writing – Beeshive

One step closer

Had an appointment with my doctor this morning.

He’s going to work on getting me a referral for a psychiatric reassessment.

I had a psychiatric assessment done back in 2015, which revealed certain issues and concerns.

I don’t know how this will play out.

I really don’t want to get my hopes up too high.

This reassessment could work in my favour, or it could derail my hopes.

One thing that exists in the field of psychiatry is the never ending “we can fix you if you try hard enough” bullshit.

An illustration depicting a distressed individual curled up on the floor, being confronted by four angry figures in lab coats, who are shouting phrases like 'Stop being depressed!' and 'Try harder!'

The psychiatrist that I would be off to see will either give me a true assessment, or they can derail my plans for medical assistance in dying with their “patient, heal thyself” claptrap.

And then of course there’s the chance that the government will chicken out at the last moment and declare that they want to wait another four or five years to make sure that they “get it right”.

At this point in life I am so looking forward to that final escape.

To finally be free of the events on Canadian Forces Base Namao.

To finally be free of the decisions of the Colonel Daniel Edward Munro.

To be free from the agenda of Captain Terry Totzke.

To be free of the lies and the hatred of my father.

To no longer be blamed for the babysitter abusing my brother.

To no longer have to realize that the Canadian Armed Forces and the Government of Canada anointed a teenage pedophile and willing accomplice of Captain McRae to be the sole innocent victim while all of the other kids on the base were swept away into the dustbin of history.

A young boy wearing a medal labeled '#1 VICTIM' walks proudly in front of an 'INSTITUTIONAL VICTIM CARD DISPENSER', surrounded by scattered papers. A group of people in the background, including a man in a suit and a woman in a business outfit, watch him as one holds an 'APPROVED' card and another holds 'DISAPPROVED'. A trash bin nearby is labeled 'DUSTBIN OF HISTORY' and contains papers referencing actual victims.

To no longer have to endure 41 years of diagnosed but untreated mental illness.

Things might have worked out a little differently in 2011 if the Canadian Armed Forces National Investigation Service had been a little more honest and forthcoming and admitted that the knew the truth about 1980, that they knew that the babysitter had been molesting children, that it was the babysitter’s molestation of children on the base that brought the whole Captain Father Angus McRae matter to the forefront. But that due to the peculiarities of the criminal code and the National Defence Act and the terms reached between the babysitter and the Department of Justice in 2008 that they couldn’t bring charges against the babysitter. But they couldn’t. Secrets needed to be kept. Images and reputations needed to be kept spick and span.

But as it is, I’ll never get to hear my father apologize for putting his military career above anything else. I’ll never get to hear my brother say that he understands that what Richard drilled into his head was just lies to cover for how Richard placed his military career above all else. And as it is, anything that the Minister of National Defence, the Canadian Armed Forces, or even the Department of Justice have to say about apologies will be absolutely fucking meaningless.

So no, there is absolutely no recovery from this.

Not a fucking chance.

The Longest Year……

Well, now I officially move into the longest year in my life.

By this time next year all of the acute care will have been relocated to the new site. But M.A.i.D. for Mental Illness won’t be available until March 17th, 2027.

What I fear is that the government of Canada might cave yet again to the Anti-M.A.i.D. crusaders. And that would be absolutely devastating.

People have asked me what I intend to do if the government delays M.A.i.D. for mental illness again like in 2023 and 2024?

I have absolutely no idea.

I’m so fucking tired and numb from dealing with the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence over the last 15 years.

Fuck me. I just realized that it’s just days away from the 15th anniversary of me sending an email to the Edmonton Police Service asking how I would make a complaint against my babysitter from all those years ago.

And with the DOJ, DND, and the CAF being very clear in their intentions to drag this matter out for as long as possible I don’t think that I would have the strength to initiate a charter challenge against the government of Canada.

And I should very clear. The DOJ, the DND, and the CAF don’t have a particular agenda against me in particular. It’s just that my issue brings a whole lot of issues to the forefront. Issues that the DOJ, the DND, and the CAF wish would simply disappear.

The 3-year-time-bar.

The summary-investigation-flaw.

The DOJ, the DND, and the CAF have a lot of reasons to keep this matter going for as long as possible.

Why is M.A.i.D. so critical for me? Why do I desire M.A.i.D. so much considering that it will mean the end of my life?

I’ve been dealing with major depression and severe anxiety since I was a kid.

Life has been anything but enjoyable.

And what makes it far worse is that even though I had been diagnosed with major depression and severe anxiety and I was having such mental health issues that I was supposed to have been institutionalized when I was young, both my father and Captain Totzke did what they could to block my access to treatment for my issues for whatever reasons.

After having dealt with even more trauma brought on by the bumbling and incompetence of the CFNIS in 2011, and 2015 to 2018, I’m even more fucking tired that I ever have been.

I also just realized that tomorrow would have been my brother’s 52nd birthday. But he started on Ketamine infusion treatments at the UofA back in the winter of 2024. This apparently evolved into a full blown ketamine addiction.

I’ll never understand who thought that giving someone a highly addictive drug as a “cure” for depression was a bright idea, but who the hell am I to argue?

Do I miss my brother?

No.

That’s the dysfunctional household that we grew up in, and that’s the way our father raised us.

Do I miss my father?

The only thing that I miss more than my father is an infected haemorrhoid.

Bobbie, all you do is talk about M.A.i.D., don’t you have anything else to talk about?

Simple answer, nope.

Why not?

The household that I grew up in wasn’t conducive to having interests in things.

But Bobbie, lots of people grow up in neglectful households.

True, but it wasn’t just the neglect.

It was the intergenerational trauma.

My grandmother’s bout in Indian residential school obviously fried her noodle. And she passed her anger, her hatred, and her alcoholism down to my father.

My father picked up his mother’s trauma, and he exhibited her anger, her hatred, and her alcoholism. But he also picked up something more. He was so bound and determined to prove to everyone that he wasn’t 1/2 Indian that he had to pretend that he was something that he wasn’t. He had to be someone so flawless and faultless that he couldn’t possibly be 1/2 Cree. This turned him into an absolute asshole.

