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Depression and Anxiety

Almost 42 years ago in October of 1980 my brother my brother and I were sent for psychological review just after we had arrived at our new school on Canadian Forces base Griesbach. This was done after our teachers had noted our “odd behaviour” when we arrived at the new school.

Our father was also interviewed by the psychiatrist.

This is one of the observations of the psychiatrist “Robert sees his environment as being harsh, threatening and fearful, His world seems unstable and is full of aggressive, frightening events. Major concern and anger is directed toward his grandmother who he sees as authoritarian and oppressive. Robert indicated a strong coalition between he and his father directed toward the removal of his grandmother from the household.”

Further the psychiatrist noted “He indicates a feeling of helplessness and frustration as indicated by his comments , “my nerves are disintegrating, my mind tells me I’m going to kill myself, people are grouchy and mean, I’m best when no one is around me, I’m going to have a nervous breakdown if granny doesn’t leave our home soon”.

When interviewed by the psychiatrist, my father was found to not be surprised by what my brother and I had said. My father acknowledged and confirmed many of the family problems that my brother and I had indicated. Very little commitment was received from my father, so my family’s file was handed over to Canadian Armed forces officer Captain Terry Totzke, the military social worked from Canadian Forces base Edmonton.

When I saw Terry as a child, I only knew him as Terry. I wouldn’t discover until 2011 that Terry was a captain in the Canadian Forces.

When I was involved with Terry, he was very concerned that I had been caught having sex with another boy (P.S., my then 15 year old babysitter). Terry told me that he had the base military police watching me and that if they ever reported to Terry that I kissed or touched another boy that I would be going to the Alberta Hospital for treatment.

Terry had told me that what I had done on CFB Namao indicated that I was a homosexual and that homosexuality was a mental illness.

Looking back on things, I don’t think Terry had ever been concerned with how bonkers things were in the Gill household. Terry must have been absolutely certain that my issues were related to the homosexuality I had exhibited on CFB Namao

This explains why in November of 1981 our teachers at school called in Alberta Social Services to deal with my brother and I. This came as a result of the teachers and principal at Major General Greisbach School becoming frustrated with the inaction of Captain Totzke.

I went for another psychological review. This time I was found to be beyond despair and beyond depression. I was found to be terrified of my father and I was convinced that my father was going to kill me. The psychiatrist conducting the interview wondered if I had ever had a day free from extreme anxiety in my life.

By the spring of 1982 yet another exam had found that I had become sufficiently emotionally disturbed that it was recommended that I be placed into a psychiatric hospital for care.

And in the winter of 1983 just after Alberta Social Services tried to remove me from the home, both my father and Terry promised that I would be institutionalized at the Sick Kids hospital in Toronto.

I was caught between people who legitimately wanted to help me and people who wanted to help the Canadian Armed Forces keep a lid on the 1980 Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse sex scandal that occurred on Canadian Forces Base Namao from October of 1978 until May of 1980.

At this point in time I’ll never know who was calling the shots back then. And at this point I really don’t care. I know that my father was a lowly cog in the wheel, a master corporal that was bound to follow his orders. Captain Terry Totzke would have been superior to my father and my father would have had no option but to obey Captain Totzke’s directives. And in turn Captain Totzke would have been following his orders from somewhere up the chain of command

The Canadian Armed Forces cannot find my records from the time I was involved with Captain Totzke. For comparison I have all of my civilian social service records and all of my hospital records from my childhood. If it wasn’t for my civilian social service records, I would never have known that I had been involved with military social workers on two different Canadian Forces Bases.

What upsets me the most about all of this is that it was known as far back that I was beyond depressed and dealing with severe anxiety.

I’d like to think that I’ve done a decent job of living my life the best I could with the demons of despair, depression, and anxiety living in my head.

Then along came COVID-19.

Where I work, I was put under an extreme amount of stress due to the age of the facility and the neglect of the facility and the need to have the facility cope with the requirements of COVID-19. And this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

About a month ago, after a couple of emergency consults with my family doctor I ended up with a prescription of escitaloprám otherwise known as Lexapro or Cipralex. I was started off on 5mg as a test run. I was then bumped up to 10mg. I’ve been on 10mg for a few weeks now. We’ll have to play it by ear, but the the length of time that I’ve had untreated depression and anxiety I’ll probably be on this for the rest of my life.

Escitaloprám is an SSRI. An SSRI is a Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitor. Basically escitaloprám prevents the neural transmitters in my brain from reabsorbing serotonin. This means that it’s easier for the neural transmitters in my brain to send signals. And somehow this helps with major depression and general anxiety disorders.

What’s it like being on escitaloprám?

Well, I can think clearly for the first time in my life.

I’m not euphoric. I’m not exactly emotionally numb. I don’t have the depression and despair hanging around my neck anymore. But I’m not exactly doing cartwheels down the street either.

For the first time ever in my life I can actually go to bed, sleep through the night, and wake up in the morning before the alarms go off.

I don’t have to take three or four naps through the day.

Dreams. I’m actually having vivid dreams, not horrifying nightmares. The nightmares were typically replays of CFB Namao and CFB Griesbach.

The only thing that I have to watch out for at this point is if my body builds up a tolerance to the SSRIs. Apparently within 2 years, 25% of patients prescribed SSRIs no longer respond to the medications.

And having had a taste of “normal” for the first time in my life, I really don’t want to go back to the way things were.

What caused my depression and anxiety?

The typical belief is that 40% of persons with major depression had it passed to them through their genes. The other 60% received their depression through environmental and other factors.

I’m thinking that some of my depression came down via my father’s genes. He was a severe insomniac. He was also an alcoholic. Research has shown that the same genes that make a person prone to alcoholism will also predispose that person to major depression.

Drinking for me amplified the dark thoughts. I haven’t had a drink since 2011. And even before that I can count the number of times I drank on both hands. Seeing my grandmother drunk and seeing my father drunk and then dealing with the two of them when they were dealing with their hangovers wasn’t pleasant.

Growing up in Richard’s house was anything put peaceful.

Between his drinking, his anger, and his complete indifference.

According to Pat Longmore, when my father was stationed at Canadian Forces Base Shearwater in Nova Scotia, my mother and my brother and I would sometimes take advantage of the “battered wives club” and we’d go stay at friendly safe houses when Richard was dealing with one of his anger outbursts.

My mother left when I was 5. This was a very abrupt departure. When I talked with her in 2013 it seems that she may not have had much say in the matter. It seems that there were very specific rules that applied to civilians living in the PMQs.

When I was 7 in the summer of 1979, my father started dating the woman who would become my stepmother. She was only 13 years older than I was. She was honestly like the older sister I never had and yeah, we could fight like brother and sister at times.

I was sexually abused by both P.S. and Captain Father Angus McRae along with an older male that P.S. took me to see in the men’s sauna at the base pool.

After I was caught being sexually abused by P.S. I was frequently beat up by the older kids on CFB Namao. This led to my family being moved to CFB Greisbach.

At CFB Namao I was put in the care of Captain Terry Totzke, whose primary concern seemed to be giving me “conversion” therapy to cure me of the “homosexuality ” that I had exhibited by being sexually abused on CFB Namao.

When my father was forced to move to Ontario to skip out on my apprehension by Alberta Social Services, he used to unload on me for “fucking with his military career”. A lot of the beatings that I took from him on Canadian Forces Base Downsview were no doubt due to his frustration at losing his career as a CH-147 Chinook Mechanic that he had been specially trained for.

As a kid, school was a complete disaster. Richard only had a grade 8 education. To him school was nothing more than a glorified daycare centre.

The there was the sexual abuse at the hands of Earl Ray Stevens at the Denison Armouries when I was in cadets.

So yeah, I guess you could say that I’ve had a lot of episodes in my life that would account for my major depression and anxiety disorder.

So, we’ll see where escitaloprám can take me. I’m dealing with one of the side effects. And honestly I can handle this one with all of the peace and quiet that escitaloprám has brought to me. When I tell you that the war war in my mind has reached a cease fire, I mean that the war has stopped. And I’m hoping that the escitaloprám will work for years to come because I’m terrified of going back.

Did I do the right thing?

I this video I ponder if I did the right thing and if it was worth it at all.

So, did I do the right thing?

Well, I sure got played for a sucker, didn’t I?

Was it worth it?

Should I just have kept living my life with the opinion of Captain Totzke and my father that I was a homosexual and that I “allowed” the babysitter to molest my younger brother rattling around in my skull?

As my father said, did I go and make things worse by sticking my nose where I had no business to?

Right now it’s seven months until I find out if Parliament will follow through with the recommendations of the committee overseeing further amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada to allow foe Medical Assistance in Dying for mental health issues such as depression.

If you remember, I did submit a brief to the Committee reviewing Medical Assistance in Dying.

https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/441/AMAD/Brief/BR11776079/br-external/GarnetBobbie-e.pdf

So, did I do the right thing?

Some Truths about M.A.i.D.

Please don’t fuck this up for me.

Recently in the media there has been a story circulating around how a woman requested Medical Assistance in Dying because she couldn’t find a place to live.

I’ll say this once and once only, YOU CANNOT REQUEST M.A.i.D. because you are homeless. If all it took was being homeless to request M.A.i.D. it would be simple for me in the Vancouver area housing market. All I’d have to do is move out of my apartment without having a place to move to, then I too could apply for M.A.i.D. instead of having to wait until March of 2023. But it doesn’t work that way.

Currently to obtain M.A.i.D. you currently have to have a terminal disease that will result in your natural death in the foreseeable future, or you need to have a condition that affects and impairs your quality of life.

You cannot request M.A.i.D. if you have genetic cognitive developmental issues, or other types of cognitive impairments that would prevent informed consent.

You and only you can request M.A.i.D.. You cannot take your 98 year old granny into the vet and have them put down like a house cat. You cannot have your child with Down Syndrome put down. You cannot have your wife with Tourette’s syndrome put down.

You, AND ONLY YOU, can make the request for M.A.i.D.. No one else can.

As the law is now, you cannot even make a request for M.A.i.D. for use in the future if you should become cognitively impaired at a later date.

Even when the rules are changed in March of 2023 to allow M.A.i.D. for mental illness, the person requesting M.A.i.D. will have to be able to comprehend what it is that they are requesting. You will not be able to simply show up at your doctor and say that you want M.A.i.D. because you’re feeling a little sad at the moment. You need the approval of two separate physicians and then there is a mandatory 90 day cooling off period. And then even with the approvals and the passing of the 90 day cooling off period, you still have to find a physician will to carry out the procedure. This is nothing like taking your elderly cat into the vet and having them put down because you’ve grown tired of the cat.

I’m fucking dreading the process for requesting M.A.i.D. as I’m worried that the bar is going to be too fucking high for me to pass.

“Is he a cutter”?

-no-

“has he ended up in hospital due to previous suicide attempts”?

-no-

“Has he been going to non-stop therapy since 1980”?

-no-

“Has he been on pharmaceuticals all his life to control his emotions”?

-no-

“Sorry then, he’s far too happy to qualify to die”.

There appears to be a whole fucking cottage industry of these people who throw around terms like “ableism” and “eugenics” and who seem to indicate that if you’re not willing to commit suicide then you really don’t deserve an “easy way out”.

One account that I came across claims that an assisted living home in Northern Ontario is handing out M.A.i.D. request forms to all of the residents. THIS IS NOT HOW M.A.i.D. works for fucks sake.

I heard from a friend, who heard it from a friend, who heard if from a friend……
blah, fucking blah, fucking blah.
The “Anti- M.A.i.D.” crowd sounds like a Faberge commercial from the ’80s
Some random Assisted Living home that doesn’t have a name is just up and killing its patient population.

I would like to think that the media in Canada was better than this, but here we have https://twitter.com/CTVW5 and https://twitter.com/Avis_Favaro running a series entitled “CTVW5 DEATH WISH”……. yeah, that sure sounds like it’s going to be fair and balanced reporting, doesn’t it?

https://beta.ctvnews.ca/national/health/2022/4/26/1_5877288.amp.html

Won’t go too far into the story, but it seems that a mentally competent woman requested M.A.i.D., and was granted M.A.i.D.. I still can’t fathom what the story is here. Yes, she had to shop around to find sympathetic doctors, but as someone who has encountered doctors who thought that I was telling lies and exaggerations about my childhood abuse and trauma, I can see the need to shop around. Some doctors will let their personal biases and opinions become part of their diagnoses. I can see some doctors outright refusing to prescribe the procedure for religious or spiritual reasons. And those are two reasons that should never be allowed to be considered in any medical decision.

And the whole “Anti-MAiD” crowd doesn’t get any better from there.

If they’re not screaming about “eugenics” or “ableism” then they’re running on and on about how the government has concluded that it’s easier to kill the disabled than it is to feed, or house them.

