Well, today I had another telephone call with my physician.
I’ve been seeing him for a while. About a year I think.
I’ll call him Dr. T.M.. I’ve kinda mentioned these blogs to him. I don’t know if he’s checked them out. If I’m not mistaken he is younger than I am.
To be honest, I’ve never had a good relationship with physicians in the past but Dr. T.M. seems quite on the ball and is actually quite involved with my care.
I’ve had massive battles with depression for all of my life. One of the unhelpful doctors I went to a while ago wanted to know what was troubling me. When I started explaining to him what I had been through he told me to stop. He said he didn’t want to hear about problems from my past. He wanted to know what was currently bothering me.
Other doctors weren’t trustworthy or honestly just didn’t seem to care, period.
When I had my heart issue back around 2012 a family doctor that I started seeing at the time was far more interested in my piercings and if they hurt, or got infected, or if I was wearing them to scare people. I didn’t see him for too long.
As far as getting psychiatric help, I’ve taken advantage of some programs at work through my employer. But not to toot my own horn, but I’m a fucking basket case.
growing up in an alcoholic household with intergenerational psychiatric issues.
growing up in a household with anger control issues.
1-1/2 years of sexual abuse at the hands of a very confused teenager who was being groomed and controlled by a Captain of the regular force of the Canadian Forces
2-1/2 years of psychological abuse at the hands of a military social worker who was determined to cure me of my apparent homosexuality that I had exhibited when I was sexually abused for 1-1/2 years.
Blamed by my father for matters that were far beyond my control or responsibility.
failure to receive proper psychiatric care when it was indicated that I had major depression and severe anxiety.
As of this date the depression and anxiety have been allowed to fester like a cancer in my brain.
One of my issues with seeking psychiatric help earlier in life is the way my father and Captain Totzke pitted me against my civilian social workers. After that, I had very little trust or faith in “professionals”.
Also, there was my father’s reactions to my mental health back then. I was an embarrassment to him. If any of my illness started to show it would be a back hand or a spanking. He drilled into my head that I was just a crybaby having breakdowns as a means to gain attention. So it should come as very little surprise that I’ve had great difficulty obtaining help.
As I said before, I don’t cry any longer not because I have nothing to cry about. I don’t cry any longer because I’ve long since run out of tears to cry.
I am so fucking numb to just about everything.
Dr. T.M. hasn’t been judgemental once. He hasn’t fussed over my piercings nor my tattoos. When I told him about my literal breakdown earlier this year he had absolutely no hesitation in putting me on sick leave, and when the rest didn’t work on its own, he put my on escitalopram right away.
He has been quite open to my request to look into M.A.i.D.. If that’s what I want, then he’s willing to work with me starting next year when the the committee currently reviewing M.A.i.D. for psychiatric issues makes their recommendations to Parliament. Whether or not Parliament accepts all of the recommendations or just cherry picks the recommendations is yet to be seen. We won’t know until March 2023 what the requirements and rules will be.
Who knows, by then maybe by the time M.A.i.D. had been approved I’ll have changed my mind. I haven’t given up on alternatives. It’s just that I’m very pragmatic and realistic. Maybe the drugs will make significant changes, maybe they won’t. The baggage and the unwanted visitors are still residing in my skull.
But it is nice having someone listen to my desires and the rational for my desires and not laugh me off as being melodramatic silly.
Okay, so this topic came up in the last post, and I thought what the hell if I’m writing the story of my life can’t do it without mentioning this.
I have in fact collected welfare a few time in life.
I’ve also collected U.I. and E.I. a few times in life as well.
The first time that I collected welfare was in Edmonton, AB. I forget the exact dates and my tax records aren’t exactly clear, but I was on welfare from around September of 1991 until February of 1992.
The thing I remember the most about applying is (a) how fucking humiliating it was, and (b) because I had been born in Nova Scotia, Alberta was willing to buy me a plane ticket “back home”. I say “back home” as I hadn’t lived in Nova Scotia since I was 5 years old.
Why didn’t I call my father for money? There is no fucking way on Earth I would have ever called him asking for money. You just learnt as a kid to never ask him for money. You just didn’t. Most times he’d just answer that he was “broke” and didn’t have money, but if you could wait for a month he might have some money then. And this would be for amounts like $20. So asking him for $300 to cover rent for the month would have been out of the question.
Marie didn’t have much money, but she did help me out with groceries a couple of times.
Edmonton was a hell hole in the early ’90s. It was in the midst of a recession. I tried delivering Pizza, but that was super risky walking into some parts of town with money in your pocket. I did “dial-a-bottle” delivery for a while. Same risk as the pizza though, but this time not only could they steal your money, they’d steal the booze too. I worked at a car wash. Nothing better than working in a car wash in Edmonton in the winter.
I moved to Vancouver in February of 1992. The job I had come down for ended up getting moved back by a couple of months because the two mechanics that were supposed to be leaving Lions Gate Lanes stayed for longer as they were having issues getting their venture going.
I applied for welfare in BC. Only thing is at the time unless you lived in BC for sixth months you couldn’t get welfare. I was given two options. A free bus ticket back to Edmonton or I could go stay at Catholic Charities Hostel for Men on the periphery of the infamous Downtown East Side. I chose the men’s hostel.
At the hostel you got a couple of meal vouchers. One for breakfast, and one for lunch. I would use the breakfast voucher and trade the lunch voucher for singles. Singles were single cigarettes.
I started smoking around age 13. My younger brother was smoking before I was. Richard didn’t care. By the time I was 18 I was up to two packs a day. By the time I hit Vancouver in ’92 I was still at two packs a day. Singles weren’t enough. So I ended up picking up butts out of ashtrays and using the unburnt tobacco to roll smokes in rolling papers. I was able to find piecemeal work, but I was only allowed to stay at Catholic Charities for 6 weeks. After six weeks you had to get out and find smoother place to stay.
Luckily the job at Lions Gate finally opened up.