My father brought his mother into the PMQ on CFB Summerside to raise my brother and I after he had our mother booted out of the PMQ. When she moved back to Edmonton in the spring of 1978 to be with her husband my father got a compassionate posting to CFB Namao in 1978 so that he could get grandma and her husband to come live with us on base while he went off on every training exercise he could sign up for.

He did this even though just a few years later he would tell Alberta Social Services that he blamed his mother’s cruelty towards his children as well as her alcoholism for the problems exhibited by his children.

And then he brought his girlfriend in to live with us in the summer of 1980.

Sue was okay at the start. As my brother said to Alberta Social Services in 1981, “when Sue first moved in she promised not to hit us, but she hits us all the time now”. There were two things that Sue promised to do when she moved in. She was going to stop our father’s drinking, and she was going to stop our father from hitting us.

There was a brief period of time when Sue and Grandma lived with us simultaneously in the PMQ on CFB Griesbach. Grandma was still pissed off at my father for booting our mother out of the house. Whenever my father would bring up how much of a “bitch” my mother was for running away my grandmother would always fire back that one day us kids would learn the truth.

Sue blamed my grandmother’s drinking for my father’s drinking. And Sue was 100% certain that grandma was trying to sabotage the relationship between our father and Sue.

And I guess that my father never told Sue about his kids being sexually abused for 1-1/2 years on CFB Namao. When the school for military dependents got Captain Totzke involved, you can sure bet that neither Totzke or my father told Sue about what had happened on CFB Namao. And let’s face it. In 1980 Sue would have been around 20 years old. My father was 34 years old.

From the limited history that I have been able to piece together my father met Sue via his paternal stepsisters that lived in Oshawa and went to the same high school as Sue.

I can see my father telling Sue that I was the reason our family was involved with the military social worker, and that it was my fault that our family was involved with Alberta Social Services.

So yeah, it wasn’t just that the house in which I lived was dysfunctional. It was that I had to endure the anger of adults who were misdirecting blame in my directions.

Captain Totzke blamed my apparent homosexuality for me having sex with the babysitter for over a 1-1/2.

My father blamed me for being a pervert and for allowing the babysitter to molest my younger brother.

Grandma? I think grandma was just pissed off at everyone.

And Sue? Sue was pissed off because the perfect little family that my father had promised her was obviously never going to be realized.

Neglect would have been one thing.

But what I had was (Neglect + verbal abuse + sexual abuse + physical abuse + mental abuse + psychological neglect + abandonment).

That’s my life.

.That’s all I’ve ever known.

There was never any encouragement for hobbies or interests.

Which is why I have no hobbies or interests.

Surely there must be something that you like, something that sparks an interest in.

Nope.

You’re just not trying hard enough.

Nope.

You’re being melodramatic.

Nope.

What about sports?

Nope.

Photography?

Why, so everyone can tell me how much my pictures suck. It’s always so funny how taking pictures isn’t just about taking pictures. Nope, you’re supposed to criticize and chastise people for the wrong film speed and shutter speed and aperture setting. Oh, and gotta ridicule people for choosing the wrong lens for the task even though the person likes the effect created by the “wrong” lens.

Fashion?

Fuck no.

Music.

Nope.

Films?

Nope.

Theatre?

Nope.

Concerts?

Nope.

Travel?

The fuck for? I can be as depressed at home without having to spend a metric shit ton of money to go some place else and be depressed.

Electronics?

Fuck, I hate electronics. I have my self taught skills, but I get ass raped at work for not “teaching” others how to be as smart as I am. I have no degrees in electronics or building automation, but fuck do I ever get ragged on for not giving everyone else the skills it’s taken me a lifetime to accumulate.

Computers? Again, fuck no. Computers are a tool that I use. They are not a toy, or a source of pride, or enjoyment for me. It drives me fucking bonkers that people who should run circles around me with their degrees or diplomas can’t even do the basics. I used to ask new applicants if they had computer skills with Word, or Excel, or Open Office, or if they’ve ever used a PDF editing program like Adobe Acrobat or Nitro PDF to put together a PDF from single pages, or to create a fillable PDF file. Yep, sure, of course! Without exception it turns out that they can’t but their computer module they took as part of their diploma program or certificate program taught them how to create a blank Excel sheet and to give it a cute name.

Why don’t you get involved in community activities.

Massive fuck no! Society has done a very good job of telling me to fuck off and to leave them alone, so I’m happy to leave society the fuck alone.

Am I a good judge of character?

Daily writing prompt

Are you a good judge of character?

View all responses

You gotta be fucking kidding me.

I am the absolute worst at judging characters.

I always seem to surround myself with people that either get their kicks from my mental health issues, want to use me as their door mat, or who exhibit absolute glee while sticking the knives in my back.

I try so hard to not me like my father and I try to see the good in people.

But, because of my dysfunctional life I end up trusting all the wrong people.

I think that this is one of the reasons that I like to be left alone.

My father traded my mental health and wellbeing for his career in the Canadian Armed Forces when he agreed to what he agreed to back in 1980.

My mother, sure my father abused the Defence Establishment Trespass regulations like lots of other fathers did back in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s and had her chucked out of the military supplied housing. But she could have tried. And she didn’t.

So, I thought that trying to not be like my father would be the safe way to live my life. Sadly, what I’ve learnt is that assholes like my father are the ones that end up winning.

But, not being like my father in a world where liars, thieves, and crooks get ahead meant that I was just setting myself up to get royally fucked by the porcelain people who have never had to endure a single scratch on their delicate skin.

And the fact that I actually set myself up for this due to my piss poor ability to judge the character of a person means that I have no one to blame but myself.

Two little resistors, so much headache.

Every now and again something pops up that brings Richard back with full force.

I will be so very happy when I am finally freed of Richard.

I started getting into BACnet at the hospital back around 2019 when the outside contract management was replaced with in house management.

Our plant was so far in the dark ages. Pneumatics still make up the vast majority of our controls.

