Tag: Scott

It should go without saying that Scott and I really weren’t close as kids.

Our family was not a family built on love.

As I’ve said before, Richard was in many ways similar to Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights in the sense that he carried a grudge for historical slights and anyone even remotely involved with those historical slights was going to pay dearly.

Unlike Heathcliff though, Richard wasn’t the victim of the disdain of others. No, Richard was the architect of his own misfortunes.

Richard carried a massive grudge against his first wife and anyone or anything associated with her was going to pay a very heavy price for her “walking out” on him even though he took advantage of the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations and had his first wife thrown out of the PMQ by the military.

Richard also carried a massive grudge against his mother for her daring to be First Nations, but that’s for another posting.

My father’s buddy from 447 squadron at CFB Namao famously asked Richard “Rick, if these fucking kids are driving you nuts, why don’t you give them back to their fucking mother and let her deal with them”. Richard’s response was “As long as the kids live under my roof, I control the costs. If I sent them to live with their mother I’d have to sign my fucking paycheque over to that bitch, and that’s not going to happen”.

Going through my email interactions with Scott, there was one email in which he noted that even our stepmother Sue had told him that Richard would tell her that Richard kept us because we were good for tax time.

Richard never took us anywhere that would require a modicum of parenting or involvement. And from about 1977 until 1981, Richard had washed his hands of my brother and I by bringing his mother on base to live in the PMQ and raise us.

This is the woman that he described to social services as being “frequently cruel” to his children and that she was frequently intoxicated and refused to admit her alcoholism.

To make matters far worse was the fact that kids from dysfunctional families that were living on Canadian Forces Bases were often shunned.

The Canadian Forces at the time, and even still today, is an extremely patriarchal which meant that the fathers of the families would never been seen to be at fault. Any problem in the household on base was always seen as the fault of the woman or the fault of the children.

So yeah, to say that Scott and I didn’t have a happy childhood would be a gross understatement.

So Scott would go off on his own, and I would go off on my own.

Because of my estrangement from Richard as a child, I never really stayed close to Richard. Scott on the other hand looked up to Richard.

When we moved to Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario in 1983 is when Scott and I started really drifting apart even further.

At that point in time I was so emotionally disturbed that I was supposed to be institutionalized whereas Scott was desperate for friendship. I preferred being left alone, whereas Scott wanted to hang out and be friends with everyone.

This led to Scott hanging out with the wrong crowd.

And Richard, being the incompetent asshole that he was would blame Sue, Grandma, myself, and his first wife for the way Scott was turning out. Not for one minute would Richard turn around and blame himself or accept responsibility for his part in this play.

This of course would stoke a lot of animosity between my brother and I.

Scott would do the crime, and I would get the beating of my life.

I wasn’t raising Scott properly

I wasn’t looking out for Scott

Another wedge that Richard drove between my brother and I was the fact that Richard blamed me for what happened to Scott on Canadian Forces Base Namao at the hands of the babysitter and possibly Captain McRae.

When Scott stole Sue’s Pontiac Acadian, Richard laid a fucking intense beating on me in my basement bedroom of the PMQ. During this beating Richard yelled numerous times at me that Scott was turning out the way he was because I let the babysitter touch him and that if I hadn’t let the babysitter fuck Scott that Scott would be normal.

And of course Scott was becoming resentful towards me because Richard’s insistence that I was supposed to raise Scott and look after Scott meant that I was allowing Scott to get into trouble.

And I know that this was a substantial issue between Scott and I even until just recently. In fact it wasn’t until the Canadian Armed Forces finally released the Court Martial transcripts and the CFSIU investigation paperwork in the summer of 2020 that Scott finally began to come to terms with the fact that Richard lied about the events of 1980 and that Richard obviously knew more about 1980 than what Richard had ever let on.

In the summer of 1984, while Scott and I were spending the summer with our grandmother, Scott said something to our grandmother about the babysitter from CFB Namao. Grandma was furious, yelling at me for allowing Scott to be raped by the babysitter while I was watching.

I moved out of the PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario in early 1988.

By this point in time Scott had been into juvenile detention numerous times and had grown substantially both in height and in mass. Scott’s uncontrolled anger and Richard’s unwillingness to control Scott and protect me from Scott is one of the reasons that I left. And it wasn’t just Scott that I was terrified of. He was hanging out with guys that I’m sure probably ended up becoming enforcers for biker gangs after they finished high school.

In a way I was very envious of Scott. Here I was, barely pushing 100 lbs and Scott had to be at least 160 or 170 even though he was 2 years younger than me. Not only that but Scott was towering over Richard. Richard once tried to backhand Scott, and Scott just caught his hand and scowled at Richard. That was the last time I ever saw Richard try to strike Scott. Me on the other hand, yeah Richard wasn’t afraid of me in the slightest.