I worked at Lions Gate from June of 1992 until June of 1993. The reason why the two previous mechanics left was that the owner of the shopping mall was not going to renew the lease for Lions Gate Lanes and Brunswick was shutting the centre down at the end of the ’92 – ’93 league season. I stayed on with Brunswick for the dismantling of the centre. I then got hired on by Larco to help build the new centre. When Larco cancelled the lease for Lions Gate Lanes, they thought that they would simply walk in and operate the centre for a couple of years until the redevelopment happened. The only problem with that is Brunswick had years of experience repossessing bankrupt bowling centres. We had Lions Gate Lanes stripped to the bare walls in 12 days.
This left Larco in a lurch as they had promised the leagues that there would be bowling for the ’93 – ’94 bowling season. But Lions Gate Lanes was an empty shell.
Warren Flanagan with Brunswick Corp said that there was a job waiting for me in Mississauga if I wanted it.
Phil had been hired on by Larco to oversee the construction of the centre. Phil called me and asked me if I wanted to help build the new centre. I said sure. Larco hired a company from the states to supply lanes, pinsetters, scoring equipment, and the rest of the capital equipment. It took about six week, but we built that 36 lane centre. The only problem was the pinsetters were a mishmash of used American and Japanese Brunswick machines. Some of them even came from a flood damaged centre in the states and were super rusted. The electrics were iffy on the machines and not a single one of them had been overhauled.
The bowlers were rightfully pissed off. The lanes weren’t ready for the start of the season. In fact, the lanes weren’t ready until about 2 weeks later. But the pinsetters were in such rough condition that they were having jams and blackouts non-stop.
One of the machines couldn’t detect standing pins. And this was the lane that the League President was bowling on. He told Phil that if the machine screwed up once while he was bowling on it he was taking the entire league and they’d move to a different centre. Phil begged me to keep it running. I tried to keep it going without having it shut down or sweep standing pins. Unfortunately I got my arm crushed in the machine.
After I got my arm free of the machine I stumbled my way up to the front and I asked Phil for a ride to the hospital. He told me to take the bus. I quit then and there. The next morning I called Warren and asked him if the job was still open in Ontario.
Because I had opened an U.I. claim when Lions Gate Lanes closed and we were all laid off, my claim was still open. When I went to the U.I. office a couple of days later I explained what had happened. They considered that I had already been through the waiting period and therefore they would get my payments underway right away.
With my final cheque from Park Royal Lanes and my U.I. cheque, and my savings I moved to Toronto in late November of ’93.
The job waiting for me was at Brunswick Mississauga lanes. I went in and met the manager. The manager said that he had heard excellent things about my from both Warren and my previous centre manager Wendy. I can’t remember the manager’s name, but I can remember the head mechanic’s name. Don W. The manager got on the intercom and called to the back. As soon as Don emerged from the walkway I could tell this wasn’t going to work. “I told you, no one from the fucking West Coast is going to tell me who the fuck I have to hire”. Don and the manager went into the office and had a yelling match. Don emerged and look at me and said “get your stuff, we’re going to the back, and don’t get comfortable because the first time you fuck up I sending you out the fucking door.” I lasted at Mississauga lanes for about three weeks. U.I. reviewed my termination and determined that it wasn’t justified. As my claim was in British Columbia they’d have to transfer the paperwork over. In the meantime I was now collecting welfare in Ontario. Once the U.I. office got the paperwork sent out it was a few weeks for the the processing to take place. Once that was done I was back on U.I. again.
To keep rent down as low as possible I had been staying at the Salvation Army down by Moss Park.
Toronto wasn’t great at the time. Job interviews weren’t leading to job offers. So I ended up heading back to Vancouver. The only thing I hadn’t counted on was the 6 weeks that it was going to take to change my mailing address. They would also have to re-evaluate my claim as I had moved to a different claims jurisdiction. And of course, they’d have to transfer my paperwork back to British Columbia.
So I ended up receiving emergency welfare from the BC Government. No wait period this time, but it would be clawed back from my U.I. cheques when they started showing up.
Why didn’t I call Richard and ask Richard for money? Not worth it. Not worth the humiliation. Not worth the degradation.
I ended up getting a room at the Salvation Army Dunsmuir House for Men. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was wrong with this place. Someone broke into my room and stole my knapsack and when I called the VPD the Sgt. responding laughed at me when I said I wanted to file a report.
Most of the men in this place were angry. And I mean really angry. Fights would start over the slightest issue.
In 2011 I would learn that the Salvation Army Dunsmuir House for Men was a Federal half-way house and housed men who had just been released from prison. At the time when I moved into the Dunsmuir I just needed a cheap room. No one ever told me that this place also housed freshly released prisoners.
I’ll save this for another post, but my return to Vancouver was when I tried to work up the courage to jump off the Lions Gate Bridge. Instead of working up the courage to jump off the bridge, I worked up a case of pneumonia.
I ended up getting work at a small bowling centre in East Richmond around the end of June. I was there until 1999 when I got into commercial property management. And as they say the rest is history.
So yeah, the first part of my 20s was very, very rough.
Which is why when I read Richard’s statement that he gave to the CFNIS 2011, I choked. He made it sound as if I kept calling him non-stop for money and that he had been giving me money whenever I asked for it.
Did the CFNIS suggest to Richard what he should say?
Was Richard really so keen to play the victim that he said what he said?
Was Richard just vengeful?
This will always be one of life’s little mysteries because Richard is dead.
Looking back on my life it has become readily apparent that the one thing that I am extremely accomplished at is slipping through the cracks.
And this has made me realize that there are actually a lot of people on this planet that have slipped through the cracks for all of their lives.
In 2011, in an attempt to bolster my complaint against P.S. after the case manger with the CFNIS told me that they couldn’t find any evidence against P.S. I started tracking down all of my personal information from any place that my father had been stationed.
The first crack that I seemed to have slipped through was in Halifax.
CFB Shearwater – Nova Scotia.