One of the first thing that I started doing when I became the Chief engineer was to start nibbling away at a lot of the inadequacies of our ancient automation systems. And this is where BACnet came in.

I’ve never used BACnet prior to this position. Networking I’ve done. I’ve worked with RS-485 networks before. I’ve got decent knowledge of controls. I’ve also learnt that proprietary licenced controllers are no longer the only way to accomplish automation.

One of the reasons that I’ve taken a shine to ABB drives over the last few years is that they can run by themselves without the need for expensive proprietary controllers that can only be programmed with expensive proprietary software developer kits, proprietary interfaces, and exorbitant licencing fees.

I’ve also installed various other devices that further expand the monitoring capabilities of the system.

But, there was always one piece of equipment that I could never get to work reliably.

With RS-485 networks, the network is supposed to be laid out in one continuous daisy chain. The network is not supposed to have stars or stubs.

Daisy Chain is good.

Stars, rings, backbone with stubs, backbone with stars are bad.

That’s where repeater hubs come in to play.

Or at least so I thought.

Some of the equipment would work fine on a hub, some equipment would work at super slow baud rates, and some equipment absolutely refused to operate at all.

I could never figure out what was going wrong. I thought that my dream of expanding BACnet all over the hospital was a dying dream.

Recently I happened across some documents from Texas Instruments talking about recommended design of circuits using their RS-485 transceiver chips used in communication equipment.

Up to this point in time I had always used MSA Fieldserver BACnet routers as the interface for the network loops. On the router are switches for each port.
Bias (+)
Bias (-)
Term

I had always set the positive and negative bias on, and of course the terminator resistor was turned on. I would also set the terminator resistor at the end of the loop to be on as well.

Well, being the complete idiot that I am, I never noticed that the hubs that I was using, and I’ve tried three different brands, had termination resistors, but they had no bias resistors.

I should have clued into the fact that the outputs of these hubs are galvanically isolated.

To be galvanically isolated, the outputs can’t be tied high to a common power supply nor can the outputs be tied low to a common ground. And this is why they couldn’t have biasing resistors.

This means that while the network was terminated, the 0 and 1 levels were not being defined properly and they’d go all over the place due to common mode voltage.

Some equipment like my ABB drives could handle the floating loop, but other equipment obviously expected the loop to not only be terminated, but to be biased. Equiment like the ABB drives can actually supply the bias voltages for the loop. Most of my other equipment can’t supply the bias voltages.

So, with the knowledge of my lack of knowledge in hand, and with Richard laughing widely in my brain, I soldered up a pair of 4.7k resistors with some hookup wire and some heat-shrink.

The resistors that were missing were the RFS1 and RFS2 which form the bias for the network. The two RT resistors are the termination resistors.

With this diagram as a reference, RFS1 = 4700 ohms, RT = 120 ohms, and RFS2 = 4700 ohms.

As soon as I connected RFS1 from the DC power rail to terminal (A) the LED on the port actually illuminated and started flickering on and off indicating data transmission. And once RFS2 was connected from (B) to ground the intensity of the LED changed the flashing was more defined. A check of my laptop showed that all communication errors on this node went away and all of the devices were back on line.

Why did some equipment work while others didn’t?

Simple.

The ABB, Yaskawa, and Schneider variable speed drives that I have in use at the hospital all have the capability to inject bias on to the loop.

Other equipment that I have such as the flow meters and the actuators typically don’t have the ability to inject bias into the network, and so the network common mode voltages will go all over the place. If the network is allowed to float all over the place the transceivers get confused.

But Bobbie, people make mistakes all the time, you caught this one.

No, the one problem that I face is that I have no paperwork, therefore when I make a mistake it’s because I’m an outright moron. When people with degrees and certificates create massive mistakes, fuhgeddaboudit, don’t worry about it.

It’s actually quite funny, but in a sad and tragic way.

Trades, certificate programs, diploma programs, they’re all made for people without scars. You got scars? Piss off and get outta here.

Well Bobbie, it’s your own damn fault, you should have taken a real trade when you were younger, don’t bitch at us.

Back in my day, to get into the trades you needed either the support of your family or the support of social services.

That wasn’t going to happen.

Being a military dependent is odd in the sense that because you’ve moved amongst the provinces, you’re the other province’s issue.

When I found myself unemployed during Alberta’s recession in 1991, Alberta was willing to give me a bus ticket back to Ontario.

When I first moved to Vancouver in 1992, BC Social Services was more than willing to give me a bus ticket back to Alberta.

When I moved out to Toronto in 1993, Ontario wanted to buy me a bus ticket back to Nova Scotia. Sure, I was born in Nova Scotia. Ain’t got any family out there. My father just happened to the stationed at Canadian Forces Base Shearwater when I popped out.

Your father’s employed with the Canadian Armed Forces, you don’t qualify for this aid program.

You’re a military brat, surely the Canadian Forces is the place for you.

This training program only covers you if you meet these criteria points.

You have no collateral.

You’re gonna need somebody to co-sign a loan for you.

Can’t you get a job where your employer will let you take paid time off whenever you need too?

Find your mother, she’ll fund you.

Tell your father you’re sorry for fucking with his military career when you got abused by Captain McRae and maybe he’ll give you some money.

Why don’t you shack up with someone and let them pay your bills.

What about finding a program that takes your knowledge into account?

Those programs typically existed back in the ’70s and ’80s, but they don’t exist any longer. Basically you’d have to interrupt your entire life and take a full-on trade program that may or may not give you any credit for your adult experience.

I am so looking forward to this…….

As I’ve said before, I will be so devastated if the Government of Canada falls through on implementing Medical Assistance in Dying for reasons of Mental Health.

Privacy

Sometimes you gotta wonder what drives companies like Apple to shape their “privacy” policies like they do.

Sometime around July 31st, 2024 my brother Scott fell and died in his apartment.

Looks like he had been participating in a “Ketamine Infusion Therapy” program and became addicted to Ketamine. According to Scott’s landlord Scott had graduated from snorting Ketamine to injecting Ketamine.

His death wasn’t noticed until he started leaking through the floor into the suite below.

