauma dump on your counsellor. Just tell them enough that they feel like they know more than you, but don’t tell them so much that they run up on to the roof of the building to jump off.

I actually had one counsellor in a preliminary session tell me that he didn’t want to hear about my past as we live in the here and now.

I swear that most counsellors get into this field with the doe-eyed misconception that everyone’s trauma is the result of their goldfish dying when they were 10 years old, or their puppy got run over by a car when they were 12.

Then there are assholes like me that show up with multifaceted trauma. Sure, kids got sexually abused out in civvy land, and sure, some of this abuse occurred in the Catholic Church which could use its influence to hide things from the public eye. But that influence only went so far. Eventually enough stories became public that the church could no longer use its influence to hide this shit. The gates were opened and all of the crap came bursting through.

The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence OWN the bases and employ just about everyone on the bases. They even have their own law enforcement agency and their own judicial system. This is why you very rarely hear of child sexual abuse from the bases. It’s much easier to control a company town when you own everything and employ everyone in that company town.

My father and Captain Father Angus McRae worked for the same employer. On Canadian Forces Base Namao they had the same base commander who had control over the base military police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit. Even Captain Terry Totzke, the military social worker whose care I was under from October of 1980 until April of 1983 was under the command of Colonel Dan Munro, the base commander of CFB Namao.

How do I explain to a counsellor that my father’s employer pulled out all of the stops to ensure that the Captain McRae fiasco didn’t blow up beyond Captain McRae being charged with just molesting his teenaged accomplice?

How do I explain to a counsellor that the rejection and derision that I faced from my father came no doubt from his shitty parenting skills and his obedience to the Canadian Forces chain of command?

I learnt a while ago to not even mention my grandmother’s stint in Indian Residential School. Sure, her shitty childhood in a racist country run by the church and corrupt politicians obviously impacted my father’s shitty childhood, which of course impacted my childhood and my brother’s childhood. And sure, it was my grandmother’s frequent intoxication while she was raising my brother and I that no doubt led to my brother and I needing a babysitter, which led to our abuse. But bringing up my grandmother leads to accusations of me trying to be a full blood pretendian.

Basically my brother and I aren’t the end result of intergenerational trauma.

We’re not the victims of 1-1/2 years of sexual abuse on CFB Namao because our primary abuser was the sole victim of Captain McRae*.

I didn’t really have major depression, severe anxiety, or a host of other issues that I was diagnosed as having, because my military social worker said that I didn’t.

I wasn’t a victim of childhood sexual abuse because my military social worker declared that I was a homosexual and therefore I was a willing participant.

On base, child neglect and child abuse were verboten subjects that no one dared speak about. Everyone just minded their own business as you had no idea who the abuser’s chain of command was and how this could impact your own chain of command.

And you can’t go into a counsellor and talk about this shit. They don’t understand what life was like for military dependants and what a hell it could be when your serving parent could use compassionate postings to stay one step ahead of provincial social services.

Due to the over saturation of feel good depictions of the military and military life on television, no one in the civvy world believes that children were in any type of danger living on the bases and that in fact living on a military base was probably the safest place for a child to grow up.

And even if I did luck out and find a counsellor that has first hand military experience and understands that military life was far from perfect and that people in or around the military who found themselves in need of help were often neglected and ridiculed, what would that accomplish?

I have understood for quite some time that I am not at fault for what happened.

I understand what caused the issues that plague me to this day.

I fully understand that the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are far too massive of an opponent for me to ever have any influence over.

Talking isn’t going to fix anything.

I know the things that will forever be broken.

I know the things that will forever be beyond my grasp.

I know the things that were taken from me by others simply because they need to hide things.

Even if my lawyers are able to reach a settlement with the DND and the CAF, that settlement and any accompanying apology (if issued) isn’t going to undo things.

There’s one thing in particular that the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces will never be able to get for me. This is partially due to me never being able to believe a single fucking thing that would ever come from their collective mouths, and this is due to the fact that my father is long dead.

Around 1987ish, my brother took our stepmother’s Pontiac Chevette for a joyride. Richard beat the shit out of me for that because it was my fault that I wasn’t keeping an eye on my brother and I wasn’t raising my brother right. During that beating my father kept freely bringing up the babysitter’s name and that it was my fault that my brother was acting up because I let the babysitter touch him.

In 2006, during our infamous phone calls, Richard pleaded with me to understand that he didn’t hire the babysitter. The it was our grandmother’s fault. She kept hiring the babysitter even through he told her that he didn’t like him. He said that he even paid for the babysitter on a couple of times because grandma didn’t have the money to pay the babysitter. He also said that I was partially to blame as I didn’t tell anyone and that I should have done more to protect my brother from the babysitter.

In 2011 he would give a statement to the CFNIS in which he completely forgot to mention to the CFNIS that he wasn’t living at home with us on the base and that his mother was raising my brother and I. He also told the CFNIS that he was certain there was never a babysitter in the house, just some rando woman from across the street that would keep an eye on his kids periodically.

In 2013 when I examined my father for Federal Court in his written response to my examination he now all of a sudden remembers that his mother was raising his children at the time in question, and why yes, there was a male babysitter, but his mother hired the babysitter, not him.

My social service paperwork from the period of time of November 1981 to October 1983 which also includes my paperwork from October 1980 to November 1981 when I was solely in the care of Captain Totzke makes frequent mention of my grandmother as having been brought into the house to raise my brother and I. This paperwork also contains an observation from a psychiatrist hired by Captain Totzke to evaluate my family in which my father was found to take no responsibility for his family, blamed problems with his family on others, and expected other to solve his problems for him. In this same paperwork my father tells Alberta Social Services that the issues being exhibited by my brother and I were due to his mother “who was very cruel to his children, especially when she was inebriated, which was often”. I gave a full copy of my social service paperwork to the CFNIS in August of 2011.