I don’t follow the religious “anti-MAiD” crowd as I don’t really care what their imaginary friend has to say. If their imaginary friend tells them that MAiD is bad, then they’re welcome to not undergo MAiD.

What concerns me about the “Anti-MAiD” crowd is that they’ve seem to have attracted various psychologists and psychiatrists into their fold.

And what concerns me even more about these psychologists and psychiatrists is that some of them actually believe in the invisible sky daddy or other deities from ancient folklore and they take the “teachings” of these imaginary friends into consideration.

And this would be okay, but these good doctors should really know fantasy from reality.

I have yet to meet a psychologist or a psychiatrist who actually gave a sweet fuck about the war going on in my brain. If they can’t medicate a problem away, and if they can’t convince the patient that the patient is responsible for their own pain and suffering, then they don’t want anything to do with that patient and they’ll simply bump the patient off to someone else.

Outside of pharmaceuticals to numb and blunt emotions, there really isn’t anything that modern psychiatry can do to “fix the brain”. And Psychiatrists and psychologists will do anything possible to hide that fact. Other parts of the body can be fixed or replaced. But the brain is very unique in the sense that unless it learns emotions properly while it is growing in the most plastic stages of its development, it will never learn those emotions properly later in life.

I suffer from Major Depression, Severe Anxiety, lack of confidence, lack of interests, the inability to form relationships, and a multitude of other issues brought on by family genetics, living conditions as a child, sexual abuse as a child, the complete mishandling of that sexual abuse by the Canadian Armed Forces when I was a child, and a life time of shouldering the blame for what happened on Canadian Forces Base Namao.

This isn’t stuff that is going to go away if I simply wish it away.

This isn’t stuff that I can simply work on for the next 20 or 30 years of my life.

And I think that’s where psychiatrists and psychologists who are involved with the “anti-MAiD” movement have secret agendas. They don’t want to admit to the public that people like me are retirement funds, or monthly payments on the brand new Lexus.

If I undergo MAiD, then there are no more $300.00 sessions.

If I undergo MAiD, then there are no pharmaceuticals to push.

If I undergo MAiD, then there are no prestigious write-ups in the psychology magazines.

I’ll be very blunt and honest. If you want to keep people like me from requesting MAiD for childhood traumas and neglect, then as a society you better be willing to ensure that people like me don’t endure childhood traumas and neglect.

Tunnel Vision

Once tunnel vision sets in all hope is lost.

Back in 2019 Netflix ran an eight part miniseries titled “Unbelievable”. It was based upon the true life story of Marie Adler.

Marie had been in foster care for most of her life. She had just turned eighteen and had been set up in her first apartment. Shortly thereafter a man broke in, tied her up, raped her, and took pictures.

Marie made a police report. The police came and investigated. Over the course of the investigation one of the two primary detectives started to latch on to some trivial inconsistencies in Marie’s story. After a little bit of badgering the detectives managed to get Marie to admit that she had made up the whole thing, that there never was a rape.

Even one of her previous foster parents had confided to the police that Marie had more than likely lied about being raped.

To teach Marie a lesson, the Lynwood Police Department pressed for charges to be brought against Marie. She ended up on probation and she had to pay a fine.

A couple of years later in a different state the FBI and a local police department executed a raid on the house of a man who was suspected of numerous rapes across multiple states.

You wanna know what they found in this man’s house?
A camera.

You wanna know what was on this camera?
Pictures of Marie being raped.
Exactly as she had described it.

The man is Marc O’leary.

Marc O’Leary was later sentenced to 327 years in prison.

https://www.propublica.org/article/false-rape-accusations-an-unbelievable-story

I urge you to read this story if you want to understand how off the fucking rails the justice train can become if cops or the superiors make leaps of judgement.

The two Lynwood detectives never apologized. The city of Lynwood settled with Marie for something around $150k USD.
She didn’t want more money.
She just wanted an apology.

It was later found upon review that the detectives became far too concentrated on issues that had no relevance to the rape of Marie Adler.

And I’ve always wondered if that is what happened in my case.

I made my complaint to the Edmonton Police Service on March 5th, 2011. I was contacted by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service on March 7th, 2011. I was interviewed by master corporal Robert Jon Hancock on March 31st, 2011. Master corporal Hancock asked me some question that upon review indicate that the CFNIS in March of 2011 knew about the connection between P.S. and Captain McRae.

Knowledge of this connection was further cemented on May 3rd, 2011 when CFNIS investigator master corporal Christian Cyr asked me if I knew anything about the base priest having been arrested for molesting children during the same time frame that I was accusing P.S. of molesting me and my brother.

There was an error that master corporal Christian Cyr mentioned to me that only could have come from the military police investigation paperwork from 1980. During this phone call Master corporal Cyr tried to tell me that P.S. was only 12 or 13 in 1980. P.S. was born on June 20th, 1965. P.S. would have been just weeks shy of his 15th birthday in 1980 when he was found buggering me in his bedroom. The only place that P.S.’s age is indicated wrong is in the CFSIU investigation paperwork from 1980. The CFSIU paperwork indicated that P.S. was 12 in 1980.

So, it’s apparent that the CFNIS in March of 1980 had access to the CFSIU investigation paperwork and no doubt the court martial transcripts. And as the Military Police Complaints Commission stated in its final report issued in November of 2020, it is very apparent that the military police in 1980 were well aware of P.S.’s molestation of younger children.

So, what happened?

The more I think about it the more it becomes apparent that the CFNIS in 2011 suffered from a very bad case of tunnel vision.

The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces are comprised of multiple units. DND and the CF have a department that specifically looks out for matters that could cause DND and the CF problems on the civil liability front. This is the Director of Claims and Civil Liabilities.

http://www.ombudsman.forces.gc.ca/assets/OMBUDSMAN_Internet/docs/en/grievance-process.pdf

In November of 2008, the Director of Claims and Civil Liabilities indicated that the Department of National Defence was willing to make a cash offer to P.S. to have him discontinue his $4.5 million dollar action against DND in the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench for the abuse he suffered at the hands of Captain McRae. This would have had to have been approved not only by CF Chain of Command, but also the Department of Justice as the DOJ serves as the lawyer for the Government of Canada.

The lawyer for P.S. accepted the offer in late November of 2008 and the case was discontinued in December of 2008.

2 years, 3 months, and four days later I send my fateful email to the Edmonton Police Service.

How much do you wanna wager that when the CFNIS took my initial complaint and started populating the fields of their intake form that notifications popped up requesting that the investigators notify certain superiors?

Were the CFNIS investigators then briefed about the sensitive nature of this matter?

Was it suggested to the CFNIS investigators that I had somehow found out about the payday that P.S. enjoyed and that I was obviously just another shyster looking for a quick buck?

Don’t forget, the DOJ and the Legal Advisor are parts of very large bureaucracies that seemingly answer to no one but themselves.

Looking back at the CFNIS paperwork, which I did not have access to until AFTER the MPCC reviewed my complaint against the CFNIS in 2013, it became apparent right from the get go that the CFNIS had written off my complaint against P.S. as trivial.

In fact, according to the paperwork the CFNIS seemed rather hellbent on portraying me as a “societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military”, that I “frequently changed jobs and was unhappy”, and that I was always looking for easy money.

How does my father forget about the fact that it was his mother raising my brother and I and that he was rarely home?

How does the CFNIS ignore my social service records which keep mentioning “grandma” all over the place and that Mr.Gill invited his mother, the children’s grandmother into the home to raise his children after his wife “abandoned” the family instead to only concentrate on the section of the social service paperwork that says that I am an emotionally disturbed child.

How does the CFNIS justify the observation of Warrant Officer Blair Hart in July of 2011 that this investigation was unlikely to go anywhere due to a lack of evidence, before the other victims had been interviewed and before the suspect had been interviewed?

Tunnel vision.

Don’t forget, the CFNIS is part of a very hierarchical organization where it is imperative that the lawful commands of superiors are obeyed at all times.

The Vice Chief of Defence Staff can issue directions and instructions to the Provost Marshal and the CFNIS relating to ANY investigation.

What if the chain of command didn’t issue outright instructions, but let their subordinates know that I was just a scammer looking to make a quick buck?

I fully understand that my father had issues with telling the truth. He was always like that. But I can’t see my father excising his mother from about 6 years of our lives as kids unless someone had maybe explained to him prior to his interview that his son was obviously just trying to juice the military for some easy cash.

This is my father’s interview with the psychologist hired by the Canadian Armed Forces in November of 1980

“[he] appeared concerned about [his mother’s drinking], suggesting [she was] emotionally abusive to both children, especially when inebriated. As well, [Richard] suggested that [his mother] attempts to undermine any closeness between [him] and [his sons] by telling them false stories”. Yes, my father was a psychological nutcase. That much is clear. And here he is in October of 1980 throwing his own mother to the wolves. The same woman that he desperately needed to raise his children. So yes, it would have been very easy for the CFNIS to manipulate Richard into giving him a statement devoid of grandma.

Again why?

Simple tunnel vision.

Someone up the chain of command decided that I was just some greedy civie looking to make a quick buck from the DND and the CF. This view was dispersed through the Provost Marshal and the CFNIS. Again, due to Section 83 of the National Defence Act, this view doesn’t have to be spread directly down to the actual investigators. Just high enough up that chain of command that subordinates none the less become aware of these thoughts.

And once this tunnel vision sets in it’s so very hard to take the blinders off and see the larger picture.

It will be interesting to see just how much of the truth is able to come out about not only the events on Canadian Forces Base Namao but also about the CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754 during my class action lawsuit against the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces.

Everything is “discoverable”……. everything.

Zong.

The “Gill boys” are an interesting genetic mixture.

One of the things that I didn’t really pay too close attention to in my Uncle Al’s obituary was the names of his parents.

Uncle Al
Uncle Al Dagenais and Marie Dagenais
Al and Marie Dagenais

Uncle Al’s mother’s name was Alma Zong. Alma Zong would have been my mother’s mother. So, Alma Zong is my maternal grandmother.

Zong is an interesting surname as it is purely a Chinese name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zong_(surname)

That means that Alma Zong was either full Chinese or part Chinese.

My paternal grandmother was full Swampy Cree

My maternal grandmother was Chinese.

My paternal grandfather was Irish.

My maternal grandfather was Quebecois.

What an interesting mix.

On Thursday April 21st, I had a sit down with Captain Chelsea St-Amand and Sergeant David Winship, both of the CFNIS Western Region detachment.

The meeting took place in a boardroom at VPD Headquarters and ran from 13:00 until 16:00.

On the complaint form that I had submitted to the MPCC I had selected the option box indicating that I would be open to an informal resolution so I got an informal resolution meeting.

So, first off I’ll apologize to Sgt. Winship for the complaint I brought against him, not because my complaint was without merit, but because as I discovered during the meeting that Sgt. Winship was not the lead investigator in my matter against the man from the sauna.

The lead investigator in my matter is actually Sgt. Justin Brady.

Sgt. Winship is actually the case manager.

Some of the highlights that came out of the meeting.

Sgt. Winship agreed that unlike a member of the Canadian Forces who can go through their chain of command to voice concerns and complaints against the CFNIS, as a civilian I do not have access to that avenue. I only have the MPCC and at that the MPCC doesn’t take complaints about “investigations”, the MPCC only accepts “conduct” complaints against investigators. This oversight in the National Defence Act seems to come from the mistaken understanding that only military members who can make complaints via their chain of command are the only persons making criminal complaints to the CFNIS. Civilian victims of crime such as myself are outliers that weren’t planned for.

(As a side note, as a civilian the prospect of redress is also unavailable to me. Redress is where a complaint is made directly to the Chief of Defence Staff and the CDS can review any matter brought to their attention. This is how Stephanie Raymonde was able to have her matter looked at again in 2014)

We talked for a bit about my distrust of the military justice system related to the news from the ’90s and pretty well up to the current day. The horrific flaws with the National Defence Act that had to be fixed due to the inability of the military justice system to deal with the illegal actions in Bosnia and Somalia. Then there were the findings of Madame Marie Deschamps in 2015 that found that the military justice system could not properly conduct sexual assault investigations, and the 2021 recommendations of former Supreme Court of Canada justice Louise Arbour that only civilian police be allowed to investigate military sexual assaults which resulted in Minister of National Defence Anita Anand ordering all current sexual assault investigations be moved to the civilian police.

I also discussed how I could never bring myself to trust the CFNIS after they took my father’s statement at full face value and never attempted to re-interview my father when my foster care records were made available to the CFNIS in 2011 and indicated that there were very serious concerns with my father’s statement. My father’s statement had a significant impact on the Crown’s decision to not lay charges against P.S. as my father claimed there was never a babysitter in the house.