The VPD contacted me on August 12th, 2024 on behalf of the Edmonton Police Service to inform me of the death. They gave me the contact information for the EPS officer investigating the matter.

I contacted the EPS officer and she gave me some of the details. She asked me to contact the Alberta Coroner to make arrangements for the disposal of Scott’s body.

The Alberta coroner told me that I’d have to wait until the official cause of death was determined and then someone had to collect his body from the coroner’s office and have it buried or cremated.

I asked the coroner if they had tried to contact anyone else.

Nope. They couldn’t find anyone else.

I contacted the EPS officer and asked her if they tried to contact his former wife or any of his girlfriends or even our stepmother in Morinville, AB.

The stepmother was unreachable and the phone numbers I had for Richard were not in use anymore.

I had no contact information for the former wife or any of his girlfriends, and the police couldn’t find anything else.

I was therefore the only legal next of kin.

And the police had no indication of any other information.

So, I made arrangements with the Alberta coroner and a crematorium to have my brother’s body transferred there and I would pick the ashes up.

I made the trip up to Edmonton and went to his apartment to try to locate any documents or records.

It wasn’t safe to walk around in there as the floor had been removed from the apartment as his bodily fluids had spilt all over the place and ruined the flooring.

Even though most of the flooring had been removed, the stench of his death and decomposition was still overwhelming in the suite. I couldn’t spend more than 10 minutes in the space before becoming overwhelmed with the urge to vomit.

Apparently his cats had been shitting and pissing all over the apartment. They had found one of the cats, but the last cat was hiding out in the joist space under the floor and was continuing to shit and piss all over the place. The cats had been drinking the water out of the toilet and had emptied the toilet out to the point that sewer gas was coming into the apartment.

From what I’ve been able to piece together, Scott received an inheritance from Richard when Richard died. Scott had used his inheritance to buy this “condo”. I say “condo” as this seems to be a scam going on in Edmonton where old apartment buildings are turned into condos and the apartment suites are sold off as condo units.

Scott’s ketamine habit had increased to the point that he sold off his condo for cash and was renting it back from the person that he had sold it to. This probably explains his urgency to settle the class action lawsuit with the Canadian Forces and why he kept getting agitated when I’d inform him that the DND and the CAF were doing everything in their power to delay the initiation of settlement negotiations until after I underwent M.A.i.D..

Scott had texted me around July 29th, 2024 asking about the settlement. So I think he was at the end of his rope. His depression and his anxiety were obviously keeping him from regular employment, his Amazon business wasn’t doing good. So, I can’t help but wonder if he took the final jab of Ketamine to escape the impending collapse of his world due to all of his creditors looking for money.

I did manage to grab his iPhone, his Apple watch, and his Macbook.

Now, you’d think that it would be a simple matter to call up Apple and either get access to my brother’s accounts to at least find contact information for his friends and girlfriends and ex-wife.

Fuck no.

Why would a certificate of death and a certificate of cremation mean anything to Apple? It’s like these silly fucking companies just throw all common sense out the fucking door. It’s the easiest way for them to insulate themselves from having to give a fuck in the slightest.

I know that when Richard died, Sue gave Scott all of our childhood pictures that Richard had. Scott told me after we started talking again that he just threw the pictures in the garbage. But Scott doesn’t do shit like that. He would have scanned the pictures for himself. Just the way he was.

But again, does a certificate of cremation with my name and address listed on an official document matter?

Nope.

“We need you to go to court and become appointed as his executor”……

Fuck that.

I paid $2,500 for the cremation of a brother that I was estranged from due to our father’s shitty parenting skills.

And now Tim Cook and Apple want me to dish out $7k to $10k to be appointed his “executor”?

So far I have been contacted by just about every credit card and service provider in Canada looking for payment of his extensive debts.

The running total of his debts is over $60k.

Not being the executor means that I’m not responsible for these debts at all.

Which is great because I don’t think he had any assets. And the headache of being appointed his executor just isn’t worth the hassle of paying for a private investigator to try to track down all of his relations to see if they had a will or access to his assets.

“BuT boBbIe, If YoU dOn’T wAnT tO bE hIs ExEcUtOr WhY sHoUlD yOu HaVe AcCeSs To HiS aCcOuNt”…..

Well, the Edmonton Police Service, the Alberta Coroner, and the Alberta Government have declared that I am his sole next of kin. Why the fuck do I need a court order declaring the exact same thing?

If Scott thinks that I wrongfully had him cremated he can call the police and make a complaint.

Instead we get companies like Apple that try to absolve themselves of any responsibility by hiding behind almost insurmountable barriers.

You would think that if anyone wanted any proof of my legal relationship to my brother that it would be the Edmonton Police Service, the Alberta Coroner’s Service, or even the crematorium.

Nope, everyone was fine with me claiming my brother’s body and having my brother’s body cremated, but Apple wants to be the paragon of legal “i” dotting and “t” crossing.

If it wasn’t for Microsoft being even more dysfunctional and dystopian than Apple I would never have switched to Apple back in 2021.

And yes, this is the problem when basically two tech companies and their lawyers lock everything down.

Why does Apple do this?

Dead people don’t need privacy.

Can you imagine what would happen if the police could convince the next of kin of a cartel member or an arms smuggler to allow law enforcement to have access to their next of kin’s equipment?

Just imagine what would happen if one of Jeffrey Epstein’s multiple clients died and their estranged next-of-kin had access to their Apple account and their hardware?

Even if Apple wasn’t worried about retribution, they would surely be worried about the sale of their equipment to people wishing to hide things from prying eyes, and instead of having a policy that takes individual circumstance into account, it’s just better to have a blanket policy no matter how tone deaf the policy actually is.

What the fuck more does Apple want?

What the fuck can a court do that these documents can’t?

What do I do at work

At work I generally work so far out of my qualifications that it’s not funny.

And I think this is one of those issues that cause so much conflict between myself and my subordinates.

Power engineers are employed at hospitals like the one as I work at as provincial regulations require power engineers to be on shift to supervise and operate the power plant.

