victim blaming – Beeshive

A song that I like

I forget how and when I first heard Free by Mike Errico.

It’s a song that I really like.

It speaks volumes to my involvement with the counsellors and psychs from my younger days on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach.

http://Skimming by Mike Errico https://music.apple.com/ca/album/skimming/295594004

Mike Errico – Free

They sent me here to rest
to get the weight off of my chest
while they work 9 to 5
cheat on husbands and wives
and tell me I’m the one who’s depressed

And I’m left to define what’s insane
to the same folks who jailed Galileo
and explain him away

They
who are we
who are wondering which one of us
is free

free

I went places you just don’t go
I saw things you can’t tell them you know
And if they’re smiling stark naked
sometimes is just wiser
to compliment the cut of their clothes
And know they define what’s insane
based upon what makes them look good
at the end of the day

They
who are we
who are wondering which one of us
is free

free

But I’m the one chained to the bed
That’s just proof I got into their heads
And I witnessed their colourless landscapes
Saw the lovers who were too bored to stay
And walked the grey roads of their memories
that just stop at the end of the page
They’re a little too sad to hate
They’re just children who ran
out of paint

I’m up for review in a month
and I’ll watch them drink water from crystalline glasses
They’ll sit and stare like smoke damaged chairs
around a smouldering pile of ashes
And I’ll try to define what’s insane
to the same folks who consistently kill those
with something to say

They
who are we
who are wondering which one of us
is free.

free

yeah

free

A true pit of vipers.

What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?

I would never want to visit National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario.

NDHQ – where truth and integrity go to die.

Not that I would ever be invited.

But it is an organization of liars and deceivers.

The ultimate impenetrable boy club dedicated to buffing their own public imagine using the blood of its many victims.

It’s an organization that is more concerned about its own prestige and reputation than it is about justice and truth.

NDHQ in Ottawa is the seat of power and policy for the Canadian Armed Forces.

It is where the decisions are made.

Decisions like keeping the investigation of the death of a trans military dependent in the grasp of the dysfunctional CFNIS.

Decisions like willfully allowing the CFNIS to conduct dog ‘n’ pony show investigations while knowing full well that prosecutions for pre-1998 service offences are fully impossible.

Decisions like fighting a group of former army cadets since 1974 over compensation for an officer of the Canadian Armed Forces allowing a 14-year-old cadet to play with a live grenade citing that as these kids were cadets the military wasn’t legally responsible for them.

Decisions like refusing to acknowledge the fact that as children living in military housing on military bases we were often exposed to the same chemicals and hazardous materials that our serving parents were due to provincial safety regulations not being applicable on the bases across Canada.

It’s where political favours are called in, and where truth, decency, and honour go to be sacrificed on the altar of military pride and tradition.

National Defence Headquarters is not a place that I would ever go visit.

Your life is really not your own

It’s often said that Canadians have rights and freedoms that most of the world don’t enjoy.

The one right that I don’t have is the right to request that my life be terminated.

For some reason my desire to die is either taking rights away from people who don’t want to die, or if I am allowed to die then the man in the sky will be angry.

I didn’t ask for this life.

I didn’t ask for my grandmother to be a residential school survivor.

I didn’t ask for my father to be a pissed tank alcoholic like his mother.

I didn’t ask for military rules and regulations to allow dead beats like my father to have my mother discharged from military housing.

I didn’t ask for Captain Father Angus McRae to be a sexual pervert.

I didn’t ask for my babysitter, Captain McRae’s altar boy, to work as McRae’s agent.

I didn’t ask to be sexually abused by the babysitter when my grandmother would go into town to visit her husband in the nursing home.

I didn’t ask for the 1970 RSC National Defence Act to be written in such a way that unscrupulous members of the Canadian Forces could bend and obstruct a criminal investigation to hide and minimize the true extent of the crimes.

I didn’t ask for Captain Terry Totzke to interfere with my mental health and wellbeing so as to keep a lid on the events of CFB Namao.

I didn’t ask to be blamed for the abuse my brother endured at the hands of the babysitter.

I didn’t ask to be disowned by my father for “fucking” with his military career.

I’m suffering from a myriad of issues that I didn’t ask for and didn’t have any control over.

And then I get ambushed by disabled rights groups and mental health advocates because I can be fixed or cured so long as I am willing to hide, bury, and internalize the shit I went through.

I get ambushed by the members of the Invisible Sky Daddy crowd who seem to think that their invisible friend will be sad and upset if I end my own life.

And then I also get ambushed by the Canadian Armed Forces who will move mountains to prove that nothing whatsoever happened on Canadian Forces Base Namao and that I’m just a “societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military”.

