I really wish that I had learnt earlier in life that the Canadian Armed Forces were nothing to look up to.
As a child growing up in a military family living on military bases you get exposed to the military in a way that civilians aren’t exposed to.
I’ve flown in a Sea King.
I’ve flown in a Chinook more than a few times.
I’ve flown in a Hercules at least once.
These flights were typically on “family days” on base, but with the Chinooks it was when I was at the squadron I could go on test flights if I promised to keep my mouth shut and just sit there.
And when the Canadian Forces used to operate passenger planes for transferring personnel, I flew in one of these from Canadian Forces Base Shearwater to Canadian Forces Base Namao.
I don’t remember going to the squadron on CFB Shearwater or on CFB Summerside, but I was a frequent visitor to 447 Sqn on CFB Namao in the days prior to the Captain McRae fiasco. I knew how to turn on the DC breakers to get power to the cockpit radio and I knew how to select the AM band and tune in the local radio station and kill time in the cockpit while my father was busy doing who the hell knows what. Yeah, I knew how to tune into the base tower or the local civilian towers, but this wasn’t as much fun as the radio.
I followed a mechanic up on top of a Chinook once. The rotors were off the helicopter and he was doing something with the swash plate assemblies. This was prior to us moving off CFB Namao in September of 1980 so I would have been around 8. I was out of my father’s hair so he didn’t give a shit so long as I didn’t fall off and create paperwork.
This was the best I could get Chat to do. The first time I asked Chat to make an image like this it created a Chinook that looked like a giant R/C model with the mechanic standing beside it and the boy sitting on top. The next image chat created from my prompts had the mechanic and the boy looking at the forward gearbox like it was an engine under the “hood” at the nose. So, this is as good as it gets.
Sure, my father was a drunk and an asshole, but so were a lot of the other guys. And they all seemed to love hanging out together at the mess. Yeah, my father could get angry and issue beatings, but that was my fault. He wouldn’t hit me or beat me if I didn’t deserve it, right?
And after what I had done on CFB Namao with the babysitter and Captain McRae I really deserved his anger and his fury, right?
For the majority of my life I held the Canadian Armed Forces in high regard.
And of course that didn’t change until May of 2011 when Master Corporal Christian Cyr let the beans out about the whole Captain Father Angus McRae fiasco.
To this day I can’t believe that I was so fucking stupid to believe that the Canadian Armed Forces had any honour.
The more I dug into the whens and whys of the Captain McRae fiasco the more it became crystal clear that the Canadian Armed Forces is an organization that places more concern in its public image and its ability to “wash the laundry in house”.
It cares not about the children living on base.
It cares not about the families living on base.
And it really doesn’t care about the individual members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
It’s a soulless entity that will destroy lives in order to protect its image.
Men like my father?
Just fucking mindless robots that go along with what they’re told because they’re not allowed to think on their own. They’re part of the hive-mind or the Borg. Completely fucking useless automatons that can’t do fuck all unless the chain of command tells them to.
The Canadian Armed Forces will never reward individuality. The Canadian Armed Forces is all about conformity and following orders.
If the Chain of Command tells you that you 8 year old son is a homosexual because he was found being buggered by his 14 year old babysitter, well who the hell are you to question the wisdom of the chain of command?
If a Colonel doesn’t want the public to know that over 25 children were sexually abused for a two-year period on his base, then the public isn’t going to find out. Fuck the victims. Just charge McRae with enough crimes to get him the boot from the military, but don’t charge McRae with the full extent as this will only call your command ability into question and your plan of retiring from the Canadian Armed Forces as a Brigadier General will be at risk.
And don’t forget, in 2011 the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service knew the whole sordid affair from CFB Namao as they had the CFSIU DS 120-10-80 investigation paperwork as well as the Courts Martial transcripts for CM62 in their possession. They knew the full fucking truth. But they still insisted on running a dog’n’pony show investigation because there was no way that the Canadian Armed Forces was ever going to willingly suffer the public humiliation of having the Canadian public discover that the military had historically hidden child sexual abuse that occurred on the bases in Canada and that the problem was quite extensive.
And that’s the lesson that I wished I had learnt earlier in life.
Maybe not too young, but at least by my early 20s.
This is just the rough outline at the moment, I will try to fill in more details as time goes by.
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1923
June – My paternal grandmother is born in the Athabasca region of Alberta.
1935
October – As she is Swampy Cree, grandma is enrolled in an Indian Residential School named Holy Angels located at Fort Chipewyan, AB.
1938
March – Grandma leaves Residential School
1941
– Uncle Norman born
1946
June – Richard Gill (my father) born in Peterborough, Ontario
December – Marie Annette Jacqueline Dagenais (my mother) born in Hull, Quebec
My father’s father leaves the family. Unsure of the details.
Grandma relocates her family back to Fort McMurray, Alberta
1963
Richard joins the Royal Canadian Navy with a grade 9 education
1967
– Richard and Marie married
Marie had met Richard via her brother Al. Al and Richard served in the navy together.
1968
Unification of the Canadian Forces, Richard remusters into the Air Force.
1969
July –
Richard is photographed as a member of the Sea Kings on HMCS Ottawa, the first ship of the Canadian Forces where French is the primary language spoken.
October 29th –
The HMCS Ottawa was amongst the ships that were returning from the United Kingdom as part of exercises. The HMCS Kootenay suffered a major explosion in the engine room due to faulty maintenance. 9 members killed, including three that had been my father’s drinking buddies when he was in the Royal Canadian Navy before unification. As Richard was attached to the Sea Kings he would have been involved with the rescue flights flown to evacuate crew members from the HMCS Kootenay.
According to Bill Parker my father’s personality changed for the worse in the aftermath of the Kootenay. He was no longer pleasant to be around. He was very moody, very withdrawn, and his drinking was getting the better of him.
1971
I was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia
moved into my first military PMQ – 23 Seafire Ave on Canadian Forces Base Shearwater
moved into my second military PMQ – 14 Fulmar Ave on Canadian Forces Base Shearwater.
1974
– Scott born in Halifax Nova Scotia
Captain Father Angus McRae investigated and charged for committing “Acts of Homosexuality” at Canadian Forces Base Kingston / Royal Military College Kingston. It would appear that McRae’s commanding officer did not approve of the charges.
1971 to 1976
– My mother made frequent use of what was called “The Battered Wives Club” on CFB Shearwater. This was a loose knit group of military families that would often take in the wives and their children from abusive military households as the military at that time didn’t consider domestic issues to be a concern of theirs.
1976 –
My frequent visits and lodgings at the IWK Children’s Hospital in Halifax prompt medical staff to ponder about getting social services involved as the medical staff have concerns about my father and my mother.
My first posting. My father was posted to Canadian Forces Base Summerside on Prince Edward Island. We lived at 353 High St in the town of Summerside. This housing development had been built for the Canadian Armed Forces for housing families of military members. As such the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations applied to all civilians living in this housing.
1977
January –
my father arrested for domestic assault and battery. He had apparently gotten into a fist fight with his own mother / my grandmother when she had come out to visit us over the ’76 Xmas holidays. Both were apparently quite intoxicated while this was going on.
My father’s drinking increases exponentially. He is more angry than ever and often breaks things or smashes things. Fights between my mother and my father increase with my mother often taking my brother and I to go stay with “relatives” that weren’t our relatives.
Spring –
My mother suddenly left just before the summer of 1977. My father would explain that my mother was a slut and a whore that ran off with a guy named Gus from the P.P.C.L.I.
It turns out that my father used the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations to have my mother ejected from the PMQ. This was a common practice that was documented in a document called “Canadian Forces Response to Spousal Abuse in Military Families” which was a report that was commissioned by the Canadian Armed Forces.
Summer –
My grandmother arrives from Edmonton, Alberta to raise my brother and I. I get chucked into Sunday School.
1978
June –
Grandma returns to Edmonton
July –
I’m hospitalized after an incident on my bicycle. No next of kin listed on my admission records. Note on my admission records state “Father in Iceland with Airforce, will return this evening”. Iceland hosts an airfield that is used by NATO countries. Also, prior to 2006, the United States leased land and ran an Airforce base there.
August
Captain Father Angus McRae arrives at Canadian Forces Base Namao after having been transferred there from Canadian Forces Station Holberg on Vancouver Island.
Scuttlebutt on one of the Facebook groups for base brats indicate that Captain Father Angus McRae was transferred to Edmonton as a result of an interaction that he had with a teenaged boy on CFS Holberg.
My family arrives on Canadian Forces Base Namao after my father had obtain a compassionate posting from the Eastern Command social worker.
September
Grandma and her husband Roy (Andy) William Anderson move into the PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Namao to raise my brother and I. My father would claim that “training exercises” kept him away from home for 6 to 8 week stretches at a time
Grandma starts taking Scott and I to Sunday service at the base chapel.
November
After a night of heavy drinking with grandma, Andy decides to take a shower to help him sober up. Andy slips in the bathtub and cracks his skull on the rim on the bathtub.
My grandmother didn’t have a driver’s licence. Captain Father Angus McRae, the base chaplain, would occasionally give her rides into Edmonton to see Andy at the Misericordia
During these visits we were looked after by a male teenaged babysitter who would later be revealed to be an altar boy of the chaplain. This babysitter would also be described as a pedophile as a result of molesting children across Canada.
1979
My father meets a woman named Vicki whom lives in Wetaskiwin. My father frequently stays at her place until they break up.
My father meets a new girlfriend whom would end up becoming his second wife. My father met this woman through his half-sisters who attended highschool with this woman in Oshawa, Ontario.
My father would live off base with his girlfriends as he didn’t want to bring them home to meet his mother as grandma was adamant that Richard must get back together with Marie. Grandma would tell me to not believe anything Richard had said about Marie and that the truth would come out one day
Over the course of 1979 and into 1980 the abuse at the hands of the babysitter increases at a marked rate. The babysitter is becoming more aggressive with his abuse and even begins to demand penetration.
There are a few times where the babysitter would find me on base and escort me over to the chapel. Once in the chapel we’d go into the rectory where the father was. We’d have wafers, watch TV, listen to music. The father had a collection of magazines that looked like the ones my uncle had, so I never thought anything bad about them. And besides up at 447 squadron in the canteen they also had the same magazines and some of the centrefolds on the walls. After looking at the magazines or listening to music the father would give me a tumbler full of a “sickly sweet grape juice”. I never remember going home after these visits.