Power engineers are not trade qualified millwrights or industrial mechanics. You can have power engineers that have more qualification, such as a 4th class with a millwright’s ticket, or a 3rd class with an electrical ticket.

We take rounds and readings, make sure that chemical readings are done and that chemical levels are maintained properly. We supervise the boilers, the chillers, the heat recovery systems to ensure that the systems are running as efficiently as possible while maintaining the proper temperatures, air flows, and pressure differentials for the infection control.

I came into this position offering more skills than what is typical of a 4th class power engineer. But this is how I’ve always been. It’s always something that I’ve had to do in order to offset my horrific personality.

After all, when you don’t have any safety nets to fall back upon, you learn how to make yourself valuable.

This is one of the reasons it was always so easy for me to find employment in the bowling industry. Since the ’80s computers and electronics have found their way into bowling centres. Most centres didn’t have anyone that was familiar with electronics and so they would bleed with the electronic repairs. I come along, I can do the mechanical work with ease, but I can also do the electronic repairs in-house, which brings the expenses down substantially, considering that I’m getting paid the same amount as the mechanic with no skills in electrical, electronics. This makes me valuable even though I wasn’t making that much. Better to be poor and employed than poor and unemployed.

I have skills in electronics, networking, DDC, pneumatic controls, etc.

Working with machinery like the fan motor above is something that I can do.

Once I moved into the Chief Engineer’s position there was a sort of resentment directed towards me by the others in my section because there was no one doing the heavy duty work anymore.

Work that I had been doing since I started at the hospital fell to the wayside. Somehow I was not only unqualified to do the work, but now I was being lazy for not doing the work.

One thing that I’ve had to learn over the last few years is that mechanical aptitudes cannot be taught. A person either has a mechanical aptitude, or they don’t. And it’s no use banging your head into the cinderblock wall trying to instil a mechanical aptitude where there is none. It’s like trying to teach someone who has absolutely no interest in music how to read music and keep time. They may be able top memorize the scales, but it will never click for them.

I rebuilt the Phase 2 Domestic Water Booster Station back around 2012. The fun part was that none of the gate valves would hold. So I had to arrange to get ball valves threaded on pretty well as soon as as I pulled the regulators out. We finally managed to get the booster station replaced around 2019

Again, this was a project that I did by myself. This isn’t something that power engineers do.

I ran a copper compressed air line from the Phase 2 Level 4 mechanical room all the way down stairwell 13 and into the Burrard Building by myself. I had a company come in and radio graph the stairwell to guide me so that I’d miss the rebar and the buried conduits. Cored all of the holes by myself and soldered the entire length of pipe myself.

Sat. October 18th, 2024

Daily writing prompt

Describe a family member.

View all responses

Describe a family member……….

Well, I think I’ve described my father the best I can.

My stepmother? I didn’t really know her all that well even though she lived with us from August of 1980 onwards. There is a lot of truth to the old medieval stories about wicked stepmothers. Didn’t help much either that she was only about 10 to 12 years older than me and that my father started dating her while she was in her very late teens or early twenties.

Stepbrother? Again I don’t know him. I moved out of the house just after he turned 2. I had some brief contact with him when he was 5 and we moved to CFB Griesbach for Richard’s last posting but I haven’t seen him since.

My mother? I don’t really know her too well. She left when I was five. My father poured all sorts of lies and bullshit into my head when I was a kid. When I finally did meet her again in 1990, she was very damaged. When I saw her again in 2013 she was even worse than 1990. Extremely broken. But just about everyone who came into contact with Richard ended up being fucked up.

So, let’s talk about Scott.

Remember in my previous posting about my dealings with Sheldon Robb of the RCMP? I went to Edmonton in the summer of 2013 to see Scott to talk about the matter from Canadian Forces Base Namao. When Scott found out that I was going to meet with Sheldon Robb, Scott wanted to meet Sheldon. Scott wanted to ask Sheldon to check his CPIC history to see if there was anything in there that would explain why he couldn’t get into the States and why he was randomly being pulled over by the Edmonton Police Service.

We met with Sheldon at a Timmies in St. Albert. Sheldon was absolutely fascinated with and perplexed by the Captain McRae affair from CFB Namao and how things had unfolded.

Scott asked Sheldon if he had a chance to look into Scott’s CPIC file to see if there was anything that would explain his inability to cross the border and his frequent interactions with the police for traffic stops.

Sheldon proceeded to excuse himself saying that he had just received a text and he had to return to the detachment, but that we could meet again latter. There would be no later. When I called Sheldon the next day he explained that there were warrants for Scott’s arrest. And as Sheldon was with the federal RCMP and not the municipal Edmonton Police Service he’d have to arrest Scott and take him into custody.

After Scott’s death, I attended his apartment in Edmonton. Couldn’t stay for long in the suite as the entire floor had been removed and the smell of death and rot was still very heavy in the apartment. But I did manage to snag his passport before leaving. Around 2019 he had been denied entry into the States. He apparently made it to Mexico for gastric bypass surgery.

I can’t explain the difference between Scott and I. We were like night and day. Same household, same neglect, same mental, physical, and sexual abuse. Same alcoholic grandmother and same alcoholic father. Same rage fulled grandmother and same rage fulled father.

The one thing that I think may have possibly contributed to the difference is that Richard had dumped any responsibility for raising Scott on to me. I was responsible for my actions, and I would receive punishment if my actions were deemed inappropriate. I was also responsible for raising Scott as if he was my son, and if Scott got into trouble. Richard liked it this way. If I fucked up, it was my fault. If Scott fucked up, it was my fault. This way Richard could keep his hands clean. Wasn’t his fault that his kids were fucked up, it was always somebody else’s fault.

I guess the difference between Scott and myself would be best summed up by the fact that when I moved with Richard and Sue back to Edmonton in July of 1990, Scott didn’t move with us. Scott was still completing his sentence at St. John’s Training School for Boys in Uxbridge, Ontario.

