reviews – Beeshive

A risk……. that didn’t and did work out.

Daily writing prompt

When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out?

The last time that I took a risk of any consequence was when I disobeyed my father’s wishes and I went to the Edmonton Police Service in 2011 and tried to report my former babysitter for molesting my brother and I on Canadian Forces Base Namao from 1978 to 1980.

In 2006 when, I first broached the topic of the babysitter with my father, he heavily cautioned me against trying to report the babysitter because if I insisted on sticking my nose into this I might not like the way the shit was going to smell.

For me, reporting the babysitter was extremely important. After all, up to that point in time my father had blamed me at every opportunity for allowing the babysitter to molest my younger brother. If I hadn’t let the babysitter molest Scott, then Scott wouldn’t have been in non-stop trouble with the law.

Richard was really upset that Scott was so dependent on Richard to meet his needs in order for Scott to stay somewhat functional.

I went up to Edmonton in the summer of 2003 to visit Richard after not having seen him since moving to Vancouver in 1992. I thought that he’d be pleased to see me.

After all, when Scott moved to the Vancouver area in 1996, Richard had contacted me a couple of times to help Scott out with his car. Dead starter one time. Broken throttle cable one time. Wheel bearings another time.

Nope.

I spent more time hanging out with the stepmother that I never got along with as a kid.

Richard barely had the time of day for me, except to explain to me that he was still upset with what I allowed to happen to Scott because Scott was having so many difficulties. Richard whined about having to currently pay Scott’s rent so that Scott wouldn’t try moving back in to Richard’s house in Morinville.

Richard also whined about being “forced” to give Scott his ’83 Mustang GT. Or how he had no choice but to give Scott Sue’s old ’89 Thunderbird after Scott totalled the Mustang on one of Edmonton’s many traffic circles.

When I told Richard that I had obtained my 5th Class Power Engineering certificate and that I was working towards my 4th Class Power Engineering certificate he didn’t care. Just said that no matter what certificate I had my stupid mouth and my stupid attitude were going to keep me unemployed.

I called Richard in September of 2005 to let him know that I landed a union position at a local hospital in the physical plant.

Didn’t give a shit.

Not in the slightest.

In fact he informed me that Scott had a job in a “card board box factory” and insinuated that with all of the struggles that Scott had overcome in his life that Scott’s employment meant far more than mine.

In August of 2006, after a night of drinking at various pride events in Vancouver, I called Richard and left him a couple of messages in which I unloaded both barrels on him.

I wasn’t expecting Richard to ever call back, but he did. I had never heard him whimper like this before in my life. He was like a big dog that just got the newspaper to the snout for pissing on the carpet.

It was your grandmother that hired P.S.

I didn’t like P.S. the first time I saw him.

I told your grandmother not to hire P.S.

And yes, my father used the babysitter’s name without any prompting.

My father called me every morning for the next couple of weeks, as if he was trying to make amends for the way things had been.

But everything came to a screeching halt after I told him that I was going to go to the police to report the babysitter.

“Somethings are best left in the past”

“Let sleeping dogs lie”

“If you stick your nose into this you’re not going to like the smell of the shit”

I didn’t make my complaint to the police right away.

I had legally changed my name in anticipation of transitioning and I had too many things on the go.

In February of 2011 I entered into an out of court settlement with another party in which I represented myself. The lawyer for the other party decided to make an offer to settle and after a bit of back and forth we settled.

Because of this settlement I decided to take my chances with the babysitter.

Without criminal charges it would be near impossible to bring any type of meaningful civil action against the babysitter.

And that’s how I ended up contacting the Edmonton Police Service on March 4th, 2011.

And as we all know, things didn’t work out as planned.

I did learn some interesting things though.

And learning things was better than not learning things.

I learnt for example that my father was right, that I wasn’t going to like the smell of the shit if I stuck my nose into the events of Canadian Forces Base Namao.

I learnt that no matter which base we were stationed at, civilian social services or medical staff were concerned about my father.

I learnt that my mother didn’t abandon the family, but that my father used the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations to have my mother booted out of the PMQ after she threatened to take my brother and I away due to his out of control drinking and physical violence.

I learnt that the child sexual abuse scandal on Canadian Forces Base Namao was far larger than what I could ever have imagined.

I learnt that the Canadian Armed Forces considered a 52 year old military chaplain with the rank of captain having sexual relations with children as young as four years of age after imbibing them with alcohol in the rectory of the base chapel was nothing more than “acts of homosexuality” thus implying that the victims of McRae were just as guilty as McRae was.