My brother says that I have to forgive my father because maybe the Canadian Forces forced him to give that statement in 2011, or maybe the Canadian Forces edited his statement to be what they wanted it to be.

No.

My father was a liar. Nothing was believable coming out of his mouth when I was a kid.

Birthday parties? Sure you can have a birthday party, I promise.

From 1977 until 1985 not a single birthday party. Apparently kids with depression and suffering from child sexual abuse aren’t allowed to have parties.

Had a birthday cake in 1985. Richard made a promise that he’d never forget my birthday again. Never had any type of birthday acknowledgment after that until 2006. What was behind the birthday cake in 1985? I didn’t realize at the time that my family was under supervision from the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, but we were. And I guess that Richard was buttering my ass up just in case that Children’s Aid found out about the domestic outburst that he had that required 3 military police officer to bring him under control.

He promised and he swore up and down that he’d pay for my driver’s training for my 16th birthday if I stayed in school. Well, birthday time rolled around, and all of a sudden he just realized that he couldn’t let me get my driver’s licence as it would affect his car insurance.

He invited me in June of 1990 to move to Edmonton with him and we could try to be a family again. That lasted for one month before him and my stepmother bought a house in Morinville and my stepmother made it very clear that I wasn’t welcome. What pissed me off the most about the whole move from Toronto to Edmonton was that I paid for most of the meals on the way and I paid for some new office furniture for my father’s work area in the basement of the PMQ. He told me to give him the receipts from the meals and that he’d submit them to the DND and give me the money when he was reimbursed. He also told me that he’d pay me back for the office chair and desk that I bought him. He never did pay me back. Claimed that after all he paid raising my brother and I that I owed him.

He called me up a couple of times in the ’90s when I was living in Vancouver. Said that he’d give me some money if I helped my brother fix his car. Helped my brother. The promised money never came.

I’ll never get an apology from Richard. Did he lie to the CFNIS in 2011 because he was pressured by the CFNIS? Or did he lie to the CFNIS in 2011 because he was ashamed of the fact he participated in a cover up in 1980? And even if it wasn’t a coverup that he participated in, was he ashamed to admit that his children were abused because he left his children in the care of his very dysfunctional mother?

But then again, even if Richard was still alive today, would I be able to believe anything that came out of his mouth?

And this is why I am tired.

And this is why I am burnt out.

And this is why I am disillusioned.

Everyone keeps telling me to move on.

To let the past stay in the past.

Even my father said in 2006 the if I went sticking my nose into this that I might not like the smell.

Everyone makes the depression out as being my fault because I just don’t want to be happy.

My anxiety attacks are nothing more than ploys for getting attention.

If I honestly wanted to get better, all I’d have to do take “x” therapy and all would be great.

My desire for M.A.i.D. is nothing more than melodrama.

A Societal Malcontent with an axe to grind against the Canadian Armed Forces.

Yep, that’s me. Mr. Societal Malcontent.

Well, at least that’s what the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service labelled me as during their investigation of my complaint of sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao.

I’m odd.

Definitely a little fucked in the head.

I more or less march to my own drummer.

I don’t fit in too well.

But I think “societal malcontent” is taking things a little too far.

After all the shit I’ve been through in my life I’ve more than earned my tattoos, my piercings, and my manner of dress.

However, you can imagine how hard my jaw hit the floor when I read the Certified Tribunal Records that I received from the Military Police Complaints Commission in February 2013.

“A societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military”.

Fuck them.

Up until I received my social service paperwork in 2011, I had always believed that everything that went wrong in my life was due to me being a fucked up nutcase. “Insane as your fucking mother” as my father always used to say.

When I received my social service paperwork and discovered that Captain Totzke seemed to have been running interference between me and my civilian child care workers, I thought that this was maybe a result of my father wrapping Totzke around his finger and manipulating Totzke to hide my father’s shitty parenting skills.

But then when I read the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service investigation paperwork in 2013, it became very apparent to me that the Canadian Armed Forces is an organization in need of a very serious fucking tune-up.

For a police agency such as the CFNIS to roll over and yield to the chain of command dictates as easily as it did during GO 2011-5754 is absolutely sickening.

It’s no wonder that two retired Supreme Court justices in back to back reviews said that the military police and the CFNIS were incapable of investigating sexual assaults. Victim shaming was one of the concerns that the justices had in their reviews.

It was only in November of 2021 that the most recent Minister of National Defence ordered the military police to hand over all of their sexual assault investigations to the civilian police.

My complaint against the man in the sauna was one of 31 sexual assault investigations that the military police requested be exempt from being handed over to the civilian authorities.

Why mine wasn’t given over I’ll never know.

The investigator running the investigation said that the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service was the only agency with the skills required to investigate child sexual abuse on military bases. But this is one of the concerns that Madame Marie Deschamps had in her Final Report issued in 2015. The military police have neither the expertise nor the number of cases to develop the skills and techniques required to successfully investigate sexual assaults like the RCMP and most large civilian police departments have.

Another case of crimes being committed against a military dependent that for some reason seem to have remained in the jurisdiction of the military police is the disappearance and death of a transgendered military dependent who went missing from Canadian Forces Base Petawawa in March of 2019. Her body was found in May of 2019. She went missing from the PMQs on base.

Sure, the Canadian Armed Forces were instructed by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1994 to stop discriminating against homosexuals, but the Canadian Armed Forces up to that point in time had always been a hotbed of racism, xenophobia, white supremacy, homophobia, misogyny, alcoholism, etc.

Old habits die hard.

The problem with sexual assault and misogyny is that these issues still plague the Canadian Forces to this day.

In early 2023 the Canadian Forces engaged a professor from the University of Alberta to assess the problem of white supremacy and racism in the Canadian Armed Forces and how to combat this.

