At first glance the 1980 investigation of Captain Father Angus McRae looks like a typical military scandal from another era. But the real story is not about one officer or one investigation. It is about the system that surrounded them. The military police, the investigators, and the legal authorities responsible for the case were all operating inside the same chain of command that governed the base itself. That was not an accident. It was how the National Defence Act was designed to function at the time.
When the Investigator Talks: The Forgotten Structure Behind the 1980 CFB Edmonton Investigation
In November of 2011 I had a conversation that would later become surprisingly important.
The man I spoke with was Warrant Officer Frederick R. Cunningham, the former Acting Section Commander of the Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit (CFSIU) Western Region. Decades earlier he had been tasked with investigating Captain Father Angus McRae during the 1980 sexual abuse scandal at CFB Edmonton (then CFB Namao).
Cunningham did not speak to me as a stranger repeating rumours.
He spoke as the investigator who had been assigned to the case.
Within weeks of that conversation I raised what he had told me with the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal (CFPM) as part of my complaint regarding the handling of my 2011 CFNIS investigation.
What happened after that is worth examining closely, because it reveals something about how the Canadian military justice system actually worked in 1980.
The Base Security Officer: The Hidden Gatekeeper
To understand the structure of the 1980 investigation, you have to understand the role of the Base Security Officer (BSO).
At CFB Edmonton that position was held by Captain David Pilling.
The BSO was not merely a staff officer concerned with physical security. In the Canadian Forces of the 1970s and early 1980s, the BSO was the officer responsible for coordinating serious investigations on the base and supervising the military police detachment.
In practice this meant that when a serious criminal matter arose, the process often flowed like this:
Incident occurs
↓
Base military police become aware
↓
Base Security Officer assesses the situation
↓
Special Investigation Unit assistance is requested
In the McRae case, the CFSIU file shows that Captain Pilling personally tasked WO Cunningham with investigating McRae.
This detail matters because it reveals where the investigation actually began: inside the base command structure.
Command Authority and the Investigation
The base commander at the time was Colonel Daniel Edward Munro.
Colonel Munro was not just the commander of the base.
He was also Captain McRae’s direct superior officer.
This created a structural reality that is easy to overlook today.
The investigative chain began within the same command environment that included the officer being investigated.
The sequence looked something like this:
Colonel Munro – Base Commander
↓
Captain David Pilling – Base Security Officer
↓
Base Military Police
↓
CFSIU investigators (including WO Cunningham)
Even though specialized investigators were brought in, the investigation itself was triggered and coordinated through the base command structure.
This was not unusual for the era.
It was how the system was designed to function.
A System Built Around Command Authority
The Canadian military justice system in 1980 was governed by the National Defence Act as it existed before the major reforms of the late 1990s.
Under that framework, commanding officers exercised enormous influence over disciplinary matters.
They could:
• receive and assess allegations
• determine whether charges should proceed
• decide whether a case would move toward court martial or be handled in other ways
Military police were not institutionally independent in the way civilian police services are today.
They were embedded within the military chain of command.
This meant that when allegations arose involving an officer within the base hierarchy, the investigation inevitably unfolded within that same command structure.
The Conversation in 2011
In November 2011 I spoke with WO Cunningham about the historical investigation.
What he described to me reflected his position inside the original investigative machinery.
He spoke about:
- the investigative direction
- the involvement of legal officers
- the dynamics surrounding the McRae court martial
- that the activities of Captain McRae were uncovered due to the military police investigation of my babysitter.
- that it was a command decision to not call in the RCMP to handle the investigation of the babysitter.
- that it was a command decision to keep the McRae matter in the military justice system instead of handing it off to the civilian courts.
- that it was a command decision to limit the number of charges brought against Captain McRae.
These were not abstract opinions. They were observations from someone who had been positioned inside the investigation itself.
In December 2011 I raised what Cunningham had told me in a complaint sent to the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal.
The Institutional Response
In January 2012 I received a response from the Provost Marshal’s office stating that the Professional Standards review had concluded that CFNIS investigators had acted appropriately.
The letter also included a strikingly narrow statement:
The review found no indication that military police in the 1980s were aware of incidents involving me personally.
This wording is significant.
It does not say that military police were unaware of abuse occurring on the base.
It only states that investigators were unaware of incidents involving me specifically.
That distinction leaves open a much larger question about what investigators knew regarding other victims and events at the time.
In his January 2012 response, which came less than one month after I informed the Provost Marshal of my conversation with Fredrick R. Cunningham, Deputy Commander Lt.-Col. Gilles Santerre concluded that he could find no evidence that the military police in 1980 were aware of incidents involving me personally.
That statement may be technically correct in the narrowest possible sense, but it sidesteps the far more important fact that the individual I have long identified as the person who molested my brother and me was already under investigation by the base military police in 1980 for sexually abusing the children that he was babysitting. According to both former SIU investigator Fred Cunningham and the father of babysitter, it was this very investigation into the babysitter that led investigators to uncover the activities of Captain Father Angus McRae. In other words, the military police did not need to know my name to know that children on the base were being abused. The investigation that ultimately exposed McRae began precisely because those abuses were already being reported.
Also, Bobbie Garnet Bees became my legal name in the mid ’00s. The CFNIS were aware of my legal change of name and what my name was during the time of the abuse. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Provost Marshal and the CFNIS only searched the 1980 files for my current legal name and not my birth name. If it ever came to light at a later date that my name was in fact contained in the 1980 military police investigation of the babysitter or the CFSIU investigation of Captain McRae, the CFPM and the CFNIS could say “ooops, sorry, we honestly forgot about your change of name”.