1980
April
The babysitter had me over to his family’s PMQ and was buggering me in his bedroom. His younger brother walked in and caught the babysitter in the act of buggering me. This younger brother notified numerous other kids on the base.
A group of about 10 to 12 older teens gathered on the lawn of babysitter’s PMQ and started throwing rocks and yelling homophobic taunts up at the window.
When I was leaving the babysitter’s PMQ to go home I was attacked by a group of teens and beat up in the middle of 12th Street.
My life on base became a living hell after that. I was no longer allowed to play with the other kids. I was no longer allowed to go to the base pool. I was no longer allowed to go to the “kid’s disco” at the Lamplighter Pub on Saturdays.
May
The babysitter is investigated by the base military police based upon numerous reports received from the parents of military families on base that the babysitter had been molesting their children.
As a result of the investigation of the babysitter the military police became aware of Captain Father Angus McRae’s involvement with molesting children on the base.
A decision is made by the base chain of command to not call in the Morinville RCMP to handle the babysitter. The National Defence Act states that military dependents are only subject to the Code of Service Discipline when accompanying their serving parent anywhere outside of Canada. Why the Canadian Forces thought that it had any power to withhold the babysitter’s crimes from the RCMP is unknown. It was claimed that the babysitter was only 12 years old in 1980. The babysitter has been confirmed to have been born on June 23rd, 1965.
On May 12th, 1980 Captain David Pilling requests that Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit acting section commander Warrant Officer Fredrick Cunningham initiate an investigation into Captain Father Angus McRae for having committed “acts of homosexuality” with teenaged boys on the base.
Over the course of the investigation Warrant Officer Cunningham meets with Base Commander Colonel Daniel Edward Munro. At one of these meetings Cunningham requests that Munro confine McRae to his quarters so that McRae is unable to interfere with the CFSIU investigation by using his command authority as a captain to intimidate ranks lower than his and enlisted parents.
June
Prior to June 20th, The CFNIS have numerous charges against Captain McRae related to the abuse of numerous children, but the brass orders the number of charges brought against Captain McRae to be reduced to only those related to the charges involving the babysitter.
Prior to 1998 it was the commanding officer of the accused, and not the provincial crown prosecutor, that would recommend for or against charges and then cause these charges to flow to either summary trial, courts martial, or even to the civilian courts.
One of the other boys took great offence and blamed the babysitter for the charges relating to their abuse not going forward. This other boy was noted by Fred Cunningham to be a “prolific pyromaniac”. Canadian Forces fire marshal records would verify that this boy had lit fires in his own PMQ in an attempt to “play the hero” by discovering the fires and calling for help.
June 20th – Fire at PMQ #26. This is the babysitter’s PMQ. The babysitter was not home at the time. The babysitter’s mother had noticed the faint smell of natural gas in the morning and had called the Base Construction engineers to take a look at the leak. The babysitter’s sister was in the shower having a shower.
The babysitter’s mother was in the kitchen watching the construction engineer looking for a gas leak. As the engineer was moving the stove back into place, the gas line ruptured.
The gas ignited into a “torch” and started a fire that engulfed the kitchen and started to spread into the dining room.
In an attempt to shut the gas off, the construction engineer ran into the basement where he collapsed and died from a heart attack. The mother had to rescue her daughter from the PMQ. Total damage to the PMQ was $56k in 1980 dollars. The PMQ was worth $70k in 1980 dollars.
Base Commander Colonel Daniel Edward Munro was satisfied with the military fire marshal’s report that it was obviously just a defective gas line on the stove and that calling in the provincial fire marshal to conduct their own investigation was not required.
It should be pointed out that the gas stove was located just inside the back door of the PMQ. The back door of the PMQ faced the roadway and the front doors faced a common area lawn. To give the hose a slight tug to cause a small leak wouldn’t have been that hard to do.
June 28th – Captain McRae officially arrested and charged with the service offences of Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault, and Buggery.
Captain McRae requests a military courts martial.
July
15th through 18th Captain McRae’s Courts Martial.
The babysitter and his family were living on Canadian Forces Base Petawawa in Ontario when the Canadian Forces requested the babysitter return on his own to testify against Captain McRae. The babysitter’s father objects to this and the Canadian Forces relent and allow the babysitter’s father to return to Edmonton with his 15 year old son. The father is barred by the Canadian Forces from entering the courts martial.
During the courts martial, the courts martial panel hears that Captain McRae admitted during his ecclesiastical trial with the catholic church to having molested numerous boys for years.
Entered into evidence is that the investigation discovered that Captain McRae had been receiving the children of service members in the rectory of the base chapel and had been giving these children alcohol and then taking them into the bedroom to “fool around” with them.
After hearing the evidence against him as well as the babysitter’s testimony, Captain McRae changes his plea from innocent to guilty.
Captain McRae sentenced to 4 years which was reduced numerous times over the next few months. Captain McRae ended up serving a sentence of 10 months.
Minister of National Defence Gilles LaMontagne approves of the sentence applied by the courts martial panel.
The media catches wind of this event, but the Canadian Armed Forces quickly throw a “wall of secrecy” around the courts martial and permanently seal all of the documents and evidence.
August
My father moves back into the PMQ with his new girlfriend. He had been living off base with her.
September
During the start of the school year at McArthur school, the school on base for military dependents, I am frequently beat up and teased for being the babysitter’s “girlfriend” and/or “wife”. This is my introduction to slurs like “homo”, “faggot”, “queer”, and “cocksucker”
Towards the end of September my family was moved from CFB Namao to CFB Griesbach. These two bases we 10km apart from each other
October
My brother and I are brought to the attention of Canadian Forces military social worker Captain Terry Totzke by our respective teachers and principal at Major General Griesbach School, the school on base for the children of military families.
November
My family is interviewed on separate occasions by a psychiatrist.
My father is found to accept no responsibility for his family, he likes to play the victim, he feels like everyone is attacking him, he blames others for his problems, he expects others to solve his problems for him.
I am found to be suffering from major depression, severe anxiety, haphephobia, have extremely low self esteem. I am also found to be very poorly informed about sex. I mention that I am terrified of my father and that I expect him to drown me in the toilet. I also remark that “my brain tells me that I’m going to kill myself if granny doesn’t leave the house”.
My brother is found to be a very quiet, lonely, and isolated child.
1980 – 1983
During the course of my involvement with Captain Terry Totzke he would often come to school to talk with me in the office. Other times he would come and pick me up at the school and drive me over to base headquarters where he had an office. Other time my father would take me to see Captain Totzke.
As I had never seen Captain Terry Totzke in uniform I would never realize until 2011 that Terry was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces and that he held the rank of captain.
Terry knew about what had happened on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
Terry was concerned that I was exhibiting signs of a mental illness called homosexuality as I had been known to be having sex with the babysitter.
Terry was concerned that I had allowed the babysitter to molest my younger brother.
Terry had mentioned to me that he had asked the base military police to keep an eye on me and that if I ever tried to kiss or touch another boy that I would be off to the Alberta Psychiatric Hospital for treatment.
Terry said that I should avoid situations where I would see other boys naked as that would awaken my desires to touch them. This resulted in me not playing sports anymore or being allowed to go swimming anymore.
Once Alberta Social Services became involved with my family, Terry and my father would both inform me that I had to be very careful with what I told Pat and Wayne as Pat and Wayne would twist my words and use my words against me.
1981
During the summer of 1981 Grandma moves out of the PMQ.
After Grandma moves out Sue promises my brother and I that if we never want to go to church again that we don’t have to.
November – Due to the inaction of Captain Terry Totzke with my brother and I, our respective teachers and our principal notify Alberta Social Services. As the PMQ that I lived in and the school I was attending were on a Defence Establishment, Alberta Social Services pretty well required Totzke’s permission for their dealings with me.
1982
Richard and Sue are still having great difficulty in their relationship.
Social Services note that Richard and Sue refuse to talk to each other or even acknowledge each other during the counselling sessions and instead Richard uses me to communicate with Sue and Sue uses Scott to communicate with Richard.
Richard informs Scott and I that if Sue leaves him, he’s going to put our dead bodies into a duffle bag and that no one will ever find the either of us and that he’ll just go live in the barracks. This isn’t the first time that Richard has sworn that he would kill Scott and I, but this is the most memorable.
Richard and Sue get married in a private ceremony in the PMQ on base. My brother and I are given $50 each and told to go away for the day and to not come back until close to bed time.
In the spring of 1982 I am formally admitted into the Westfield Program for emotionally disturbed children until a psychiatric bed can be located. My father signs the paperwork surrendering me to the Westfield Receiving Home for Children. Neither Richard nor Captain Totzke seem to realize that by signing this paperwork Richard has placed me into the foster care system.
Both my father and Terry tell me that my involvement with this program is due to my attraction to boys and that this program would help me get over my homosexuality.
During various meetings with Alberta Social Services my father claims that my issues are due to his mother “who was extremely cruel to his children, especially when she was intoxicated, which was frequently”, he explained to Alberta Social Services that he had brought his mother into the house to raise his children after his wife “abandoned” him. He further explains that his mother is an alcoholic who refuses to seek treatment for her drinking issues.
The babysitter is arrested and convicted for molesting a young boy in a small town just north of Canadian Forces Base Petawawa in Ontario.
Christmas ’82. We fly out from Edmonton to stay with Richard’s father in Oshawa, ON.
Richard and his father do not appear to be in friendly terms. Even though we moved to Canadian Forces Base Downsview in April of 1983 and would frequently go visit Sue’s parents in Oshawa, we never again ever saw Richard’s father even though he lived about 10 blocks away from Sue’s parents.
1983
January
26th – Captain Totzke instructed by my civilian case worker and my two child care workers that he is to inform my father and my father’s commanding officer that my father is to start attending all family counselling sessions or I am to be removed from the house and placed into either residential care or foster care.
28th – Captain Totzke informs my civilian social workers that my father has just been transferred from Alberta to Ontario effective immediately and that the move will occur in April.
Sometime between January 1983 and April 1983 my father keeps me home from the Westfield Program. He tells me that I was expelled from the program because I wouldn’t stop kissing and touching other boys.