Sure, the Canadian Forces have attended various pride parades over the years, but if the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service ridicules the victims of sexual assault, including ridiculing and dismissing the complaints of a victim of child sexual abuse, how likely are the military police to put real serious effort into investigating the death of a transgendered military dependent?

As has already established by various reviews, the investigators within the CFNIS and the base military police are not independent of the chain of command. So even if they wanted to conduct an investigation that could potentially implicate either a member of the Canadian Forces or another military dependent from Canadian Forces Base Petawawa, would the chain of command allow them the independence to bring such implications?

Why are the military police even remotely involved in the off-base death of a military dependent? This investigation should belong to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Ontario Provincial Police Service.

After what I went through with the CFNIS from 2011 to 2018 makes me wonder what exactly the military police think that they’re going to accomplish in this matter? Don’t forget the CFNIS had in their hands the investigation paperwork and the court martial transcripts from 1980 CFSIU investigation that made it very clear that the babysitter was known to have been sexually assaulting children and was actually receiving counselling for his attraction to young children but yet the CFNIS were unable to secure charges. Actually, to go one further, the CFNIS weren’t allowed to secure charges against the babysitter.

Why else would the CFNIS have gone to the sickening extent of trying to colour the opinion of one of the witnesses by suggesting to this other victim of the babysitter that I was a “societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military”, that I was “frequently changing employment”, and that I had only made my complaint “as an attempt to make money”.

My father and the art of terror.

When I say that I was terrified of my father as a child, I’m not exaggerating.

There’s a reason why the psychologist that evaluated my family in November of 1980 found that I was terrified of men and that I was certain that I my father was going to kill me.

And it wasn’t just the physical violence that Richard could dish out. It was the outright psychological terror that he could dish out.

I had once gone and spent a weekend at a sea cadet corp in Port Hope, Ontario. Port Hope was just a little beyond Oshawa, Ontario so Richard had no problem driving me out as this was part of Richard’s and Sue’s shopping trips to Knob Hill Farms in Oshawa.

Richard came to pick me up on the Sunday evening.

When I got into the Mustang he just looked at me and wound up like he was going to backhand me, so I put my hands up to block and cover my face.

“What? You thought I was going to hit you?”

I lowered my hands a bit to look at him.

“You are so goddamn fucking lucky, do you understand that?”

“I was planning to give you the beating of your life when we got home”

I stared at him but I didn’t say anything.

“I went to use my oscilloscope today and some asshole had used one of the probes to poke fucking holes in the anti-glare screen”

“So of course I thought that it was you as you’re the only other person in the house that would dare touch the ‘scope”

I still just stared at him.

“And I was so fucking looking forward to giving you the beating of your life when we got back to the base, but then I remembered that I used the ‘scope yesterday and the fucking holes weren’t there. So it had to be your asshole brother”

I asked Richard what he was going to do to my brother.

“Nothing, what the fuck can I do to him to make him listen. He won’t listen to you and he sure as fuck won’t listen to me”.

The actual fact of the matter was that by this time my brother, who was 2-3 years younger than me (depending what time of the year it was), was larger than Richard. And I have no doubt that if Richard had tried to raise his hand against my brother that my brother would have ripped Richard’s arms from their sockets and beat him over the fucking head with them.

There were things as a kid that I was jealous of my brother for.

Richard would let him watch all the Saturday morning cartoons that he wanted to. My cartoons were too stupid and childish and I was the older kid so I was supposed to set an example for my brother.

Richard wouldn’t object to my brother listening to any music that he fancied. Twisted Sister, Poison, Motley Crue, etc. I wasn’t allowed to have a stereo in my room, and any music that I listened to such as Bruce Hornsby and the Range was utter stupid garbage.

And yes, the fact that Richard was afraid of my brother, or more than likely Richard was cautious of my brother due to my brother’s ability to fight back where as I couldn’t.

You would think that putting up with Richard’s bullshit would have taught me how to fight.

Nope.

Fighting just made things worse. Standing up for myself only made things worse.

And Richard’s temper was swift and quick and often without second thought.

I forget when exactly it happened, but it was when my bedroom was still upstairs in the PMQ on CFB Downsview, my brother had his first epileptic seizure. Actually, I don’t know if this was the first one he actually had, or if this was the first one in which someone else found him in the midst of a seizure.

I came home from wherever it was that I was. Sue, our stepmother, told me that I had to go up to my room and wait for my father to come home and that I was to sit on the floor and not touch anything.

I went upstairs and did as I was told. I sat on the floor.

For hours.

There really wasn’t anywhere else for me to sit as my room had been tossed.

Thankfully I didn’t have much to my name at the time as I have no doubt that Richard would have destroyed it.

My bed was up ended and the sheets had been torn off.

My dresser had been emptied out on the floor.

My closet had been emptied out on the floor.

The cover for my radiator had been pulled off.

So, I sat on the floor and waited for Richard to come home.

Richard came home and I heard him ask Sue, “did the little fucker come home?”

“He’s upstairs, Richard control yourself”.

Richard sprinted up the stairs, had to be 3 steps at a time.

He came into my room and with one fell swoop put both hands on my chest, picked me up, and slammed me into the wall so that our heads were at the same height?

“Where the fuck are the drugs?”

“What drugs?”

“You gave your fucking brother drugs, he’s in the fucking hospital because of you”

Slam.

“I don’t do drugs, I don’t have drugs, I don’t know what you’re talking about”.

Slam, down I went to the floor.

“If your fucking brother dies, I will fucking kill you!”

“Now, get this fucking shit cleaned up and you better think long and fucking hard about what you’ve done!”

I think it was two or three days later that the official diagnoses came in that my brother had Grand Mal Epilepsy.

Richard died in 2017 without his lips once ever uttering an apology.

In 2006 when I had my infamous blowout with Richard on the phone he remembered this, he also said that I was overreacting, and he couldn’t understand why I was holding on to this. He was a father, he was concerned, I didn’t understand what it was like for him.