I should be able to make a simple request, go through a simple verification process, a subsequent cooling down period, and then the procedure if I wish to go through with the procedure.

The fact that others may be upset about my death shouldn’t be a factor in this matter.

Society has absolutely no problem with my death if I get killed by an out-of-control car driver because speed and horsepower are more important than my life.

Society has absolutely no problem with my death due to pollution, because pollution means production, and production means owners get wealthy.

The right-to-die is a basic human right that should never be removed from a person.

Don’t want physically healthy person dying for mental health reasons?

Don’t let children get sexually abused, and if they do, take care of them.

Don’t let them get fucked over by the dysfunctional military sham justice system.

Don’t let unqualified persons fuck with children’s brains.

And don’t hide, minimize, and then victim blame the victim.

Pride weekend…… or not.

Well, it’s Pride Weekend here in Vancouver. My apartment sits right on the parade route which is on Beach Ave to Pacific Ave this year. Meanwhile I’m over at a nice little coffee shop on the south side of False Creek over by 2nd Ave.

As I’ve said before, the commercialization and the promotion of alcohol have always been turn-offs for me.

And then there’s the do nothing politicians like Hedy Fry that wrap themselves up in the gay pride flag for votes, but then come up with every flimsy excuse for their inability to help their constituents with governmental issues.

If that’s the one benefit of having grown up in a dysfunctional household on various Canadian Forces Bases across Canada is the fact that I learnt very young that I’m on my own and there’s literally no help coming from anyone.

In fact, I learnt very young that I’m better off just keeping my mouth shut as people in positions of authority don’t like finding out that there are problems and that these persons in position of authority are more than likely to blame me for bringing the issue to their attention as they are to actually do something about the issue. The “squeaky wheel” syndrome where instead of fixing the issue that caused the squeaky wheel, you just pump on massive amounts of grease until the squeaky wheel stops squeaking whether or not the underlying issue is fixed.

So no, I’ve never felt any benefit from the “community” or a need to “belong” to the community. Especially not a community that is extremely selective with its chosen “cause célèbre”. And not a community that is extremely protective of lame duck politicians because said politicians wrap themselves up in the pride flag and wave from a float in a parade.

Queers, gays, lesbians, trans, bi, and other people on the gender spectrum have existed since time immemorial. This need to be officially sanctioned by the local LGBTQ+ community is something relatively new.

When I first came down to Vancouver in February of 1992 to apply for a job in Burnaby, I knew that there was something different about Vancouver. When I got back to Deadmonton later that week, my mind was made up. Into the dumpster went all of my furniture, gave the keys back to the landlord, and off to Vancouver I went.

Of course I migrated towards the West End. But sadly when “queer went mainstream” the West End changed. The GLBTQ+ crowd that could, moved away. The Pride Parade at the same time went from being a massive “fuck you!” to the society in general that shat all over the queer community because the church told them to, to being a massive corporate advertising campaign for banks and booze.

And I don’t ever see this changing.

And now that the GLBTQ+ crowd has had a taste of acceptance, they’re willing to do whatever it takes to keep that acceptance, even if it means no longer making society feel uncomfortable about issues involving the GLBTQ+ crowd.

A trans teen goes missing from a Canadian Forces Base and no one bats an eyelash when their body is found in a river near the base.

Someone brings to light the fact that the Canadian Forces gave conversion therapy to the victims of male-on-male child sexual abuse due to the assumption by military social workers that male-on-male child sexual abuse was nothing more than homosexuality. Not one single fucking person cares.

This isn’t a community. This is just an excuse to get shit faced and wear glitter in a parade.

Ignored, written off, and talked-over.

One of the things that I’ve had to endure over the years is the constant talking over

I’ve had many instances of being written off and ignored.

In the past I had always hoped that I was just misunderstanding.

But often it’s not.

People have said that I don’t exert myself enough.

One of the most startling episodes of this was when we had an outside management company managing the physical plant at the hospital where I work.

When I started working at the hospital in 2005 I re-opened the welding shop. No one had the ability to weld since the last person with welding experience left. So I started welding. One of the managers would absolutely refuse to ask me to do any type of welding work for him even though there were lots of projects. The other manager blamed this on my “flamboyance” and that I was flaunting it too much?

I was thinking to myself “what the fuck?”

I wasn’t yet out of the closet.

But then again at that point in time it was almost 10 years since a Vancouver Police Department officer wrote my mugging off as a “gay trick gone bad”.

And then I started to realize that a lot of what I had been through in life up to that point in life was due to some sort of “queer vibe” that I had exhibited.

To this date I’ve never figured out what this “vibe” was. But it must have been noticeable.