Which brings up my matter and which was the cause of the MPCC complaint and the informal resolution meeting. Sgt. Winship assures me that there is nothing political with the decision for the CFNIS to retain my investigation. Sgt. Winship says that my investigation was sent for review and it was decided to keep it within the CFNIS because they were at the stage of interviewing both P.S. and R.B..

I don’t know how receptive P.S. will be to being interviewed by the CFNIS. The more I think about it the more I believe that P.S. attempted suicide in the year 2000 as too many brats from CFB Namao kept making complaints against him. So I’m pretty sure that P.S. will no doubt have a good attorney who will tell him to tell the CFNIS to go away.

R.B. is a different matter. The CFNIS are still waiting for Library and Archives Canada to give the CFNIS a copy of R.B.’s service file. I find it sad that law enforcement doesn’t have priority access to service files at the LAC.

We talked for a bit about counselling and if I’ve tried to access it. I explained that one of the most significant issues that I have with receiving counselling is that almost every counsellor that I’ve dealt with to date is unfamiliar with the military aspect of what I went through. Having a military social worker who was blaming me for basically allowing myself to be sexually abused really fucks with one’s brain. Being labelled by this military social worker as being a homosexual is just as bad as being blamed for the abuse. Having a father at home, who due to his rank of Master Corporal, was probably placing very special emphasis on what the Captain was saying was just as fucking devastating as what the Captain was saying. And even Sgt. Winship agreed that there is no way that I will be able to deal with the sexual assault components on their own without dealing with all of the other aspects. Sgt. Winship mentioned that male on male sexual assaults were just handled a lot differently back then. I added that I think what really bad was when Captain David Pilling requested that Warrant Officer Fred Cunningham investigate Captain Father Angus McRae for committing “Acts of Homosexuality” with boys on CFB Namao that this tarred all of McRae’s and P.S.’s victims as also being “homosexuals”. And back in the day, the official policy of the Canadian Armed Forces was that homosexuality was a mental defect. To this end, Sgt. Winship said that when he got back to Edmonton that he would talk to some counsellors that he knew of that specialized in treating survivors of military sexual assault trauma who also work with civilians to see if the would be able to somehow bring their military services into the civilian realm. We also discussed a bit about how military dependents such as myself are ineligible for assistance through the Canadian Armed Forces and how most provinces balk at picking up the costs for counselling or therapy, especially if the former dependent is living in a province where the assaults did not occur. Members and former members of the Canadian Forces can receive help no matter where they live. This is not true for former military dependents.

Communication is one of the things that we discussed. Just a periodic heads up along with an explanation of the current status of the investigation would be great.

We did briefly discuss the fallout of the Lamer Report, the findings of the Somalia Commission, the findings of Madame Marie Deschamps, recommendations of former Supreme Court of Canada justice Louise Arbour. I also brought up some of the concerns that the Military Police Complaints Commission has voiced about the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, a position that is not law enforcement and is not a sworn peace officer, making recommendations and issuing instructions for any CFNIS investigation and that how even though in theory the Provost Marshal is supposed to make those recommendations or instructions available to the “public” that all the Provost Marshal has to do is post a copy of those instructions in the 10th floor coffee room at National Defence Head Quarters and the Provost Marshal has met their obligation.
Sgt. Winship is adamant that he would not allow the chain of command to interfere with his investigations.
I brought up the matter of Corporal Stuart Langridge and how CFNIS investigator Sgt. Matthew Ritco had told the MPCC Inquiry that CFNIS brass had rewritten his report and instructed him to sign the new report.
Again Sgt. Winship insisted that he would have refused to sign the report.

All in all it was a productive meeting.

I’m still very wary of the CFNIS and the Canadian Forces, but at least I feel more comfortable with Sgt. Winship and the current investigation into the man in the sauna.

One curious person wonders why I talk so much about death.

Death is all around us. Each and everyone of us will die. Some of us will die sooner than the others. Some of us will die due to the actions of others. And some of us will even die at our own hands. None of us are getting out of here alive.

And as my chances of receiving any type of justice from the Canadian Forces military justice system start to drastically dwindle, my resolve to apply for Medical Assistance in Dying becomes more solid.

In the next year I’ll probably discuss the procedure in more detail as I learn more about it myself.

I’ll also get more into my depression and my anxiety and how they caused numerous problems for me in my life. I’ll also hopefully be able to explain to you just how fucking hard it is for a male to get sexual abuse counselling in our society and how it is literally impossible for a former military dependent to obtain counselling that takes into account the military environment that they grew up in.

As I’ve mentioned previously, suicide is actually common in our society no matter the desire of the media to hide suicide from public view.

table from the BC Coroner Service

I also have no doubt in my mind that there are numerous suicides that don’t get reported as suicides whether that’s done to spare the family “shame” or if its done because the person finally succumbs to their injuries weeks or months after the attempt.

The above table indicates that between the years 2008 and 2018 six thousand one hundred and two people committed suicide in the province of British Columbia alone. And would you look at the age group that commits suicide the most frequently ……

What is not listed in the table above are those who have attempted suicide or those who have had suicidal ideations.

Also what appears to not be incorporated into the table above is the number of Medically Assisted Deaths such as in the table below:

MAID deaths in Canada
These numbers are expected to increase substantially as “foreseeable death” is no longer required as of 2021 and “mental illness” becomes an allowable category in March of 2023.

One of the most common things heard after someone successfully commits suicide is “I had no idea they were depressed” or “Why?”.

I have heard frequently that those who have attempted suicide are just seeking attention and those who have committed suicide are just selfish and thinking of no one else but themselves. It really irks me that society thinks that I owe it to society to live.

The son of one of my engineers at work committed suicide last year. This engineer was beyond distraught. So I had a talk with him. I told him that the only person who knows why his son killed himself is his son. If his son was determined to take his own life, there was absolutely nothing this engineer could have done to stop him. The engineer wanted to know if he had missed the signs that his son was depressed or sad. I asked him if he knew that I suffered from major depression and severe anxiety. He replied “no”. I mentioned to him my own struggles both in the past and currently. Knowing this seemed to put him at ease.

And I think that was always one of the fears that I had in the back of my mind. That when I decided to go that no one would understand why I went and that my father or the Canadian Armed Forces would be able to pass me off as just being insane or simply out to get attention. This blog details my justification for ending my life. I explain everything to the best of my ability. If and when I am able to undergo Medical Assistance in Dying there shouldn’t be any unanswered questions.

The fear of pain is another reason I have never been able to follow through on my attempts. Asphyxiation, bleeding out, jumping from heights, electrocution, pills, etc., none of these are without pain and prolonged suffering. I don’t like pain and I sure as hell don’t want to be hooked up to a ventilator for 2 weeks because someone “saved me”. That’s the nice thing about Medical Assistance in Dying. It’s done as humanely as possible. There will be no pain and there will be no suffering. And it will be very quick. One minute I’ll be alive. The next minute I’ll be completely unconscious. Then I’ll be in a coma. Then I’ll be dead. Supposed to take about 6 minutes from start to finish.

Again, I’m not afraid of death. I am afraid of dying. Death doesn’t bother me because I’ll be dead. It’s the process of going from living to dead that causes me concern. Most suicide attempts fail. With Medical Assistance in Dying I don’t have to worry. Everything will be looked after by professionals.

Being alone. As much as I want to die, dying alone would suck. Why do I have to scurry away to a hidey-hole to die like some sick or injured animal. That’s what I like the most about Medical Assistance in Dying. I don’t have to die alone. At the bare minimum the practitioner performing the procedure will be there. I don’t know who else I’d ask to be there. Don’t really have any friends and my family is more or less none existent. I’d like to keep my death a somewhat private affair.

And with Medical Assistance in Dying I know that my corpse will be looked after. Sure, I’m having some difficulty at the moment trying to figure out how to get my brain to go where I want my brain to go, but regardless my corpse won’t be found a week after I die due to the stench wafting out of my apartment.
But Bobbie, if your goal is to die, why do you care about your corpse after you die?
Simple.
Do you realize how much it fucks with someone’s wellbeing to stumble across a dead body?
Especially if they weren’t expecting it?
And as much as I desire to get out of here, fucking with others isn’t high on my list of priorities.

And as I mentioned at the top of this blog entry, I had always from a young age hoped and dreamed that P.S. would somehow be held responsible for what he did. But he won’t. Nor for that matter will Earl Ray Stevens. And as there is no heaven, hell, or afterlife, so telling me that they’ll be looked after in the afterlife is meaningless to me.

By holding P.S. and Earl responsible for what they did I was hoping for Richard to be held responsible for the shit he put me through as a result of the CFB Namao matter. Well Richard died in 2017, so getting even the slightest acknowledgment from Richard would be impossible.

As I told Sgt. Winship during our meeting, the one aspect of this whole event that I resent the most is that P.S. is loved by is father. Retired Sgt. J.S. couldn’t stop fawning over his son, how his son was the victim in this whole tragic affair, how the military never helped his son and how the military is to blame for his son going on to molest many more children over the years. P.S.’s sister D.S. lied on P.S.’s behalf. P.S.’s younger brother P.S. also lied on behalf of P.S..

My father lied to the CFNIS in 2011. And it wasn’t just that he forgot to mention something. The fucker outright stabbed me in the back and threw me under the fucking train. I guess he never got over Captain Totzke diagnosing me as a homosexual at age 9 and blaming me for “allowing” P.S. to molest my younger brother. He obviously never forgave me for “fucking with his military career”.

“very inconsistent”

This nugget showed up in the copy of my Foster Care records that had been obtained by my lawyer for a different matter. I hadn’t seen this in the records that I obtained in August of 2011. Before CFB Namao I don’t think there were any issues between myself and my brother. At least I don’t remember any. After Namao we are getting flagged in Alberta and Ontario for “extreme sibling rivalry”. What changed?
Well, as it says in the except, my father disciplined my brother and I very differently. Whatever my brother got, I usually got twice as hard. Why?
Richard had determined that my brother was acting up due to what I had “allowed” the babysitter to do to him. And, due to Richard’s piss poor parenting skills, Richard came to believe that I was responsible for raising my brother. And if my brother got into trouble then I obviously deserved twice as much punishment because I wasn’t being responsible and looking after my younger brother.

So yeah, as you can see, there is a lot of damage.

Why do I think that death is the only answer to my problems?

Why do you think that living is something that I need to do?

40 years ago was the time to deal with my issues. 40 years ago treatment would have done something. Not now. Now is far too late. And the older I get the more the toxins of depression build up. The more regret builds up. The more time passes the more that “what could have been” eats at me from the inside.
Yeah, sure, the Escitalopram is keeping my severe depressions at bay and it nips my anxiety in the bud, but being medically numbed for the rest of my life does absolutely nothing for the constant replaying memories and the constant regret.

As I’ve said, if the abuse had been limited to P.S. grabbing my nutsack on one occasion, fine. But this asshole was extremely sadistic in his abuse. The memories of what he did to not only myself but the other kids is forever etched into my mind. And throw into the mix Captain Totzke’s “treatments” and my father’s absolute disdain, and you’ve got some very heavy duty toxins.

My meeting with Sgt. David Winship and Captain Chelsea St-Amand on Thursday April 21st, was the first time that anyone from the Canadian Armed Forces ever came to the realization that I can’t get any type of beneficial counselling through “normal” civilian channels. I wasn’t just sexually abused for 1-1/2 years on Canadian Forces Base Namao by P.S. and potentially Captain Father Angus McRae. I was also mind fucked for 2-1/2 years by Canadian Armed Forces social worker Captain Terry Totzke. Captain Terry Totzke’s rank of Captain and his determination that I was a “homosexual” at age 9 no doubt had a significant amount of influence on my father’s opinion of me and contributed to how my father treated me at home. Sgt. Winship agreed that the Canadian Forces had a very dim view of “homosexuality” back then and that the CFSIU investigation of Captain McRae for committing “Acts of Homosexuality” didn’t really help the matter.
Sgt. Winship indicated that the crimes of “Gross Indecency”, “Indecent Assault”, and especially “Buggery” were crimes that both parties could in fact be charged with implying that back then both parties would have been deemed to be culpable.
Sgt. Winship agreed that I can’t just deal with the sexual assault aspect without dealing with the Captain Totzke issues and the issues caused by my father. Civilian counsellors however are completely at a loss as to how I would ever have been involved with military social workers or how living in a military family at the time would have impacted how I was dealt with and treated in the aftermath of the CFB Namao incident.

So………..

March 2023 is when I find out what my possibilities are. I can bide my time until then. But even then, I will probably have a year and a bit before I can undergo the procedure and go to sleep and never be troubled by CFB Namao ever again.

So, you’re all welcome to follow along. I won’t blame anyone for not following.

All that I ask is that you don’t cast judgement on my decision.

It’s mine and mine alone to make.