“It’s obvious that your brother has epilepsy so why you’re holding on to what I said all those years ago makes no sense. Why do you insist on living in the past?”

In 2011, after I had received my social service paperwork from the Alberta Government I started seeing a counsellor named Doug.

We were discussing my father’s anger outbursts and I mentioned my brother’s first “official” seizure and how Richard accused me of giving my brother drugs.

“So, were you ever tested?”

Tested for what?

“Epilepsy, it’s genetic. Your brother is your full brother, right?”

I wouldn’t learn until 2013 when I tracked my mother down, that the epilepsy originated on her side of the family. It skipped her, though.

I had seen my brother in a couple of seizures. I knew what the seizures looked like, I knew that there would always be physical evidence, and when my brother came out of a seizure he was always disorientated and angry. I don’t honestly ever remember having any type of seizure like my brother, and I told Doug that.

“The reason I ask is your records indicate that you frequently had trouble paying attention in school, you often drifted off and didn’t pay attention, you were often found to be “day dreaming”, your testing indicated an auditory memory issue.”

No, I’m absolutely sure that I never had a seizure of any kind when I was a kid.

“Do you know what an absence seizure is?”

Nope.

Absence seizures, as I would find out, are often a precursor to full blown epilepsy. Epilepsy is mainly genetic and runs in families. My mother’s mother died from an epileptic seizure. Anyways, absence seizures are often exhibited by children that are genetically predisposed to epilepsy. The interesting thing about absence seizures is that children will either grow out of them by adolescence or they will progress to Grand Mal Seizures.

Absence seizures are typically brief and only last from a few seconds to maybe a minute, but they can happen numerous times a day, sometimes in rapid fire succession.

There were times as kids when my brother and I were in the back of the car. Richard would be driving somewhere. And my brother would make this face at me where he’d roll his eyes back in his head and flutter his eye lids. If I complained to Richard about the faces my brother was making he’d get pissed off at me and my brother.

Well, as it turns out, that’s a symptom of an absence seizure.

My records indicated that I would frequently interrupt the school class by making clucking / clicking noises, grunting noises, and that I would often day dream and not pay attention.

The clucking and clicking noises I honestly can’t remember them other than what the other kids would say what I sounded like or looked like while I was doing them.

The day dreaming? I don’t remember day dreaming per se, but what I do remember is that I had what I thought was a magic ability that I needed to work on. I found that if I stared hard enough at the clock that I could make the second hand jump forward in time by up to 40 seconds. I thought that this was a magic power. It wasn’t. There were times when the teacher would be explaining something, and I would zone out and miss out on what was said. And this would happen maybe about four or five times per class.

Of course my misbehaviour in school made Richard angry. Not so much the fact that this “misbehaviour” was fucking with my education, but because my “misbehaviour” was causing my teachers and my principal to frequently call Richard at work and “disturb” him while he was busy playing soldier in the military.

The number of times that I had to endure Richard’s anger when he arrived home from work is more than what I want to remember. The pants and underwear down leather belt spankings that I took from Richard fill me with pain to this day.

I remember during my time living on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach and Canadian Forces Base Downsview trying so hard to be normal in school but then realizing that I was too fucked up to be normal.

My father’s anger is something that will always be with me until my life is ended.

My counsellor Doug set me up with a neurologist for testing. I did the sleep depravation test and the strobe light test. Triggered my ocular migraine. But it didn’t trigger a seizure. When I got home I had to sleep in my bathtub covered in my blankets and duvets as this was the only room quiet and dark enough to let me sleep.

The neurologist that I went to said that at that stage in my life it would be very doubtful that any testing would show that I had absence seizures as a child. But considering that my brother has full blown epilepsy, and that description of my issues in my social services paperwork, it was more than likely that both my brother and I were having absence seizures as kids and that one of us grew out of them and the other didn’t.

Which brings me back to Richard’s anger. How would things have turned out differently for my brother and I had Richard had control of his temper and his anger?

How would things have turned out for my brother and I had Richard even tried in the most basic sense of the word to be a father and not just a sperm donor?

What if, instead of being an angry asshole, Richard had actually cared?

What have we learnt?

If you had asked me back in March of 2011 if I had any idea of what I was about to uncover and discover, I would have said no.

I’ve learnt that the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are very well insulated from any external review that they don’t agree with.

As per “An overview of Canada’s Military Justice System”, “Canada’s military justice system is a unique, self-contained system that is an integral part of the Canadian legal mosaic.”, and “As the SCC implicitly recognized in this passage, and as former Chief Justice of Canada, Brian Dickson, recognized in the separate context of an independent report on the military justice system that he completed for the Canadian Forces in 1997, the chain of command is at the heart of this system.”

In the Canadian Forces military justice system, up can be whatever the chain of command decides, and down can be whatever the chain of command decides.

What the rules are shift on a daily basis.

Does the military have jurisdiction to investigate child sexual abuse on the bases? Well, the military often points out that domestic assaults are handed off to the civilian police to avoid potential conflicts of interest and to allow the abused spouse to obtain victim services that the military can’t offer to civilians.

But when it comes to child sexual abuse on base that may implicate officers of the Canadian Forces, then it’s best that these investigations are kept in house as the military police are the only police agency capable of conducting these types of investigations.

Yeah, sure, the CFNIS gave me victims services. Basically a list of phone numbers that I could call to set up counselling services that I’d have to pay out of pocket for. Again, DND and the CAF are not responsible for civilians of any age.

In the civilian world, when one wants to complain about a police investigation, or lack thereof, they can get a civilian lawyer. And this opens up all sorts of opportunities to obtain the entire and complete investigation paperwork prior to a complaint being made.

In the military justice system this avenue does not exist, especially not for civilians. Even if I had hired a lawyer to initiate my complaint against the CFNIS, it’s still the purview of the Provost Marshal to determine what will and what won’t be released to my lawyer.