I learnt that Terry, my much reviled “shrink” in the days after the sex abuse scandal on CFB Namao, was actually a social worker in the Canadian Armed Forces with the rank of captain.

I learnt that Canadian Forces Administrative Order CFAO 19-20 explained why Terry had such a massive concern about my perceived willing participation in the “homosexual” abuse on CFB Namao and that if I didn’t get my “homosexual” urges under control that I would be going to the Alberta Hospital for psychiatric treatments.

I learnt that due to the military’s official policies against homosexuality which viewed homosexuality as a mental illness, a deviancy, and a character flaw, most parents did not want it known that their children had been involved with “acts of homosexuality” and kept their children out of the investigation.

I learnt that my family’s infamous move from Canadian Forces Base Griesbach, AB, to Canadian Forces Base Downsview, ON, in April of 1983 was not to avoid my social workers “giving me drugs to keep me from being attracted to other boys” like my father had said at the time, but was instead to avoid my apprehension by Alberta Social Services due to their concern for my safety in the home.

I learnt that a flaw contained within the National Defence Act prior to 1998 gave commanding officers within the Canadian Forces prosecutorial discretion over criminal code offences committed by their subordinates.

I learnt that another flaw contained within the National Defence Act prior to 1998 placed a 3-year-time-bar on all criminal code offences, including criminal code offences that do not have a statute of limitations.

I learnt that my father was described by social services as “often telling conflicting stories” from one meeting to the next, and “telling people he perceived to be in positions of authority what he thought they wanted to hear”. In other words, my father was a habitual liar and a sycophant.

I learnt from paperwork that I obtained from various agencies across Canada that everything that my father said during my childhood was basically a lie.

I learnt that the military justice system was defective, but that the CAF, the DND, and their various predecessors had always fought with parliament against reforming the military justice system.

I learnt that the CAF and the DND can use the Official Secrets Act and the Security of Information Act as cudgels to gag anyone who was ever subjected to the Code of Service Discipline to silence.

I learnt that the Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service are soldiers first and police officers second and that nothing in the National Defence Act places members outside of the Chain of Command and as such member of the base military police and the CFNIS must obey the lawful command of anyone with a rank superior to theirs.

I learnt that the Vice Chief of Defence Staff which is not a member of law enforcement has the right under the National Defence Act to direct any CFNIS investigation as they see fit.

I also learnt that the Supreme Court of Canada frowns upon the structure of the Canadian Forces Military Police Group as due to the hierarchy of the Canadian Forces the Minister of National Defence functions as the “chief of police” and has ultimate control over the military police even though it would be the Minister’s office that would be subjected to possible civil actions resulting from the outcomes of military police or CFNIS investigations. This is why civilian police always bring in police from other jurisdictions to investigate matters which may place the city of the first police agency at risk of civil actions.

I’ve also learnt that when people die, it doesn’t really matter for more than a few days, or maybe weeks, before everything goes on like nothing ever mattered.

50 forever.

Well, Tuesday would have been Scott’s 51st birthday.

But looks like he’ll be 50 forever.

Is he in a better place?

Nope.

Is he in a worse place?

Nope.

We didn’t believe in heaven or hell or the imaginary friend in the sky.

This existence is all we get.

In many ways I’m jealous of Scott.

For Scott, there’s no more pain and there’s no more suffering.

He’s no longer plagued by daemons of what could have been or what should have been.

No more memories of growing up, of the babysitter, of our grandmother, or of our father.

All that shit is gone.

What killed Scott?

Was it the ketamine, his epilepsy, or his heart condition?

Officially the Alberta Coroner will only say that his death was due to a ruptured spleen after a fall.

What caused the fall the medical examiner can’t say because his body was fairly decomposed when he was found.

2 weeks in an apartment in the Edmonton summer will cause a body to break down fairly quickly.

But if I had to speculate as to what the root cause of my brother’s death was, I’d have to say that the Indian Residential School System would probably factor in as a significant contributor. I’d also say that the desire of the Canadian Armed Forces to hide the true extent of Captain McRae’s child sexual abuse exploits on Canadian Forces Base Namao were also a significant contributor.

In life, every action has consequences.

Some consequences are felt immediately.

Some consequences appear as ripples at a later date.

Grandma was a very angry and disturbed woman from her time in Indian Residential school.