Well intentioned people often don’t realize the harm they do.

From October of 1980 to until April of 1983 I was in the care of a military social worker named Captain Terry Totzke.

Terry as I knew him.

Under Totzke’s care I had seen a few different psychologists in the Edmonton area. But even though I had been seen by various psychologists I never did receive any type of treatment even though as I would find out they were calling for drastic measures including institutionalization.

When Alberta Social Services became involved with my family in November of 1981, Terry seemed to always be at odds with Pat and Wayne. At the time I thought that Terry, Pat, and Wayne worked for the same organization.

It wouldn’t be until August of 2011 that I learnt that Terry was a captain in the Canadian Armed Forces and that both Pat and Wayne were my civilian child care workers and that Alberta Social Services had been called in due to the inactions and inability of Captain Totzke to help me with my myriad issues.

It would appear that Terry had a very different agenda from that of Alberta Social Services.

Because of the way that Terry and my father reacted to Alberta Social Services I formed very negative views not only of myself, but also of “do gooders” like Pat and Wayne.

Both Captain Totzke and my father had drilled into my head that what happened on CFB Namao was my fault, that I was to blame for what happened to my younger brother, and Terry was adamant that I had a mental illness called “homosexuality”.

I was told by both Terry and my father that I needed to be very careful with what I told Pat and Wayne as they would “twist my words” and make it sound as if I said things that I didn’t say.

I was supposed to have received psychiatric care back then.

But I never did.

Instead what I received was torment, apathy, anger, and belittlement.

It WAS my fault.

I LET the babysitter touch my younger brother.

I was just ACTING up for attention.

I was a SELFISH asshole.

I FUCKED with my father’s military career.

Throw into this mix my grandmother’s issues and my father’s issues and you hopefully can understand that my mental health and well-being were doomed.

As one would expect, a child suffering from major depression and severe anxiety often has a very hard time making friends. So I was fucking lonely.

And a kid without friends often gets beat up a lot. And I got beat up a lot.

A depressed child tends to cry a lot. Nothing would fire up my father’s temper like my “whining” and my “pouting”. Richard was always more than happy to give me something to cry about.

And this doesn’t take into account all of the memories of the sexual abuse that occurred on CFB Namao. Even though it was known what had happened on CFB Namao, Terry knew, my father knew, I received absolutely no help with the year and a half of sexual abuse and the hands of a very disturbed teenager.

So, it should be readily apparent that I am not a suitable candidate for touchy-feely, celebrate you inner-child type therapy.

I was a kid who was found in 1981 to be completely unable to display or express any type of emotion.

One coping mechanism I had found was to allow myself to be the butt of everyone’s jokes. Sure, I was being put down, but at least people were talking about me.

In my adult life I’ve had people call me a psychopath because I couldn’t display emotions.

I often get accused of “being angry” when in fact my mood is neutral. It’s just my face betrays no emotion, so people assume that I’m angry.

I like to keep to myself. So of course this means that I’m a self centred asshole who thinks he’s better than everyone else.

Anyways………..

What therapy do you think will fix this?

Hot Yoga?

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy?

Mystic Chanting?

Electro Convulsive Therapy?

Lithium?

What therapy is going to erase the gross malpractice of Captain Terry Totzke from my brain?

What therapy is going to erase the various incidents of sexual abuse from my brain?

What therapy is going to erase the abuse and neglect of my father and my grandmother from my brain?

How about the abandonment issues. My mother fled an abusive situation and left my brother and I in the care of a rage prone alcoholic. Sure, it’s more than likely that Richard used the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations to have Marie thrown out of the PMQ by the military police, but I wouldn’t find out about that until around 2014 when I received a copy of a report that looked at spousal abuse in the Canadian Forces.

My father would often take off for weeks or months and leave us in the care of his alcoholic mother or his second wife, Sue.

That has to really fuck with a person’s psyche.

Because of the war that I was caught in between Captain Totzke and my civilian social workers, I have a severe distrust of anyone in that field.

What upsets me is when people say to me that I’m not trying, implying that it’s all my fault for not seeking treatment.

It’s such an odd predicament that I find myself trapped in. A survivor of military sexual trauma who wasn’t in the military. A child living on a military base, the dynamics of which most civilian social workers don’t understand.

Military sexual trauma is a unique beast all on its own as the abuser can use the military hierarchy to control their victims. Sure, P.S. wasn’t in the Canadian Forces, but his father was. And at the time his father was a Sergeant. My father was only a Master Corporal. And then of course Captain McRae was a Captain. P.S. freely threw his father’s rank around as threats to me and the other kids he was abusing. And even though I have nothing in the way of memories after the wine in the rectory, I have no doubt that Captain McRae would have thrown his rank around to threaten the kids that he was abusing.

And don’t ever forget how homophobic the Canadian Armed Forces were back in the ’50s, ’60s,’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. If you were a male child on a military base, and you had been sexually abused by another male, you just kept your mouth shut least people assume that you were a queer, or a faggot, or a homo.

I had tried in all honesty going to a couple of sessions with the BCSMSSA – BC Society for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse. I tried, I really did. But I just felt like they didn’t believe what I was talking about. Almost as if they were disbelieving of what I was saying as I seemed “too functional” and of course I also detected a bit of skepticism when I told them that I had lived on a military base as a child.

I had tried counselling through work. At first it was great to have someone like Dave to talk to. But then it became clear that talk was all that we were going to do. Yes, it was nice to have a sounding board to reflect off of, but at the end of the day I was expected to fix my problems on my own.

I tried getting help through the EFAP program at work. But again this was more talk therapy.

The public psychiatric system is so underfunded and overwhelmed that people like me, unless we go completely off the fucking rails, we’re not on their radar. And even if we do get on the radar of the public psychiatric system, the system is so overwhelmed that it can only apply bandages to mental wounds and get the person out of the bed ASAP as there’s probably another 20 people waiting in line for that bed. Don’t forget, I work in an urban hospital with a large mental health component. I know exactly how overwhelmed the system is. People like me are not on the radar. I function. I get up in the morning. I take a shower. I take my meds. I go to work. I work. I go home. I go to sleep. I don’t pose a risk to society. Completely off the radar.

Trying to find a psychologist to give me a clear diagnosis is almost absolutely impossible. And without a clear diagnosis there is no place to start from. All I have for a diagnosis is what was contained in my social service paperwork from back in 1980 which said that I was beyond depressed and suffering from severe anxiety.

And without a clear diagnosis there is no place to start from.

More “falling through the cracks”, a skill that I seem so very adept at.

When I hear professionals say “Oh Bobbie, why don’t you give this a try”, or “Oh Bobbie, why don’t you give that a try” all I hear is “Bobbie, your problems are far too complex to be dealt with realistically, so we’re going to blame you for not fixing yourself, you’re not trying!”.

Can’t you just do CBT? It’s all the rage these days.

Have you tried art therapy? Colouring will make your inner child happy.

Just try thinking positive thoughts Bobbie. Positive thoughts will set up positive energy and will get you in tune with the universe.

Crystals Bobbie, crystals have magical healing powers.

I hate myself. I despise myself. I hate my fucking intelligence.

In another post I’ll talk about how my fucking intelligence has been a fucking curse all of my life and how it’s caused just as many problems as it has solved.

How is a depressed person supposed to look?

One of the issues that I seem to have when being taken serious about my desire to seek Medical Assistance in Dying for mental health issues is that I don’t look “sad”, or “depressed”, or “unhappy”.

I appear smart and intelligent.

Piercings and tattoos are the only form of “self harm” that I engage in. And no, I don’t consider my tattoos or my piercings to be “self harm” or a “cry for help”.

Surely if I was depressed and wanting to die I’d be on drugs, or living on skid row, or a frequent flyer in the local psychiatric wards.

But that’s my problem.

I’ve always been on my own.

I’ve never had anyone to fall back on in times of trouble.

I’ve had to navigate life so fucking carefully that I didn’t end up an drug junkie or an alcoholic on skid row where people could say that I was the captain of my own misfortune.

If I had followed through on any of my previous suicide attempts and not succeeded there would have been absolutely no help from my father. In fact there only would have been shame and ridicule.

I’ve struggled with the fact that if I make one misstep that I’d have a very long fall down the ladder of society.

And believe me, the number of people that attempt suicide and fail far outnumber the number of people that attempt suicide and succeed.

My first attempt was way back on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach when I was about 9. I honestly don’t remember what I thought I was doing. I put the bag over my head and I held the bag around my neck. I kept breathing in and out, but as my lungs started to burn I couldn’t hold the bag any more and I let go of the bag.

The next time I tried was again on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach. This time I taped the bag around my neck thinking that would work better. It didn’t. Again I couldn’t get past the burning in my lungs and I ripped the bag off my face.

I had no idea that killing myself was actually going to be this painful.

The next time I tried suicide was in Toronto when I was living on Canadian Forces Base Downsview. This was before my bedroom had been moved downstairs into the basement in 1986. I had done a “practice run” at the Bloor-Yonge station. I actually did two practice runs. Both times I would wait on the Yonge platform until the trains had left. Then I’d take a little run and jump down on to the tracks. This was just to see if I could work up the nerve to jump down. I would then vault across the 3rd rails and climb up on the other platform and then out of the station.

However, when it came time to do it, I just couldn’t work up the nerve to jump in front of the train.

I don’t mean to sound cliche, but I did try the Bloor Street Vaiduct. Just couldn’t get the nerve to get over the railing.

There were a lot of things that kept me from following through.

Pain. I think my fear of pain has always ranked up there as the #1 reason why I haven’t succumbed to suicide. I really don’t want to spend my last 5, 1o, or 15 minutes on Earth in severe pain, gasping for breath and feeling the pain of broken bones.

Even worse, I always had visions of Andy Anderson with tubes in his skull as the doctors did everything to save his life after he slipped and fell in the bathtub in our PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Namao. Andy honestly had no life after that. They should have just let him die after his first series of blood clots and strokes. He spent the subsequent 5 years “living” in the Mewburn nursing home. He had been warehoused with other people who could no longer function on their own. And that’s another fear that I had. That I would do just enough damage to myself and that some asshole would “save me” and that I’d spend the rest of my “life” living in a facility being fed with a feeding tube.

Yet another reason that I couldn’t ever work up the courage to kill myself is my fear of Richard. I knew that if I had succeeded in killing myself that I would never have to be afraid of Richard again. But what I was afraid of the most is what Richard would do after I was dead. I knew that after I was dead that Richard would be free to blame my suicide on my insanity, that I committed suicide to weasel my way out of accepting responsibility for what I had allowed P.S. to do to my younger brother.

Richard had also impressed upon me from my time with the psychologists and social workers in Edmonton that “I was just acting up to get attention”. And as Richard had really impressed upon me that I was a worthless piece of shit that had fucked with his military career, the last thing I wanted to be seen as was an “attention seeker”.

I had so many reasons to kill myself back in the days of CFB Namao, CFB Griesbach, and CFB Downsview, but yet I couldn’t “man up” and do the deed because I was worried about what my father would say and do. Pretty fucking lame dontcha think?

My next attempt at suicide came in 1994.

I was unemployed. I was collecting E.I. as it was known back then. I had just returned from a disastrous trip out to Toronto to take a job that fell through. My E.I. got cut off because my E.I. cards were still being sent to my Toronto address so I ended up collecting welfare in B.C.

At this point in my life I had been on welfare in three different provinces. Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia at different points in time between the summer of 1991 and the spring of 1994. I had slept in various Salvation Army houses, as well as different charity dorms.

And no, there was no fucking way on Earth that I was going to endure the humiliation of calling Richard and asking him for assistance that I know wouldn’t be coming anyways.

I know the exact date of the 1994 attempt.

It was the very early morning of Sunday June 12th, sometime after midnight.

I had scoped out the Lions Gate Bridge for around a week prior. And I knew that after midnight car traffic dwindled to almost nothing. I wasn’t planning to jump of the bridge in the typical manner. I didn’t want anyone to see me. I didn’t want anyone to stop me. Earlier in the day on June 11th I had gone to a BC Liquor store and purchased a 6 pack of whatever. I didn’t drink very often, so I knew that a 6 pack would take away my chickenshit fear and would allow me to jump.

When I got to the bridge I waited for a break in traffic, then I headed onto the bridge and got to where the maintenance gondola was parked. The bridge had a gondola underneath that allowed maintenance crews to service and paint the bridge from underneath. There really wasn’t any type of security on this gondola which was amazing when you think about it. So over the railing I went and I climbed down the ladder and onto the gondola.