I had sent off a request to the Nova Scotia government for any medical or social service records that the government had from my childhood when my father was stationed at Canadian Forces Base Shearwater.
I was surprised that they had the detailed records that they did. They had my birth records that included my mother’s admission records. They also had all of my admission records from just after I was born all the way up until we moved from CFB Shearwater to CFB Summerside on PEI.
The records were notable for a few things.
First, the records identified an issue that I had with anything that contained beef fats like dairy.
The records also indicated that my mother was an extremely anxious person.
The records also indicate that my father had to be returned to port by the Canadian Forces due to “emotional issues”.
I had been admitted to the hospital on a couple of occasions as a “boarder”.
The longest I spent in hospital was 31 days.
Just before my father’s posting to CFB Summerside in Prince Edward Island the doctors at the IWK Children’s hospital had reached the opinion that my frequent admissions to the hospital were due to “societal problems” in the household and that social services should be notified.
Around 2015 I would make the acquaintance of Pat Longmore. She had been in the Canadian Forces along with her husband Bob back in the 1970s at CFB Shearwater. Pat knew both Richard and Marie. Pat was the first person ever to have confirmed the existence of a “battered wives club” on CFB Shearwater and that my mother had used it a couple of time when she needed to get us away from Richard when Richard was in the midsts of a meltdown.
How would things have turned out if Richard had not been able to escape the involvement of our family with Nova Scotia Social Services by obtaining a posting to CFB Summerside.
What would life had been like had Richard faced any real serious consequences for his alcoholism and his violent outbursts.
What would life had been like had the Canadian Forces offered Richard treatment for his PTSD and his Depression instead of encouraging him to self medicate his problems away with alcohol.
CFB Summerside – Prince Edward Island
I remember being in a bicycle accident while we were stationed at CFB Summerside. I didn’t remember too much about the accident, but I figured that I would submit a request anyways.
Turns out that someone had found me laying face down in the middle of the road unconscious with no description of what had happened.
The person who admitted to hospital was not my grandmother. To this day I still don’t recognize the name. When I tracked down my mother in 2013 and showed her the paperwork she said that she didn’t recognize the name. At the top of the admission paper it says “Father in Iceland with airforce, will return this evening”.
In 2013 I had to examine my father for a Federal Court application for judicial review. One of the questions I asked my father was what provinces other than Alberta were we involved with social services. His response was PEI for child custody.
I filed a request from the PEI Govt for these records. All the government would confirm is that my father had applied for custody, but that the matter was never settled by the court, the government had never granted Richard sole custody.
In 2013 I tracked my mother down to ask her about this. She said that the Canadian Forces Judge Advocate General had granted Richard sole custody of my brother and I and that she had been ordered to leave the PMQ by the Canadian Forces.
Behaviours such as this were confirmed in a report that was commissioned by the Canadian Armed Forces in 1996 and released in May of 2000. The report stated that because of the existence of the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations military dependents such as spouses and children had no legal right to live on military bases. Military dependents are there at the pleasure of the serving member. If there was a breakdown in the marital home the serving member could have the military police eject the spouse from the base. This would prevent the ejected spouse from serving court papers on the serving spouse. Also, the serving spouse enjoyed free transportation provided by the Canadian Forces which would often cause the ejected spouse to be disadvantaged by travel distance from seeing her children.
How would things have turned out in the long run if Richard wasn’t able to have Marie ejected from the PMQ?
What would have happened had social services become involved when I was admitted to hospital with no next of kin.
CFB Namao / CFB Griesbach – Edmonton, AB
The most egregious cracks that I slipped through here were related to my mental health.
As I’ve said in other posts, I fully believe that my long term mental health was willingly sacrificed to allow the Canadian Armed Forces to keep their damn secrets about the Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse sex scandal under wraps and out of the public eye.
I had no idea of how bad things were until I received my foster care records from the Alberta Government. The fact that I had foster care records was the most stunning aspect of this.
In October of 1980 my family arrived at CFB Griesbach. This was 6 months after the events on CFB Namao. My teacher and my brother’s teacher brought us to the attention of military social worker Captain Terry Totzke. A psychiatrist hired by the Canadian Armed Forces to evaluate my family and I found that I was well past the point of despair and depression and that I was extremely anxious and fearful of men. I was also found to hate being touched. Oh, and I was terrified of my father and I was convinced that he was going to drown me in a toilet. It’s obvious that by this point in time Richard had been informed of what had transpired on CFB Namao.
For an added bonus my results from the Wechsler IQ test that I had been administered showed that I had an IQ of 136 +/- 6.
This same psychiatrist found that my father accepted no responsibility for his family, he expected others to solve his problems for him, he blamed his mother for the problems my brother and I were exhibiting.
I remember this time of my life as being full of confusion. I couldn’t make friends. The other kids on base were constantly beating the daylights out of me. I also started to be able to run my hands through my hair and pull clumps of hair out of my head. My father was angry with me no matter what I did. My stepmother started echoing my father’s anger towards me. No matter what I did I was a complete fuck-up. There was no pleasing anyone. I started frequently wetting the bed. To teach me a lesson and to get me to stop wetting the bed I was often sent to school without a shower which just amplified the attacks at school. The kids would often call me “onion head”. As a foot note, I didn’t stop wetting the bed until just after I had turned 16 and had moved out of the house.
Various follow-ups between October 1980 and November 1981 didn’t go anywhere. No matter what Captain Totzke was being told I was never medicated nor was I ever sent for therapy.
In November of 1981 my teacher, my brother’s teacher, and our principal contacted Alberta Social Services as Captain Totzke didn’t seem to be able to get my brother’s and my “odd and strange behaviours” under control. It wasn’t that Totzke couldn’t get our behaviours under control. It’s more than likely that the Canadian Forces didn’t want to risk either me or my brother talking to civilian therapists because there was the obvious risk that we’d start talking about the babysitter from CFB Namao which in turn would lead to the discovery of the true extent of what Captain Father Angus McRae had done on CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980.