She was not a loving or caring woman, except for her alcohol. She loved and cared for her alcohol.

My father was not much better. He was already a heavy drinker at 16 when he joined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1963.

Grandma should never have had children.

But she did.

My father should never have had children.

But he did.

Luckily neither Scott nor I reproduced, so the dysfunction ends with us.

From the time I left the house in 1987 when I was 16 until 2013 I never really had much dealings with Scott.

When I went up to Edmonton for a couple of weeks in the summer of 2013 I mentioned to him that I never thought that I would have ever spoken to him again.

Scott knew from reading my blog back then that I was having some dealings with a constable from the Morinville RCMP detachment and Scott asked me if I could arrange a meeting with this constable as he wanted to know if this constable could read his CPIC file to see if there was some explanation as to why he was frequently being pulled over for traffic stops.

I did arrange for a meeting between the three of us at a Tim Hortons in St. Albert on the St. Albert Trail. Just after my brother started asking about what his CPIC file contained the constable kinda feigned a radio call and said that he had to go.

When I talked to the constable by phone the next day he said that there were issues on Scott’s CPIC file that would have warranted his arrest, and that he didn’t want to do that as this constable was familiar with what we went through on CFB Namao.

When I collected my brother’s belongings and his remains last August, the one thing that I did notice in his passport was that he had tried to enter the United States of America but that he had voluntarily returned to Canada.

Scott had quite the criminal history.

Some people may say that Scott’s criminal history was his own doing.

But it wasn’t.

Scott’s criminal history was 100% Richard’s fault.

When we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in North York, Ontario my brother started running with a bad crowd.

I think that was the difference between Scott and I.

Scott wanted to be popular and to have friends.

I was majorly depressed and just wanted to be left the fuck alone.

Scott wanted to hang out and belong.

I was the type of kid that the popular kids picked on for entertainment.

Richard had absolutely no interest in the either of us.

I had my after school and weekend jobs.

Scott had nothing to do but hang out with the thugs he called friends.

And these guys were literal thugs.

Auto thefts, B&E’s, robberies w/o weapons, credit card fraud, etc…..

And this was all before he was 16.

Richard, our illustrious father, was too busy kissing ass and polishing knobs in the Canadian Forces to climb the ranks to give a shit.

Scott’s troubles and his frequent stays in group homes and detention were solely due to Richard’s inability to give a fuck about anyone other than himself.

But to hear Richard tell it, Scott’s issues were solely due to:

Grandma’s drinking
Grandma’s cruelty
Our mother’s absence
Insanity that ran in out mother’s family tree
Me not raising my brother properly
Me letting the babysitter on CFB Namao molest Scott
The parents of the other boys not raising their kids right.
Schools not teaching Scott properly.
The civilian public schools not using corporal punishment like the schools the Canadian Forces ran for the kids of military families.

Richard was a complete skinflint.

As he told his airforce buddy Jacques Choquette once after Jacques asked my father why he doesn’t just drop Scott and I off with our mother, “As long as I keep these kids under my roof, I control the costs. If I send these kids to their mother, then I’ll have to sign my fucking pay cheque over to that bitch, and that’s sure as fuck not happening”.

So no, there were no hobbies, no activities, no trips, no going to the movies, no going to sports games, no fucking nothing.

Scott’s legal troubles would plague him well into adult life.

It’s too bad that Richard died back in 2017.

It would have been nice to have seen Richard tortured and tormented by Scott’s death.

Okay…….

Daily writing prompt

Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.

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As a kid I never liked the name “Robert”.

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……….

Brotherly relations

I wish that I could say that my brother and I had some sort of decent relationship. But we didn’t.

That’s how we were raised.

Scott was always told that I allowed the babysitter to molest him.

I was always told that I was responsible for Scott’s misbehaviours as I had allowed the babysitter to molest him.

And of course there was Richard, not taking responsibility for anyone or anything as long as he had a scapegoat to blame things on.

His usual scapegoats were myself, my grandmother, and my mother.

It’s no surprise that these are the three people Scott hated until the day he died.

And let’s not kid anyone, Scott may have been slowly coming around to the fact that I wasn’t the bad guy. But that only happened because Richard died and because the Canadian Armed Forces finally released the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the courts martial transcripts. If those three events hadn’t occurred Scott would never have shown any change in his ideas about me.

And let’s not kid ourselves, Scott’s hatred of me could be intense at times.