I don’t knowhow long I was under there. I didn’t have a watch, and this was years before I owned a cellphone. But eventually I drank the last of the six beers. The gondola was parked perfectly over the footing for the south side pylon. If I just sat on the rail of the gondola and leaned back I could hit the footing without bouncing off of any of the ironwork for the pylon. It should be quick and I was so pissed that I probably wouldn’t feel anything. But now I was fucking hallucinating. There was P.S. and my father holding hands and laughing at me. Both of them were calling me a cocksucker, a faggot, a homo. I passed out. I woke up a little while later with no shirt on and both shoes missing.

Fuuuuucccckkkkk.

So I managed to climb back up the ladder, back over the railing and walked back to the Sally Anne on Dunsmuir. Being drunk and without footwear I nearly killed myself in the process of climbing the Gondola ladder. I was screaming my lungs off as I walked through Stanley Park. I couldn’t believe how much of a fucking loser I was. I had the perfect opportunity to kill myself and my childish fears of what Richard would say after my death stopped me.

To this day I still don’t know why I feared Richard as much as I did. It made absolutely no sense. I should have hated him. But I didn’t. I feared him.

Anyways, the reason I know the exact date is that on Monday June 13th, 1994 I ended up at St. Paul’s Hospital. I could barely breath. I was coughing up blood and thick brown / green phlegm. The diagnoses was that I had come down with a bad case of community acquired pneumonia. The doctors had asked me if I had done anything out of the ordinary over the last week, if I had been anywhere unusual. Nope was my answer.

I felt like a fucking idiot.

In between 1994 and 2006 there were a few more attempts with the Skytrain, still couldn’t fucking do it.

The next time I would try to kill myself was in 2006. In August of 2006 I had called Richard and left some blistering messages on his cellphone. The next day he called me. I expected him to be angry. He wasn’t. He was quite shaken. I hadn’t really seen Richard since I moved away from Edmonton in February of 1992. Sure, I stopped in Edmonton in 2003 with my then girlfriend, but Richard barely had the time to speak to me. In my messages I had told him that I was sick and fucking tired of being blamed for what P.S. had done, I was tired of being blamed for having fucked with his military career, I was sick of everything. He knew that I was working at the hospital since the year previous as I had called him for his birthdate and my mother’s birthdate so that I could get my birth certificate replaced as the hospital needed to have a copy for my personnel file. He knew my phone number. He knew my address. But not fucking once did he ever call to see how I was making out.

So out of frustration I called him and vented into his voicemail. I was surprised when he called. I was even more surprised when it sounded like he was scared, like he had been wounded. He told me that yes, he had probably over reacted to what P.S. did ( yes, he used P.S.’s name). He didn’t mean to blame me, but that things were hectic back then. I was the older brother. I was supposed to look out for Scott. He pleaded with me to understand that he didn’t hire P.S.. He told me that he told his mother that he didn’t want P.S. around the house but that grandma kept hiring P.S.. And if I was to be angry at anyone for what P.S. had done, I should be angry at my grandmother for hiring P.S..

Things were great for about two months after this. Richard would call me on a daily basis. He even mailed me a $100 gift certificate to the Old Spaghetti Factory for my birthday. For him to tell the CFNIS in 2011 that he didn’t know how to get hold of me was a fucking crock of shit.

Anyways, just after my birthday the calls started to drop off.

By November he wasn’t calling or returning my calls.

Not a word at Christmas.

So I had decided to jump in front of a Skytrain.

Again I chickened the fuck out.

July 18th, 2011

This was the last time I had ever been in a hospital.

But this hasn’t been the end of my desire to die.

As I’ve said in other posts, in the early 2000’s I had become aware of what was then called “assisted suicide” in Europe. Towards the late ’00s I had heard that in some European countries that depression was an acceptable reason to seek “medical suicide”. I knew that I would never have the money to make it over to Europe. And then the unthinkable started to happen. Jurisdictions across North America started to warm up to the idea of assisted suicide.

Medical Assistance in Dying for Mental Health reasons is so close that I can almost taste the propofol in my tongue. March 2023 to be exact.

Whether or not I have what it takes to pass the “test” to be allowed to die peacefully in my bed without any violence inflected upon my body remains to be seen.

North America has a puritanical streak in which it is believed that everyone must suffer right to the end for a death to be righteous.

I haven’t enjoyed a single fucking day in my life since Canadian Forces Base Namao. Society tells me that I am a fucking loser for wanting to die. Society tells me that I am selfish and only hurting others with my desire to die.

Society tells me that I don’t value the special and unique life that I have been “given”.

I sure as fuck didn’t ask for this. I didn’t tell Richard to fuck Marie so that I could be born.

I didn’t ask for my father to be a rage prone alcoholic in the Canadian Armed Forces.

I didn’t ask for my mother to leave.

I didn’t ask for my grandmother to hire P.S.

I didn’t ask to be molested by P.S. and Captain McRae.

I didn’t ask for my brain to be fucked with by Captain Terry Totzke.

I didn’t ask for my father to be a spineless wimp that followed along with the desires of the Canadian Armed Forces.

I have no interests.

I have no hobbies.

I have no friends.

I have absolutely nothing.

People tell me that I have to live, that I simply have to find the reasons to live, that I’m not trying hard enough.

People tell me that I’m only trying to get attention, that I’m weak, that I’m ungrateful.

People tell me to “forget the past and move on”.

How the fuck does one simply forget what I’ve been through?

Why do I have to keep suffering so that others can feel like they’ve fixed me or cured me?

Trust me, I am angry about a lot of things, but I’m not angry about dying.

Everyone dies.

My death won’t be some unusual event that no other human being has experienced.

Four simple drugs administered via a PICC catheter into the superior vena cava of my heart and I can be freed of all of this dysfunctional shit that is my life.

Midazolam

Propofol

Rocuronium

Bupivacaine

All that I want is to die a little earlier than what the cosmos has planned for me so that I don’t have to live with CFB Namao playing on an endless loop inside my skull. Richard may be dead and gone, and yes it was very cathartic when I found out that he was dead, but his ridicule, his hatred, his loathing, and his depression live inside my skull. P.S. lives in my skull. The knowledge of what Captain McRae did to me after the wine lives inside of my skull. Going to “special school” is inside my skull. Being a grade 8 dropout who missed out on a multitude of opportunities lives in my skull.

Let me go.

Let me be at peace.

Let me be free of the things that I had no control over.

The Canadian Forces are adept at keeping secrets no matter who suffers.

As much as I love the final report issued by the Military Police Complaints Commission in 2020 in which the MPCC gave a very subtle and discreet kick to Minister Harjit Sajjan’s balls there is one troubling aspect that has caused me concern.

It’s these pair of paragraphs in the final report.

Basically, the MPCC is stating that I was wrong to assume that the CFNIS were commanded by the Chain of Command to conduct the 2015 to 2018 portion of investigation GO 2011-5754 in such a manner as to not risk exposing in the present day what the Canadian Armed Forces tried to bury in 1980.

Yes, technically the Military Police Complaints Commission is correct in the sense that Captain McRae’s court martial was reported in the media. But lets’ see what was actually in the media versus what happened on the base.

“McRae has been sentenced to four years for buggery with ->A<- child”

In 1980 the Canadian media reported that Captain Father Angus McRae had committed buggery with “A” child. Not 2 children. Not 3 children. Not 10 children. Not 25 children.

ONE FUCKING CHILD.

Not 25 children between the ages of 5 and 15.

ONE FUCKING CHILD.

And that child was P.S..

The only child over the age of 14.

In September of 2002, the Departmental Public Affairs Office (DGPA-DPAPO) of the Department of Justice, which was representing the Department of National Defence and the Minister of National Defence, made edits to a press release that was going to be the Government of Canada’s response to the $4.5 million dollar action brought by P.S..

Why did they strike these words?

Why would the Government of Canada strike the words “Buggery”, “Gross Indecency”, and “Indecent Assault” while leaving the offence numbers 155, 156, 157?

My guess is that simple numbers are meaningless.

Don’t forget, in the early 2000’s, male child sexual abuse was finally being acknowledged. Prior to the mid ’90s and early 2000s it really wasn’t accepted that boys could be the victims of sexual assault.

And in 2002, the Criminal Code that was current in effect was the 1985 Criminal Code of Canada. Not the 1970 Criminal Code. If someone wanted to know what sections 155, 156, and 157 were and they grabbed a copy of the 1985 criminal code they’d really be confused as in the 1985 Criminal Code section 155 was Incest, section 156 was language dealing with offences committed prior to 1983, and section 157 was repealed.

Only if someone was really determined and went to a local law court library and got their hands on a copy of the 1970 Criminal Code would one be able to determine that sections 155, 156, and 157 related to Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault, and Buggery.

And even though the military police and the CFSIU in 1980 knew that as many as 25 children were being sexually abused by Captain McRae and that the military was aware that Captain McRae had confessed during his ecclesiastical to having molested boys for many years meaning that Captain McRae had more than likely molested children on Canadian Forces Base Kington, Canadian Forces Base Portage La Prairie, Canadian Forces Station Holberg, in addition to the 25 children he molested on Canadian Forces Base Namao, the Department of Justice was still going with Captain McRae having only molested “one” boy.

The Department of Justice even went so far as to note that the Canadian Forces had found Captain McRae guilty in a court martial and had subsequently kicked Captain McRae out of the military.

But the Department of Justice made no mention that many of the charges that the military police and the CFSIU had ready to go against Captain McRae had been dismissed by the chain of command prior to Captain McRae’s court martial.

The Department of Justice also fails to note in their press release that unlike in the modern day where charges have to be referred to a prosecutor, in the days of Captain McRae’s court martial it was Captain McRae’s commanding officer, base commander Colonel Daniel Edward Munro, that would determine during a summary investigation which charges would proceed and which charges would be dismissed and not a military prosecutor.

Charges against McRae pg1
Charges Against McRae pg2
Brig-Gen. D.E. Munro
Ret. Brigadier General Daniel Edward Munro

In 1980 Brigadier General Daniel Edward Munro was Colonel Daniel Edward Munro, base commander of Canadian Forces Base Namao and Commanding Officer of Captain Father Angus McRae.

LS-311E 1998
Bill C25 passed
Commanding officer like Daniel Edward Munro and NOT military prosecutors determined the charges

As Legislative Summary LS-311E (1998) indicates, it was Colonel Munro that determined the charges against Captain McRae.

3 year time bar pg1
3 year time bar pg2

As the Judge Advocate General indicated in 2018, it would be impossible to bring charges against Brigadier General Daniel Edward Munro if it was found that he had acted improperly in 1980 and had committed the Criminal Code offence of “Obstruction of Justice”. And even if Daniel Edward Munro had just been following the orders of his superiors, the same 3-year-time-bar would apply to his superiors no matter how high up the chain of command this originated.

To this date the Canadian Forces are very happy to leave things in the past.

So, with all of this bullshit and all of the subterfuge and all of the lies is it any wonder that I’ve grown very tired?

When I went to the Edmonton Police Service in 2011 to lay charges against P.S. I honestly thought that I stood a decent chance of getting justice. And if I got justice then there was no way that my father was going to be able to keep blaming me for what I had allowed P.S. to do to my younger brother. My father would have to apologize for the way he had treated me in the aftermath of the P.S. / Captain McRae fiasco on CFB Namao.

The Canadian Forces and their defective investigation agency stole that away from me.

The court martial transcripts from McRae’s court martial, the CFSIU investigation paperwork, and what retired Warrant Officer Frederick R. Cunningham had told me on November 27th, 2011, all indicate that the military police in 1980 knew what P.S. had done. But the 2011 investigation was a big nothing burger.

My old man died in 2017 and got off scot-free. He’ll never have to apologize and explain his part in this horrid mess.

And I’m the one who is stuck with having to request Medical Assistance in Dying for mental health issues when it becomes legal in March of 2023 to erase all of the memories of 1978 through 1987 and 2011 to the present day.

Why are the CFNIS so hellbent on retaining my investigation?


In the summer of 2020 I made another complaint to the CFNIS regarding the man in the sauna that P.S. had provided me to at some point in time between May of 1980 and June 23rd, 1980.

This man was an officer of the Canadian Armed Forces who had been sent up to Canadian Forces Base Namao to assist Captain Father Angus McRae during the investigation into the “acts of homosexuality” that Captain McRae had committed with young boys on the base. This officer was a Major at the time. This officer himself would go on to have complaints of inappropriate sexual relations with children brought against him.

I made the complaint as I had evidence, paperwork from the Canadian Forces itself, that indicated that this Major was on the base during the relevant time and would have been a prime suspect as he would have no doubt been very familiar with P.S. as it was the statement of P.S. that brought Captain McRae to the attention of the military police and the CFSIU.

The investigating officer, Sgt. David Winship has only been in contact with me twice since the summer of 2020. This is not very confidence inspiring to say the least. In fact, the last time I was in contact with Sgt. Winship he said that there would only be communications from the CFNIS if something were to turn up. Basically it was “Fuck off Mr. Bees, and leave us the fuck alone. Don’t bother us with the shit from your childhood.”