Was this the same vibe that put me in the sights of Captain McRae and his teenaged accomplice?

Was this the same “vibe” that got the shit beat out of me numerous times at school because I “walked like a girl”, “didn’t have a girlfriend”, “looked like a faggot”?

Was this the same vibe that attracted numerous adult men to me for sexual favours while I was under 16?

Was this the same vibe that caused another manager that I worked for to constantly refer to me as “Freddie Mercury” and to constantly remind me that gay sex leads to AIDs.

Was this the same vibe that caused the son of a company in St. Albert, Alberta to exclaim that there’s no place for fags at his father’s company?

Was this the same vibe that caused Ed from Classic Billiards to poke and prod me to admit that I had a same sex attraction?

Is this the same vibe that allows service contractors and vendors to ignore me even when I’m the one who called them in for service?

It’s so much fun at work dealing with contractors who ignore you and instead start talking to someone else who has no idea of what’s going on or what the service call is about.

But Bobbie, you’re the Chief Engineer!

Surely people have to take you seriously?

No.

Things are great when I’m communicating via email.

Things go off the rails when I deal with people face to face.

It’s those “queer vibes” apparently.

And in the macho “trades” field that I find myself in, these “queer vibes” are an outright turn-off to a lot of guys.

The only reason that I’m at where I’m at is my knowledge, my skills, and my abilities.

There are numerous people over the years who would have gladly destroyed me because of my “vibe”.

And I know it’s that “vibe”.

The was one guy at the hospital that used to turn to me for advice and knowledge and help with getting projects done.

But after management was brought back in house an I was promoted to the non-management position of Chief Engineer which allowed me to dress more appropriately for my gender identity, his opinion of me soured to the point where he was sticking a knife in my back on almost a weekly basis.

And I have absolutely no doubts that if I were to meet some of my previous co-workers and employers that their opinions of me and their attitudes towards me would change drastically from what they were before.

Yeah, okay, fine.

In the last couple of years I’ve switched over to dresses, I do my nails, and I’m more often than not in heels.

Does that make my knowledge worth any less?

Apparently so.

VPD Constable Gil Puder

VPD constable Gil Puder was the investigator assigned to my mugging.

I was working the Tuesday through Saturday 14:00 to 22:00 shift at the bowling centre that I worked at.

If I left work at 22:00 sharp, I could make it downtown to watch the late shows at either the Famous Players Capitol 6 or the Cineplex Granville 7.

This fateful weekend I went to see a movie called “Congo” at the Capitol 6. I’ve covered the mugging elsewhere, so I won’t get into the details.

But, the end result is even though I had located a video tape that showed me, my two assailants, and what triggered the mugging, VPD constable Gil Puder refused to pick up the video tape or to even just go and view the video tape and speak to the theatre manager.

Gil Puder told me right to my face that until I admitted the “truth”, that I had picked this guy up in a bar and that this was a “trick gone bad”, that he wasn’t going to help.

So, there never was an investigation.

Puder defended.

A few years later when I had moved into commercial property management one of the plumbers that worked for us knew Gil Puder.

This plumber and I were having coffee at a local coffee shop discussing some upcoming projects that I had for him.

This revelation only came up because the plumber used to play ice hockey with Puder and Puder had just died due to a brain tumour.

I asked the plumber if this Gil Puder that he played hockey with had been a VPD officer, the plumber said that yes, Gil had been a VPD officer.

I gave the plumber my opinion of Puder and explained to him what caused me to have this opinion of Puder.

The plumber seemed quite taken aback and then the plumber started to justify what Puder had opined.

“Bob, you gotta admit, you don’t have a girlfriend or a wife, and you don’t exactly come across as a ladies man”, and “Look at it from Gil’s point of view, you got mugged on Burrard at Georgia, the gays are down on Burrard and Davie, so what else what Gil supposed to conclude?”

There was also a general contractor that was used frequently that did tenant and building renovations.

I was the first power engineer that had ever worked for this employer, as such there was now a requirement to adhere to provincial and municipal codes. And this caused quite a row between the contractors and I. They were now required to pull permits for electrical, plumbing, construction, demolition, and asbestos abatement.

The general contractor would often wait until it was just him and I with no one else around and then he’d unleash on me with every homophobic slur and stereotype.

When I’d go talk to the general manager about this, the GM would talk to the contractor, and the contractor would profusely deny that he had said anything.

Thick skin.

It took me years to grow a thick enough skin to ignore these opinions of my worth.

And as much as I am able to ignore them in the modern day, the problem is they still have the ability to cause me to endure significant issues.

Employment is something that I can’t just up and change if I wanted to.