The Military Police Complaints Commission? No where near as powerful as it should be. But then again, the MPCC was created with the input of the very agency that it was supposed to oversee and nothing from the civilian world to temper the iron fist that the DND and the CAF wanted to rule over the MPCC with.

But Bobbie, civilian police oversight agencies are the same.

Nope.

Not by a long shot.

The Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service do not report to the provincial Attorneys General. The CFMP and the CFNIS report to the Attorney General of Canada.

With the exception of the RCMP, the various civilian oversight agencies across Canada are created by the various provincial Attorneys General. Even though the RCMP are a federal police force and report to the Attorney General of Canada, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP does not report to the RCMP nor is it a part of the RCMP.

What is unique about the Military Police Complaints Commission is that it operates under and reports to the Minister of National Defence. As has been illustrated previously by the Military Police Complaints Commission itself, the Minister of National Defence by way of the CAF Chain of Command, is the defacto head of the Canadian Forces Military Police Group and has command authority over the Chief of Defence Staff and the Vice Chief of Defence Staff. The Vice Chief of Defence Staff is authorized under the National Defence Act to give directions or instructions to any CFNIS investigation.

When a complaint is made against a civilian police department, there are very few legal avenues available for the civilian police department to outright not comply with the investigation of a civilian complaint.

In the military world, it is the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal who will determine how much cooperation will be extended to the MPCC. It is also the Provost Marshal that will decide which documents will be released and which documents will be withheld from the MPCC.

During a “review” the MPCC cannot subpoena documents or witnesses, nor can the MPCC administer oaths. These are important issues as any statement that the members of the CFNIS give to the MPCC don’t have to be truthful as their are no consequences whatsoever for lying to the MPCC or refusing to participate with the MPCC review.

And for a person like me on the outside? Well, I’ll never have access to all of the documents from the CFNIS GO 2011-5754. I could have a team of high priced lawyers throwing lawsuit after lawsuit against the DND and the CAF and neither my lawyers or I will ever be given access to those documents. DND and the CAF are just too well insulated from the civilian world.

That’s the problem with “separate but parallel” systems. The Canadian public believe that the CFNIS work just the same as officer friendly at the Vancouver Police Department.

Officer Friendly at the VPD doesn’t face a sentence of “life in prison” for disobeying the “lawful” commands of their superior.

Officer Soldier of the CFNIS does however face a sentence of “life in prison” for disobeying the “lawful” commands of their superior. There are no exceptions in the National Defence Act that protect members of the military police and the CFNIS from vexatious prosecution by an angry superior.

Civilian police are often members of police brotherhoods. And these brotherhoods can reign terror over any civilian police department.

Members of the Canadian Forces are not members of any type of union and have very little in the way of protection from an angry chain of command.

How much faith would the citizens of Canada have in the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP if it reportedly directly to the RCMP Commissioner?

In the civilian world, police agencies do not investigate their own members for serious matters. For example when an allegation of wrongdoing is brought against a member of the VPD, an outside police agency is brought in to investigate.

Guess who investigates the military police when a member of the military police is suspected of wrong doing? That’s right, the military.

Basically what we have is a toothless Parliament that refuses to bring the DND and the CAF to heel because after almost 70 years of hyping the “heroes of Canada”, Parliament inadvertently created a spoilt child. A spoilt child that will throw temper tantrums and bawl and cry to get what it wants.

And what does the DND and the CAF want? They want to be left alone and not meddled with by the civilian authorities. The DND and the CAF want to be left alone in their own little world where the laws of common decency and common sense don’t apply.

The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are very happy to be left alone in their filthy little sandbox where victims of child sexual abuse are just as guilty, if not more guilty, than their abusers.

Depression and the art of never starting things…….

One of the hardest things about dealing with depression is the inability I have to start things that I want to do.

It’s not that I’m lazy.

It’s just that my brain keeps telling me not to bother starting because it won’t make a difference to anyone or anything.

Yes, but Bobbie, isn’t this therapeutic ?

Possibly.

But I still have to overcome the depression demons.

Sure, I’m on escitalopram, but that doesn’t stop the depression, it just turns it down a bit.

The demons and the monsters are still there.

Waiting and lurking.

Don’t forget, I’ve never had a day in my life of any type of therapy related to the events on Canadian Forces Base Namao, nor have I ever had any therapy to help me recover from my involvement with Captain Terry Totzke, nor have I ever had any therapy to help me recover from my father’s very dysfunctional household.

I’ve had tons of talking sessions with counsellors since 2011. But they can’t fix what they can’t understand.

Children don’t live on military bases.

If children did live on military bases, military bases were very safe and secure environments where nothing bad would ever happen to a child.

If bad things did happen to those children, then the military would have stepped in an put an end to it as the military protects children.

And on, and on, and on, wash-rinse-repeat.

I’m sure that the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence have gone to every extent to convince everyone of any importance in Canada that the military treated child sexual abuse as the horrific crime that it was and that it would never classify male-on-male child sexual abuse as “acts of homosexuality” and that it would never blame the victims for their own abuse.

So, until the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence come clean about historical child sexual abuse, the flaws in the National Defence Act that would allow commanding officers with no scruples to hide child sexual abuse, and their very abysmal manner in which victims of male-on-male child sexual abuse were seen as mentally ill homosexuals partially responsible for their own abuse, things will never change. I can’t keep going to counsellors, psychologists, and psychiatrists when they cast their distrust upon me.

This of course means that my depression has free reign inside of my skull.

Power Engineering

I’m a 4th class power engineer. I started off as a 5th class power engineer back in 2002.

Power engineering isn’t what I wanted, but it was what as available to me if I wanted to finally get away from wages that had me just treading above welfare.

I was working for a property management firm in Vancouver at the time doing building maintenance. Pump repairs, chiller maintenance, building automation, etc.

I wasn’t trade qualified and I didn’t have a red seal. But what I had was an ability to read and comprehend service manuals and parts diagrams. I could read schematics and I understood electrical safety.

So, if I didn’t want to be a power engineer, why am I a power engineer.

As I’ve alluded to previously, my father didn’t give a shit about school. To my father my teachers and principals were all stunned cunts, stupid fucking cocksuckers, and fucking assholes. My teachers were forever sticking their noses into his fucking business. They were calling him at work and disturbing him. My academic problems were obviously caused by their fucking inability to teach.

When I left school at the start of grade nine, he didn’t give a fuck in the slightest. I just had to pay him $100.00 per month to stay in my room, otherwise I’d have to move out. Which I did in the winter of 1988.

Even if I had stayed in school, trade school, college, or even university would have not been options for me.

As I would discover later in life, Richard joined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1963 with a low mark grade 9 education which he had to upgrade before the RCN would admit him in 1963.

He sailed the world, he learned trade skills, he learned to fly aircraft.

Not bad for a prairie boy from a one room school house in Fort McMurray, AB.

He did all of this without a university education, nor a college degree, nor any type of trade school.

Even though I have my grade 12 GED, I’ve always downplayed what that means.

Before I was allowed to apply for the 5th class power engineer program at BCIT I was required to take a couple of tests to prove that my mathematical skills were at least at the grade 10 level.

I passed my 5th class power engineering course.

Called and let Richard know.

Didn’t give a fuck in the slightest.

I accumulated sufficient time as a 5th class power engineer to challenge the 4th class power engineer provincial exam.

I passed that with ease.

Called Richard and let him know.

Just like the last time, he didn’t give a fuck.

In September of 2005 I was hired at the physical plant at the hospital and I called Richard to let him know.

Absolutely didn’t give a fuck. He didn’t need a union in the Canadian Forces so why the hell do I need a union? He then said that I was still dumber than my younger brother who he was sure was making more money than I was and he worked in a “cardboard box factory” making more money doing far less. So it was obvious that I wasn’t the smart one.

This is what led to me leaving all of the messages with Richard in August of 2006.

Now, to be honest, power engineering has provided me with employment at a wage that wouldn’t normally be available to a “loser” like me.

So, what is a power engineer?

A power engineer is someone who has been granted a certificate of competency to operate and be in charge of a refrigeration plant or a steam plant / heating plant of up to a specific heat exchanger surface areas.

This includes inspecting the entire plant once per day, minor maintenance, adjustment of equipment, checking fluid levels, maintaining chemical levels, and ensuring that the equipment is operating at peak performance in a safe manner.

In the hospital this also involves responding to fire alarms, conducting elevator extractions, testing the generators and fire pumps, diagnosing minor refrigeration issues, filter changes on the supply fans.

And in 2019 I was promoted to chief engineer.

I go well far above and beyond what a power engineer is required to do.

Don’t forget, power engineers have a “certificate of competency”, not a “trade qualification” or an “inter-provincial red seal”.

I can troubleshoot the building automation system down to component level. I’ve installed networked temperature monitoring equipment for logging the temperatures of medical and pharmaceutical refrigeration.
I upgraded the chemical monitoring systems for all of the cooling towers.
I was responsible for having all of the major supply fans converted from variable pitch mechanisms over to fixed pitch hubs with variable speed drives.
I was responsible for replacing close to 60 older pneumatic HVAC mixing boxes in the laboratory area with newer electronic mixing boxes.
I put in the current fuel monitoring system that automatically calls in the refuelling company when certain fuel levels are attained.
I pushed to have the four main cooling tower replaced in 2016 when after 25 years of neglect the old towers were a liability to the hospital.
I just finished the upgrade of the building automation system in Phase 1 Level 4 to replace the old Honeywell Excel Plus system that could no longer be serviced.
I implemented tablets for rounds and readings software.
I implemented the Angus mobile software for the aforementioned tablets for tracking of work orders.

So, why don’t I feel happy?

I’ve known for a very long time that this isn’t the line of work that I wanted to be in. And I don’t mean being the chief engineer at work. I mean being in hands on mechanical / electronics type work.

The key to this was in my social service records.

“When asked why Robert likes computers and electronics, he said that he wants to learn this so he can be closer to his father”

Fuck was I ever a damn idiot back then.

At work I find that playing stupid is the best way. Most of the power engineers that I supervise have no mechanical, electrical, or electronic skills. And one thing that I’ve had to learn in life is that if someone doesn’t have a mechanical intuition they will never learn mechanics. If I need something done I either do it myself or I contract it out.

I liken a power engineering certificate to a driver’s licence.

A driver’s licence states that you are qualified to operate a motor vehicle. A driver’s licence does not vouch for the mechanical aptitude of the car driver. Some car drivers can drop their own blocks and rebuild the big end and press a new oil seal, while some car drivers can’t even top up their own windshield washer fluid without nearly killing themselves.

With power engineering it’s the same thing.
Some power engineers know how to weld.
Some know how to wire electric motors.
Some know how to press bearings onto shafts.
Some can understand digital logic, and understand control signal and feedback while other power engineers can’t even bring up task manager on Windows or know how to check for +15, -15, +24, +5, and -5 volts on a connector that is clearly labeled.

But Bobbie, if you don’t like this stuff, why do you keep doing it?

Simple.

As a kid I tried to win my father’s affection, which as it turns out was a lost cause.

When I moved out of the house when I was 16, I had two things going for me. My mechanical intuition and my skills in electronics.

These two abilities ensured that I had employment when otherwise I would have probably endured a life on the streets with my grade 8 education and my mental illnesses.

I scratched and clawed my way up through industries that I never should have worked for but they were willing to overlook my mental issues and my lack of formal education in trade for putting my mechanical and electronic skills to use.

What could I have been if Richard had just given the slightest of a fuck (and if CFB Namao hadn’t occurred)?

I liked theatre and play production at school. At Elia Jr. High and at Pierre Laporte Jr. High I worked on lighting for plays and I did sound setup and sound mixing. Pretty well the same thing at Pierre Laporte. I did sound and lighting for school productions. I repaired the old 20 channel dimming panel. Needed a whole bunch of new trials to replace the ones that had burnt out due to shorts in the fixtures.

Theatrics would have been interesting.

Theatrics would have cost a shit ton of money to get into and a lot of support from home, so realistically theatrics would never have been an option.

Working on cars? Nope, I’ve always hated cars. I’ve owned cars for 7 years of my 35 years of holding a driver’s licence.

So, I go to work everyday.

What else am I going to do?

Am I going to quit my job and retire after I win mad-mad-money in my class action? Fuck no. If I walk away with $30k from that whole fiasco I will be greatly surprised. This is the Government of Canada that I’m dealing with, not the Catholic Church.

But Bobbie…… lots of people hate their jobs.

Well, lots of people love their jobs.

Anyways…….. until next posting.

Makeup……..

Yeah, as per my previous posting, I did dabble with makeup for a few years.

I liked it.

Growing up in military communities as a child can be extremely stifling.

Back in the day “queers”, “fags”, “homos”, “lezzies”, etc. were not welcome in the Canadian Armed Forces.

This was enforced by Canadian Forces Administrative Order CFAO 19-20. Yes, CFAO 19-20 was not aimed at military dependents living on the bases, but it would have affected the attitudes of our serving parents towards anyone that appeared in the slightest to be a homosexual.

And housing communities on military bases made the boring conformity of the civilian suburbs look like outright anarchy in comparison.

Yeah, I understand that out in the civilian world, makeup and dresses on boys wouldn’t have been all that tolerated, but there were glimmers of hope.

In the defence community dresses and makeup on boys would have resulted in some pretty substantial beatings and corrective measures.

CFB Downsview was probably the closet to a tolerant base that I lived on, but that was more or less due to the fact that CFB Downsview was the base where military personnel went to finish off the last few years of their career until retirement.

So, after a childhood, adolescence, and adulthood of self loathing, why did I suddenly give in to my whims starting in 2006?

Well, first I had a union job. I wouldn’t have taken a chance with my previous employers finding out about my proclivities involving makeup and dresses.

Second, some co-workers from work from different departments invited me out to a pride event.

Now, to be honest that was the only pride event that I’ve ever been to in my life. There’s just way too much in the way of alcohol indulgence at these events for me to feel comfortable. And there’s way too much social interaction. I like to be left alone. And I don’t like to be touched. I still participate in fringe events at pride outside of the main events.

Anyways, after the party and on my way home I gave my father a few phone calls. All of these calls went to voice mail. But they must have hit a nerve as Richard called me the next morning.

The last time this fucker had called me on his own initiative was back around 1996 when he called me and told me that if I helped my brother fix his car that Richard would pay me. Richard never did.

Anyways, we talked for a long time when he called.

You have to remember that this was almost 5 years before I received my social service paperwork that contained the evaluation of Richard by the psychiatrist hired by the Canadian Armed Forces which stated that Richard took no responsibility for his family, blamed other for the problems with his family, and expected others to solve the problems with his family. This paperwork also contained evaluation from Alberta Social Services that Richard lied and Richard basically had two faces depending on the situation.

So, in 2006 I was totally unarmed in my discussion with Richard.

First, I had to understand that hiring the babysitter wasn’t his fault. It was his mother’s fault that the babysitter was hired. He told her not to hire P.S., but she wouldn’t listen to him. He knew the babysitter’s name. He blurted it out himself without any prodding.

He even managed to blame me again for the abuse by telling me that I let it go on for far too long, and that because I allowed my brother to be abused by the babysitter that I was to blame for the issues my brother was having.

Richard said that all I had to do was tell him or tell Grandma and they could have stopped the abuse. But because I had allowed the abuse to go on there were some concerns that I was a pervert like the babysitter.

Second, Grandma wouldn’t have had to come raise my brother and I if our mother wasn’t a whore that would spread her legs for anyone in uniform. Yes, he actually said that. He said that our mother ran away and she abandoned us, it wasn’t his fault. She knew he had a career in the Canadian Forces and that he wouldn’t be home a lot. He had no decision in the matter, when the Canadian Forces told him to go, he had to go.

Third, he really didn’t beat me as hard as I remembered that he did when my brother took the Pontiac Chevette for a joyride. And even if Richard did go a little to far that morning it was because he was under a lot of stress at the time from work and by me not keeping my brother under control I was just making matters worse for him.

He on his own brought up the matter of the Vectrex and the laser. Said that he couldn’t understand why I got so worked up about that. School was meant to go to, sit down, shut up, and look at the blackboard, not to be a show-off, who the fuck did I honestly think that I was trying to impress.

And of course he railed on and on about how he sacrificed everything for my brother and I and that we didn’t show him the least about of respect or appreciation.

It was at that time that I had begun to realize what an asshole my father really was and how I had wanted my entire life trying to make amends with a man who only cared about himself.

Even though I realized in 2006 just how horrific Richard really was, this didn’t (and never will) erase the memories of everything that I had lived through under his roof.

The more I wore makeup and the more I switched from “men’s” clothing to “women’s” clothing and went against the conventions that society considered “normal” for the genders, the more what my father and Terry had told me as a kid came back to haunt me.

I generally stopped wearing makeup around 2012. The whole previous year of dealing with the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service and the Military Police Complaints Commission sucked the fucking life right out of me.

And this was before I received a copy of the certified tribunal records in February of 2013 for my Application for Judicial Review.

Dealing with all of the stress and the lies and the intentional obfuscation pretty well killed any joy that I had with wearing makeup. I still get my nails done on occasion, but not to the extent that I used to before.