April
a moving truck arrives one day without notice. The majority of my belongings are piled up at the curb to be disposed of. Later that day we are loaded up in the Datsun B210 for the trip to Ontario. When we cross the Saskatchewan border I asked my father why we had to move. His reply was that because I was still showing signs of being attracted to boys that the counsellors wanted to give me drugs to stop this attraction but that he didn’t want me to take those drugs and that I had to understand that he was saving me.
Alberta Social Services gave Children’s Aid Society of Toronto a heads-up about the imminent arrival of my family. Children’s Aid tried to contact my father via the Canadian Armed Forces. The Canadian Armed Forces stonewalled C.A.S.T.. C.A.S.T. ended up tracking my brother and I down through the public school system.
My father and Captain Totzke had given Alberta Social Services assurances that I would be placed in a psychiatric hospital to receive treatment upon our arrival at Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario.
I was instead enrolled at Sheppard Public School as CFB Downsview did not have its own school for military dependents.
October
Roy (Andy) William Anderson dies at the age of 58 after having spent the last 5 years in hospitals and nursing homes having never recovered from the slip in the bathtub in the PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
My father almost succeeded in conning Children’s Aid into believing that there was no reason for Alberta Social Services to be involved with his family and that Pat and Wayne had blown everything out of proportion.
1984
Children’s Aid and the North York Board of Education come to realize that there is intense sibling rivalry between my brother and I, and both agencies comes to the realization that Scott and I can never be at the same school.
Richard sent my brother and I up to Edmonton to spend the summer with our grandmother. Grandma’s drinking has peaked, probably due to the death of her husband in October of ’83.
Scott mentioned something to grandma about the babysitter. This sent grandma in to a rage and fury. Grandma wanted to know if I knew what the babysitter had done to Scott. I managed to escape the apartment and made my way up to CFB Namao. Once at Namao I tried to report the babysitter to the military police. The Military Police said that as the babysitter was a military dependent he had to be dealt with by the civilian police. So I went back to Edmonton and this time went to the Edmonton Police Service. This did not work out at all.
Grandma gave me my first beers to drink after she caught me sipping the foam off a pair of bottles that she asked me to open for her and her friend Hazel.
During the summer of ’84 grandma takes Scott and I out to Terrace, BC to see her first son, our uncle Norman. Unlike my father and my uncle Doug who were only metis, Uncle Norman was full blood. Uncle Norman was about 6 to 8 years older than my father. My father was born when my grandmother was 23.
In October of 1984 a fellow base brat from CFB Downsview and I were in the same behavioural therapy program at Elia Jr. High and Dellcrest. He convinced me that I should join Sea Cadets over at the Dennison Armouries.
My babysitter was convicted in 1984 for molesting an 8 year old boy in Manitoba.
A search of newspaper records indicate that in 1982 a 17 year old male babysitter had molested numerous children in a neighbourhood directly adjacent to Canadian Forces Base Winnipeg. The mother of some of the molested children was upset that the 17 year old babysitter had never been charged due to the young age of the victims
My babysitter would have been 17 years old in 1982
Even though his family had been residing on CFB Petawawa in 1982, his family may have been posted to CFB Winnipeg to get away from CFB Petawawa. Posting problems to other bases was a known phenomenon back in the day.
Late 1984 – Early 1985
Scott has his first Grand Mal seizure.
Richard had discovered Scott, called the ambulance, and went to North York General with Scott.
I had been out of the house all day, but when I arrived home Sue told me to get straight up to my room. She mentioned nothing about Scott. She just said that Richard wanted me waiting in my room when he got home.
When Richard came home he was slamming doors. Richard and Sue started yelling at each other.
Richard stormed up the stairs and into my room. Before saying anything he gave me a massive backhand across my face that drew blood and knocked me to the floor. Richard then started demanding to know where the drugs were that I gave to Scott. I kept asking “what drugs?” which only made him more furious. He started tearing my room apart stating that if and when he found the drugs he was going to make the next beating even worse than this one.
A few days later when Scott was released from the hospital all Richard would say is that I was goddamn lucky that Scott had Gran Mal Epilepsy and that I hadn’t given Scott any drugs.
What has always been perplexing about this is that Richard knew that Marie’s mother had died of an epileptic seizure and that one of Marie’s brothers had epilepsy.
1985
The babysitter’s family arrives back on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
In May the babysitter is found molesting a 9 year old boy that lives on the base. He is charged by the civilian police for this matter.
The babysitter is ordered off the base by the Canadian Armed Forces. The babysitter’s father rents him an apartment in the West End of Edmonton.
In June the babysitter is arrested and charged for molesting a 13 year old newspaper carrier. The babysitter lures the newspaper carrier to his apartment with video games.
In August the babysitter is convicted in court of the charges relating to the boy from CFB Namao and the newspaper carrier. The Alberta crown prosecutor specifically mentions that the babysitter is a danger to children and informs the court of the babysitter’s conviction in Manitoba in 1984 for molesting a young child.
July
Richard sends Scott and I to spend another summer with grandma.
Somewhere between the summer of ’84 and this summer, grandma has “found jesus” again. She’s given up drinking. She frequently drags my brother and I to church service at St. Joseph’s Basilica on Sundays. She had even joined AA and appears to have stopped drinking. This is a new experience as I had never really seen grandma sober.
Sober grandma was not as pleasant as intoxicated grandma.
August
My father and my mother finalize their divorce. Somehow Sue discovers this and there is a massive domestic disturbance in the PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Downsview that results in my father being detained by the base military police.
During the investigation, the military police hear disturbing things from the neighbours about how my father treats my brother and I. As the military police can’t find us, they ask Richard where we are. Richard tells them we’re in Edmonton with our grandmother. The CFB Downsview military police contact the Edmonton Police Service and ask the EPS to do a welfare check on my brother and I.
Upon our return to Toronto after having spent the summer in Edmonton the base military police had to speak to my brother and I about concerns they had for our safety living with our father. A couple of recommendation from the military police. Get out of the house if my father starts raging out. Jump from the second story window if necessary. Call for help from inside someone else’s PMQ. Never call 9-1-1, call the base military police instead as the civilian police can’t just respond to calls from on the base.
I was after this visit by the military police that I had my first inkling about the HMCS Kootenay. Bill didn’t name the ship, but he said that my father had been at sea and he had lost some very close friends in an “engine room explosion” and that Richard was never the same after that day. Bill said that he knew my father had a temper and that my father was prone to violence and that he had been hitting my brother and I, but Bill said that I had to forgive my father. Bill said that he really wished I knew my father before the “engine room explosion” as he was a much different guy. Bill said that much like on Shearwater, my brother and I were always welcome to come stay in his PMQ when my father was out of control and we needed a place to stay for a while.
September
My father surprises me with a small birthday cake and a card with $20 inside. He apologized for not remembering my birthday for the last few years (since 1977 to be exact). Promises that he will never forget again. This would be the last birthday acknowledgement that I ever had from him.
I wouldn’t discover until 2011 that we were under the supervision of the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto and that he was just buttering me up incase CAST was to find out about the massive domestic dispute that had occurred over the summer of ’85.
1986
Attended cadet camp at RMC Kingston
1 week prior to the end of summer training camp we were to call our parents to see if they were going to attend the graduating ceremonies and then drive us home after. That’s when I discovered that my father had signed my brother out of juvenile detention and he was going to take my brother and our stepmother to Washington, DC for a vacation and that I would have to take the bus from Kingston to Toronto.
1987
February – Over the protests of the executive officer of my sea cadet corp., my father enrols my brother in the sea cadet corp that I am a member of. This XO worked with at-risk-youth involved in the criminal justice system. This XO had informed me that my brother had been giving the police my name and my DOB whenever he had been arrested. The XO did not want my brother in the corp as he couldn’t trust my brother.
May – After the disastrous cadet weekend at Canadian Forces Base Borden, I quit cadets. The XO ‘knew’ that my brother had joined in with some of the troublemakers from a different cadet corp that were staying in the same barracks as we were and had snuck over to the female’s side of the barracks. I highly suspected that Scott had done what he was accused of, but if I would have told the XO that my brother did do what he was accused of my father would have beaten the shit out of me for “not looking out for” my younger brother and allowing him to get into trouble.
My brother by this point had been in and out of group homes and juvie. He was hanging out with a group of small time thugs and would engage in strong armed robbery, B&E into hotel rooms and houses, stealing cars, etc.
August – Grandma dies.
September – picked up all of the forms and all of the paperwork required to allow me to get my learner’s permit and sign up for the Young Driver’s of Canada program. My father explains that I cannot have my driver’s licence as long as I live under his roof as this will make his insurance rates go up. If I want my licence I need to move out.
Fall –
Scott had stolen our stepmother’s Chevrolet Chevette and went for a joyride with his the guys he hung out with. They nearly didn’t make it off the base as Scott lost control of the Chevette on the circular road for the PMQs and nearly struck a utility pole. Numerous people reported him to the military police, but he had gotten off base by the time the MPs arrived.
I was asleep in my bed in my bedroom in the basement as I often slept in due to chronic fatigue due to my depression.
Richard had come home from grocery shopping with Sue when they both noticed that the Chevette wasn’t in the parking space.
Richard grabbed me by the ankle and yanked me out of bed. My head hit the concrete floor. Richard started punching me and kicking me demanding to know what I did with the Chevette. As I was trying to crawl under my bed to get away from him he’d just pull me back out. I kept telling him that I didn’t know what he was talking about as I was asleep. He then started ranting about how I wasn’t raising Scott right, that I didn’t protect Scott from the babysitter, that Scott was acting out the way he was because I let the babysitter molest him.
November – dropped out of school and moved out of the house shortly there after. My father’s anger was getting out of control and my father had lost complete control of my brother. Even my father was afraid of my younger brother.
Started working full time and started renting a room in a house just off base. The house was a PMQ in the LDH housing that was off base but was adjacent to where I worked. It was rented by a member of the Canadian Forces who had just split up with his wife. His wife took the kids. As the wife was civilian she had to move out. This member did not want to move out of military housing and he did not want to move into the barracks, so he kept renting this PMQ and had decided to rent two of the three bedrooms out.
1988
Worked. Worked a lot.
1989
One of the owners of the company that I worked for had a friend in Timmins, Ontario that needed some help with servicing their amusement machines, so I was asked if I would like to spend a few weeks up north. I went up north and spent most of my time servicing video games, pinball machines, and jukeboxes that had been provided by this company to the various community centres on the Indian reservations on the shores of James Bay.
When I returned to Toronto that summer, I found out rather abruptly that the Canadian Forces forbade the renting of rooms in the PMQs and that I had to find a new place to live. So I moved into my car at the base auto club carefully sleeping in the back and sneaking on and off base to get to my car.
One day while heading to work I encountered Mr. Bowles, my former science teacher from Pierre Laporte. He implored me that I had to finish school, that I had way too much potential to waste. He said that if I was willing, he would get my other favourite teachers like Mr. Ford and Mr. Atkinson to write letters to a school program called A.I.S.P., the Alternative and Independent Study Program. He said that A.I.S.P. was ideal for kid who didn’t fit into the typical school programs or structures.
I was accepted into A.I.S.P.
As I needed a place to stay, I went back to Richard and asked him if it was possible to stay at his place until I finished A.I.S.P.. I explained to him that I intended to take grades 9 and grade 10 in the first year, and grade 11 and 12 in the second year. He accepted.
A.I.S.P. was is a unique program that placed heavy emphasis on the Independent portion of its name. At the time is was run from the second floor of a former elementary school. At the time the school was running only kindergarten and a few of the first grades on the lower floor. A.I.S.P. had the second floor. There was definitely not enough room in this school to house the resources that grades 7 through 12 would require. And there definitely wasn’t enough room to accommodate all of the students if the students were to all show up at the same time.
This is where the “independent” portion of the name came into play. Any branch of the North York Public Library or any library from any of the local junior high or high schools were available to us for study or for research. If we wanted to drop in on a subject being taught we could just show up at a local junior high or high school and sit in on their class. Our physical education programs took advantage of the various locals school. Yes, the teachers at A.I.S.P. ran classes but it was more like “here’s your assignment for the next week, hand in your work when you’ve completed it”
I was walking from A.I.S.P. to the North York public library main branch which was just north of Yonge and Sheppard in North York. My father also worked in the government of Canada federal building at 4900 Yonge Street, which was right across from the library. I don’t know where Richard was going to, but he saw me and the kids I were with. In typical Richard dramatic fashion he floored his Mustang GT, pulled a u-turn in the intersection of Yonge and Sheppard, raced up beside us, and then jumped on the brakes. He got out of the car in and in a profanity laced tirade wanted to know what the fuck I was doing out of school, did I take him for a fucking idiot? How fucking long did I think that I was going to be able to pull this shit off for.
When I got home that night, Richard was ranting again about A.I.S.P. and that he wanted me to”the fuck out of that fucking school and back into a normal fucking school” and that all I had to do was “sit the fuck down, look at the fucking blackboard, and mind my own fucking business” he even suggested that I just “take some fucking basket weaving courses” to get my grade twelve.
Things did not get any better over the next couple of weeks. I ended up dropping out of school again and I got a job
1991
1992
Moved to Vancouver in February of 1992
1993
1994 –
Arrived back in Vancouver from Toronto.
End up with a room at the Sally Anne on Dunsmuir street. EI took a couple of weeks to reroute from Toronto to Vancouver. Received BC social service assistance which was to be paid back.
It was becoming painfully self evident that only those with supportive parents met success in life and that I was destined to forever be wasting my life making welfare wages.
I had been eying up the Lions Gate Bridge for a couple of weeks. Knew that I wouldn’t be able to simply jump off, but that I would have to drink some liquid courage but doing so would put me at risk of being discovered.
Saturday June 11th made my way to the Lions Gate Bridge.
1995
1996
1997 – As a result of the finding of the Somalia Inquiry, the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit is disbanded and replaced by the Canadian Forces National investigation Unit. The Provost Marshal is stood up for the first time since the ’60s. All military police are placed under the command of the Provost Marshal and are in theory removed from the local chain of command, but the changes in the National Defence Act fall critically short of placing members of the base military police and the CFNIS outside of the overall chain of command, and thus investigators with the base military police and the CFNIS must still obey the lawful commands of anyone with a superior rank.
1998
Bill C-25(1998) “An Act to Make Amendments to the National Defence Act” passed in the House of Commons.
There are two key sections to this bill.
The first is the removal of the 3-year-time-bar from the National Defence Act and the application of the relevant Criminal Code “statute of limitations” for Service Offences that are Criminal Code in nature.
The second is the removal of the requirement for the commanding officer to conduct a summary review of the investigation. Also removed are the commanding officer’s ability to summarily dismiss charges brought against their subordinate. Charges will now be reviewed by a military prosecutor.
Unfortunately there is no language in the Act to apply these changes retroactively.
1999
2000
The babysitter attempts suicide
2001
March 2001 – As a result of the previous year’s suicide attempt, the babysitter hires an Edmonton based lawyer and initiates a $4.5 million dollar civil action in the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench against Angus McRae, the Archdiocese of Edmonton, the Canadian Armed Forces, and the Department of National Defence.
The Department of Justice represents the CAF and the DND.
2005
2006
August – made contact with Richard via voice mail.
Let Richard know that I was sick and tired of being blamed for what had happened on CFB Namao and that I was sick and tired of always being blamed for having “fucked” with his military career. I was sick and tired of always hearing from Scott of all of the things that Richard had done for him. I told him that I was seriously considering going to the police with a complaint against the babysitter.
Richard called me back the next morning, his voice was shaking.
He wanted to know why I just didn’t simply move on.
He said that everyone made choices back in 1980 and that there was no undoing the past.
Richard told me that I had to understand something about the babysitter. He said that it was his mother who hired the babysitter, not him. He said that he told grandma that he found the babysitter to be creepy and not very trustworthy, but that grandma wasn’t going to listen to him. Richard had no problem recalling the babysitter’s name.
For the next couple of weeks Richard would call me on a daily basis to see how I was and to have small talk that sounded very forced.
The calls stopped after a few weeks.
I never spoke to Richard again after that.
2008
I decide to make a change in my life to escape the past. I start looking into legally changing my name.
May of 2008 my name is officially changed to Bobbie Garnet Bees.
Department of Justice communicates with the babysitter’s lawyer and signals their intentions to pay a settlement
Cheque issued to babysitter. Amount paid unknown.
2011
In March of 2011 I decide to finally go after the babysitter. I figured that if I could get the babysitter to admit to what he had done that Richard would finally stop blaming me.
March 4th, 2011 I sent an email off to the Edmonton Police Service asking how I would go about pressing charges against my former babysitter.
The Edmonton Police Service forwards my query off to the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team and asks ASIRT who’s jurisdiction my complaint belongs to. ASIRT in turn forwards my complaint off to the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service at Edmonton Garrison.
July 22nd, 1969 was 94 days prior to the worst peace time disaster in the Canadian Navy.
July 22nd, 1969 was when my father was photographed aboard Canada’s only French helicopter destroyer, the HMCS Ottawa.
He was a half Cree / half Irish boy from Fort McMurray.
He was born in Peterborough Ontario.
His father, Arthur Herman Gill abandoned grandma, so grandma packed up and moved back to Fort McMurray with Richard and his younger brother Doug in tow.
Richard attended a single room school house in Fort MacMurray.
Two of his three maternal uncles had been members of the Royal Canadian Army during WWII.
Jimmy Waniandy
Johnny Waniandy
George Waniandy
Trooper George Waniandy died in WWII in Italy. His brother John had been wounded in Italy as well.
Lance Corporal Jimmy Waniandy, a section commander, had been interviewed during the Korean war and been involved in stopping an attack.
Richard obviously had some pretty big shoes to fill.
As grandma lived with us from 1977 until 1981 I knew that she was an overbearing and domineering person.
In 1980, I had mentioned to a psychiatrist that I had been sent to for evaluation by military social worker Captain Terry Totzke that “my brain says that I’m going to kill myself unless grandma leaves the house”. My father would later tell Alberta Social Services that he blamed his mother for the issues my brother and I were having as she was “extremely cruel to his children, especially when she was intoxicated, which was frequent”.
I could see him volunteering to serve aboard the HMCS Ottawa to prove to his mother that he was just as good as George, Jimmy, and Johnny.
Just after the unification of the separate branches of the Canadian military into the Canadian Forces in 1968 he moved from the ships to the Sea King squadron on CFB Shearwater. The HMCS Ottawa was one of the Restigouche class destroyers that were converted to have a helicopter hangar. Richard could go to sea with his former shipmates on the HMCS Kootenay, but he would go with the prestigious submarine hunting Sea Kings. And even though he was with the Sea Kings, he could still go hit the local pubs and get shitfaced with his former navy buddies when the ships pulled into port.
And wouldn’t his mother ever be impressed with his ability to learn French? Learning French might also endear him to his wife who was part of the Dagenais clan from Province Quebec.
But, fast forward to October 23rd, 1969.
The HMCS Ottawa, HMCS Kootenay, HMCS Bonaventure, HMCS Saguenay, were amongst 10 ships that had sailed to the United Kingdom a few weeks prior as part of naval exercises and they were on their way back to Canada.
The HMCS Kootenay has just been instructed to fire its boilers up to full steam and the turbines had been ordered to full throttle.
Unfortunately the HMCS Kootenay had the original version of the Restigouche class reduction gearbox. This gearbox required that the bearings for the gear shafts to be installed in a particular direction to receive lubrication. The second version of the reduction gearbox allowed the bearings to be installed in either direction.
One bearing had been installed backwards and had starved for oil and was overheating. The stress of the full speed run didn’t help the situation.
The gears in those gearboxes were of the herringbone type. This design minimizes the axial loading on the shafts and gears, but leads to a large amount of oil shear which causes a large amount of vapourized / atomized oil.
This oil vapour came in contact with the red hot bearing and caused the vapour to ignite and then explode.
Three of the eight men killed in the explosion were friends of my father that he had served with.
The Sea Kings were called in to remove the injured off the Kootenay. This of course included the Sea King from the HMCS Ottawa.
It’s of no doubt that the HMCS Kootenay incident cooked my father’s noodle.
I can also see the Kootenay incident as sparking my father’s life long hatred of French. And I don’t mean he just didn’t want to speak French. Whenever the topic of French was brought up in the house, his full hatred came out. Even when I tried to practice French at home for school he would ridicule me for trying to learn French because French was, in his opinion, a complete fucking waste of time. Only fucking frogs spoke French was his constant refrain.
I can see his superiors on the HMCS Ottawa insisting to the point of complete idiocy that French and only French be spoken.
While my father’s drinking buddies were burning to death on the Kootenay I can see my father’s superiors yelling and gesticulating wildly “Arrêtez de parler anglais Gill! Nous parlons en Français sur ce navire”.
If that’s the one thing that I know about my father, he didn’t entertain “silly decisions by silly fuckers”.
Nothing screams Canadian Armed Forces like adhering to the “rules” during times of disaster, especially if the rules are petty and useless.
In 2014 I had returned to Halifax, Nova Scotia for the first time in my life since my father was posted to from CFB Shearwater to CFB Summerside in 1976. I met a man named Chris LeGier out by the HMCS Kootenay memorial at Point Pleasant.
He said something that stuck with me all these years later.
The Canadian Armed Forces turned their backs on everyone that was involved.
The military stuck to the rules regarding PMQs on the base in that the housing could only be rented to serving members of the military, not their spouses. Accordingly non-serving spouses were told to move out of the PMQs.
Members that had been traumatized by the events were ignored by the military. And this makes perfect sense because back in the day mental health issues were pretty well a one way ticket to civvy street.
According to Chris, it wasn’t unheard of for traumatized members of the HMCS Kootenay event to hit the bottle, use heroin, or even cocaine. And no, drug use in the Canadian Armed Forces wasn’t unheard of. And he said that it wasn’t just the members on the Kootenay that suffered. CFB Shearwater and CFB Halifax were a tight knit community and they all knew each other.
I had been going through searches on Newspapers.com when I came across a picture of my father from 1969.
The fact that Richard would have been a member of a ship’s company when that crew was expected to speak French at all times is fucking mind blowing to say the least.
He was a prairie boy growing up in Fort McMurray, AB before enlisting in the Royal Canadian Navy in 1963 at a stone frigate in Edmonton, AB. I can’t see him as ever having learnt French at home. When grandma came to live with us I can’t ever remember her speaking a single word of French, and I don’t think that she would have learnt French in the two years that she attended Indian Residential School.
When I was a kid, Richard had absolutely no time for French. Even though the schools on base were giving military dependents French classes, Richard would get upset if I tried speaking French in the PMQ.
The photo answers a bunch of questions. The HMCS Ottawa DDH 229 was fitted with a landing pad and a hangar for the Sea King helicopter. And the HMCS Ottawa was amongst the ships that had sailed to the United Kingdom and were involved with the HMCS Kootenay incident on October 23rd, 1969.
As Bill Parker had said to me in August of 1985 on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario, “I wish you had known your father before the Kootenay, he was a much different man then, I think you would have liked him”.
This photo was taken on July 22nd, 1969. That’s almost 3 months before the events of October 23rd, 1969 when the HMCS Kootney suffered a massive explosion due to overheated oil vapour in one of its reduction gearboxes. 9 men died that day, and according to Bill Parker in 1985, and my mother in 2013, three of those men were close friends of my father that he had served with in the Royal Canadian Navy before unification in 1968.
This photo was taken two years and two months before I was born. The man in the photo is not the man I grew up with. The man in the photo looks calm and inquisitive. The man that I grew up with was a piss tank alcoholic with rage issues and a hair temper trigger who had copious amounts of contempt for just about everyone else around him.
Looking at this photo I can only wonder what Richard would have been like had the HMCS Kootenay event not occurred. Or even if it had still occurred, I can only wonder what home life would have been like had the Canadian Armed Forces treated mental health as a priority instead of simply turning a blind eye to mental health issues and expecting the guys to deal with it on their own and self medicate through abusive behaviour, alcoholism, or hard drugs.
I know from my personal involvement with military social worker Captain Terry Totzke that the mental health and wellbeing of military members was the least of the military’s concern.
Does seeing this photo make me change my opinion of my father.
No.
He was still a broken inconsiderate self centred man who should never have been allowed to father children.
But what this photo does show is that Bill Parker and my mother weren’t lying when they said that Richard was a completely different person before the HMCS Kootenay disaster.
Came across the obituary for my mother’s second husband, Art Wudrich.
Arthur Leo Wudrich
November 18, 1938 ~ May 18, 2024 (age 85)
Arthur Leo Wudrich Obituary
Art passed away in Calgary at home at the age of 85 years in his sleep peacefully.
He is survived by his wife of 39 years, Marie Wudrich; sons, Terry Wudrich (Deanie) and Dwayne Wudrich; grandchildren, Tyler Wudrich, and Joanne Wudrich; great-grandchildren, Kayden Wudrich and Carson Wudrich; sister Amelia Buhler; brothers Kenny Wudrich, Donald Wudrich (Juverna) and Richard Wudrich (Marilyn).
Art was predeceased by his sister, Ruth Olson; and brothers, Louie Wudrich, Leonard Wudrich, Albert Wudrich, Harold Wudrich and Emil Wudrich.
Arthur Wudrich started his career as a Ferry operator in Saskatchewan, until he went back to school and became a refrigeration mechanic. His son Terry and grandson Tyler have followed in his footsteps and continued with refrigeration as a career choice.
Arthur did move a lot during his career and had many hobbies that kept him busy. He loved to fish, do woodwork and take photos of wildlife. He always loved nature and animals, as do his son Dwayne and granddaughter Joanne.
Art’s wish was for no services to be held, but for the people that know him please take a moment and enjoy family, nature and what life offers you.
I only knew Art briefly. He was a decent guy.
I first met Art in the summer of 1990 when my father invited me to move back to Edmonton with him for his final posting.
Marie and Art were living out on an acreage by Wabumun just west of Edmonton.
I don’t know how or when my mother and Art first met. Marie and Art were married in 1985. This was just after my father signed their divorce papers.
Art and my mother were together for 39 years.
I stayed with Art and Marie for the month of September in 1990.
When my father, my stepmother, my stepbrother, and I arrived at Canadian Forces Base Griesbach in July of 1990 we lived in military housing on base for 2 months. My father bought a house up in Morinville, AB. My stepmother made it very clear that I was not welcome in her house. When my brother arrived in Alberta after his delay in Ontario, she didn’t want him in her house either.
When I was staying with Marie and Art out on their acreage, the engine on my car blew a lower radiator hose and I ended up destroying the engine while driving to work in Edmonton.
No big deal, Art made his garage available to me to use to swap the engine out in my car. He even came with me to West Edmonton Pick-A-Part where I grabbed a used engine out of a scrapped car in the scrap yard. And being an industrial refrigeration mechanic Art had all of the good tools at his disposal.
I found a car that had significant rear end damage but with low milage. Pulled the valve cover off the engine to check for wear on the cam shaft and tappets, and to see if there were any signs that the head had ever overheated, checked for oil leaks around the head. Pulled the plugs and they looked clean.
I took the opportunity to upgrade my car from a 1.4l to a 1.6l engine with the more advanced carburettor.
Took me the one weekend to have the dead engine pulled out of the car and the new engine put in. Art even helped me haul the old engine to the wreckers for scrap.
Art was impressed that I had done the engine swap by myself and that I was meticulous and tidy and cleaned everything up. This I owed to Bill Parker, Bob Wrightson, and the other guys at the base auto hobby club on CFB Downsview.
Art wanted me to get into the refrigeration trade. He said that he was certain that he could get me taken on as an apprentice, and that with my mechanical skills and my electrical aptitude that I would do well.
Sadly though, the events of CFB Namao had occurred just over ten years prior and I was still bearing the fresh trauma of my father’s anger and Captain Totzke’s derision. I was more than certain that I was too much of a failure to be anything like Art.
I moved to Vancouver in the early winter of 1992. Being on welfare since the summer of ’91, Edmonton wasn’t a pleasant city to be in. Unless you have a red seal trade, there’s really not much work in Edmonton except in the low paying service industry.
I had tried to get in contact with my mother a few times between 1992 and 2013, but the company that Art worked for had service contracts for large industrial gas compressors and Art and Marie would often move to the area where the job was as the job would often take a few months from start to finish.
I didn’t see Art between 1992 and December 2013 when I had to track Marie down to ask her questions about answers my father had given to me when I examined him for federal court.
Art would have been about 75 at this time. My mother was 67.
I saw Art and Marie two more times, but the last time I spoke to either of them was back in 2017.
Marie and Art had moved on with their lives, and Marie had petty well written off anything to do with her involvement with my father.
Art didn’t seem to appreciate my desire to know more about the relationship between my mother and my father and my extended family.
But still, Art was a good guy.
It was last week that I had found out that Art had passed away in May of 2024.
I often wonder what would have happened in my life had my father been 1/8th or even just 1/16th the man that Art was.
So now, it looks like it’s just Marie and myself that remain.
And after we’re gone that will be the end of the dysfunction that was my family.
Nice city. It’s walkable. But it’s also dominated by car culture.
Massive freeways all over the place.
It’s hard to get away from the car.
The downtown is nice and walkable.
Same homelessness and drug use issues that Seattle and Vancouver, BC have, but still no where near as bad as the drug problems in Edmonton, AB.
Did the usual thing, just walked around the city, steering clear of anything that looked like a tourist trap.
Came down here to buy socks.
Yep, socks.
Place down here sells nice cotton knee high and thigh high socks that come in an assortment of colours and patterns.
They work out to about $30/pr in Canada, but with Sir Misogyny the Orange wanting to start a trade tariff war, I thought that it would be a great time to pop on down for a long weekend to grab some socks and take advantage of the duty exemption that comes into play after one has been in the US of A for more than 48 hours.
There are a lot of these water fountains around the city. And it looks like they keep them running around the year.
Portlandia, a sculpture by Raymond Kaskey.
If you ever get to Portland, you gotta check the statute of Portlandia out. It’s perched over the entrance of the Portland Municipal Services Building located on S.W. 5th Ave., between S.W. Main St. and S.W. Madison St.
This city has a lot of bridges. 12 large bridges and a good half dozen pedestrian bridges.
Most of the bridges have a good coating of graffiti, stickers, and other colourful distractions from the banality of life.
My hotel room had one of these in it.
Kept waiting for the psychologist to come in to analyze me, but they never showed up.
And finally, no trip would be complete without me checking out the HVAC system in the hotel where I’m staying. Polished spiral duct. Long radius elbows. Looks like a variable flow refrigerant system so it can do heating and cooling. Easy access to the filter.
I despised my full name, but that’s for a different post.
While my family lived on Canadian Forces Base Shearwater in Nova Scotia people like Bill Parker or my uncle Al always referred to me as Bob, Bobby, or Robbie.
No matter how much I preferred Bob or Bobby my father and my grandmother were always of the opinion that my birth name was Robert and that’s what I would be called.
It wasn’t until my infamous August 2006 telephone call with my father that I became determined to change my name.
The telephone call was the first time that I had an inkling that my father knew more about the events on Canadian Forces Base Namao than what he had ever admitted to.
In the aftermath of the telephone calls I had decided that I was going to seriously look at changing my name and possibly going through hormone therapy.
So, I decided that I wanted to work on my name first.
I tried different first names, but I always came back to Bobby, or more specifically Bobbie. What I really liked about Bobbie is that it is a unisex name. Bobby is generally a male name. Bobbi is generally a female name. And Bobbie is gender neutral. Tracing the history of Bobbie through the years it has gone back and forth between being a male name and a female name.
Nothing fancy about the name Bobby / Bobbie / Bobbi. They’re all the diminutive spelling of Robert / Roberta.
And the plan was that once I underwent hormone therapy that I would simply drop the “e” and go with Bobbi.
But then I had to do a stupid thing and I went on to pick a fight with the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence.
The fight was going to be inevitable. There’s no way that the shit from 1978 through 1980 was going to stay hidden and buried in the past.
So, 17 years after my name I’m still Bobbie.
At least I’m on Estradiol and I’m sprouting beewbs……….
Okay, so it should come as no surprise that I have a fixation on Medical Assistance in Dying when mental illness is the sole underlying condition.
Mental illness has always been my constant companion.
Not since the days of my youth on Canadian Forces Base Namao have I been free of mental illness.
Having obvious but untreated mental illness is a torment that no one should ever have to go through. What’s much worse by far though is having diagnosed mental illness but being actively prevented from receiving treatment for those issues.
My father’s been dead for seven years now. But I did examine him for federal court back in 2013, and when questioned about my diagnoses back in 1980, he claimed to know nothing about this.
But then again he also claimed to know nothing about Captain Terry Totzke either.
Much like everything else to do with the Canadian Armed Forces and the events related to 1980, I don’t think that we’ll ever know 100% of the truth.
All I can say is that my father was a master corporal and Totzke was a captain.
And I still maintain to this day that as fucked up and depraved as the sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao was, the period of time between October of 1980 and the spring of 1983 was far worse.
In the current day it’s very hard to separate what currently is from what could have been or what should have been.
For example, my gender. Even before CFB Namao I had more or less a preference for being female. I remember being around five or six that I was upset that I wasn’t going to be a girl.
During the period of abuse on CFB Namao I had often wondered if the babysitter was doing what he had been doing because I was acting like a girl. Maybe if I had been more like a boy then the babysitter wouldn’t have touched me.
The day that I was caught being buggered in the babysitter’s bedroom, the teens that beat the shit out of me before I could get back home were calling me a homo, a queer, a fagot.
In the days and weeks after the final sexual assault the kids on base started referring to me as the babysitter’s girlfriend, the babysitter’s wife, and that if I didn’t watch out that I was going to have the babysitter’s baby.
In October of 1980, when it was obvious that I wouldn’t be able to fit it at Guthrie School on Canadian Forces Base Namao my family was moved 10 km down the street to CFB Griesbach.
I was a social pariah and an outcast from the word go. But to make matters far worse was my involvement with Terry.
Terry was adamant that I was suffering from a mental illness called “homosexuality” and that I was responsible for allowing my younger brother to be sexually abused by the babysitter. During our various sessions together Terry would remind me that boys are supposed to be attracted to girls, and that homosexuality was a crime and that I would be sent to the Alberta Hospital if I still insisted on kissing and touching boys.
Why Terry chose to ignore my diagnoses is anyone’s guess. Even if Terry was still alive these days, I don’t think that he would tell the truth.
It was during this period of time that my bed wetting started to occur at an alarming rate. The cure at home for this was to let me go to school smelling like stale piss because I was obviously wetting the bed just to get attention.
Now, you have to understand that as a child I had very little understanding of the things going on at the adult level. I lived on a military base. My father was in the military. My social worker was in the military. Matters were discussed at a level that I would never have been privileged to.
Even though I lived on Canadian Forces Base Namao during the time of the Captain McRae fiasco I never knew anything about McRae other than he was the father at the chapel and grandma took us for Sunday service.
So when Terry and my father had picked me up from school one day to go for an appointment and we drove past the military prison on CFB Griesbach and one of the two said to me that “if I stayed a homosexual” that I would end up in prison “like the priest”. At the time I had no idea of the whole Captain McRae fiasco.
I went through my teenaged years hating the fact that I wished that I was a girl, as this was obviously why the babysitter had sex with me, right? The babysitter (so far as I knew at the time) wasn’t getting into trouble because it’s perfectly normal for boys to fuck girls. Well, that is what Terry and my father were always going o about. And let’s be honest, the military was extremely misogynistic back then. So, it was obviously my fault that the babysitter abused me for as long as he did. If I didn’t like the abuse I could have stopped it at any time, right?
And while all of this was going on I was becoming more and more withdrawn.
Because of my untreated major depression, severe anxiety, and my out of control haphephobia I was not a pleasure to be around. And as one of my teachers noted, I was ostracized and often made a scapegoat.
None of this got any better when my family came to the attention of Alberta Social Services. In fact, once I became involved with Alberta Social Service in November of 1981, things at home became much, much worse. And this wasn’t due to Alberta Social Services per se, it was due to Terry’s and my father’s reactions to Alberta Social Services.
Alberta Social Services realized that I was having significant behavioural issues. But Terry and my father never once mentioned the events of CFB Namao to Alberta Social Services. Instead my father would try to convince Alberta Social Services that I was acting up because I missed my mother, or because I was just seeking attention, or because my grandmother had been cruel to my brother and I.
What didn’t help this matter was that I was told by both Terry and my father that Pat and Wayne were involved with me because of my homosexuality. Of course I wouldn’t learn until August of 2011 that Pat and Wayne were child care workers with the Alberta Government and that Terry and my father were both employees of the Canadian Armed Forces and that in hindsight Terry and my father didn’t appreciate Alberta Social Services sticking their noses in where they weren’t wanted.
My father had no issue whatsoever in the privacy of our PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach venting his frustrations on me for “fucking” with his military career. This would often be delivered by either the belt or by openhanded backhands. Or going to bed without supper.
There was a time in which the relationship between my father and his girlfriend Sue was at risk of falling apart. She had threatened to leave him. Richard sat my brother and I down and basically explained to us that if Sue left, that he was going to kill the two of us, stuff our bodies into a duffel bag, get rid of us where no one was ever going to find us, and he’d move into the barracks like nothing ever happened. The terrifying thing about this was the look in his eye meant that he was deadly serious and that he obviously had put some serious thought into this.
I remember having been expelled from school in the winter of ’83 because I apparently was still attracted to boys. And I remember the sudden move in the spring of ’83 because Pat and Wayne wanted to give me drugs to make me stop liking boys and my father didn’t want me taking those drugs so we had to move so that he could save me. Learning the truth about that in 2011 doesn’t change the pain and anguish that this caused. Nor does learning the truth about CFB Namao and CFB Griesbach change how devastating life became for me on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario.
The truth about ’83 is that I wasn’t expelled from the MacArthur Program for exhibiting “homosexuality”. Nor did Pat and Wayne even seem to know anything about my alleged “homosexuality”. No, the “expulsion” and the sudden move were due to the fact that Alberta Social Services wanted to remove me from my father’s care and place me into protective custody. As I was officially Captain Totzke’s client Alberta Social Services had to inform Totzke about their plans to place me into foster care or residential care due to my father’s outright refusal to participate in the family counselling, and that if he continued to refuse and continued to not seek treatment for his anger issues, that my issues were never going to get any better. On January 26th, 1983 Captain Totzke was told about these plans. On January 28th, 1983 Captain Totzke informed Alberta Social Services about my father posting to Ontario that had just been approved.
Alberta Social Services asked my father if he intended to tell me about the move, he said that he would not. However, both Terry and my father said that I would be placed at the Sick Kids hospital in Toronto to receive psychiatric care. This never happened. In fact there never were any applications or inquiries made to Sick Kids.
On Canadian Forces Base Downsview my mental health continued to plummet. On CFB Griesbach and on CFB Namao, my exposure to other kids was limited to other base brats or to other kids in the Westfield / MacArthur day program. And that was it. Canadian Forces Base Downsview didn’t have a school on base for the children of military families. We were all punted off to the local North York public school like Sheppard Public, Downsview Public, Elia Jr. High, Pierre Laporte Jr. High., C.W. Jeffries, and Downsview Secondary School.
And unlike on base, where kids like me were shunned and ostracized, in public school we were targets for beatings from the civy kids.
And one thing that that I was going to become extremely familiar with is the fact that sexually abused children with emotional issues were magnets for sexual deviants and perverts. When your own father blamed you for the sexual abuse you endured previously this means that you don’t dare mention the sexual abuse that you are currently enduring as you know that you’ll just get blamed again.
Having been sexually abused meant that I was expecting just about every male adult that I was somehow involved with was going to sexually abuse me or expect sexual favours for good marks or good grades. But the truth is that none of my teachers ever tried to touch me. Even teacher that my father had called homos and faggots, like Mr. Ford or Mr. Bowles, or even Mr. Cross.
But, because of my father’s reactions to anything homosexual, I knew that I had to keep my distance from these teachers, or anyone else of the male persuasion that wanted to help me because it was obvious that they must be trying to be nice to me because they just wanted a blow job from me or to get into my pants.
So yeah, this made school very fucking awkward for me.
And by this time my depression, my anxiety, and my haphephobia were all in overdrive. The years of neglect and the mental abuse were starting to add up and to take their toll. School would keep asking my father why I was late, and why I was sleeping in classes, and why I had such a negative attitude. His response always was that I was just acting up to get attention and that he didn’t understand why I wasn’t waking up on time and why I was sleeping in class all the time. I guess that he never told my teachers or the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto about the sexual abuse I endured, about the major depression, severe anxiety, and haphephobia that I had been diagnosed with, but not receiving treatment for, and I’ll bet you that my father never once told the schools about the fact that he’d come downstairs into the basement every night where my bedroom was, and that he’d smoke and watch TV until about 02:00 to 02:30 in the morning due to his severe insomnia.
Yes, he had his own daemons to endure, but that didn’t mean that he had any right to subject me to his daemons.
So I was constantly in trouble at school which only ensured that I was going to get “corrective punishment” at home.
By the summer of 1985 his anger and his temper had reached a boiling point. Luckily my brother and I were up in Edmonton for the summer. Richard had raged out in the PMQ and went on a major destructive spree. Furniture had been thrown out the windows, holes punched in the walls, drapes and curtains torn off the rails. It took three military police officers to restrain him. Only with my father in custody and at risk of being courts martialed out of the military did the chickenshit neighbours start to tell the military police and the brass about the way in which Richard had been neglecting and beating us.
This wasn’t the first time in Richard’s military career that he was anxious about being thrown out of the military for one of his outbursts, but he wasn’t. Not the previous times and not the time in 1985.
What was odd though is that from this point of time onward there were yearly reviews noted in his service file. In 1985 he only had 8 years to go until retirement. Did someone in the forces feel sorry for him due to his involvement with the HMCS Kootenay in 1969?
Looking back I can only wonder why no one in the Canadian Forces could have shown me 1/100th the sympathy they had shown to Richard.
But again, this isn’t about Richard. This is about why I desire Medical Assistance in Dying. Unfortunately I can’t go into the reasonings for my desire for M.A.i.D. without explaining to you how I was failed by the Canadian Armed Forces, by my father who was an employee of the Canadian Armed Forces, and by Captain Terry Totzke who not only was an employee of the Canadian Armed Forces but who was by virtue of rank my father’s superior.
There is absolutely no therapy or drug that will free me from the memories of CFB Namao and how I was dealt with in the aftermath of CFB Namao.
There are no treatments or therapies that will free me from the damage of long term untreated major depression, severe anxiety, nor haphephobia.
My long term gender issues will not be solved by an apology or a settlement.
The damage is done.
In fact a settlement may actually make things worse as this will mean that things didn’t have to be as bad as they were and that I didn’t have to suffer through untreated mental illnesses due to a desire to keep things hushed, and gender confusion that was drilled into my head due to institutional homophobia.
Living a life where I am reduced to drifting along as flotsam on the ocean currents working in jobs that I fit into because of the high skills that I bring to positions that typically don’t pay the wages required for these types of skills.
Never having had the safety net of a family that I could fall back on if I tried to take a risk in life and took a misstep meant that trade school or other educational endeavours were forever out of my grasp.
Having grown up with a father that drilled into my that I was a worthless cocksucking piece of shit and that I was the cause of my brother’s sexual abuse and subsequent criminal behaviour really didn’t foster an attitude of excellence.
The only time that my father ever gave me any helpful advice was back in 2006 when we talked about the babysitter and I told him that I was working up the courage to report the babysitter to the police. He told me that I have to watch where I go sticking my nose because I might not like the smell of the shit.
Even before I started to learn the full truth about the child sex abuse scandal from Canadian Forces Base Namao I had wanted to die.
I tried with a plastic bag two times on CFB Griesbach.
When my father was posted to CFB Downsview I tried again, usually under the guise of taking risks.
I used to go to Bloor and Yonge and wait until the trains were approaching and then I’d run and jump off the platform and jump over the 3rd rails and then hop up on the other platform. The thinking was that if I got hit “accidentally” that it wouldn’t hurt as much.
I did this until a fellow cadet in sea cadets told me that his father was a motorman on the TTC and that suicide jumpers fucked up the train drivers.
Then I became fascinated with jumping. The Bloor street viaduct over the Don Valley Parkway always seemed to be a hotspot. But how does one accidentally fall from a bridge?
Bloor Street Viaduct Now with suicide barriers
When I moved back to Edmonton in 1990 I tried the High Level Bridge.
High Level Bridge Now too with suicide barriers
I really, really needed my suicide to look like an accident. My fear was that if I committed suicide that my father would just tell everyone that I was just seeking attention and that I had committed suicide to escape my responsibility for allowing my brother to be sexually molested.
Again, you don’t fall off bridges accidentally.
May of 1994 found me on the underside of the Lions Gate Bridge with a six pack of cheap ass beer. I was trying to work up the courage to get pissed drunk enough that I would no longer care about what my father would have to say about my death. And besides, it was perfect. Who takes a six pack of beer to a fucking bridge and climbs onto a service gondola underneath the bridge to get drunk. Must have been some idiot looking for a thrill, right? Definitely not a homosexual pervert looking to escape the responsibility of letting his young brother be molested, right?
I didn’t drink back in the day, so I was completely hammered off 3 of the 6 beers. I started to hallucinate my father and the babysitter, P.S., together at my funeral laughing their heads off at me. My father was telling me to stop blaming the babysitter for what had happened, that it was my fault. I cried for a couple of hours after that. I ended up in the hospital with pneumonia.
I was determined to jump in front of the Skytrain in 2006. That didn’t pan out.
I was determined to jump out of my apartment window in July of 2011 when Master Warrant Officer Terry Eisenmenger told me that there was very little chance of bringing charges against the babysitter as there was no evidence against him.
Again in November of 2011 when Petty Officer Steve Morris told me that the CFNIS could find absolutely no evidence to indicate that the babysitter was capable of what I had accused him of.
Then there was July 19th, 2012 when I was interviewed by the Military Police Complaints Commission for my statement. It was during this interview that both Peter Cicalo and Claude Bergeron told me that they had reviewed the 2011 CFNIS investigation and that they couldn’t find anything wrong with the CFNIS investigation and in fact the investigators with the CFNIS went above and beyond the call of duty as this was a historical case. I kept walking in circles between the Burrard Bridge and the Granville Street bridge working up the courage to jump. But again the same thing kept coming back. If I jumped then the MPCC, the CFNIS, the Canadian Forces, my father, and P.S. win. I get written off in the annals of history as being a fucking attention seeking homosexual nutcase that was trying to shirk his responsibility for what he had done on CFB Namao.
Since about 2016, I have been pinning my hopes on receiving Medical Assistance in Dying. This became even more so after the 2019 Truchon decision in the Quebec Superior Court and the Senate’s suggestion that Mental Illness be considered as one of the criteria for obtaining M.A.i.D.
Why?
To receive M.A.i.D. you have to have a verifiable mental illness. I have them and no one can deny them and no one can negate the horrific effect that they’ve had on my life.
But even more so the unquestionable evidence shows that the Canadian Armed Forces, my father, Captain Totzke, and various others knew of the full extent of the abuse that had occurred on Canadian Forces Base Namao and that instead of allowing me to be a victim, I was vilified and denied treatment all in the name of keeping a lid on the secrets of CFB Namao.
The DOJ, the DND, and the CAF can all mew and cry all they want now. And believe me, they will deny, deny, deny. They will paint me in the public eye as a societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the Canadian Forces. I should know this, they did this to me once already.
But what they will never be able to deny me is that there is a hell of a lot more to this story than just poor widdle P.S. getting touched by Captain McRae.
My hope is that win or lose, that I can be humanely put to sleep after the court decision. Because at this point in time the genie is out of the bottle. The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are no longer going to be able to portray me as a psychotic loser making up stories and lies.
I can go to sleep knowing that I did my best to get the truth out, and that it wasn’t for a lack of trying.
I can go to sleep knowing that I never have to deal with assholes telling me to fucking smile more, or to simply fucking forget about it, or suggesting that I take some responsibility for my life, or that other people have it hard in life therefore I should shut the fuck up and stop whining like a little bitch.
I didn’t ask to be born into a defective family. I didn’t ask to be molested by perverts of Canadian Forces Base Namao. I didn’t ask for untreated mental illnesses. I didn’t ask for relentless victim blaming and shaming.
I just want to go peacefully and respectfully.
No more nightmares. No more teeth grinding. No more being touched and then getting chewed out for “overreacting”. No more being told that I just need to find a boyfriend or a girlfriend. No more being told that I just have to get a degree or a diploma and my life would be so much better. No more being told that I’m too smart.
I came across this video on TikTok yesterday and it really blew me away as to how naive people, especially adults, can be.
I can assure you that this is not the way it worked on any military base in Canada. Especially not if you had the misfortune of coming from a dysfunctional family such as mine.
My mother left in 1977 while my father was stationed at CFB Summerside. It wasn’t her choice to leave.
Military housing could only be rented to the serving member, the non-serving parent had no legal rights to remain in the house if the serving member didn’t want them there. In fact the language in the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations meant that the non-serving spouses were only able to remain in the military housing so long as they had the “permission” of their serving spouse. If the serving spouse didn’t want the non-serving spouse there, the non-serving spouse had no options but to leave.
In the aftermath of my mother leaving my grandmother came to Summerside to live with us from the spring of 1977 until the spring of 1978. When she returned to Edmonton my father requested a posting to Edmonton specifically so that his mother could look after his children as his “wife had abandoned him”.
As I mentioned elsewhere in my blog, my grandmother had been through Indian Residential school as a child. She didn’t have much of a formal education having entered school when she was 13 and leaving school when she was 15.
From all accounts she was an alcoholic by the time my father was born in 1946.
When she came to live with us in the military housing in Summerside she was mostly drunk and would often haul my brother and I off to the Royal Canadian Legion or other pubs while she drank.
When my father received his posting from Summerside to Namao he brought her and her husband Roy (Andy) Anderson into the PMQ on Namao to raise my brother and I while he literally buggered off to who knowns where.
It was grandma’s and Andy’s drinking that landed Andy in long term nursing care when he slipped in the bathtub and cracked his skull open. It was because of this that my brother and I ended up in the care of the babysitter.
My father was asked by Alberta Social Services after we became involved with civilian social services in 1981 if he knew why my brother and I were having emotional and behavioural issues.
My father explained to social services that his mother was “extremely cruel to his children, especially when she was intoxicated, which was frequent”.