Alberta Social Services sent me for testing and found that I was so emotionally disturbed that I would never be able to function properly in any school unless I received treatment. By the time I was supposed to be placed in a “special school” I had devolved so bad that I was supposed to be institutionalized. As Captain Totzke was my primary caregiver he would have to agree to this. Which he never seemed to. So a compromise was reached, I would attend a school program for emotionally disturbed children until further arrangements could be made.
Being in this program required two things. First my father had to sign my foster care admission paperwork. Second, me father was supposed to attend family counselling.
In December of 1982 a letter was sent to Captain Totzke and my father inviting them to a conference with my civilian social workers on January 26th, 1983.
The meeting occurred on January 26th, 1983. Captain Totzke was there but my father wasn’t. Captain Totzke said that my father was happy with my improvement from being in the Westfield program. My father was so happy that Captain Totzke said that he recently helped my father turn down a posting to Nova Scotia because my father wanted me to stay in the program.
My civilian counsellors informed Captain Totzke that my father was not attending family counselling and that unless my father attended family counselling that my behaviour and my emotional state would continue to deteriorate. My civilian case worker told Captain Totzke that in order to apply duress to Richard to make him comply that I would be removed from the home and placed into foster care or residential care. Remember the part about my father signing the foster care admission paperwork? My civilian counsellors told Captain Totzke to inform my father and my father’s commanding officer forthwith that Richard was to attend every scheduled family counselling session that was upcoming or Alberta Social Services would take action.
On January 28th, 1983 my civilian case worker called Captain Totzke for an update. Apparently my father lost his shit. He didn’t understand what the program was all about. He claimed that my counsellors were harassing Richard and Sue. Totzke also informed my civilian case worker that my father has just received a posting to Ontario. Remember Totzke claiming he helped my father turn down a posting? I wonder what changed in the span of two days, don’t you?
In closing the file Alberta Social Services noted that my father often changed his story from one meeting to the next, and that my father often told people in positions of authority what he thought they wanted to hear. Basically Richard was a pathological liar who could manipulate people to get what he wanted.
It destroys me to know that the Canadian Armed Forces and my father knew that I was experiencing severe psychological trauma brought on no doubt by the sexual abuse from CFB Namao, but also from my father’s issues, and they chose to do nothing.
What type of life would I have been able to enjoy had I received proper therapy and treatments back then?
What would have happened if my father had to prove that he had sole custody of my brother and I and that it turned out that he didn’t.
How would life have been for me had I been removed from both Richard and Marie and placed with a normal family.
If I had remained in Alberta after my father fled to Ontario and had I remained in the foster care program what type of assistance would I have received with obtaining higher education?
I slipped through far too many cracks to count here.
How would my life have turned out had I received therapy for my major depression?
How would my life have turned out had I received therapy for my severe anxiety?
How would things have turned out for me if Captain Terry Totzke was less concerned about my apparent homosexuality and had been more concerned about my mental health and wellbeing.?
How would things have turned out for me had I been institutionalized and received the proper care?
How would things have turned out for me if I had been placed into foster care or residential care and then felt safe enough to talk about what had happened on Canadian Forces Base Namao?
If I had been removed from the home and placed with a family that cared, would I have finished grade 12? Would I have gone on to college? University? Would I have been able to take proper trades training?
If I was removed from Richard’s house and placed into either residential care or foster care, would I have been free to develop a proper sexual identity?
Given a chance, what would I have parlayed my IQ of 136 +/- 6 into?
CFB Downsview
I obtained my social service paperwork from the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto as they were mentioned in my Alberta Social Services paperwork.
CAST tried to locate the contact information for my family from the Canadian Armed Forces, but the Canadian Forces wouldn’t comply.
CAST ended up tracking down my brother and I through the North York Board of Education.
CAST wasn’t able to get too involved with my family as my father didn’t want to participate and CAST was facing budget cuts. CAST said that they would keep the file open none the less and that if they received any complaints from the neighbours they wouldn’t hesitate to get involved.
I don’t ever remember being involved with CAST. Is this why Richard and Sue always insisted that my brother and I get out of the house in the morning and not come back until supper time? That way we’d never be home when CAST showed up for a house visit?
If I had been placed at the Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto for psychiatric treatment, instead of being forced to grow up with major depression, severe anxiety, and gender confusion, what would my future have been like?
What would have happened if the Canadian Forces Military Police on CFB Downsview had reported Richard’s violent domestic fight to CAST in the summer of 1985? Is this why when the military police came to talk to my brother and I about Richard’s violent breakdown that they told us to never call 9-1-1, that we were to call base switchboard and summon the military police?
When I moved out of the house in the winter of 1988 the CAST file on my family was still open. I didn’t have to go to work or rent a room in a house. Had I known that my family was involved with CAST I could have asked CAST for emergency shelter and emergency funding to allow me to attend school without having to work.
In 1989 when I attempted to finish off my schooling at A.I.S.P., I could have also received emergency funding and emergency shelter had I applied for it after Richard blew a gasket because he didn’t understand what the name “Alternative and Independent School Program” meant.
If I had known about my family’s involvement with CAST, would CAST have assisted me with extracurricular music lessons?
Would CAST have assisted me with getting into the National Science Fair if they had learnt about my father’s refusal because I was “showing off”?
CFNIS 2011
If I had known the truth about the period from October of 1980 until January 1988, would I have been better able to prevent the CFNIS, the Provost Marshal, the VCDS, and the Minister of National Defence from concocting a wildly inaccurate story about the period of August 1978 though to July of 1980.
The CFNIS in 2011 had access to the Canadian Forces court martial records relating to Captain Father Angus McRae. The CFNIS knew that P.S. had been molesting numerous children on the base and it was this abusive behaviour that attracted the attention of the base military police which eventually led to the CFSIU investigating Captain McRae for having committed “acts of homosexuality” with young boys on the base.