When Scott wasn’t around Richard we could talk, but as soon as Richard got hold of Scott, Richard would download his version of reality into Scott’s brain.

How quickly could Richard flip Scott?

So fucking fast that it would make your distant ancestors dizzy.

Scott and I had been friends on Facebook since the spring of 2013 when I tracked him down to talk to him about his 2011 statement to the CFNIS.

Over the summer of 2013 I went up to Edmonton and hung out with Scott for a week.

Scott at that point in time said that he hadn’t talked to Richard or Sue since back in 2008 when Richard and Sue tried to pester Scott into attending Eric Kolsteren’s funeral after Eric had committed suicide.

As Scott and I were friends on Facebook I’d get alerted to any post that he made, so of course I was notified of this. According to Scott at a much later date, Sue had tracked Scott down because apparently Richard was freaking the fuck out about my Federal Court hearing and Richard wanted Scott to “remember” how things had “really” been after CFB Namao.

On October 3rd, 2013 I was heading into Federal Court for my hearing for Judicial Review when my Facebook page started blowing up fast with bizarre accusations from Scott.

Because I blocked him on Facebook he resorted to contacting me via text messages.

The vitriol that Richard had pumped into Scott skull must have done the trick as this was the final text message between Scott and I until 2021.

P. was our babysitter from CFB Namao.

And some of his posts between 2013 and 2021 were just as off the wall as this.

Things didn’t get any better until 2020 in the aftermath of David Pugliese’s columns about how the Canadian Armed Forces were moving mountains to keep Captain McRae’s secrets hidden.

And then once David ran the above column Scott reached out and contacted me.

We met and went for breakfast.

He was in town for a couple of days.

And that was the last time I ever saw him in person.

I’m fucking happy that Richard was dead and long gone otherwise I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Richard would have pumped Scott’s head full of complete bullshit.

I really do wish that Richard had been alive for the release of the CFSIU paperwork and the Courts Martial transcripts. I would have loved to see the fucking worm wriggle and writhe as he tried to explain just what the fuck went on back in 1978 to 1980.

But yeah, this is the environment that my brother and I grew up in.

An environment where orders trumped truth.

An environment where secrets needed to be kept no matter the cost.

The environment that Scott and I grew up in existed on each and every Canadian Armed Forces base across the country.

Each base was staffed with regular force, reserves, and civilians that were all hired by the same two employers. The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces.

The DND and the CAF were the gatekeepers for each Defence Establishment.

The DND and the CAF were responsible for the justice system that administered justice on each and every Defence Establishment.

My father wouldn’t have denied the truth about what happened on Canadian Forces Base Namao without those above him assuring him that the truth would never come out. That’s why Richard had no problem in 2011 writing our grandmother out of existence during his interview with the CFNIS. He never would have imagined that I would have discovered my social services paperwork. In 2013 I gave him sections of my social service paperwork to assist him with writing his replies to my written examination that I sent to him. This must have blown his fucking mind. And it would have scared the shit out of him. The Canadian Forces promised him in 1980 that if he played along that he’d be looked after.

When I confronted him with my social service paperwork, he must have panicked. He had Sue track Scott down so that he could pump his lies and bullshit into Scott’s head.

And Scott, not knowing any better, went along with what Richard had been saying all along. Bobbie was responsible for what happened on CFB Namao, he’s a homosexual, he wanted the babysitter to have sex with you, that’s why the babysitter was never arrested, the 15 year old babysitter was a victim of 8 year old Bobbie.

And Scott let Richard’s poison into his brain, because after all, Richard wouldn’t lie, right? Shit like this doesn’t happen on military bases, right?

No doubt that between October of 2013 and January of 2017, Richard was sticking to his guns that nothing happened on CFB Namao, that Bobbie was just doing this to get out of his responsibility for being a homosexual that allowed the babysitter to have sex with you.

Then Richard died in January of 2017.

Then came the existence of CFSIU DS-120-10-80.

Then came the existence of Courts Martial transcripts CM62

Then came my fight with DND and the CAF over those records.

Then came the release of information in October of 2020 that confirmed once and for all that the CAF and the DND knew full well fucking well what had happened on CFB Namao from 1978 to 1980.

I don’t think that Scott and I could ever patch things up.

Scott and I were victims of the desire of the Canadian Armed Forces to keep the Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse scandal under wraps which was facilitated by their spineless little minions like Colonel Daniel Edward Munro, Captain Terry Totzke, and Master Corporal Richard Wayne Gill.