The Curious Silence in 2016
Several years later, during a later phase of the investigation, CFNIS investigators attempted to contact Cunningham.
His response was notable.
He declined to participate in a recorded interview and refused to meet investigators in person. Instead, he spoke briefly by telephone and avoided giving detailed answers.
This was a stark contrast to the way he had spoken with me in 2011.
Why Cunningham became so cautious remains unclear.
But the timeline raises an obvious possibility.
After my complaint reached the Provost Marshal in December 2011 and included information Cunningham had shared, it is entirely possible that he was advised to avoid discussing the investigation further.
If that occurred, it would explain why he became extremely careful when investigators contacted him again years later.
The Official Secrets Act and the Security of Information Act allow the Canadian Armed Forces to control what information becomes public and what information is never to be discussed with the public.
A Structural Problem, Not a Conspiracy
The purpose of examining this structure is not to claim that a conspiracy occurred.
The issue is structural.
The system that existed in 1980 placed investigations, command authority, and disciplinary decisions within the same organizational chain.
When serious allegations arose involving members of that chain of command, investigators inevitably had to operate within an environment influenced by the same hierarchy.
This was precisely the kind of structural problem that later inquiries into the Canadian military justice system criticized.
Reforms implemented after the Somalia Inquiry were intended to create a clearer separation between investigators and the command authority whose members they might be required to investigate.
The Larger Question
Looking back at the McRae investigation today raises a simple question.
When a serious criminal investigation begins inside the same command structure that includes the accused officer, how independent can that investigation truly be?
The answer to that question is not found in speculation.
It is found in the structure of the system itself.
And that structure is preserved in the documents that still exist today.
Below is a closing section you can append to the blog post. I wrote it so it ties the command structure, the National Defence Act flaw you’ve been analyzing, and the chilling effect of secrecy laws together in a coherent way. You can trim or sharpen the tone to match your usual style.
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The Structural Flaw Behind It All
When you step back from the personalities involved in the 1980 investigation, a larger structural problem comes into focus.
The issue is not simply that the investigation occurred on a military base, or that the accused officer was part of the command structure.
The issue lies in how the National Defence Act operated before the reforms of the late 1990s.
At the time, the Code of Service Discipline effectively placed the entire disciplinary process under command authority. Commanding officers were not merely supervisors. They were central actors in the decision-making process that determined how allegations would proceed.
They could influence whether:
• allegations were pursued as service offences
• charges were referred for court martial
• matters remained within the military system
• civilian police were notified
This arrangement created what can only be described as a prosecutorial bottleneck.
Every major decision flowed upward through the chain of command.
In the McRae investigation, the chain of command ran directly through Colonel Daniel Edward Munro, who was both the base commander and the direct superior officer of the accused.
Even though specialized investigators such as the CFSIU were brought in, the investigation itself still originated inside that command structure through the Base Security Officer.
The system was not designed to isolate investigators from command influence. It was designed to operate within the command structure itself.
That distinction matters.
Because when serious allegations involve individuals within that same hierarchy, investigators inevitably find themselves operating in an environment shaped by the very authority structure connected to the case.
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Silence Through Secrecy
There is another layer to this story that is rarely discussed.
Investigators and military personnel operating in this environment were also bound by the Official Secrets Act, legislation that imposed strict legal obligations regarding the disclosure of information obtained through official duties.
The Act criminalized unauthorized disclosure of government information connected to official service.
For someone like Warrant Officer Frederick Cunningham, who served as the Acting Section Commander of the CFSIU Western Region during the McRae investigation, this created a powerful constraint.
Anything he learned during the investigation was information acquired through official duties.
Speaking openly about those events decades later could potentially be interpreted as revealing protected information related to military operations, investigations, or internal decision-making.
Even if the events themselves occurred decades earlier, the legal obligations imposed by secrecy legislation do not necessarily expire simply because time has passed.
The result is a quiet but powerful chilling effect.
Former investigators may possess direct knowledge about how an investigation unfolded, but the legal environment surrounding them discourages open discussion.
In many cases they may simply decide that remaining silent is the safest course of action.
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The Problem With Silence
When secrecy laws intersect with a disciplinary system controlled by command authority, an unintended consequence emerges.
The people who know the most about how an investigation actually unfolded are often the least able to speak about it.
Investigators such as Cunningham may possess firsthand knowledge of the investigative environment, the legal advice involved, and the decisions made during the case.
But decades later, those same individuals may feel legally constrained from explaining what they witnessed.
This creates a situation where the historical record becomes shaped almost entirely by institutional documents and official summaries, rather than the voices of the investigators who actually worked the case.
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Why This Matters Today
The Canadian Forces eventually recognized the dangers inherent in this structure.
The reforms that followed the Somalia Inquiry were designed to strengthen the institutional independence of military police investigations and reduce the influence of the chain of command over criminal matters.
Those reforms did not appear out of nowhere.
They were a response to the realization that the previous system placed investigators in a position where command authority, legal control, and secrecy obligations intersected in ways that could obscure the full truth of events.
Looking back at the 1980 investigation through this lens reveals something important.
The question is not simply whether individuals acted correctly or incorrectly.
The deeper question is whether the system itself was designed in a way that made full transparency almost impossible.
And when the structure of the system makes transparency difficult, silence becomes the natural outcome.
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In the end, the McRae investigation tells us less about individual decisions than it does about the design of the system itself. The pre-1998 National Defence Act concentrated investigative power, prosecutorial control, and command authority inside the same chain of command. When serious allegations arose within that chain, the system was forced to investigate itself. That is not simply a historical curiosity. It is a design flaw. And like any flaw built into the foundation of a structure, its consequences were not always visible at the time, but they were inevitable.
Beeshive 