Scott had detected early on that Richard would unleash on me for anything that Scott had done as I wasn’t “raising my brother right”. Scott had even delighted in telling one of his friends that if he wanted to get Richard to beat me up that all he’d have to do is take one of Richard’s screw drivers out of his toolbox, and just remove a screw from one of Richard’s computers or whatnot and that Richard would explode. It was a great source of pride for him.

Scott wasn’t too bad until we moved to Canadian Forces Base Downsview in North York, Ontario. That’s when things went off a cliff.

The first time that I knew Scott was getting in to trouble was when we went to Edmonton for the summer of 1985 to stay with our grandmother. Scott got picked up by the Edmonton Police Service for breaking into lockers in the men’s change room at the Kinsmen Sports Centre and stealing cash and credit cards.

When we got back to Toronto after the summer that’s when Scott and his friend Greg started getting into all sort of legal trouble. Greg was some civy kid that lived in the local neighbourhood.

Stealing cars, breaking into houses, breaking into semi trailers, breaking into warehouses. You name it Scott and his buddies were doing it. Scott tried stealing Richard’s ’83 Mustang GT once but he couldn’t drive standard. But he did steal our stepmother’s Pontiac Chevette once. Scott’s theft of the Chevette was directly tied by Richard to me allowing the babysitter to have abused Scott from 1978 until 1980.

I had a weekend job working for a man named Bob Becker. Bob owned a company call Trans American Video Amusements. He was a video game operator. He had a workshop up on Keele St. and Steele Ave. I’d go up on weekends and work on video games, pinball machines, or jukeboxes. Perfect job for a loner geek like me. Gave me a place to be away from Richard. Anyway Scott shows up with his buddy Greg and some friends. Scott has told Greg that I agreed to fix Greg’s V-6 Nova. Problem was I said no such thing. Greg was the last person that I’d ever do anything for. Greg and Scott made a habit of stealing my belongings. And the other problem was somebody had pulled all of the electrics out of the engine compartment and made a mess of it.

Even though I didn’t have a driver’s licence at the time I backed Bob’s truck out of the shop so Scott and Greg could push Greg’s car in. Once in Greg and Scott started looking for anything of value that they could pocket. Scott and Greg disappeared for a short bit but they came back around an hour later. After having no lock with the car I pushed it back outside and got the keys for Bob’s truck and drove it back in. Once back in that’s when I realized that Bob’s truck mounted mobile phone was missing and one of the side cutters from the shop were sitting on the floor by the remnant of the phone’s wiring harness.

There was no doubt that Scott and Greg stole the mobile phone. Stealing the truck would have been too obvious. And besides it was a late ’70s Chevy Karyvan with a large cube box and a lift gate on the rear. Definitely not the most indiscrete vehicle to steal.

When I worked for another small video game operator I would often do service calls for that company. That meant that I had to carry the master keys for the machines. I used to carry a pager. Vince or Ravi would message me if there were service calls for me to look at after school. Well, I checked the pager after school and it was a whole bunch of messages from Ravi and Vince. Both wanted to know how my some kid named Craig got hold of my keys. Turns out that Scott had taken my keys out of my bedroom and sold them to one of his friends for about $50.00 and then told this kid the addresses for a lot of the locations that Vince and Ravi had games at. This kid Craig got caught opening up machines and taking quarters out of the coin boxes.

In the years after Scott had been diagnosed with Grand Mal Epilepsy he developed this state where he would be asleep but if awoken he would be in an uncontrollable rage until he gained control. As he wasn’t allowed to smoke in his bedroom he’d often come downstairs and pass out on the couch in the “TV” room, or he’d pass out on my bed. After the first time or two of waking Scott up to get him to go upstairs and go to bed and being on the receiving end of his rages I decided that I would just go upstairs and sleep in the living room. Even Richard would no longer try to disturb Scott. In a way it was fun watching the once mighty Richard cower in front of Scott, but it was short lived joy as I would often be subject to the same rage.

How much trouble did Scott get into after I moved out for the first time in 1987, and then for good in September of 1990? I don’t know. I know that by his own admission he did some jail time.

When Scott finished his sentence at St. John’s he was sent out to Alberta. He moved in with Richard and Sue in their new house in Morinville, but his stay was even less than my three weeks in Sue’s house. Richard called me up one day at work and said that he wanted to stop by my place for a visit. Scott was in Richard’s car. Richard told Scott to get out of the car and that he was now my problem to look after, that Richard was washing his hands of us and that it was time our mother started looking after us. It took Scott less than three days to eat up all of my food and to get me some eviction warnings from Creepy Walter, the landlord. The warnings were due playing my music too loud. Wasn’t me playing the music, it was Scott. But same thing. I called Richard for help with the groceries. Fuck no, he had paid enough all of these years to raise us, I could fuck off if I thought I was getting another fucking penny out of him. He suggested that I hit up that bitch mother of mine and get her to foot some of the bill as he was sick and tired of not being able to enjoy his paycheque.

I made contact with Marie and she agreed to take Scott out to her acreage by Wabamum Beach.

After I left Edmonton in ’92 I never saw Scott again until 1996 when Scott showed up in Vancouver to go to “Columbia Academy for the Performing Arts ” on West Broadway. Richard called me up and told me that Scott was having car troubles and that I owed it to Richard to help Scott. So I did. Then Scott went away. He came back around 2000. He only stayed out here a short while, then he was gone again. Saw him once in 2003 when I drove to Edmonton over the summer. After that I never saw him again until 2013.

I would find out that after I left in ’92 he has stolen a truck from a car dealership in Canmore, AB and drove it all the way out to Ontario where the OPP caught him just outside of Kenora, Ontario. No doubt he was heading back to Toronto.

Scott was shipped back to Alberta to stand trial and he got sentenced to more time in juvie. Apparently Richard refused to have anything to do with Scott. And when Scott tried to get our mother Marie to pick him up Marie was hesitant as Scott had become extremely belligerent to her before he stole the van.

On the morning of January 1st, 2000 Scott gave a pair of Skytrain attendants my name, my social insurance number, and a fictitious address that had the proper postal code had that address actually existed. Scott worked for a company in the geographical area serve by this postal code and he knew fictitious addresses that would look as if they were plausible.