Do you have any idea how long it took to work up the confidence to start dressing the way that I wanted to and to even start on hormone therapy?

Do you realize how severely I have limited my future?

In 1980 the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service investigated Captain McRae for having committed “Acts of Homosexuality” with young children on Canadian Forces Base Namao. At the time “homosexuality” was viewed as a “victimless crime”. That tarred and feathered everyone involved with Captain McRae as a “homosexual”.

This is why I spent time in the care of Captain Terry Totzke receiving “help” with my “homosexuality” that I had exhibited.

In 2011 the CFNIS conducted an investigation into the actions of the babysitter.

As I’ve said elsewhere, the CFNIS had in their possession both the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the courts martial transcripts. The existence of which the CFNIS withheld from the MPCC and the Federal Court of Canada.

They knew what Captain McRae had been charged with, and they knew that it was the investigation of the babysitter for molesting numerous young children on base that triggered the investigation of Captain McRae.

But the CFNIS in 2011 would have been exposed to a report that was written back in 1980 when the attitude was that Captain McRae, the babysitter, and all of the other kids involved were “homosexuals” with perverted minds willingly participating in the victimless crime of homosexual sex.

Is this why the 2011 CFNIS investigation was such an abysmal failure?

They had the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the court martial transcripts that implicated the babysitter in the direct molestation of young children, but the CFNIS still had the audacity to call me a liar.

Anyways, enough for now.

Gotta get ready to catch my bus back to Vancouver.

Happy Pride Month?

As I’ve said, I’ve never really taken part in pride, and I really don’t identify with it.

I guess part of it has to do with the environment that I grew up in.

Military communities were isolated. And by isolated I mean that the Canadian Armed Forces had control over the types of people that were allowed to live in the military communities on base.

By way of filtering recruits, the Canadian Armed Forces could control the political leanings of those living on the bases. And it should be of no surprise that these military communities were very conservative and right leaning.

The thing is, when you’re living within these communities, especially if your exposure to the outside world is very limited, you come to see the political leanings of these communities as being “normal”.

Yes, Canadian Forces Administrative Order CFAO 19-20 did no apply to children living on base, it only applied to members of the Canadian Armed Forces. But as has been indicated through various studies, members of the Canadian Armed Forces often had a problems with separating their military careers from their home lives.

As the civilian social worker that dealt with my family noted during various home visits to our PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach, Mr. Gill orders his children with simple commands and answers their questions with yes or no replies and the children don’t question these decisions.

Being in the Canadian Armed Forces, Richard was nothing more than a cog in a machine that demanded his servile obedience. His was not a position to question. His was a position to do as he was told. And like many men who are stripped of the authority in their lives, he made up for this lack of authority by exerting his authority on those he could.

When it came to me and my issues from Canadian Forces Base Namao he was not going to question the authority of Captain Terry Totzke. If Captain Totzke said that I was a homosexual, that I was exhibiting signs of homosexuality, who was master corporal Gill to question this?

When I’ve talked to other base brats about how things were on base I get this Pollyannish rose coloured view of what things were like on base. This usually comes from former brats that didn’t have “issues” and therefore weren’t exposed to the underbelly of life in the “company town”.

I have encountered a few former brats that don’t participate in any of the social media groups for base brats. They want nothing to do with acknowledging their past. And I have an inkling that the brats who don’t want anything to do with remembering their pasts as base brats vastly outnumber the number of brats that celebrate their past as base brats.

The number of broken and dysfunctional families that lived on the bases was probably a high percentage, especially when you look at how the recruiting process would naturally filter out more liberal minded recruits. The military communities were rife with homophobia, racism, misogyny, victim blaming, victim shaming.

Another matter that played into the sterility of the military community was the fact that military housing could only be rented to members of the Canadian Armed Forces, and that these members had the ability to decide who could live in these houses and who couldn’t. If a service member wanted his spouse out of “his” PMQ, she was booted off the base by the military police. Same thing for his kids. As long as provincial law allowed for it, the serving member could give his kid the boot. The age that a child can live on their own varies from province to province. In Ontario a 16 year old can move out on their own.

I’m not sure what the rules are any more, but in my day living on the bases, 18 was the absolute oldest a base brat could be. Once you hit 19 you were expected to get off the base. There were exceptions to this rule, care givers could live in military housing so long as it was to look after military dependents, persons with disabilities could live on base past their 19th birthday, and students obtaining a higher education could continue to live on base until their 24th birthday.

As you can imaging, there wasn’t a lot of diversity. Everything was sterile. Everything was the military mindset.

Queer kids just learnt to stay in the closet.

Queer kids learnt that they were defective and a national security threat.