Back in November of 2021 Minister of National Defence Anita Anand announced that the Canadian Armed Forces were going to hand over sexual assault investigations to the civilian police.
Adam Scotti / PMO (Canadian Prime Minister's Office)
Minister of National Defence Anita Anand
Adam Scotti / PMO (Canadian Prime Minister’s Office)
Global TV
CBC News
CTV News
Toronto Star
The New York Times

Not long after this story hit the media, I received this email from the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service Victim Service Coordinator

November 12th, 2021 email from James Merritt

In January I received this email from James:

January 19th, 2022 email from James Merritt

Why the fuck are the CFNIS so bound and determined to keep control of my investigation?

So, here I am engaged with the Military Police Complaints Commission once again.

This will be complaint #3

Complaint #1 for the original CFNIS GO 2011-5754 was a fucking unmitigated disaster. At that time I had no idea that the Provost Marshal would be looking after the complaint first and that the MPCC was extremely handicapped by the National Defence Act.

Complaint #2 worked out a little bit more in my favour. The MPCC laid out that the Military Police in 1980 knew that P.S. was molesting younger children on base and that this is what led the military police and the CFSIU to investigate Captain McRae in the first place. The MPCC also pointed out that the CFNIS had the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the Court Martial transcripts in their possession during the investigation of my complaint.

It will be very interesting to see how the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal responds to my complaint this time.

My complaint this time is related to the conduct of Sgt. David Winship of the CFNIS. That’s the way it goes. As I’ve explained before a person wishing to make a complaint to the MPCC can only complain about the investigators, not the investigation.

So anyways, my complaint is related to Sgt. Winship’s failure to comply with orders of Minister of National Defence that all sexual assault investigations be handed over to the outside civilian authorities. As part of my complaint I have included the email that I had received from Sgt. Damon Tenaschuk in which a legal officer with the office of the Judge Advocate General informed Sgt. Tenaschuk that due to the 3-year-time-bar that existed prior to 1998 Criminal Code charges could never be brought against Brigadier General Daniel Edward Munro.

I explained to the MPCC that just as the 3-year-time-bar would have prevented the CFNIS from laying charges against Captain Father Angus McRae in 2011, and as the legal officer from the JAG confirmed charges could never be brought against Captain Father Angus McRae’s commanding officer Brigadier General Daniel Edward Munro I full believe the reason for the CFNIS not handing my case over to the civilian police is that no charges can ever be brought against the man in the sauna whom P.S. provided me to for the purposes of receiving oral sex from an underage prepubescent male. I explained to the MPCC that as long as the CFNIS conduct the investigation they can give the Crown the most laughable case ever, a case that the CFNIS know will not be prosecuted. Or they can delay the case until the man I have accused dies. “Sorry Mr. Bees, we tried but the Crown wasn’t going for it” or “Oh geez Mr. Bees, retired Brigadier General R.B. died, that’s the end of the investigation, sorry”.

Were they to hand my case over to the civilian police, the civilian police are more than likely completely unaware of the existence of the 3-year-time-bar that existed from 1950 until 1998 and which put a 3-year time limit on the prosecution of indictable offences committed by persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline. I don’t think that the civilian police would be willing to do a “Dog ‘n’ Pony” show investigation into my complaint for the sake of helping the Canadian Forces do a coverup. And when it came time to prosecute retired Brigadier General R.B. and then civilian authorities were informed that the 3-year-time-bar meant that prosecution was impossible, I don’t think that the civilian police would have hesitated to tell me the reason as to why R.B. gets off scot-free.

I sent a letter to Minister of National Defence Anita Anand asking her why women who served in the Canadian Armed Forces get justice while males, who were sexually abused as children, are ineligible to receive justice.

I haven’t heard anything back.

And I don’t expect anything to change.

The outside appearances.

Recently I made acquaintances with a woman named Nacy who was married to Jean-Yves Dagenais. Jean-Yves is the younger brother of my mother. He was the uncle I don’t think I ever met.

I met my uncle Albert (Al) Dagenais various times while we lived on Canadian Forces Base Shearwater. But I honestly can’t remember meeting Jean-Yves.

One interesting thing that Nancy did mention is that Marie, Nancy, and Jean-Yves drove up from Regina because Marie was in a panic that her children were in danger. It turns out that Marie was still on Prince Edward Island and had been told where Richard had moved to. Marie called up Jean-Yves and borrowed some money to fly from PEI to Regina, and then the three of them drove up to Canadian Forces Base Namao.

Apparently when they arrived the found grandma feeing my brother and I at the kitchen table. We didn’t appear to be in any distress.

I remember this visit. Not too much detail. I sure didn’t remember Nancy or Jean-Yves. I know that I had been told about my mother coming for a visit as I went and waited by the entrance to the PMQs with a flashlight for them to come. I figured that with the flashlight she’d see me better and she wouldn’t drive past.

I remember Marie bitching about the house numbering. And yes, the houses were numbered weird. Or at least weird when compared to the civilian world. In the civilian world the houses tend to be numbered odds on one side and evens on the other. The house numbers also increase typically from the lower cross street to the higher cross street.

This was not how they were numbered on CFB Namao. The houses were numbered sequentially down one side of the street and then sequentially up the other side. This is how our PMQ #11 on 12th street was literally across the street from P.S.’s PMQ #26 on 12th street.

I’ll never figure out who it was that told Marie that we were living on Canadian Forces Base Namao. There were only two people who would have told her. And they’re both dead now. It was either my grandmother, or my uncle Doug. There is no way on Earth that Richard would have ever called Marie.

Grandma was always of the opinion that Marie and Richard should never have separated and that Richard should have swallowed his pride and asked Marie back in.

Doug never really liked Richard. When uncle Doug would come back from the oilfield every six weeks or so, Doug would buy my brother and I toys and other things to Richard’s chagrin.

Most of the xmas present that my brother and I received like our little B&W tvs and the little Coleco rifle games for those TVs were bought by Doug in Marie’s name.

If I was a gambling man I’d have to say that it was Doug and not grandma that called Marie to let her know where Richard had technically kidnapped her children to.

Grandma was too afraid of Richard to have gone behind his back to tell Marie where he had moved to with their kids and without a valid custody order.

Uncle Doug just didn’t seem to give a fuck. Yeah, he wouldn’t outright antagonize Richard, but he would do things that he knew would rub Richard the wrong way.

For example, when I moved back to Edmonton in June of 1990 with Richard “so we could try to be a family again”, it was Doug that introduced me to Marie. It was also Doug that tried to get me to go for my small “m” metis papers.

Small “m” metis papers really don’t amount to too much, other than you can rightfully say that you have First Nations DNA. I think Doug knew this would kill Richard as Richard had spent his entire life pretending that he wasn’t Half Cree and Half Irish.

Nancy said that when Marie, Nancy, and Jean-Yves arrived that my brother and I were sitting at the kitchen table happily eating our breakfast. So I don’t know if Nancy and Jean-Yves came at a later time, but I do know that when Marie arrived I had my father’s military issue flashlight because it was getting dark.

Maybe Marie came up by herself initially and then Nancy and Jean-Yves came up the next morning.

Nancy said that after seeing that my brother and I weren’t in any danger that things became testy between Jean-Yves and Marie.

Nancy would go on to say that because Marie had abandoned my brother and I on Prince Edward Island and left us in the house alone by ourselves Uncle Al was furious with Marie and she didn’t think those two ever spoke again. Probably explains why Marie was never mentioned in Uncle Al’s obituary. And this probably explains why Marie wouldn’t say anything about Al when I went to visit her in 2013 and 2014.

I don’t honestly remember too much about when Marie left. I know I was crying. I know my brother was crying. And I know that Marie was crying. She packed my brother and I a suitcase each of our clothes.

Marie took us over to another PMQ on base and left us with one of Richard’s airforce buddies. I can’t remember who this guy was other than he had two kids that were older than me. It was one of these older boys that gave me their bicycle when his father bought him a new bicycle. What I also remember about this guy is that he had a reel-to-reel tape deck that I was fascinated with.

I can’t remember which PMQ we were dropped off at, but it was one of these.

So yeah, my brother and I weren’t abandoned.

Until the day I die I will never forgive Marie for leaving me with an alcoholic rage fuelled monster suffering from PTSD and intergenerational family trauma. But no, she didn’t abandon us like Richard and his melodramatic outbursts would make it sound like.

Richard would have been fucking pissed. Richard was at sea with the airforce when Marie left. Richard was fine with having children so long as he didn’t have to look after them. And now with Marie gone, he was going to have to look after his own kids. So he brought his alcoholic and psychologically damaged mother out from Edmonton, AB to raise my brother and I.

And as we know from my Alberta Foster Care records, Richard always had to play the victim. And I kid you not, Richard was excellent at bullshitting. There’s a reason why Alberta Social Services noted Richard as “frequently telling different stories from one meeting to another”. He lied, and he lied good.

And I also know for a fact that Marie didn’t abandon us like Richard said she did. Richard made an application to the PEI courts for child custody. The application never went anywhere in the court. The court made no determination as to child custody. If Marie had abandoned my brother and I like Richard claimed she did, it would have been a slam dunk. Richard would have been awarded custody and in fact the courts may have awarded Richard child support payments from Marie.

Yet, none of this happened. Richard wasn’t a kind old man who didn’t want free money from Marie because he had a kind heart and didn’t want to cause her further distress. Richard was a man who could carry a fucking grudge better than Allied Van Lines carries furniture.

At the time it wasn’t common knowledge, but it is now that service members back in the day often abused the National Defence Act and the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations to their own advantage.

The Hillcrest housing development was built to DND spec by a private builder and was then leased to DND by this builder. Any property that is leased by DND becomes a “Defence Establishment”. Only members of the Canadian Armed Forces or civilian employees of the Department of National Defence have any legal right to be on a Defence Establishment.

Military dependents such as my brother and I and our mother have no legal right to be on a defence establishment. We’re only there at our serving parent’s pleasure.

There was a report commissioned by the Canadian Forces in 1996 to look at spousal abuse in the Canadian Forces. The report was finished in the spring of 2000 and released.

The report found that men would often use the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations to eject their spouse out of the PMQ and off the base when the marriage was breaking down.

Once kicked out of the military housing and off the base the non-serving spouse often found it impossible to serve papers on the service member as they and their lawyers would be barred from the base or from approaching military housing which was located on a base.

The report would also discover that the serving member’s superiors would often lie to outside social service agencies about the child custody status of the children, implying that the service member had custody. This would deny the non-serving spouse of any civil benefits.

Now, the odd thing about Richard’s claim that Marie abandoned my brother and I is that he himself would readily abandon my brother and I when it fit his needs.

(father will be back from Iceland tonight)

I have no idea of who the woman was that brought me to the hospital after my bicycle incident.

But I do know that Iceland is nowhere near Prince Edward. In fact it’s 3,341km from Prince Edward Island to Iceland. By way of comparison it’s 3,359km between Vancouver, BC and Toronto, ON.

Grandma had already returned to Edmonton to be with her husband Andy Anderson when I was admitted to the hospital.

Richard received a compassionate posting from Captain Lynda Tyrell in August of 1978 and we ended up moving to Canadian Forces Base Edmonton in August of 1978.

This isn’t the only time Richard would abandon my brother and I.

One of Richard’s favourite places to drop off my brother and I was Canada’s Wonderland north of Toronto. Richard would buy my brother and I the $29.99 season’s pass. He’d drop us off just about every weekend that the park was open during the spring and the fall. He’d drop us off just about every day of the week in the summer. He’d drop us off at 08:00 in the morning and he’d pick us up again at 22:00 after the park closed. That’s almost 14 hours in that fucking park.

He’d give my brother and I $10 each for the day. Even back then, $10 didn’t go very far in a park where hotdogs were about $4 ea. I don’t know about my brother, but I used to just go hide and try to sleep for the afternoon and evening. You can only ride the same rides so many times before they become outright boring.

As my brother would call it, this was “Richard’s Discount Babysitting Service”.

I used to pray that every time that Richard would drop me off there that I would be kidnapped and killed and then when the police found my body they’d arrest Richard for child endangerment.

That’s why when I read Richard’s statement to the CFNIS on June 9th, 2011 I nearly choked.

Richard’s statement to the CFNIS in 2011

” – In T.O. he (Richard) refused to take him(Robert / Bobbie) to Canada’s Wonderland because of (sic) he was bad; the school found out and said it was child abuse.”

“- He (Robert / Bobbie) threatened to call the police”

You get the feeling that Richard loved good ol’ melodrama and playing the victim?

I have my records from the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto. There’s nothing at all mentioned in there about Canada’s Wonderland or abuse.