I didn’t discover the impersonation until 2006 when ICBC sent a collections agent after me. I knew the ticket wasn’t mine as I’ve never had a fare evasion ticket anywhere, AND more importantly I was at work on standby for the chaos that was supposed to break out due to the Y2K bug.

And I had been told by John Potter at my Sea Cadet corp in February of 1987 that Scott had used my name and SIN when he had been arrested for stealing yet another car. So Scott giving my name for a fare evasion ticket was par for the course.

In 2013 I had to track Scott down due to the statement that Richard had given to the CFNIS in 2011 and I also needed to serve Scott with a written examination for Federal Court for my judicial review to ask him some question “on the record” to be admitted to Federal Court as evidence.

Scott said that after having not spoken to them since 2008, Richard and Sue were in a panic to find Scott as Richard and Sue wanted to know what the fuck was going on and why I was giving Richard a subpoena for Federal Court.

I asked Scott what he meant that he hadn’t spoken to Richard and Sue since 2008. He asked me if I remembered Erik from the first time we lived on Greisbach in the ’80s.

Kinda, I replied.

Well, the pussy committed suicide back in 2008 and Richard and Sue wanted me to go to the funeral, but there was no way that I was going to go, not for him.

Why? What happened?

Well, I came across some credit cards. Okay, I stole some credit cards from the gas station I was working at. I gave Erik some of the cards and then we went over to West Edmonton Mall on a shopping spree. The thing is we got caught.

Scott then went on to explain that he used his previous experience in the criminal justice system to keep his mouth shut. “If the police have enough evidence to charge, they’ll charge. They don’t need to talk to you. If they’re talking to you they’re trying to get you to give them the evidence to charge you”. He said that Erik was so scared that he was trying to explain his way out of being charged, but that Scott just kept his mouth shut. In the end Erik took the fall for the entire affair and Scott walked away hands clean.

Of course, being charged with credit card fraud and receiving a jail sentence will pretty well prevent you from going places both travel wise and employment wise.

According to newspaper articles I’ve found, Erik went off the rails, started drinking, got into an incident at a bar, and then committed suicide a short time later.

I don’t really know how solid the relationship was between Scott and Erik was prior to the credit card matter. I know that when we lived on CFB Griesbach, Sue would often go hangout with her friend Darlene. If I remember right, Darlene and Sue knew each other from their time at AGT. Sue and I didn’t spend much time together, and she rarely took me on car rides, especially not on shopping trips, and especially not over to Darlene’s place. Scott was Sue’s constant companion. So much so that Sue took Scott for ice cream once at the DQ on Castle Downs road, as she was getting in the car with Scott, I asked her if I could come. Nope. Retards don’t get ice cream. She called me retard frequently after I was admitted into the Westfield program for emotionally disturbed children.

There was one time that I went to Darlene’s place that will forever stand out in my mind. Darlene and Sue had gone off to Londonderry Mall to do some shopping. Darlene provided her kids with just about everything they wanted. They had some video tapes with kids on them signing popular hits from the radio. This was definitely not something that Richard would have tolerated in his house. I’m signing along with the videos and having a good time. But then I realize that Scott, Erik, and Erik’s younger sister are nowhere to be found. After checking around outside I made my way upstairs and discovered Scott, Erik, and Erik’s younger sister naked as jaybirds playing doctor.

As the events of CFB Namao were still fresh in my head, and as I was still receiving “therapy” from Captain Terry Totzke, I knew that this wasn’t going to be good. So I fucking hightailed it back to the base. That was about a 1 hour walk, but I did an awful lot of walking as a kid anyways. I could walk from CFB Griesbach to grandma’s apartment on 107th and 111st whenever Richard had blown his fuse. I could walk to my job at Pizza Plus in Kingsway Garden Mall. Booking it back from Darlene’s place to the base wasn’t a problem, and was far preferable to getting caught in the same house as those three.

How close was the relationship between Scott and Erik? Don’t know. But they did see each other far more frequently than I ever did. And the fact that Scott thought that Erik was worthy enough of being Scott’s partner in crime means that they must have had more than just a casual relationship. But no matter how strong that relationship was, it wasn’t strong enough for Scott to not turn his back on his friend.

There were times after the 2011 CFNIS investigation where it became very clear that Richard was still very capable of playing head games with Scott. For instance, the morning of my Federal Court hearing Scott gets into my Facebook and Twitter feed with all sort of accusations that I had allowed and encouraged the babysitter to abuse us. A quick check of Scott’s facebook feed showed that Richard had shown up at Scott’s place the evening before and had given Scott all sorts of computers and computer equipment. No doubt Richard also took the opportunity to “set things straight” which explained Scotts weird tirade.

Scott kept up these accusation right up until 2020 the Military Police Complaints Commission released their report on the 2015 to 2018 CFNIS investigation in which they said that it was very clearly obvious that Captain McRae was a pedophile and that the military police and the CFSIU in 1980 were very much aware of the babysitter’s actions, that the babysitter was known to have molested numerous children on base and that the babysitter was actually receiving psychiatric care at the time for his sexual attraction to children.

Scott’s attitude further changed once my class action was filed and became public knowledge.

Was Scott evil?

No.

Scott came from the same fucked up and dysfunctional house as I did.

The difference between Scott and I probably comes down to the fact that I tried to desperately get out of the house whenever I could. I always had jobs at pet shops, or pizza shops, or working on electronics, etc.

Scott on the other hand was under the direct influence of Richard.

Richard was probably the single most toxic person that I ever knew.

521 days to go.

Yes, I do actually have an app running on my Macbook that is counting down the days until M.A.i.D. S.U.M.C.M.I. is hopefully approved. And I say hopefully as the government of Canada has chickened out on this twice already. Once in March of 2023, and once in March of 2024.

The delay in March of 2024 was devastating as this was when the federal government announced that it was going to delay approval for three years.

At this point in time I have the when and where mapped out. But beyond that I don’t have much planned out. It’s kinda pointless getting to far into specific details right now as there could be yet another devastating setback in 2027.