Alberta Social Services was of the opinion that my father was a liar and often told people he perceived to be in positions of authority what he thought they wanted to hear. Would the CFNIS had been able to place much emphasis on Richard’s statement in which he said that there was never a babysitter in our house?
If I had my social service records during my initial interview with the CFNIS in March of 2011, would I have been able to introduce enough evidence to show the CFNIS that my father was fully aware of what had occurred on CFB Namao but that due to his own issues he was refusing to allow me to receive treatment for the various mental illnesses that I was suffering through as a result of the abuse on CFB Namao?
So many cracks.
I’ve slipped through so many cracks that it’s not funny. It’s actually quite maddening.
To see that I was so close to receiving help with my issues, but that my father and the Canadian Forces were so hell bent on keeping a lid on the Captain McRae fiasco that I was kept from receiving the help that I so rightfully deserved.
You might say to yourself that maybe it would have been better if I had never found these records and documents. You’d be very wrong.
Prior to obtaining these records I had always viewed myself as a worthless fuckup who had screwed up his own life because as my father would often say that I was fucking insane like my mother and that I was a selfish crybaby who fucked with his military career.
The records allowed me to see that I wasn’t a fuck-up. That I was just a kid being crushed by forces far more powerful than I could have ever imagined.
I had been sacrificed in order to keep a secret.
The Canadian Armed Forces sacrificed me to keep the lid on a horrific secret.
My father, having his own demons and lacking his own backbone was more than willing to go along with this.
My father was obviously an unfit parent, so was my mother but I didn’t grow up with her, how would my life had turned out if I hadn’t grown up in an environment where secrets needed to be kept?
People keep telling me “Bobbie, you’re so smart, what are you wasting your life for”, or “Bobbie, you’re so smart, why didn’t you get into such-n-such a trade”, or my favourite “Bobbie, the guys in the shop are afraid of you because you know too much”.
The last point I’m not kidding about. When I took on the position of Chief Engineer at St. Paul’s I got brought into the plant manager’s office for a little one-on-one. Seems that there was a little mutiny of sorts brewing in the power engineering section. I was too smart and the other engineers were feeling intimidated. And this isn’t the first employer that has brought this up.
And it’s true. I love to read. I love reading service manuals. I love to understand. If I didn’t then I wouldn’t have made so many changes at St. Paul’s. And this is something that I am sick and tired of apologizing for. Yes, I should be in more technical employment. But that wasn’t in the cards for me. And I’m not about to play stupid. Why should I? I didn’t ask to have my potential pulled out from under me.
I really despise it when people accuse me of having been lazy or having wasted all the opportunities that a person like me should have had. When I was younger this used to anger me quite a bit. “Bobbie, you must have partied too hard instead of going to trade school”, or “Maybe home life was too good and you just never learnt the value of hard work”.
Where would I have gone in life had I not had to drag along the diagnosed but untreated depression, anxiety, and other issues that were gifted to me?
No, the discovery of all of these records tells me that short of a fucking miracle I ended up exactly where the trajectory of my early life aimed me for. I think I did pretty good for a grade 9 dropout with a grade 12 G.E.D..
No drug dependency, no criminal record, a pretty solid employment history.
Sure, going to college, or university, or even trade school would have probably opened up a world of opportunity for me, but those things were never to be.
So I’m not upset and saddened by the opportunities that were taken away from me.
I’m just disgusted at the people and organizations that took those opportunities away from me.
In this post I will briefly touch on some of the issues that I’m facing and why I am pursuing some of the paths that I am pursuing.
I wasn’t quite sure where I wanted this blog to go when I started it.
I envisioned this blog ( beeshive.ca ) as being separate from ( cfbnamao.ca ). And it will be.
My other blog, cfbnamao.ca , is more about the trauma and abuse I went through as a child living on a Canadian Armed Forces base that was gripped by the Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse scandal that the Canadian Armed Forces buried out of fear of the public humiliation that would have resulted had the Canadian public found out that an officer of the regular force had sexually abused children on a secure defence establishment for just short of two years.
The other blog, cfbnamao.ca , is also where I go through the flaws in the National Defence Act which allow DND to hide and bury pre-1998 incidents of child sexual abuse.
This blog is intended to deal with the day to day or week to week goings on in my life.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to post in this blog or how personal I wanted to get.
There are things I will talk about on this blog, and there are things I won’t talk about on this blog. The ones I won’t talk about are more to do with how boring they actually are.
I’ve been told by one of my counsellors before that I should write a book about my life. The problem is that I’m not a writer. I can type, and I can write blogs. So I figured that I would at least get my story out. It will be in blog form, and it will probably jump around from topic to topic a lot. Sure, I won’t make any money from this, but at least it gets my story out and allows me to tell my side of things.
Some of the issues that I write about will make a lot of people very uncomfortable. And that’s fine. It’s been a really weird life, and I’ve got a lot of issues and a lot of demons.
For a brief refresher, I was a military dependent as a child. My father served in the Canadian Armed Forces. I lived on military bases in military housing from birth until age 16. My father was an alcoholic with anger issues, he had depression and he also suffered no doubt from PTSD due to a naval incident that happened in 1969. He self medicated with alcohol and was quick to anger. Everyone minded their own business in the military housing on base and lots of people, including the military police would just turn a blind eye. My mother left when I was 5. She couldn’t take my father’s drinking or physical abuse. My father brought his own mother, a survivor of the Indian Residential Schools, into the house to raise my brother and I as my father was frequently absent. It is because of my grandmother’s heavy drinking that my younger brother and I ended up being sexually abused by the base chaplain and his 14 year old altar boy for just over 1-1/2 years. In the fallout of the CFB Namao scandal, I spent 2-1/2 years in the care of the military social worker receiving conversion therapy. A couple of years later, I would end up being sexually abused by a retired member of the Canadian Armed Forces who was working as a commissionaire at the armouries where I was in cadets. There’s a lot more dysfunction in my life, but that’s a basic run down.
In 2011 I obtained my foster care records, which I never knew existed. Turns out that in the aftermath of the CFB Namao matter, I was so depressed, so anxious, and so emotionally disturbed that I was supposed to have been institutionalized. That never happened though because the Canadian Forces needed to keep the Captain McRae matter under the rug and out of the public eye. In fact, my father was posted out of the jurisdiction of Alberta in order to ensure that I was taken out of the jurisdiction of Alberta Social Services so that my apprehension would never occur.
So, I suffered with diagnosed but untreated mental illness for 42 years.
Mental illness that various doctors were noting was getting more and more out of hand.
And for the most part I think I got everything “under control” and “hidden”. You learn quickly in life how to hide mental illness and depression and anxiety.
Things have popped up in the past, but you can only keep the lid on a boiling pot for so long before the roiling bubbles lift the lid.
I’ve had an interesting career trajectory.
Most employers that I’ve work for hired me because they could see that I was very technically skilled and that I had a very obvious ability to deal with technical issues. But, the one thing that most employers had remarked is that I lacked the personal skills required for advancement.
In 2011, after the Canadian Forces military police let slip to me that my babysitter had been involved with the base chaplain and that the base chaplain had been kicked out of the military for molesting children, I started to see a counsellor.
I started going over my history with this counsellor. I started discussing all of the paperwork I had uncovered. All of my personal records that I had found. The lawsuit between my babysitter and the Minister of National Defence in 2001. The out of court settlement in November of 2008.
My counsellor said to me that I reminded him of a character in a series of books that he had read, and he wanted to know if I had ever heard about “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. I had actually. I had already read the books and had already seen the films. My counsellor said that the parallels between my life and the life of Lisbeth Salander were remarkable. We were both very damaged people, but we were both very smart, very tech savvy, and able to put the puzzle pieces together.
And yeah, that’s pretty true. I have no interpersonal skills. I can relate with people on technical issues and in technical discussions, but outside of that I’m lost. I don’t make small talk. I’m not interested in discussing family life. Wanna talk about work, sure, I’m your man. Wanna talk about your sister’s wedding, or what happened in the sportsball game last night? Nope, not interested in the least.
Due to the “conversion therapy” I received from the military social worker I have no honest idea of what my gender is or what my orientation is. And sex is kinda a moot point anyways as (a) I really don’t like being touched, (b) I really don’t like being touched in a sexual manner, (c) I find sex to be repulsive, (d) I honestly don’t know if I’m GLBTQ. And it probably doesn’t help that my years of untreated and unmanaged depression and anxiety mean that I don’t like getting personal with people. I have honestly had very few partners of either gender in my life.
So, for the record I am the Chief Engineer at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, BC. This is a position that I’ve held since May of 2020. Prior to that I was the Acting Chief Engineer while we reclassified the power plant. Prior to being Acting Chief Engineer I was the Assistant Chief Engineer since about 2017. Prior to that I was a maintenance power engineer for about 11 years.
Power engineering was recommended to me back in 2002. It was a pathway to a decent paying job for a person who didn’t have the funds or the support to take a trade course.
St. Paul’s Hospital is being relocated to the False Creek Flats. Construction of the new hospital should be completed in about 7 years. I’ve had involvement with the planning and design of the new hospital. The old St. Paul’s Hospital will probably continue to operate for at least one or two years after the new hospital is open in order to ensure that all of the programs and clinics transfer from one site to the other without any disruption.
St. Paul’s hospital on Burrard will more than likely be my final place of employment. The hospital and I have been taking care of each other for the last 17 years. And we’ll take care of each other for the next few years.
Now, I will unequivocally state that the future of St. Paul’s Hospital has absolutely nothing to do with my decision to explore the possibility of Medical Assistance in Dying.
I am not looking at M.A.i.D. out of fear for my future. Even though the new St. Paul’s will have either a 2nd class power plant or a 3rd class power plant, which means that I cannot be the chief at the new hospital, there would still be ample positions for me in the power plant none the less.
I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that because of what I’ve done over my tenure at St. Paul’s that Senior Leadership would create a position for me if they had to.
I bring this up because I forgot that one of the Senior Leaders from Providence Health Care follows my twitter feed and saw my postings about M.A.i.D.
I am actually very proud of the work that I’ve done at St. Paul’s and the innovations that I’ve brought to the Physical Plant. I have a good team under me and I have good leaders above. The other trades and I get along very well.
In a way, being at St. Paul’s has probably allowed me to deal with my mental health issues as I could take off sick days on the days where I was completely incapable of getting out of bed in the morning.
Being at St. Paul’s has also allowed me to be as odd and weird as I want because so long as you’re doing the work required of you both HR and the union don’t care, and if they don’t care then the personal opinions of others don’t matter.
COVID last year was an absolute disaster and extremely disruptive to the physical plant. But COVID was far from the sole reason for my breakdown this past spring.
I’ve run as far and as hard as I can.
For 42 years I’ve been hauling around baggage that no person should ever have to carry.
For 42 years I’ve been denied treatment, help, and acknowledgement for issues that were far beyond my control.
The years of childhood neglect, the physical, mental and sexual abuse, the years of self loathing, self hatred, the feelings of emptiness and worthlessness, and the realization that I had been sacrificed by the Canadian Armed Forces to keep their secrets hidden finally came home to roost.
All of it is finally catching up.
I’m tired.
I want to go to sleep.
I don’t want any memories of the past.
I don’t want to remember being caught in P.S.’s bedroom.
I don’t want to remember the sexual abuse on CFB Namao. And let’s be very clear, P.S. could be very aggressive and depraved. This was not, as Alberta Crown prosecutor Jon Werbicki opined in October 2011, “childhood curiosity and experimentation “. P.S. would vent his own anger and hatred on the kids he was abusing, so let’s not mince any words here. There was no fun enjoyed by his victims.
I don’t want to remember watching P.S. sexually abuse my younger brother.