He would further tell social services on different occasions that his mother would not admit to being an alcoholic, and that she refused to seek help for her alcoholism.
There’s a couple of “not so funny things” about my father’s statements to the CFNIS in 2011 which serve to illustrate just how fucked up the military justice system actually is.
First, my father seemed to imply that my grandmother never lived with us, and even if she did it was just a very brief period of time.
The CFNIS in 2011 knew from my statement to them that grandma had raised my brother and I from the spring of 1977 until the spring of 1981 and that even before we moved to Downsview in 1983 we’d spend a lot of our weekends at grandma’s apartment.
And when I obtained a copy of my social service records from the Alberta government in August of 2011, I gave the CFNIS a copy of the entire set of records.
The CFNIS never attempted to question my father about the discrepancies between his statement and the contents of the social service records. Instead the CFNIS gave Alberta Crown prosecutor Jon Werbicki my father’s statement with absolutely no mention of my father’s statement to social services after Alberta social services became involved with my family.
This resulted in Jon Werbicki stating that “it was very significant that Mr. Bees never told anyone in a position of authority about the abuse”.
And of course in 2012 the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal did not make the existence of these records known to the Military Police Complaints Commission. So these records became “new evidence” that the MPCC wasn’t able to review. And these records became “new evidence” that couldn’t be introduce during my application for Judicial Review in federal court.
Long story short, unlike in the video there was no one at home that I could run to tell.
My father was living off base with whatever girlfriend he had at the moment. He honestly barely lived with us in PMQ #11 on 12th street on CFB Namao. He didn’t move back into the PMQ until August of 1980.
His mother came to live with us on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach. She looked after my brother and I until the summer of 1981 when she moved out and got her own apartment.
My father’s drinking was just as bad as my grandmother’s drinking. And when the two got drunk together there would often be swearing, yelling, and shoving. If my uncle Doug showed up and the three of them were drinking things would really get out of control.
The thing was alcoholism on the bases in the PMQ patches back in the day was always seen as normal. “It’s a tough job”. “It’s a hard life”. “It’s camaraderie and cohesion building”.
It wasn’t until I moved off base and started living in the civilian world that I began to realize that not every weekend was supposed to be a booze fuelled festival.
The dirty secret of the Canadian Forces is that there was a lot of “trailer trash” living on the bases back then.
My new stepmother didn’t like any of this and she decided to try to put an end to my father’s drinking. She blamed my grandmother for my father’s drinking and the relationship between my stepmother and my grandmother was described as “frosty”. One of them had to go, and it wasn’t going to be my father’s girlfriend.
There was one time that I asked my uncle Doug why my father always believed everything that my stepmother said over what I had said. His response was that the father slept with her, not with me. It would be a few years before I would truly understand what that comment meant.
My grandmother lived by two maxims, and no doubt this was beat into her during her stay at Holy Angels in Fort Chipewyan. “Children are to be seen and not heard” and “Children only speak when spoken to”. And yes, Richard was the exact same. Richard did not under any-fucking-circumstance want to be disturbed. You only spoke when he said it was okay to speak. You stood silently beside him and waited for him to acknowledge you before you said anything. And when you said something to him, it had better not be a stupid waste of his fucking time.
Grandma was the same. If you talked at the kitchen table you either got rapped on the knuckles with the wooden spoon, or you got smacked across the mouth.
But yeah, tell me again who exactly I was supposed to tell about the abuse.
My alcoholic grandmother?
My alcoholic father?
My stepmother, who no no doubt had been told nothing about CFB Namao by her new husband, but had been told that his kids were acting up like they were because they liked their mother better than her?
And besides, with the comments of my father and Captain Totzke, everyone knew what had happened.
It wasn’t like I should have had to tell anyone. That base was a secured defence establishment. How the base chaplain and at least one of his altar boys could molest over 25 children for over 2 years is something that I will never understand.
But whatever. It doesn’t matter if my father lied to the CFNIS in 2011 or if the CFNIS guided my father into saying what he said, the CFNIS accomplished what it needed to do. And that was to sever any potential connection to myself and the babysitter as the babysitter and the babysitter’s documented abuse of young children on the base is what led to the discovery of Captain Father Angus McRae.
From the report: “Our most significant challenge this year was the erosion of the MPCC’s ability to exercise civilian oversight of the military police. The MPCC used a great deal of resources and effort to obtain relevant documents from the CFPM to enable it to conduct fair and fulsome investigations. In too many instances, we have seen resistance or refusal to disclose information the MPCC needs to investigate complaints; a reduction in the number of recommendations accepted by the CFPM; a refusal to respond to recommendations; a refusal to provide updates on files currently being reviewed by the Office of Professional Standards of the CFPM; and restrictive and unilateral interpretation of the MPCC’s jurisdiction. The MPCC has been forced to turn to the Federal Court to obtain the documents it is legally entitled to review as part of its mandate. These unfortunate barriers dilute the will of Parliament in setting up a strong oversight system for the police and must be addressed.”
The MPCC was created in 1998 as part of the passing of Bill C-25 in 1998 and the restructuring of the military police in the aftermath of the fallout from the failures of the military police to conduct proper criminal investigations in Bosnia and Somalia when the Canadian Forces were on “peace keeping” missions there but ended up with members of the CAF conducting illegal activities.
The Military Police Complaints Commission was created with input from the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence, meaning that the CAF and the DND knew how they wanted their new police forces to operate and that through careful consideration the MPCC would be relegated to the status of toothless hound dog.
The issues that Madame Tammy Tremblay raised above are nothing new. In 2015 then outgoing MPCC chairman Glenn Stannard has this to say in his interview with Gloria Galloway of The Globe and Mail.
The Canadian Forces Provost Marshal has the ability to control the findings of the Military Police Complaints Commission.
During a review, the MPCC cannot subpoena documents or witnesses. The MPCC also cannot administer oaths.
Without the ability to administer oaths the members of the CFNIS subject to the complaint can utter falsehoods all day long and there will be absolutely no repercussions.
If a person such as myself wishes to make a complaint against the base military police or the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit we have to first submit our complaint to the Provost Marshal. The Provost Marshal then knows what the complaint is about and can then tailor the documents released to the MPCC to paint the narrative that the Provost Marshal or the Vice Chief of Defence Staff which for the MPCC to see.
Even if the MPCC suspects that something is off and not right, there’s nothing the MPCC can do as the MPCC cannot demand the release of documents from the Provost Marshal. Sure, they can go to Federal Court to ask the court to instruct the Provost Marshal to hand over the records, but that would mean that the MPCC would have to know what documents to request.
As I learnt during the 2012 review of my complaint against the 2011 CFNIS investigation, the complainant cannot simply supply the MPCC with all the documents in their possession. The MPCC can only consider documents that are relevant to the documents supplied to the MPCC by the Provost Marshal.
And as the Provost Marshal is under no obligation to tell the complainant what they’ve supplied and what they’ve withheld from the Military Police Complaints Commission, following through with a MPCC review is almost 100% a waste of time.
This is why when I was interviewed by Claude Bergeron and Peter Cicalo of the MPCC in July of 2012 they were practically popping the champagne and cheering for the CFNIS.
I’m on the left….. the MPCC is on the right.
Peter and Claude were very impressed with the CFNIS investigation even though the Provost Marshal had actually withheld all of my email communications between myself and Master Corporal Christian Cyr detailing the 5 visits to the chapel.
After my interview with Peter and Claude I was so fucking nauseated that I just wandered around the city aimlessly until about 03:00 in the morning trying to work up the courage to jump off the Granville Street bridge.
The Provost Marshal withheld the fact that the CFNIS had in its possession the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the 1980 courts martial transcripts from the MPCC.
Both of these sets of documents indicated that in 1980 the military police and the CFSIU were very well aware of the babysitter’s abuse of young children on the base and the fact that it was the investigation of the babysitter that exposed the actions of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae.
This of course ran counter to was I was told by Petty Officer Steve Morris on November 4th, 2011 when he stated that the CFNIS could find absolutely no evidence that the babysitter was capable of what I accused him of.
Well, if you don’t like the findings of the MPCC, file an application for Judicial Review.
Don’t think that the Federal Court will be of any relief. The Federal Court can only render judgements based upon the documents that the Provost Marshal submitted to the MPCC. Anything else is considered “New Evidence” and the Department of Justice will fight tooth and nail to have all “new evidence” dismissed.
When I entered all of my emails between myself and Master Corporal Christian Cyr detailing the visits to the chapel the DOJ demanded that these be struck from the proceedings as they were “new evidence”. Because the Provost Marshal failed to notify the MPCC about these emails, I couldn’t introduce these emails at Federal Court level.
And it gets goofier than this.
In 1998, the Provost Marshal issued CFPM 2120-4-0 to the commanding officers of the new CFNIS, and all of the detachments across Canada. This document was further reissued in 2006. This document stated that matters involving civilian victim are to be handed over to the outside civilian authorities having jurisdiction. This document further stipulated that the CFNIS could only conduct an investigation of offences involving civilian victims if the outside civilian authorities outright refused to conduct the investigation.
I introduced this document into my applicant’s records for my application for judicial review.
The Department of Justice requested this document be struck from my hearing as this was also “New Evidence”. New evidence even though this was a standing operating procedure of the Canadian Forces Military Police. But it appears that the Military Police Complaints Commission was never given a copy of this document even though this document has guided military police and CFNIS operations since 1998.
I can’t help but wonder if the Provost Marshal’s new found energy to fight the MPCC over documents has to do with the fact that the MPCC went around the firewall that the CFNIS and the Provost Marshal had constructed around the investigation into my complaint of sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao and accesses a parallel investigation being conducted into the sexual assaults on CFB Namao and discovered the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the 1980 courts martial transcripts in the possession of the CFNIS.
Militaries like the Canadian Armed Forces really don’t like outside civilian agencies and do-gooders sticking their noses into the military’s business. Militaries view themselves as being the saviours of their respective country, and therefore they should never be questioned.
The Catholic church did the exact same thing that the Canadian Armed Forces are doing. And that’s using their immense power and prestige to place themselves above examination by pesky civilians.
The only difference between the Catholic church and the Canadian Armed Forces is that the Catholic church is subject to civilian laws and the civilian courts. The Canadian Armed Forces are a law unto themselves.