Maybe in a way my facial tattoos make up for the loss of my desire to wear makeup.

Wearing dresses and make up and my weird fashion sense have made me wonder what exactly I could have been in life had I not grown up in the circumstances that I grew up in.

I thought that everyone knew

When did Bobbie start wearing dresses?

I didn’t realize until December of 2013 when I tracked my mother down and went to see her in Calgary that I had slipped into my friend’s dresses once or twice on CFB Shearwater.

My father wasn’t around, so he never found out. Which was probably a very good thing.

The next time I wore dresses was actually on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach. I had a female friend. Her parents were very traditional in the sense that girls had to wear dresses. So she and I would slip off base, swap clothes, and hang around for a while. This of course was during the time I was in the care of military social worker Captain Terry Totzke for my “homosexuality”. So this would have been in the period of 1981 to 1983. Again, I don’t think my father ever knew.

There was an incident on CFB Griesbach that caused me a lot of conflict though. I knew it would have been after I was placed into the Westfield program by Alberta Social Services. Sue, my stepmother, was going to take my younger brother to Dairy Queen for ice cream. I asked Sue if I could come. Sue, who was only about 12 years older than me, looked at me and said “Retards don’t get ice cream”. She was obviously referring to my involvement with Westfield and the problems that my untreated depression, anxiety, and other issues were causing for my father and her. Anyways I started crying. She came over and grabbed me and looked me straight in the face and said that if I didn’t stop crying like a little girl that she was going to take me to Sears and buy me a dress and that I could cry like a little girl all I wanted too. 

This caused me great conflict for three reasons. 1) I hated being called a retard. I was getting teased and taunted enough on base having to take the short yellow bus to school, but now my own stepmother was calling me a retard. 2) I despised [brother] for how he could cause all sorts of shit in the house but it was always my fault for not looking after him. 3) I really wanted a dress. I was kinda hooked on Alice’s dress from Alice in Wonderland.

As things had become way out of control at home with Richard and Sue and as Richard was blaming me for “fucking with his military career” and dishing out the physical abuse to go along with that, my desires for dresses took a back seat.

The only type of glimmer that I had in my teenage years of the fascination I had with dresses as a kid was when I went to see Ridley Scott’s Legend in the theatres. I wanted Lilli’s “Black Evil Dress”.

It wouldn’t be until I had my first apartment in New Westminster around 1995 that I started to buy dresses on the sly and wear them in my apartment.

Because of my time with Captain Totzke and my father’s attitude I knew that this was probably due to my “homosexual perversion”.

It wouldn’t be until I got my union job at St. Paul’s in 2005 that I really got into dresses. First it was skirts. Skirts that could conceivably pass as “kilts”.

But by 2008 I was mainly wearing dresses.

My wardrobe at this point is mainly dresses and skirts. I do own a couple “utilikilts” and one pair of jeans.

Why do I wear dresses?

I think that on CFB Shearwater it was just childhood curiosity. When you’re under 5 I don’t think that you have a clear understanding of societal gender roles. Don’t forget, it was very common up until the early 1900s for boys under the age of 7 or 8 to wear dresses. When a boy turned 7 or 8 they were “breeched” and given their first pair of trousers / pants as well as their first haircut. Toilet training and the lack of mass produced clothing would account for this.

This is Franklin Delano Roosevelt wearing a dress.

Historians have had to go back and reevaluate paintings from the Medieval and Early Modern Eras as a lot of the paintings depicting girls in dresses may have actually been both boys and girls in dresses. To tell the two apart boys tended to wear plain dresses while girl’s dresses tended to have small amounts of finery attached to the dress.

But I think that from CFB Griesbach and onwards my desire for wearing dresses had more to do with my gender identity having been destroyed by my sexual abuse on CFB Namao along with the “conversion therapy” that I was receiving from Captain Terry Totzke on CFB Griesbach.

At the time my IQ was evaluated using a professional psychiatric test. I was evaluated to have an IQ of 136 +/- 6.

Maybe this figured into my desire to wear dresses. Dresses don’t have genders. They’re clothing.

As Richard would often say, maybe I was too fucking smart for my own fucking good.

You don’t become a woman by wearing a dress anymore than a woman becomes a man by wearing pants.

Don’t forget, but society heavily frowned upon women wearing pants right up until WWII when women were then required to work on the assembly lines to build weapons and aircraft.

Dresses are comfortable and easy to wear.

And the less things I have touching my body, the happier I am.

I think the destruction of my gender identity also figures into my desire to wear dresses.

I don’t identify as male or female.

I have no desire to be a woman.

But I also don’t fit into society’s definition of a man.

Therefore I’ve never felt locked into society’s demands that I wear specific clothing.

I have no attraction to women, but I also have no attraction to men.

I have had sex with both earlier on in my life.

During the late ‘80s and into the ‘90s I was mainly with men, but it always felt mechanical.

But don’t let this sound like I was involved with 1,000s or partners.

Maybe about 10 guys total.

Maybe about 2 or 3 women.

And I haven’t been with anyone since the early 2000’s

My attraction to men is stymied by the fact that I’ve lived all my life with the knowledge that homosexuality is a mental illness and that it is inherently evil. Having sex with men always brings back memories of my father, of Terry, and of [baby sitter / accomplice]. This cannot be escaped.

My attraction to women is stymied by the fact that I’m not really attracted to women.

What am I?

I identify as “queer”. Not gay. Not bi. Not straight. Not trans. 

Just queer.

Maybe I am gay, but unfortunately that was taken away from me back in ’78 through ’83.

When I legally changed my name in 2008 I chose Bobbie specifically because this is the unisex spelling of this name.

Bobby = male

Bobbi = female

Bobbie = unisex.

I hated the name Robert as this is a boy’s / man’s name.

Anyways……………..

The fact is I wear dresses ‘cause I like dresses and I don’t identify with either gender.