I don’t want to remember P.S. sexually abusing the other kids.
I don’t want to remember the five distinct visits to the chapel on CFB Namao to see Captain McRae in his living quarters. Visits that always ended with a sickly sweet grape juice. One of these visits hurts the most and will always stand out in my mind. I was with my father over at the storage unit he rented for his motorcycle. My father wasn’t around a lot. He’d bugger off for weeks or months on end and leave us in the care of his mother who was living on base with us. I really wasn’t helping him work on his motorcycle, but I just wanted to be near him. P.S. came walking by and asked my father if he wanted P.S. to look after me. I looked at my father hoping that he would say no. My father told me to go with P.S. and stay with him. P.S. took me right to the chapel.
After Mcpl Christian Cyr let slip to me in May of 2011 that the base padre Captain McRae had been arrested for molesting children on the base in 1980, I broke down and told him about the five visits to the rectory and the sickly sweet grape juice. And not having any memories after the grape juice. The CFNIS spent the entire rest of the investigation trying their best to gaslight me. When I finally received the court martial transcripts and the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork it killed me to find out that the CFSIU in 1980 knew that Captain McRae was luring children into the chapel and would give them alcohol before sexually assaulting them. The CFNIS had these documents in their possession through the entire 2011 CFNIS investigation.
I don’t want to remember my father threatening to kill me for fucking with his military career. When my father received his compassionate posting from CFB Summerside to CFB Namao in 1978 he ended up being attached to 447 squadron. 447 was the home of the tandem rotor heavy lift and troop transport helicopters. He arrived at that squadron when it was brand new. 447 Sqn wasn’t officially stood up until January 1979. I never knew what position my father had at 447. He would always go off on training exercises sometimes for 6 to 8 weeks at a time. The Chinooks were his escape from the responsibilities of his family. He could run off with his military buddies and leave me and my brother at home with his alcoholic mother who would hire P.S. to be our babysitter. In 2019 I learnt about my father’s death in 2017. I filed an ATI request with Library and Archives Canada for his service records. LAC complied and released a partial amount. But it was more than enough for me to understand that I really wasn’t exaggerating when I say that Richard despised me for “fucking with his military career”. Just after our arrival on CFB Namao in the summer of 1978, the Canadian Forces sent my father to Boeing-VERTOL for Maintenance Management training on the Chinook. Here he was, a kid from Fort McMurray, a kid with bugger all for formal education, and he was going to be a key player in the hierarchy of 447 Sqn. My abuse at the hands of P.S. caused us to be relocated off CFB Namao and sent down to CFB Griesbach. And then when Alberta Social Services divulged their plan to remove me from the home, the Canadian Forces arranged for my father to be posted to CFB Downsview in Ontario. Yeah, it looks as if he was right when he would often rage out that I had “fucked with his military career”. Sure, as a 50 year old man I fully understand that none of this was my fault. However when you’re 11 years old, you don’t understand this. When your father tells you that you fucked with his military career, that’s it, you fucked with his military career. You can’t undo the yelling, the screaming, the backhands, the belts. I lived through his rage, and there is no removing it from my brain.
I don’t want to remember the times my father would beat me and then beat me again for crying. Nothing would get Richard more enraged than crying. And what’s a sexually abused child with major depression and severe anxiety going to do? They tend to cry.
I don’t want to remember trying to hide under my captain’s bed to keep my father from getting hold of me. Richard could lose his temper. I learnt quickly that I could hide from Richard under my captain’s bed. Once he figured out where I was hiding he took all of the panels off the bed. I lost my safe space.
I don’t want to remember hoping and wishing all the time on CFB Griesbach that I would die in my sleep and never wake up again.
I don’t want to remember my grandmother’s alcoholism or my father’s alcoholism.
I don’t want to remember how Earl Stevens used his position of authority at the Dennison Armouries in Toronto to entrap me into providing sexual favours to him. Somehow Earl knew that I was a military dependent and that my father was in the Canadian Armed Forces and that I lived on a military base. Earl was retired from the Canadian Armed Forces and I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that he preyed upon children living on the bases that he was stationed at. He knew that if he touched me that blackmailing me would be very simple as male on male sexual assault is something that no one ever talked about on base. In fact you knew that if you got sexually abused on base the last people you ever wanted to find out were the military police or your own family.
I don’t want to remember the times my father would get angry at my school teachers for wanting to help me or to encourage me to take my hobbies seriously. This one I can’t really speak to or understand. Most parents would have died to have their child put extra effort into school. Not Richard. Just go to fucking school, stare at the fucking blackboard, and stop showing off.
I don’t want t remember being mugged in 1995 by a guy and his girlfriend only to have a Vancouver Police Officer tell me that he wasn’t going to investigate my mugging because he was certain that I was a homosexual prostitute. Even when I found a video tape that had the two suspects on it and showed the proximity to me in a line-up, this police constable refused to look at the matter.
I don’t want to remember all of the people in positions of authority who took advantage of my technical skills to make themselves look better while at the same time limiting my potential due to my lack of education.
I don’t want P.S., Captain Father Angus McRae, Captain Terry Totzke, Earl Ray Stevens, my father, or my grandmother living in my head. They all need to go.
I don’t want to remember all of the kids who beat the shit out of me as I left P.S.’s house the day I had been caught in his bedroom.
I don’t want to remember the kids at the various schools who used to beat the shit out of me for being different and not normal. Sure, I might have been odd and a bit of an asshole, but the Canadian Armed Forces decided that their secrets were worth more than my psychological well-being.
I don’t want to deal with the crushing major depressions or the severe anxiety anymore. I don’t want to wake up with night terrors, or have to have teeth removed because Ive cracked them due to excessive grinding. The anxiety is not fun. The major depression is a literal killer.
Sure, the Lexapro has brought the anxiety under control and seems to have tamed the anxiety monster, but they’re still there. I can feel their presence. I know they’re just waiting for my body to build up a tolerance to the serotonin and then they’ll come roaring back with a vengeance.