The Children’s Aid records make note of the intense sibling rivalry that existed between my brother and I. The records also noted that my father didn’t perceive any trouble between my brother and I, that he but it down to “boys will be boys”. He was also adamant that our family didn’t need to be involved with social services, that our involvement with social services in Alberta was unwarranted. But the Children’s Aid records also make note that due to budget constraints and staffing issues they couldn’t dedicate a lot of resources towards my family unless someone called them about witnessing physical abuse. And living on a military base meant that no one would rat-out another family.

And I highly doubt that the school or Children’s Aid would really give a sweet flying fuck if I went to Canada’s Wonderland or not. But I’ll bet you that Children’s Aid would have loved to have known about Richard’s discount babysitting service.

Yeah, I don’t care how much my murder would have hurt, the suffering and the agony I would have gone through would have been worth seeing the police and the courts destroy Richard.

Now, back to the part where Nancy and Jean-Yves were startled to see my brother and I sitting at the kitchen table happily eating our breakfast.

In our interviews with Alberta Social Services both my brother and I described our grandmother as a threat and very authoritarian.

In my initial assessments with the psychologist hired by Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke this is what I had to say.

From my psychological review in November of 1980

My desire to die is nothing new. It’s been with me for so long as I can remember. It’s just that the fear of pain has kept me alive. But yeah, I would have been 9 years old when I said this.

I guess that first impressions can be very, very deceptive and very misleading.

When Nancy, Jean-Yves, and Marie first showed up in September or October of 1978, Andy Anderson had yet to slip in the bathtub and crack his skull open. Grandma had yet to start drinking. And P.S. had yet to be our babysitter.

And almost two years to the date in 1980 I have major depression, severe anxiety, and I want to kill myself.

When I talked to my brother back in 2013, one of the things that I mentioned was that I remembered grandma having a “Block Parent” sign in her bedroom window.

My brother remarked that kids would have been better off getting into the “Free Candy Van” than coming to our house for help.

A much safer alternative to the Gill household.

Anyways, until next time…….

This just keeps getting more and more interesting.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-armed-forces-sexual-assault-survivors-cases-closed-during-crisis-1.6274844

Interesting isn’t it.

This is exactly what the CFNIS and the MPCC told me in 2013.

P.S. didn’t want to speak to the investigators, so that was it – there was nothing the CFNIS could do.

And as my brother would say, you can’t force someone to talk to the police. If you talk to the police you only incriminate yourself. If the police had enough evidence they’d go to the Crown and get an arrest warrant.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-armed-forces-sexual-assault-survivors-cases-closed-during-crisis-1.6274844

One interesting thing that I did learn though is that if police have evidence to show that someone has committed similar offences in the same relative period of time the police can provide that evidence to the Crown in order to persuade the Crown to allow charges to be laid.

The Military Police Complaints Commission stated in the 2020 findings that the CFNIS had in their possession the CFSIU investigation paperwork from May and June of 1980 as well as the July 18th, 1980 CM62 court martial transcripts.

What did the CFSIU investigation and the CM62 court martial transcripts indicate?

They indicated the following:

  • P.S. had taken a group of young boys into the Horseshoe Forest, P.S. had the boys to drop their pants. P.S. then removed his erect penis from his pants, spit on his penis, and penetrated a 10 year old boy.
  • There were complaints from parents on the base about P.S.’s sexual behaviour with younger children. This is what initiated the investigation of Captain McRae.
  • P.S. was already receiving psychological treatment for his attraction to young children.
  • P.S. was arrested and convicted in 1982 for molesting a young boy in a town just north of Canadian Forces Base Petawawa where his father had been stationed. P.S. would have been either 16 or 17 depending if this occurred prior to June 20th or after June 20th.
  • P.S. was arrested and convicted in 1984 for molesting an eight year old boy in Manitoba in relation to an unnamed Canadian Forces Base there.
  • In the spring of 1985 P.S. was arrested and charged with molesting a 9 year old boy on Canadian Forces Base Edmonton, as a result of this P.S. was kicked off the base by the Canadian Armed Forces.
  • P.S.’s father rented P.S. in the west side of Edmonton. P.S. lured a 13 year old newspaper boy into his apartment and molested him on a few occasions.
  • In August of 1985 P.S. was convicted of molesting both the 9 year old and the 13 year old.

Why didn’t the CFNIS pass this information on to the Crown?

The fact of the matter is the chain of command above the CFNIS did not want charges brought against P.S. as this would only open up a festering wound that the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence have kept a bandaid on for the last 40 years.

If the CFNIS had provided the Crown with enough evidence to indicate that P.S. was in fact KNOWN to have been molesting children and if the Crown had approved charges against P.S. this would have exposed the Canadian Armed Forces to the fallout that would have resulted from the Canadian public learning the truth about what had transpired on CFB Namao from 1978 to 1980 and that the Canadian Forces had sacrificed the lives of numerous children/adults in favour of keeping a hideous secret out of the public eye.

Instead, in my matter the CFNIS just threw their hands up and said that P.S. didn’t want to talk to them so there was little they could do.

That’s what you call “bullshit”.

Beyond a doubt the CFNIS knew what P.S. had been up to. The CFNIS had all of the paperwork and they had his criminal record.

The CFNIS had two options.

(a) The CFNIS could have gone to the Crown with all of the evidence to show that P.S. wasn’t suspected of molesting children, P.S. was a confirmed child molester. The CFNIS could have then arrested him, brought him in to talk, and at least got the truth about what had happened back then even if it resulted in nothing more than symbolic charges.

-or-

(b) The CFNIS could have approached the case in a totally different manner. The CFNIS could have approached P.S. as a victim of Captain McRae whom was obviously molesting children as a direct result of Captain McRae’s grooming, instructions, and directions.

The problem with either option (a) or option (b) is that they exposed the office of the Minister of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces to multiple civil actions which would have none the less resulted in very negative media coverage.

This is why the CFNIS were not allowed to bring any type of charge or even to treat P.S. like a witness. The Chain of Command made the decision and their subordinates did as they were told. The past was going to stay in the past where it had been buried in 1980.

I can fully see the CFNIS still doing this. And remember, it’s not that the investigators are in on this duplicity. The order only has to be given to senior officers within the Provost Marshal or the CFNIS chain of command. Once the investigation has been shaped by the chain of command, the investigators never have a chance no matter how good their intentions are.

I think tis is one reason why various CFNIS investigators, “the good ones” made sure to share pertinent Information with me and made sure that I knew what documents to request via FOI and ATI requests.

And talking about moving cases out in to the civilian world, the CFNIS are in the process of handing their investigation of my complaint related to the man in the sauna.

This is in relation to the investigation looking at the man in the sauna that P.S. provided me to for the purpose of providing oral sex to the man.

I have a very good idea of who the man in the sauna was / is.

In the spring of 1980 a very specific major was sent from Ottawa to Canadian Forces Base Edmonton to assist Captain McRae with his affairs during the investigation and subsequent court martial.

This major was involved with the Canadian Forces Chaplaincy branch.

In the spring of 1980 I would have been 8 years old.

This would have been in the period of time between me having been caught being buggered by P.S. in the bedroom of his family’s PMQ and the house fire at his PMQ on June 23rd, 1980.

I had been swimming at the base pool. I was about to get changed when P.S. came over to me and coerced me to go to the sauna.

In the sauna was a man sitting in the far side. The man asked P.S. if I was really as good as P.S. said that I was. The man opened his towel and held his erect penis and motioned me to come over.

If I had to hazard a guess I would say that I had performed oral sex on P.S. at least two dozen times from the fall of 1978 until the spring of 1980. And this isn’t including the older boys that P.S would often hang out with.

So I put the man’s penis in my mouth and I played with his balls.

He stopped me just before he ejaculated.

I never saw this man again.

Now, if this man is who I think it is he would have known about P.S. and the affinity that P.S. had for children. He would have known that P.S. was the reason Captain McRae was in trouble. Was he trying to “blackmail” P.S. by getting P.S. to do something as horrible as pimping out an eight year old?

Or, seeing as how this man was a member of the Catholic church just as his subordinate Captain McRae was, did he have a thing for young children. If he knew the details of what P.S. and Captain McRae had been doing on the base, then he would have known that P.S. had been bringing children over to the rectory for Captain McRae and P.S. to molest. So maybe he knew that P.S. could supply him with fresh young meat.

And it’s not like the man I have accused is squeaky clean. This man has had his own troubles with the sexual molestation of children over the years.

Anyways, it remains to be seen how badly the CFNIS screwed up this investigation.

And you wonder why I am seriously considering medical assistance in dying in March of 2023 when it becomes legal for psychiatric issues. There’s only so much shit that one person can keep locked inside their skulls before it all becomes toxic. And no, seeking MAiD does not make me weak. Others who have been involved with the Captain Father Angus McRae have attempted suicide, have committed suicide, and have had mental health issues that have plagued them for their lives. And to have the Canadian Armed Forces do everything in their power to deny us our freedom from the torment associated with the events from CFB Namao is beyond the pale.

And here’s hoping that the media will pay attention to military dependents who were sexually abused on defence establishments by persons who were subjected to the Code of Service Discipline. We are stuck in a world of grey between the civilian justice system and the military justice system, between the provinces and between Ottawa.

If you’re keeping tally, I’ve blown a major, more than likely been buggered by a captain while drunk on wine, pleasured my 14 year old babysitter on numerous occasions, blew an enlisted guy on CFB Griesbach. And this was all before I turned 11.

It’s no wonder I hate sex.

40%

And that’s just those who came forward.

https://globalnews.ca/news/8405606/canadian-forces-sexual-misconduct-class-action-claims-men/

Well, here’s something that might come as a surprise to some people, but it doesn’t come as a surprise to me.

There were about 19,000 claims submitted for compensation.

If 40% of claimants were men that’s 7,600 men. And trust me men, especially in a military environment, are NOT going to be all that willing to come forward out of fear that others will judge them as being weak or of being a homosexual.

https://aasas.ca/support-and-information/men-and-sexual-assault/

And if one sexual abuser in the Canadian Armed Forces had five or six victims that 7,600 sexually abused men could quickly become 45,600 men. And I don’t really want to think about the total number of men that were sexually abused by other men in the Canadian Armed Forces. According to some stats, over 90% of sexual assault victims never report their assaults.

I’ve known about this since 2014 when L’Actualite ran an exposé on sexual assault within the Canadian Armed Forces. Part of this exposé looked at male-on-male sexual assault within the Canadian Armed Forces. This exposé was stripped from the English version of this article that ran in Maclean’s magazine.

This story was only featured in the French newsmagazine L’Actualite in Quebec. This story did not survive the translation into English for the Maclean’s English version of the exact same story.

Basically, it was found that male-on-male sexual abuse in the Canadian Armed Forces had nothing to do with “homosexual” relationships. The article found that male-on-male sexual abuse was more about exerting dominance and punishing others for perceived bad behaviour.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8360601/canadian-veteran-military-sexual-assaults-misconduct/

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2021/04/24/i-was-going-to-get-raped-former-soldier-speaks-out-about-his-being-sexually-assaulted-in-canadas-military.html

Male-on-male sexual abuse was frequently used to shame other members into compliance or to humiliate members that had “caused trouble” or used to blackmail a member into silence least his coworkers, friends, and family discover that he had participated in anal intercourse.

And I have absolutely no doubt that many male children living on the bases were subjected to this “discipline” in the household.

If a member of the Canadian Armed Forces is willing to force anal intercourse on a fellow adult member or if a member of the Canadian Forces is willing to force another adult member to perform fellatio on him in order to teach the other member a lesson or to change the other member’s non-conforming behaviour, you can bet that this type of behaviour found its way back into the PMQs on base.

Here’s a story from the New York Times that deals with male-on-male sexual abuse in the US mIlitary. There are numerous similarities between the US Military and the Canadian Forces.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/10/us/men-military-sexual-assault.html

Almost every type of discipline these men were taught would find its way back into the homes on base.

Once you engage in the military life, it’s almost impossible to separate and segregate the military life, the military training, and the military discipline from the home life.

I have absolutely no doubt that there are many a male military dependent that have some rather fucked up hazy memories from way back then. After all, it’s not like these male members were engaging in routine homosexual activities. They would just use male-on-male as a disciplinary tool.

It might have happened once.

It might have happened twice.

But I would be more than willing to believe that if it happened once or twice, that this would have been buried in the dark recesses of one’s mind.

Especially if it happened on a military base.

Who are you going to tell?

Who is going to believe you?

Are you really going to risk having your serving parent booted from the military?

Are you really going to endure the wrath of your serving parent if they found out that you tried to rat them out to the military police?

Sure does raise some interesting questions, doesn’t it?

Maybe this is one of the reason why the Canadian Armed Forces refuse to investigate historical child sexual abuse.