In the summer of 1990 Richard got hold of me and invited me to move to Edmonton with him so that we could try to be a family again.

In preparation for the move, I moved back into PMQ 223F on Canadian Forces Base Downsview. But Scott wasn’t there. Scott had been incarcerated during my absence and was serving time at St. John’s in Uxbridge, Ontario.

By the time Scott was released, Sue and Richard had already bought a civilian house in Morinville, AB. I didn’t last too long in that house, and neither did Scott upon his release from juvie in Ontario. I think I lived in the house in Morinville for about a week before I got the boot and had to go rent my own apartment, which was no small feat at the age of 18.

One day at work I got a phone call from Richard telling me that after all he did for us as kids that I had to take Scott in until things calmed down. Scott was unceremoniously dropped off at my apartment. He ate all of my food in three days and he nearly got me evicted by fighting with the neighbours and blasting loud music. I asked Richard for help with groceries, he just laughed and said that maybe I should try hitting up our mother for groceries as he was finally done with us. Our mother ended up taking Scott out to her acreage out by Wabamum Beach.

I was introduced to my mother by my uncle Doug in the summer of 1990 just after we arrived back in Edmonton. I have no doubt that uncle Doug also introduced Scott to our mother after Scott arrived in Edmonton from Ontario after his release.

I happened to stop in to our mother’s house one weekend when she asked me if it was true what Scott said, that I had let Scott get raped numerous times by our babysitter. This was in the summer of 1991 and Scott was still framing it the way that my father had framed the events of 1978 to 1980, that I had allowed and encouraged the babysitter to molest my brother.

Between the winter of 1992 and the summer of 2012 I only saw Scott 3 or 4 times.

In the Summer of 2013 I went to go see Scott. We had some talks, but there was still an intense amount of resentment and condensation in his voice towards me. At the time Scott claimed that he hadn’t spoken to Richard or Sue for the longest time due to the suicide death of Eric Kolsteren.

On the day of my Federal Court application for Judicial Review, Scott had started texting me claiming that I had raped him along with the babysitter and that I should tell this to the judge. I did some quick sleuthing and as it turned out Richard had tracked Scott down via Sue and just the night before Scott’s outburst Richard had paid a visit to Scott and gave Scott a computer, a bunch of computer items, some camera equipment, and possibly paid for a trip to Toronto.

After that, Scott’s attitude towards me soured quite considerably. I have absolutely no doubt that Richard was pumping Scott’s head full of bullshit.

The next time that Scott would have any type of contact with me was in 2019 when he called me to let me know that Richard had died in 2017. Scott requested that if Sue ever asked how I found out Richard was dead that I wasn’t supposed to say that Scott told me.

Things again changed between Scott and myself in 2020 after the release of the Captain McRae’s court martial transcripts, and the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork. Scott began to realize that he had been lied to all of his life by Richard once my class action against the Canadian Armed Forces was initiated.

People have asked me if my brother’s death upsets me.

Not really.

I didn’t know him.

I knew him about as well as I knew my father.

I am disappointed that Scott is dead.

He didn’t live long enough to at least see official acknowledgement for no only what had happened to him on Canadian Forces Base Namao, but the fact that various members of the Canadian Armed Forces failed him such as our father Master Corporal Richard Gill, Captain Totzke, Colonel Daniel Edward Munro.

I know that Scott had been struggling with mental health issues for the longest time as when we did have email conversations early after 2012 he did say that he was seeing counsellors to try to work out his anger issues.

Drug wise, I don’t know when he started to be honest with you.

I know that he drank when we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview. Back then it wasn’t uncommon, even for the Goodie-Two-Shoes brats, to drink and smoke weed on base.

When Scott came for a visit in the summer of 2021 both him and his girlfriend at the time were doing mushrooms and weed.

When Scott started doing K is something I’ll never know.

If he was doing anything harder than weed, ‘shrooms, and K is also something that I’ll never know.

If we were closer together, would I have known?

I don’t know.

I work at a hospital in Vancouver that is basically THE hospital for Canada’s poorest postal code, the DTES. Drugs can take over anyone at anytime. The number of fresh faces coming in for treatment is astounding. Everyone seems to think that they can try the hard drugs once or twice and they’ll be okay.

I haven’t quite figured out what to do with Scott’s ashes at this point in time.

Maybe I’ll get them mixed into little cement middle fingers and have one delivered to the Chief of Defence Staff, one delivered to the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal, one delivered CFNIS Western Region, one delivered to CFNIS Pacific Region, and one delivered to RCMP K division HQ.