I’ve had the suicide monster lurking in my brain ever since the days of living on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach. The suicide monster is kinda easy to keep under control. But it’s there none the less. If I didn’t have a suicide monster living in my head after all that I’ve gone through then that would truly indicate that something was wrong.
So yeah.
There’s a lot of baggage in my skull. There’s a lot of trauma. There’s a lot of damage.
I’m tired, and I don’t want any of this anymore.
Knowing that the end is possibly within reach actually fills me with hope.
The sad thing about my mental illness is that people like my father and Captain Terry Totzke were well aware of the struggles I was having, however it appears that it was more politically expedient to deny me of the treatments and medications that I rightfully deserved in the name of keeping secrets.
How bad were things back then in the early ’80s in Edmonton?
Well, I was supposed to have been placed in a psychiatric facility for children.
I was found to be extremely anxious.
I was found to be well beyond despair.
I was terrified of men, including my own father whom I thought was going to kill me.
I did not like being touched at all by anyone.
I was afraid of my grandmother who had been living with us and raising my brother and I during my father’s absences with the Canadian Forces.
My teacher noted that I did not fit in with the other kids at all. I preferred to be left alone to read books. My teacher did remark that the other kids would often use me as a scape goat.
I remember not having a lot of friends. The kids I hung out with were usually kids from other dysfunctional families living on base.
Alone.
And isolated.
Flailing around in the depths of my despair, my depression, my anxiety.
By myself.
Issues caused by my depression or anxiety would often be straightened out with a backhand or the belt.
I remember as a kid in the aftermath of CFB Namao and up until I was around 15 or 16 I always felt like I wasn’t inside of my brain. I always felt like I was behind myself, watching myself do things, and that I was powerless to do anything. Almost like I was watching a TV show.
Nothing felt real.
I frequently wet the bed right up until I moved out of the house when I was 16. It was only after moving out of the house that I never wet the bed again.
I had no hobbies as a kid, I had no interests.
For 42 years I suffered through severe depression and extreme anxiety.
I knew I was having problems and I knew I was floundering all these years. But you have to work hard and hide it, and pretend it doesn’t exist.
But the depression and anxiety are always there. Ready to flare up when you least expect it. Always trying to sabotage your life because deep down inside you know that your life is worthless and meaningless.
I’ve kinda skimmed along the surface of normalcy from the spring of 1980 until April of 2021.
It took the extreme stress of dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak at my work place to push me over the edge.
I’ve managed to keep employment due to my technical abilities.
Did my depression and anxiety come from the events of CFB Namao?
Not entirely. But I do think genetics played a major part. It would be a very safe bet to say that the paternal side of my family has depression encoded into its genes.
My anxiety is so bad that most of my teeth have been destroyed by grinding. I’ve already had one tooth extracted because I cracked it from grinding and I have a feeling that a few more teeth will need extraction in the short while.
Grinding my teeth was nothing new, I remember my father waking me up when we lived on CFB Downsview due to my grinding.
When COVID struck, the facility that I work at became a hotbed of activity. At first it was easy keeping up with the demands, but as weeks turned into months, the overtime went from being a treat to being a major cause of stress. The facility was designed in the late ’60s / early ’70s and construction was started in the late ’70s. The building HVAC systems meet the ’70s CSA standards. It does not meet 2021 standards. Being caught between parties that wanted todays standards flogged from 1960s technology was also very stress inducing.
So yeah, this was not fun.
Not fun at all.
But it did push me hard enough that I started to suffer constant panic attacks and anxiety attacks. My depression was hitting so hard that I was feeling physically ill and nauseated most of the time. I’d go to work and I couldn’t concentrate and I couldn’t think. My brain felt like it was on fire.
I ended up having to go on sick leave.
And this is how I ended up on Escitalopram.
Escitalopram is a SSRI. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor.
Let’s be very clear, Escitalopram is not going to cure my depression, nor is it going to cure my anxiety. Those two issues have been with me for so long that they’ve more than likely fucked with my brain’s wiring.
The Escitalopram will not stop the war that goes on inside my head.
The Escitalopram will not evict Captain Terry Totzke, Captain Father Angus McRae, P.S., Richard Gill, Earl Stevens, or the many others who reside inside my skull.
The Escitalopram had a very noticeable effect on my depression and my anxiety. It has really turned down my anxiety. The depression is still there. However the Escitalopram has numbed my emotions. I find that for the first time in my life I can actually concentrate on matters and I can hold two thought simultaneously.
The thing about Escitalopram is the more severe the depression and anxiety, the more noticeable the effect it has on the person taking the medication.
And the fact that Escitalopram had such a drastic effect on me shows just how bad the depression and anxiety were.
I’m at 10mg right now. That might have to go up to 20mg due to the stresses of work.
Negative side effects?
Only two that I’ve noticed.
Getting to sleep takes a bit of work.
And I know, TMI, but I can’t orgasm at the time being.
Both of these are well known side effects of SSRIs
Sleep is becoming easier.
Couple of interesting things that I’ve noticed about being on SSRIs.
My dreams are fucking vivid and wild in a good way. My dreams before SSRIs were sporadic and were often nightmares. Now my dreams are different. More colourful. Playful you could say.
And waking up in the morning is far easier now. I’m often up before the alarms go off.
I don’t need naps during the day.
I’ll probably be on these medications for the rest of my life.
As I said, these drugs will not fix my brain. The damage has been done, and the damage is very extensive. I hope that my body doesn’t build up a tolerance to these SSRIs. Apparently the crash back into depression and anxiety can be pretty horrific.
And even though I am emotionally numbed at the moment, I can tolerate this better than drowning in the pits of despair.
But I also don’t want to spend the next 20 to 30 years of my live living with muted emotions while the war rages on in my head.
There is possibility of a solution, but I won’t find out what the rules are until March 2023.
Beeshive 