What happens if the government chickens out in 2027, or if they erect barriers so high that I could never avail myself to M.A.i.D.? I’ve got some things in mind. But nothing that is anywhere as humane as M.A.i.D..

What do I have planned in the meantime?

Nothing much, just living from day to day.

What about your civil action?

What about it?

It will continue on. I know that the Government of Canada has absolutely no plans to settle this matter in less than 10 to 15 years. The GoC, the CAF, the DND, and the DOJ will drag this matter out just as they did in the matter of P.S. vs. the Canadian Armed Forces and the Minister of National Defence. There is absolutely no desire for them to let this matter go to court or go to settlement.

I’m one of at least 25 victims that the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit was aware of in May and June of 1980. I know of one man who committed suicide around 2010 due to the events from Canadian Forces Base Namao. I know of one other man who died from suicide due and who was involved in the events from CFB Namao. I know of another person who died from a drug O.D. from poor mental health brought on due to the lingering effects from CFB Namao. How many other persons committed suicide or O.D.’d due to the events that occurred on CFB Namao from 1978 to 1980? That’s anyone’s guess. But that’s also not something that the GoC, the CAF, the DND, or the DoJ want to linger on. In fact they would prefer if all of the victims from Canadian Forces Base Namao were to just drop dead and die tomorrow.

There will be a lot of nastiness that will be exposed during this matter.

How many times did the Canadian Armed Forces internally deal with child sexual abuse via the military disciplinary system?
How many times did commanding officers or their superiors dismiss charges that had been brought against their subordinates?
Did the dismissal of these charges in the military system prevent the laying of charges in the civilian system.
How frequent did child sexual abuse occur in the military community living on base?
Did the 3-year-time bar deny children who had been sexually abused on base any prospect of obtaining justice in their matter?
Most bases and stations in Canada had catholic priests living on the base. How prevalent was sexual abuse at the hands of military clergy.

This is why I don’t believe that the GoC, the CAF, the DND, or the DoJ have any inclination to resolve this matter. And even if they do resolve to settle this matter, there’s the prospect of being gagged by NDAs.

I’m already covered by one NDA. And I expect that me and the others from this matter will be slapped with NDAs up the ying-yang.

The one thing that scares me though is how many other victims from the CFB Namao child sexual abuse scandal have DND settled with over the years and how many of these have been slapped with NDAs?

During the recent CFNIS investigation of my complaint against Brigadier General Roger Bazin, when I suggested talking to other potential victims of Captain McRae to see if they knew anything about the actions of Roger Bazin when Bazin was assigned to assist Captain McRae with his affairs on CFB Namao during the 1980 investigation of Captain McRae, the investigator with the CFNIS suggested that it would be in poor taste to contact the victims of Captain McRae because what if they had decided to move on and forget about the abuse, wouldn’t this be upsetting to them?

Back to work

I’ve been off work since September 10th.

Haven’t really done too much but give in to my depression and just slept a lot.

That’s one of the interesting things about depression is the complete lack of motivation that it bestows upon a person.

Dreamland is such a preferable place to be.

In the times that I was awake I was able to finally work on cleaning up my hard drives. It’s amazing all of the shit that I’ve accumulated over the last 14 years.

Fuck me. It’s been fourteen years that I’ve been dealing with the shit from Canadian Forces Base Namao. Where the hell does the time go?

I’ve got just over 397 GB of data that I’ve accumulated since then. I’ve still got some work to do on this, but I can’t see this number getting too far below 200 GB.

The core folder is 166 GB.

The core folder holds all of my communications with the Canadian Armed Forces over the CFB Namao matter, all of my court related material for the CFB Namao matter, and other research related to the Criminal Code of Canada, the various National Defence Acts over the years, the various bills, acts, and Administrative orders from over the years.

The folder holding all of my ATI and FOI requests is close to 20 GB on its own.

I don’t know what awaits me tomorrow. Probably an email box full of 3 weeks worth of people wanting their problems to become my problems and for me to solve their problems.

I’ve been out of the loop for the new hospital for quite a while. Ever since management discovered from a news story that ran that I fully intend to apply for Medical Assistance in Dying in 2027. I don’t know who exactly on the management team knows, but I haven’t caught any grief because of this. Management no longer asks me to go to the new site. And this is okay with me. It takes a massive amount of stress off of my plate.

In the process of cleaning up my hard drives I’ve come across a ton of pictures that I’ve taken over the years of projects and work that I’ve done.

I’m thinking of putting together a couple of pages of photos of the work that I’ve done over the years seeing as how any records of this work will disappear when I die and the hospital is torn down.

*This is me using a gantry to move a 430 kg 3ph 600 volt 75 KW motor in to SF-51C.*

It was so laughable watching the guys try to move this motor into the fan plenum using an engine hoist and 6 guys hanging off the back of the engine hoist like counterweight. I don’t know how they thought they were going to get this fan in without taking the door off the plenum.

Took me 30 minutes to pull the door and frame off the plenum. Took another hour to assemble the gantry. And then took 5 minutes and no risk of bodily injury or bodily damage to get the motor safely into the plenum.

But Bobbie, it’s not our fault that you’ve had special training!

I don’t have any special training.

I was never instructed in how to do this.

This is one of the many special projects that I’d take on.

The phase 1 fans have been in and running pretty well non-stop since 1982. The phase 2 fans have been running non-stop since 1989. After many years of service they all needed new bearings.

The instructions for the gantry are pretty clear. The safety instructions for the engine hoist clearly state that it is not to be used unless the outriggers are locked down. How to assemble the gantry is pretty obvious. How to use a come along chain puller. Taking the 5/16″ self tapping machine screws out of the door frame is fairly simple to figure out.

I used to catch hell from the guys for doing this work as this isn’t “power engineer’s work”.

And to be true, this is more Millwright’s work.

But we don’t have Millwrights, and the shit needed to get done.

And truth be told, I didn’t mind doing this work as I could work alone. Nobody wanted to help, and that’s fine, I’d just rather get the work done. I find that people love to chit-chat too much, and I’ve never been one for small talk.