Kids on base learnt that there were no victims, that it always took two to tango.

Kids on base learnt that compassion was a liability.

Living on base there were no “others” like us.

Living on base we only had exposure to adults that passed the requirements of the Canadian Armed Forces recruiting agents.

Our view of the world was shaped by the monochromatic views of the world espoused by these serving soldiers that passed the conformity tests.

You know all of those soldier that have been implicated in hazing rituals over the years? Yeah we grew up amongst those people.

I lived on the base that was the home of the Canadian Airborne Regiment. We grew up amongst the mindset and the racism that lead to the death of Shidane Arone in Somalia.

All those sexual assaults that occurred in the Canadian Armed Forces? Those were committed by men of the Canadian Forces, many of whom were our fathers.

The misogyny and homophobia that were rampant in the Canadian Armed Forces back in the day? The men espousing these views were often our fathers.

I grew up in a community that allowed everyone up the chain of command to escape responsibility for the murder of Shidane Arone and allowed a lowly private, private Kyle Brown, to be made the scape goat for the whole sordid affair.

I grew up in a community that allowed sexually abused children to be blamed for the abuse they suffered at the hand of members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

I grew up in a community where the chain of command could determine who was a victim and who wasn’t a victim.

I grew up in a community that had the legal power to investigate itself and its members for sexual assaults against children.

I grew up in a community in which officers with no legal training and no legal background could summarily dismiss service offence charges that had been brought against their subordinates.

I grew up in a community in which a 3-year-time-bar applied to all service offences, including service offences of a purely civilian nature.

I grew up in a community which claimed criminal code offences related to children as service offences to be dealt with solely through the military justice system.

I grew up in a community served by such a compromised justice system that it was dismantled and restructured due to horrific miscarriages of justice.

So no, in the end I have nothing to be proud of.

Imperfect humans

Humans by nature, so I have learnt, are far from perfect.

Human brains are so delicate and so easily damaged.

I am far from perfect.

Trauma can destroy a brain.

I should know, mine is fucked.

Mine often feels like it is getting warm, and being crushed from within.

Brains, once traumatized, will never be the same.

No matter how hard you try, you’ll never forget how to ride a bicycle once you’ve learnt how to ride a bicycle.

No matter how hard you try, you’ll never forget how to skate on ice once you’ve skated on ice.

Once your brain has been traumatized you will never be the same.

There will be those that say “Well Bobbie, you’ll just have to try harder and just get over the past”.

Doesn’t work that way.

As I’ve said elsewhere, it wasn’t that people didn’t know about the abuse. People did know about the abuse. And the chose not to do anything about the abuse. And they chose to blame me for the abuse.

That fucked with me. That fucked with my brain.

And how your brain reacts to trauma is genetically set as well.

My mother had issues with anxiety to the point where she couldn’t care for me at times and I had to be taken in as a boarder at the hospital in Halifax.

My father had issues with depression to the point that he was returned to port by the Canadian Forces. Alcohol was his crutch. He was a happy drunk, and that’s why he drank. He only became a raging asshole when he was sober.

People commit suicide A LOT.

People will ALWAYS commit suicide.

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, 4500 people die by suicide each year. That’s over 12 per day.

America had about 48,000 suicides in 2021

There’s only so much trauma one person’s brain can endure.

The human brain is hardwired to survive.

The fact that the human brain can also devise ways to kill itself indicates that the brain can only take so much stress and damage before it says that enough is enough.

And society has to understand that.

The human brain is a mushy blob of fat with a billion or so neurones that pass around signals by way of electrical and chemical processes.

Forcing people to endure hell is not right.

I get people at work that try to be friendly to me and try to cheer me up all of the time. It’s so fucking annoying.

I like to work because it keeps my brain distracted from its desire to die.

But with depression and anxiety I only have so much energy to give.

Yes, I snap at people.

Yes, I get pissed off at people.

Yes, I find people who talk to much to be annoying to the point that my brain feels like its on fire.

Yes, I am extremely forgetful.

Yes, I cannot remember faces and I get really fucking annoyed when people equate my knack for building automation with being too smart to forget faces.

My brain is damaged.

And I am tired.

With all that I have been through in life, and all that I have suffered through on my own, death is not a punishment.

My death is not an indication of my failure.

My death will be my release.

People have an irrational fear of death.

Death does not hurt.

Death is painless.

Death is peaceful.

Dying is the scary part.

And with all that I’ve been through, I think I deserve to be able to end my life when I want to and to have assistance with ending my life quickly and painlessly.

Sure, there are those who will claim that I am being selfish, and childish, and immature, and unthankful, not considerate of others, and going against god’s will.

Here’s an interesting tidbit. In the next 100 years, over 7.5 Billion people are going to die. The current estimate to date is that over 100 Billion people have died since humans began to walk the face of the Earth.

That’s a lot of death.

And yet the Earth still orbits around the Sun, our solar system still floats amongst other solar systems in the milky way, the milky way is one of an estimated two trillion galaxies in the universe.

My death will have no effect on any of this.

So far as god goes, god is a creation of humans.

God or the multitude of other gods have served as a crutch for humanity to explain things that couldn’t be explained and to justify things that are beyond justification.

Humans have always had an irrational fear of death.

It’s one of the curses of our intelligence.

We know we exist.

We know we are alive.

We also know that we die.

The human brain knows what it is like to be alive.

The human brain has no idea of what it feels like to not exist.

The human brain cannot imagine being dead.

Decaying and rotting corpses look bad and they smell bad.

But you have nothing to fear as once your brain is dead your corpse is just a piece of meat that can no longer maintain itself.

So the human mind creates heavens, hells, Xanadus and Valhallas and a plethora of other places in the “after life”.

And it creates gods to rule over those places.

Gods serve as a source of creation to explain where we came from.

Gods also serve as a source of comfort to take the fear out of death.

But then people become afraid of angering the gods that they have created.

And so every life is sacred.

Life on Earth is a gift.

You are an evil and flawed person if you want to take your leave early.

You will anger god.

God will cast you into a void or a lake of fire.

So suicide and medical assistance in dying become bad, and wrong, and evil.

Forcing people to endure mental trauma and mental anguish to keep the god crutch happy becomes the norm.

No one was around in 1978 to 1980 to stop Captain McRae and his teenaged accomplice.

No one was around when I was in the care of the military social worker.

No one was around when I had to endure my father’s wrath for “fucking with his military career”.

So you know what, you don’t get a say in my death.

And you don’t get to shame me, or chastise me, or ridicule me for choosing death over life.

I didn’t ask to be born.

I didn’t ask for this life.

I didn’t ask for the sexual, physical, and mental abuse.

I didn’t ask for the mental and emotional neglect.

But what I am asking for is a peaceful death.

Is that really too much to ask for?

Ssssshhhhhh…….

Okay, so it’s been suggested to me to not publish anything at this moment that speaks directly to the class action or the subject of the class action as it has entered a critical phase.

I watched a movie yesterday on Netflix titled “The Luckiest Girl Alive”.

The film centres around an adult woman who is trying to make the perfect life for herself in order to hide her past.

Her past involves surviving a school shooting with allegations that she may have been involved with the shooting.

As the story progresses we learn that just prior to the school shooting she had been raped by three of the popular boys. During the shooting two of the boys are killed and one boy survives but is paralyzed.

At the time of the rape the girl was blamed for being assaulted with her own mother hinting that her own daughter was loose.

The school didn’t want anything to proceed legally.

And in the aftermath of the shooting, the paralyzed boy was looked upon with sympathy from the community and it appears that in order to scuttle any chance of the girl ever bringing rape charges against the boy and ruining his new found stardom, it was leaked to the community that she was implicated in the shooting.

In the end, everything unravels, as an adult she is able to get the paralyzed boy to confess to the fact the he did rape her.

This movie, along with “unbelievable” have a somewhat bittersweet taste for me.

Whereas the female characters in these two films receive their justice at the end of the film, there won’t be any such thing for me.

The babysitter will always be the innocent little angel.

I will forever be the homosexual pervert that allowed the babysitter to do what he did to myself and my brother.

When I talked with the babysitter’s father in 2015, he absolutely loved his son. He blamed himself for what his son had done.

My father threw me under the fucking train. No matter how bad my mental health issues were and no matter how bad the trauma had fucked me up, it was my fault.

Photography.

I took this past Friday off from work to be photographed by a professional photographer.

I met Albert back in 2017 when he came to the hospital to document an energy savings program that phsycial plant had implemented.

He was brought in by the planner that had looked after the project.

He didn’t say anything to me at the time, but he asked the manager to contact me and to tell me that he was interested in taking some photos of me in his studio.

I went over and we did a photoshoot for a few hours.

It was interesting.

So, I decided that I’d like to have some more photographs taken seeing as how my wardrobe has become far more than second hand dresses. Also, my tattoos cover far more than what they did back in 2017.

I contacted Albert about a month ago and we set up an appointment on Friday.

I took four dresses over in addition to the dress that I was wearing.

I also took my favourtie heels.

Rode the scooter from Braid skytrain station over to Albert’s place.

Albert should start a therapy / photography service.

We talked for about 30 to 40 minutes before going into the studio. He seemed to want to flesh out why I wanted to pay to get my photographs taken.

I explained to Albert that I have a decent camera setup, and I like taking photographs of mechanical things, and odd things. I don’t like to photograph people and I don’t like people in my photographs.

I also explained that I am far too self concious and far too critical to take pictures of myself.

Albert asked me what happens when people want to take picture of me.

I told him that for some reason my brain reacts different.

For example, when I was in Iceland over the summer no matter where I went, both tourists and Icelanders were asking to take my picture.

I think the reason that I love dresses and colours and designs is they offset how absolutely dead I am on the inside.

Let’s face it, with what I’ve been through in life, I have the ultimate “resting bitch face”. People think that I’m angry. I’m not. I’m just completely dead on the inside.

As social services indicated back in 1982, I couldn’t express emotions, I couldn’t express happiness or sadness. Whenever they tried to get me to express my emotions it would usually end up in a temper tantrum. I had no idea of how to make friends. I was completely isolated. Captain Totzke and my father had no interest in getting me the help I needed at the time, so things were just left to fester.

I should have the photographs in a week’s time. Albert has to process the images. I’ll get them in RAW format, but he’ll also render JPG versions of the photos. Most of the portrait full frame shots were taken with a Medium Format digital camera.

Saturday October 28th, 2023

So, just sitting down eating a bite for lunch and enjoying a soy cappuccino.

I’m probably going to ride my scoot over to the VCC-Clark skytrain station and take a run out to Value Village in Coquitlam and maybe the one out in Port Coquitlam.

People have asked me repeatedly how I can live without a car.

I say very easily.

I haven’t owned a car since 1998 when I moved downtown.

But even before that, when I did own cars, I usually couldn’t afford to drive them.

I bought a 1977 VW Rabbit when I was 15. This was so that I could get a membership at the base auto club. The car really wasn’t drivable, but it was something that I could learn mechanics on from guys like Bill Parker and Bob Wrightson at the autoclub.

In a way I wish I had never been a member of the autoclub. My brother had a friend named Greg. Greg was younger than me, but much like my brother they were both built larger than me.

I stayed clear of Greg. Avoided him at all costs.

Anyways somehow Greg got it in his head that because I could tinker on cars that I was going to fix his V6 Chevy Nova.

Straight fours is all I had ever worked on at the autoclub. Never had touched an American car, especially not a V-anything. Anways, I was at work on night at Bob Becker’s workshop when my brother, Greg, and a few of their buddies show up. My brother told Greg that I could fix cars, so therefore I was going to fix Greg’s car. The car that showed up with no distributor, no ignition coil, no spark plugs, and no spark plug wires. These were all in a jumble in the trunk of the car.

As could be expected, I couldn’t fix the car.

Greg and his buddies caught up with me at a Plaza on Keele just to the south of the entrance to the base. Fuck did they ever beat the shit out of me. And it wasn’t like it was anywhere near a fair fight. I was maybe 110 lbs tops. There was Greg. Greg had to be about 5″ taller than me and maybe weighed close to 150 to 160 lbs. And the other 3 were about the same size and stature. There was also this older guy, can’t remember his name, but he had to be around 40 or 50 years old.

I remember avoiding home and instead heading over to Billy Donuts on Wilson Ave.

The owner called the cops.

But ratting out on Greg would have been the end of me so I refused to say anything.

I knew that telling Richard would have been an absolute waste of time.

This was pretty well when I started to make sure that no one knew that I had any interests in cars or fixing things.

The first road worthy car that I ever owned was in Edmonton, AB.

I bought that car in August of 1990.

I made a mistake and I quit the job that I had prior to ensuring that the job I was going to was going to work out.

So I ended up on welfare.

A guy in my apartment building noticed that I liked to work on cars so he asked me if I wanted to make some extra money under the table working on cars for his brother. Who could turn down extra money to make ends meet when you’re on welfare. Welfare barely paid the rent at the time, let alone bought goceries.

I worked on a few cars for his brother Adam who owned a used car dealership on the south east side of Edmonton.

There were some sketchy things going on in that shop. So I didn’t stay very long.

It wouldn’t be until sometime in the 2010s that I would find out that in the years after I had involvement with Adam that some skectchy shit really was going down in that shop.

The car that I bought in 1990 was my transport when I decided to leave the welfare rolls in Alberta and try my luck in Vancouver in February of 1992.

I spent so much time on and off living in that car. The best place for car camping at the time was Stanley Park. There were also industrial areas that one could camp out in.

Around the spring of 1993 I couldn’t afford to keep the car any longer so I got rid of it for free with a scrap dealer.

I ended up moving back to Toronto around the fall of 1993. That didn’t work out so well so I ended up back in Vancouver by May of 1994.

I lived down at the Sally Anne until about August of 1994.

From ’94 to ’95 I primarily rode the bus, rode a bicycle, or walked to work from New Westminster to East Richmond.

In 1996 I got my hands on a very good condition 1984 Diesel Rabbit.

Kept that until I moved downtown in 1998.

I’ve owned a few motorcycles through my life, but I’ve only kept them for a few seasons.

Most were used, only one was new of a showroom floor.

That one was written off by a cab driver that ICBC found 100% at fault for the incident.

After getting cut off by that cab driver and seeing how easily someone else could end my life for the sake of beating a green light I realized that motorcycling wasn’t for me.

My greatest fear of getting injured in a motorcycle collision isn’t dying. It’s surviving. Motorcycle helmets really don’t protect the rider when struck by another vehicle. Motorcycle helmets, much like bicycle helmets are meant to protect the rider from incidents involving the motorcycle rider alone.

My father had a friend named Jacques Choquette. One night while Jacques was riding home on his motorcycle Jacques hit a pedestrian. Jacques ended up losing part of his skull and part of his brain. The guy was a fucking psychotic nutcase after the incident. No impulse control. Anger outbursts from nowhere. Seizures. Jacques was the one who tried to strangle me in the basement of the PMQ on CFB Downsview while my father stood to the side chuckling.

That’s what I’m most afraid of. Ending up with brain damage and having to live for 40 or 50 years like a fucking psycho like Jacques.

I bought a motorcycle back in 2020 at the start of the pandemic. I rode it for that first summer. It has sat in the under ground parking lot since.

I wanted to do some modification to it, but my depression told me that I’d get started and never finish the fucking thing off like I never finish anything else off.

So all in all, I’d say that even though I’ve had my driver’s licence since I was 17, I’ve actually only driven a car for maybe 5 years of my life. That’s about 14% of my adult driving life.

Total riding time of motorcycles would be less than 8%.

Riding bicycles would be close to 20%, riding the bus would be another 20%, walking would be almost 46% if not more. I’m probably a little high on the bicycle and the bus.

I think that I can credit my father and his driving skills and his belittling attitude.

Richard could be a complete asshole behind the wheel.

Everyone else on the road was a stupid asshole, a stupid cunt, a fucking idiot, or some fucking goddamn asshole that got their licence from a cracker jack box.

This is why he was forever rear ending other vehicles.

I could never figure out why he would never get his pride and joy fixed after various collisions. But as I would learn later in life, you never wanted to claim against your insurance for any accident that you were at fault for. That’s how the ’83 Mustang GT went from being a showroom new car in 1983 to a wreck with the driver’s seat falling through the floor and needing wood to hold it in place by the time I moved out of the house in 1987.

The collisions I know of from being in the car when they happened were the time he rear-ended a Jaguar over by the Don Valley parkway. Slammed right into the back of the car at an intersection. As usual it was my fault becuase if I hadn’t asked him for a ride to work this would never have happened.

The next time was on Keele Street just before we got back on to base. He rear ended a Metropolitan Toronto Police Service cruiser. And this was back in the day when they were bright white with yellow reflective strips. I didn’t stick around to see who he blamed the collision on. I just walked home.

Richard wasn’t adverse to throttle blips to let the driver infront of him at the lights know that he was displeased with the fact that because they were driving so slow he got caught behind them at the light.

He also had this habit of passing cars as we were coming to intersections and once he passed through the intersection he’d start swearing at the light to change and teach that silly fucker a lesson.

Of course there were also the times that he drove drunk.

He wrote off his 1969 Ford Thunderbird that he had bought with his retention bonus. Wrote that car off around 1975. Wrote it off in the PMQs of Canadian Forces Base Shearwater. That put me in the hospital for stitches.

The next time that he crashed a car due to drinking was after our mother left in 1976 / 77. He had gone to the junior ranks mess on CFB Summerside and was driving back home to our PMQ at 353 High Street in Summerside. Somewhere on the highway he crossed the centre line and clipped an on coming car.

My brother and I were more or less unscathed. But I ended up with a fat lip after the other driver asked my father if he had been drinking and I told the other driver that my father was drink at the bar on base. Guess I wasn’t supposed to rat out the rage fueled alcoholic, was I?

Maybe that’s why I don’t care much for driving. My father’s rage behind the wheel and his alcoholism ruined driving for me.

Also, not having help with my cars in the early days made me realize just exactly how much of a fucking money pit cars are and how one’s paycheque just goes into the endless pit of car culture.