Maybe this is one of the reasons that some former serving parents are always telling their kids to forget about the past and to let sleeping dogs lie. Even if the serving parent in question didn’t abuse their own kids, were they aware of other service members that abused their own kids? Hard to keep secrets during an investigation, isn’t it?
Might be best to just deny anything and everything, right?

Duuuurrrrrpppppp

The polite way of saying “No Shit Sherlock!”

I know that the National Defence Act and the Queen’s Regulations and Orders may be rather dry and boring reads. But everyone should at least have some basic familiarity with these acts as they are the corner stones of a separate and parallel justice system that exists in this country.

From Twitter

https://twitter.com/JacquesGallant/status/1466739412595793921?s=20

As my father would often say to me “I’m going to make this very fucking crystal clear to you”. The Provost Marshal can’t take a piss without permission from their superiors up the Chain of Command. There is absolutely no way that the Provost Marshal will ever be able to investigate persons of a superior rank without the support of someone else higher up the chain of command hierarchy.

This is the Canadian Armed Forces, not your local police department.

These members are all “Soldiers first, police officers second”.

Rank is paramount.

Yes, the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence will prattle on uselessly about how the Provost Marshal and the CFNIS are at arms-length from the Chain of Command and can’t be influenced by the Chain of Command.

BULL

FUCKING

SHIT

There is absolutely no language in the National Defence Act that enshrines this imaginary independence just as there is no language in the National Defence Act that requires the military police to hand off child sexual assault investigations to the civilian police even though there are administrative orders and policy guidelines that say just that. As I’ve learnt over the last eleven years, if it isn’t in the National Defence Act or the Queen’s Regulations and Orders then it means absolutely nothing.

This is the link for the current National Defence Act:

https://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/n-5/index.html

If you read through this you will see that there is absolutely nothing in there that officially places the Provost Marshal, the investigators within the CFNIS, or even the investigators within the military police outside of the Chain of Command.

So what does the Provost Marshal do?:

https://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/n-5/page-3.html#docCont

Further down the same page there’s a very interesting part of the National Defence Act that says that the Vice Chief of Defence Staff may INSTRUCT the Provost Marshal on ANY investigation.

Pretty fucked up, eh?

So, the Vice Chief of Defence Staff can instruct the Provost Marshal on ANY investigation, and the Provost Marshal is supposed to make these instructions available to the public, that is unless the Provost Marshal (no doubt on order from the VCDS) decides that it would not be in the “best interests of the administration of justice” to make these instructions available to the public.

Here’s an interesting section of the National Defence Act that applies to every and ALL members of the Canadian Armed Forces including members of the military police, members of the CFNIS, and even the Provost Marshal. There are NO exceptions written or implied to this section.

https://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/n-5/page-7.html#h-375455

There’s a reason it says “lawful” and not “legal”

The term “lawful” still causes a lot of issues today. How is a subordinate supposed to know the legal validity of an order issued by a superior? There is no language contained within the National Defence Act that allows for a subordinate to ask the Judge Advocate General to provide legal opinion of a “lawful” command.

What this results in is a police department that is of very limited independence. This is a concern that the Military Police Complaints Commission has raised before in its submissions to the External Review of the Amendments to the National Defence Act.

And I truly and honestly believe that this lack of independence is what sank my complaint against P.S..

In 2020 the Military Police Complaints Commission revealed that the CFNIS had the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the July 18th, 1980 court martial transcripts in their possession which indicated that P.S. was known to the base military police, the CFSIU, and the Judge Advocate General as having sexually abused numerous children on Canadian Forces Base Namao. It was this abuse that lead to the investigation of Captain McRae and the discovery that Captain McRae had been luring children over to the base chapel and giving them alcohol prior to “fooling around with them”. In this paperwork was also McRae’s admission to his ecclesiastical trial that he had been sexually abusing children for years. So this covers his postings at CFB Kingston, CFB Portage La Prairie, CFS Holberg, and of course CFB Namao.

According to the MPCC in 2020 the CFNIS were aware that P.S. was arrested and convicted for molesting a young child in a town just north of CFB Petawawa in 1982, that P.S. was arrested and convicted for molesting a young boy in Manitoba in 1984, that P.S. was arrested and convicted for molesting a 9 year old boy on CFB Edmonton in 1985 when his family had been returned there, and that P.S. was arrested and convicted for molesting a young teen just after he had been kicked out of the military family housing on CFB Edmonton.

I have absolutely no doubt that it was a chain of command decision to not allow the CFNIS to bring charges against P.S.. And this wasn’t to protect P.S. so much as it was to protect the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence from humiliation.

As the MPCC have said in their submissions to the External Review, investigators with the CFNIS won’t even know that the chain of command has interfered with their investigation if the interference occurs high enough up the chain of command.

How do I think the Chain of Command interfered with the CFNIS investigation into my complaint against P.S.?

  • When the CFNIS took my complaint away from the EPS in March of 2011 I have no doubt that when they entered the name of P____ S________ into the SAMPIS database an alert came up instructing the CFNIS to refer this matter to the Provost Marshal or to the office of the Judge Advocate General for instruction.
  • Angus McRae was still alive at the commencement of the investigation. Angus McRae didn’t die until May 20th, 2011. This posed a very serious problem for the CFNIS. Due to the 3-year-time-bar as well as the Summary Investigation flaws that existed in the pre-1998 National Defence Act, charges could never be brought against Angus McRae no matter what the investigation uncovered while P.S. could be charged. The 3-year-time-bar and the Summary Investigation Flaw applied to service offences. Service offences included but were not limited to “Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault, Buggery, Sexual Intercourse with Female under 14, Sexual Intercourse with Female 14 to 16, Sexual Intercourse with stepdaughter or ward, Incest”
  • When I was interviewed by Mcpl. Hancock on March 31st, 2011 he kept asking me if there was anything else that I wanted to talk about, anything at all. As the MPCC said, the CFNIS had the CFSIU paperwork and the Court Martial transcripts in their possession during the investigation. I have no doubt that Hancock was instructed to “go fish” and see if he could find out what I knew or remembered about the Captain McRae court martial.
  • On May 3rd, 2011 Mcpl Cyr contacted me and tried relentlessly to get me to believe that P.S. was only 12 or 13 years old when he had been caught buggering me in the spring of 1980. The CFNIS knew exactly how old P.S. was as they had access to the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the July 18th, 1980 Court Martial transcripts. P.S. was born on June 20th, 1965. He was 14 years old in the spring of 1980 when he was caught buggering me. He was old enough under the Juvenile Delinquents Act to be charged with Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault, and Buggery. By insisting to me that P.S. was only 12 or 13 the CFNIS were trying to get me to believe that there was no way to legally bring charges against P.S..
  • On May 3rd, 2011 Mcpl Cyr also let slip about Captain McRae. If the CFNIS didn’t have the CFSIU paperwork or the July 18 1980 Court Martial transcripts already in their possession, how would Mcpl Cyr have known about a then 30 year ols court martial? I told Cyr about the 5 visits, what we’d do when P.S. took me over to see McRae, and that I have no recollection after P.S. and McRae would give me a tumbler of “sickly sweet grape juice”. I’d learn in 2020 that the military police and the CFSIU knew in 1980 that McRae was taking children to the rectory at the chapel and giving them alcohol.
  • On May 4th, 2011 Mcpl Cyr contacted me and told me the chapel never had a rectory, that the chapel that I indicated to him in a “google snapshot” of the base was a different chapel from when I lived on the base, that when I lived on the base the chapel was in a completely different place and that the padre lived off base.. Why was he so intent on proving that there was no connection between myself, P.S., and Captain McRae.
  • I would find out in 2013 that the CFNIS had scrubbed any and all mentions of Captain Father Angus McRae from the investigation paperwork.
  • There’s my father’s dubious statement given to the CFNIS which excludes any mention of the fact that my grandmother was living in our PMQ and was actively raising my brother and I. The CFNIS needed to ensure that P.S. could not be linked to my brother and I in a position of authority, such as having been our babysitter. If it had been established that P.S. had been acting in a position of authority over my brother and I and that P.S. sis in fact use this authority to abuse my brother and I this would have posed problems for him. Did my father give the statement he gave to cover his own ass, or did he give the statement he gave because he had been coerced? Forgetting about grandma is a pretty significant faux-pas.

Why would the Chain of Command interfere with the CFNIS investigation of KNOWN serial child sexual abusers (McRae and P.S.)?

My guess would be to avoid public humiliation, public scrutiny, and financial risk.

To this day the Canadian public and the Canadian media are oblivious for the most part to the fact that children lived on the various Canadian Forces Bases in Canada. These children were sometimes sexually abused by members of the Canadian Armed Forces. Due to transfers, and flaws in the National Defence Act, bringing charges would often prove very hard to do.

In the matter of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae, captain McRae was known by the Canadian Armed Forces to have molested well over 25 children on Canadian Forces Base Namao. The Canadian Armed Forces are also aware that during the court martial of Captain McRae in July of 1980 evidence was admitted that indicated that Captain McRae had sexually abused children for years.

During the Captain McRae court martial McRae’s defence counsel tried to use P.S.’s habit of sexually abusing children, as well as his recent psychiatric treatments to help him deal with his predisposition to sexually abuse children, as a means to discredit his testimony against Captain McRae.

For just about 40 years now the Canadian Forces have been able to keep this matter firmly under the rug. And the Canadian Forces are happy and content to keep it there.

I know of two persons who have committed suicide as a result of the CFB Namao child sexual abuse scandal.

I know of two persons who have attempted suicide as a result of the CFB Namao child sexual abuse scandal.

I know of others who have carried the scars of that abuse into their adult lives.

I am certain that I was not the only male child from Canadian Forces Base Namao to receive military “conversion therapy” as a result of the “homosexuality” that I had exhibited as a result of my abuse at the hands of P.S. and Captain McRae.

Also, I have absolutely no doubt that the Minister of National Defence, the Department of National Defence, and the Canadian Armed Forces do not want the Canadian public to discover that historical sexual crimes against children cannot be prosecuted against former service members due to the 3-year-time-bar and the Summary Investigation flaws that existed prior to 1998.

But I think the most significant reason as to why the CFNIS was instructed to run such a laughable investigation into my complaint against P.S. was that the Office of the Minister of National Defence wanted to avoid civil liability for the actions of their members on secure defence establishments for which the Canadian Forces owed a duty of security to those persons living on secured defence establishments.

If the CFNIS had been allowed to bring charges against P.S., how many of the other 25 children that P.S. and Captain McRae molested would have been allowed to bring civil actions against the Crown for damages for the abuse that occurred on a secure defence establishment in a building owned by the Canadian Forces which was orchestrated by an active officer of the Canadian Armed Forces regular forces?

I’m happy that the Minister of National Defence has moved all sexual assault investigations out into the civilian police. But not even the civilian police will be able to overcome the 3-year-time-bar or the Summary Investigation flaw.

And the civilian police will still run into the problem of trying to access the service records of members of the Canadian Forces who are under investigation for sexual assaults.

But yeah, there never was any independence of the Provost Marshal from the Chain of Command. Anyone who believed that the military police, the CFNIS, or the Provost Marshal from free from Chain of Command influence needs to come back to the world of reality.

A new Minister of National Defence

Will it be business as usual or will there be meaningful change?

So Canada now has its second ever female Minister of National Defence.

The first ever female Minister of National Defence was Kim Campbell back in 1993. She wasn’t the Minister of National Defence for long as she went on to become Canada’s first female Prime Minister when Brian Mulroney, facing massive backlash for matters such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, decided to resign from politics.

Canada’s newest Minister of National Defence is Anita Anand. She has an extensive resume as a lawyer and as a law instructor. She was also the Minister of Public Services and Procurement since 2019. So she’s not exactly green behind the ears. And more importantly she has absolutely no connection to the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence.

Will she be able to bring change to the Department of National Defence? When I first heard that Harjit Sajjan had been designated as the Minister of National Defence in 2015 after the Liberals won the election I thought for sure that he would be able to bring meaningful change to DND and the CF as he was a soldier that actually had done tours in Afghanistan and he used to be a detective with the Vancouver Police Department. I couldn’t have been more wrong about Sajjan. So I’m not holding my breath with Anand. She is a corporate lawyer, so she might understand the legal threat that examining historical child sexual abuse might prove to be for the Government of Canada.

Minister Anand has two choices.

She can use her legal background for the greater good.

Or she can use her legal background to erect walls and barricades around DND and the CF.

I’m going to have to write her a letter.

A reminder that my other blogs can be found at https://beeshive.ca or https://bobbiebees.ca

(featured image of Anita Anand by Joey Coleman https://www.flickr.com/photos/joeycoleman_ca/51399570220/
image licences by https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ )