On Thursday July 30th, 2020 I was interviewed at the Vancouver Police Department headquarters at 2120 Cambie Street. This was in realtion to another even of abuse that occured on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
So far my ratio with the CFNIS is 50/50.
P.S. went down in flames. I don’t think I’ll ever ascertain exactly why.
Sure, the Earl Ray Stevens matter didn’t end in prosecution, but it did convince a judge that there was sufficient evidence to warrant a trial in Ontario Superior Court.
Earl died of bladder cancer before we made it to court.
This new event involved a man in the sauna at the base pool on CFB Namao.
I did mention the man in the sauna to Sgt. Damon Tenaschuk in 2018. But at that point in time I didn’t have any idea of who this man was.
Back in 2011, when I decided that I was tired of being blamed for what had occured on CFB Namao, I inquired with the Edmonton Police Service how I would go about laying charges seeing as how the CF Military Police had twice previous stated that they couldn’t become involved becuase P.S. was a civilian at the time of the offences. In 2011 the matter got kicked on over to the CFNIS.
After my interview with Mcpl Hancock relating to the events involving my babysitter, I decided that I was going to also go after Earl Stevens, and then after Earl, I was going to go after a guy named A.M..
Out of five men from my childhood that I was sexually abused by, A.M. is the only civilian with absolutely no connection to the Canadian Armed Forces.
Sadly, the 2011 CFNIS investigation went off the rails right from the word go.
This would delay my complaint against Earl.
I can only wonder if the 2011 CFNIS investigation had been handled better and I had been able to make my complaint against Earl earlier would have been able to face him in court?
Looking back now, I know that my father’s statement to the CFNIS was a major contributing factor to the CFNIS running my complaint into the ground.
My father stated the following to the CFNIS in 2011:
1) We never had a babysitter on CFB Namao.
2) Our grandmother only looked after us for a very brief period of time.
3) Some random woman from across the street would keep an eye on my brother and I when he needed someone to look after us.
4) I only contacted him when I needed money.
Basically, the CFNIS concluded from my father’s statement that I was just some loser making up lies in an attempt to juice the Canadian Forces for money.
And this narrative also fit with an obvious desire within the DND and CF hierarchy to keep the spectre of child sexual abuse involving the Canadian Forces clergy dead and buried in the past.
In 2011, I had absolutely no idea that P.S. had sued the Department of National Defence, and that he had settled out of court with DND.
Even though I lived on Canadian Forces Base Namao during the P.S. / Captain Angus McRae affair, I had absolutely no idea of the true extent of what happened on that base from 1978 until 1980.
In the original 2011 CFNIS investigation the CFNIS made it very clear that they had evidence that there was no babysitter, and that there were various other inconsistencies with my story that just weren’t adding up.
You can bet your bottom dollar that someone up the chain of command knew about the settlement, knew about the recent events involving retired Canadian Armed Forces officer Brigadier General Roger Bazin, and came to the conclusion that it would help the Canadian Forces if I was a “societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the Canadian Forces”, and that I was doing this solely for money. And thus once my father made his statement, that sealed the deal and my complaint was dead.
No, you might say “Bobbie, how on Earth would an investigator with the CFNIS be able to link your complaint to an out of court settlement that occured many years before?”
Simple.
At work, I’ve implemented a database program that all of my subordinates use to record their daily activities in the power plant.
I also have another database program that runs the preventative maintenance program that schedules the maintenance for the equipment in the plant.
All I have to do is type in plain English keywords into the search bar for these programs, and they will bring up the relevant results. The first program can even list the number of occurences for a specific search word, and indicate who wrote that particular entry.
The CFNIS use a program called SAMPIS. I was given a very brief explanation and demonstartion of the system by an investigator from the Office of the Infomation Commissioner when the OIC was reviewing a complaint of mine related to an Access to Information Request from the CF Provost Marshal.
SAMPIS is the record keeping system for the Canadian Forces Military Police and the CFNIS.
It has search functions.
So, there’s no doubt that SAMPIS will contain references to my fomer babysitter Mr. P.S.
I have absolutely no doubt that I am not the first military dependant to go after Mr. P.S. for his activities on CFB Namao or any of the other bases he lived on like CFB Petawawa.
When I spoke with the RCMP Constable in 2012, he did say that in addition to the three sexual assaults mentioned in an August 1985 Edmonton Journal article, Mr. P.S. had many more charges relating to child sexual assault from 1985 to 1999. How many of these charges were former military dependants?
Did a flag pop up on a computer when a CFNIS investigator in Edmonton keyed Mr. P.S.’s name into the system that directed the investigator to make contact with a superior officer or an officer in the Judge Advoate General’s office?
In 2006, the Canadian Armed Forces changed the policy for obtaining baptismal records for persons whom had been baptised as children on the various Canadian Forces Bases in Canada. The language in the memo specifially highlighted the concern of lawsuits being brought against the various archdiocese in Canada as being the driving force behind these changes.
So, I’m beginning to realize that my complaint against P.S. failed due to the perfect storm of circumstances beyond my control.
P.S. had just settled his civil action with the Department of National Defence
Roger Bazin had just been arrested and charged for molesting a young child on Canadian Forces Base Borden when Bazin was a chaplain in the base in the early 1970s.
Colonel Russell Williams had just brough massive disgrace to the Canadian Forces. What wasn’t stressed during Williams’ trialis that most of the underwear that he stole belonged to young adolescent girls. Also, Williams also had a sizeable kiddie porn collection on his computer.
Col Tim Grubb had just released a report highlight a “much higher incidence of sexual crimes against children in the defence community.”
And along come I alleging that Mr. P.S. had been abusing my brother, myself, and at least four other kids that I was aware of during the exact same time period that Captain McRae had molested well over 25 children on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
So, it was obvious to the brass within the Military Police Group that I was obviously just doing this for money.
And when they spoke to my father, they hit paydirt.
I’ll never know why my father said what he said.
My brother is convinced that pressure was applied to my father to get him to say what he said.
I don’t think that’s what happened.
Richard was extremely bull-headed. Unless he wanted to do something, you were never going to get him to do it.
Richard knew about the babysitter.
When things were going wrong in the PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Downsview, Richard would often cite what I had allowd the babysitter to do as being the cause of what was going wrong.
In 2006 when I had a telephone conversation with Richard, he named the babysitter all by himself, I didn’t have to prod him for the name.
In 2013, whenI examined him for Federal Court, he readily admitted that there had been a babysitter in the house, he futher clarified that it was his mother who hired him.
In 2006, Richard had pleaded with me to understand that it wasn’t him that hired the babysitter. It was his mother. He told her not to hire him, he told her he had bad feelings about the boy.
So, why did he tell the CFNIS in 2011 that we never had a babyistter?
Well, Richard died in January of 2017, so that’s an answer that we’ll never have.
In the school year of 1985 – 1986 I was in grade 8 at Pierre Laporte Junior High in what used to be North York, Ontario.
Active Surplus was a dealer down on Queen Street West between University and Spadina that sold new electronic components along with used surplus electronic equipment.
Active Surplus had just received a bunch of Pioneer Video Laser Disc players from New Way Sales. New Way Sales was a video game distributor that had been located up on Rexdale Blvd. New Way Sales was owned by brothers Paul and Jerry Janda.
The laser disc players had been removed from a bunch of Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace, Astron Belt, and other laser disc based arcade games that had been scrapped when they reached the end of their useful life.
Active Surplus was selling these for $50 a piece. I grabbed 10 of them. Bob Becker drove his cube van down and we loaded them into the van and drove them up to the base and brought them into the house.
I would eventually get 3 of these players working, but the rest I scrapped.
In reality I had bought these players for one reason, and that was for the laser tubes and the optics. Making them work for playing movies was never the goal.
The fact that I did get three of the players working probably indicated that I wasn’t quite as dumb as some people made me out to be.
Radio Electronics was a magazine that I used to buy from Coles bookstore downtown. Popular Electronics was the other. These two magazines were the primary source of my electronics education.
Both of these magazines always had projects to build. One project was a made from scratch power supply that would strike and arc in a 5mW helium neon laser tube, and then drop the current and voltage down to a safe level once the arc was established.
Each of these Pioneer laser disc players came with a 5mW Toshiba helium-neon laser tube, a collimator lens, two surface reflecting mirrors, and two surface reflecting mirrors mounted on voice coils.
The two surface reflecting mirrors mounted on voice coils were the tangential and radial correction mirrors.
Tangential / Radial tracking mirrors.
The manner in which these two mirrors were mounted allowed them to scan in an x-y pattern with one mirror moving the beam in a horizontal direction and the other mirror moving the beam in a vertical direction.
Because they were moving a laser beam around, a tiny bit of movement of these mirrors would cause a significant amount of deflection of the beam.
The voice coil on these mirrors was 8 ohms. 8 ohms was the perfect impedence for just about any power amplifier at the time.
I built a small dual channel amplifier with 25 watts per channel. 25 watts was enough power to make the mirrors move fast enough, but not enough power to overheat the voice coils.
I could feed audio into the amplifier and have the laser project odd patterns on the wall to the beat of the music. I could feed the output of a function generator and have the laser generate shapes on the wall based on the type of waveform, the amplitude of the waveform, and the frequency of the waveform.
And I could also feed the x-y voltages from a Vectrex video game console into the amplifier and I could play video games on the wall.
Vectrex was an interesting game console from around 1982. It displayed graphics by actually drawing lines on the monitor tube as opposed to how conventional video games draw images. I won’t get too detailed, but think of games like Asteroids, Omega Race, Tempest, Major Havoc, Armor Attack, Space Fury, etc. These games had a very unique look due to the way the CPU drew the images on the screen. The Vectrex console drew x-y graphics as opposed to raster graphics.
Mr. Jonathan Bowles was my grade 8 science teacher.
The first couple of times that I had taken the laser to school and set it up in science class and just bounced the beam around the room he was more than impressed. But once I got the Vectrex interfaced with the laser, he was astonished. I could set the laser up in the cafeteria / auditorium of the school and project the Vectrex images on the screen.
The first time Mr. Bowles had talked to my father about the laser, Richard blew up at me at home.
“Why the fuck did you take that to school?”
“Do you know how much fucking trouble you’re going to get me into?”
“Why can’t you just be quiet in school, do the fucking work the teachers tell you to, and stop showing the fuck off, what is wrong with you?”
“Tell your teachers that I work during the day and to stop bothering me at work, I don’t have the time for their bullshit.”
The next science class, Mr. Bowles asked me if my father had spoken to me.
I asked about what.
Mr. Bowles said that my father seemed quite pleased that I was taking an interest in science.
By this time in my life I was begining to notice that my father would often say one thing at home, and then something completely different to other people.
As per my father’s instructions, I stopped taking my laser to school for science class.
Mr. Bowles had told me once that this laser was something that I should enter into the National Science Fair in Ottawa, and that he’d be happy to talk to my father about this.
I pleaded with Mr. Bowles to never call my father again, that my father was upset about the last phone call and that my father said that none of my teachers had better interrupt him at work,
Mrs. Donskov, my grade 7 music teacher from Elia Junior High had made somewhat a similar mistake. She saw that I could keep rhythm fairly well, and she suggested that I take up bass guitar. When she called Richard to suggest a local music shop that could finance a guitar if money was tight, he exploded.
So, Mrs. Donskov did the next best thing, she arranged for me to be able to take one of the school’s bass guitars and an amplifier home to practice on the weekends. She’d even go so far as to drop the guitar and amp off on Friday and pick it up on Monday. When Richard saw me carrying the guitar and Mrs. Donskov carrying the amplifier towards our house on Canadian Forces Base Downsview, he blew up. He threatened to have her arrested by the military police if she ever though of doing something stupid like this again.
Mrs. Donskov suggested that maybe my father could set me up with drum lessons from a local teacher. Nope.
And then there was Mr. Ford, my grade 8 music teacher from Pierre Laporte. This time Mr. Ford was convinced that I had a knack for sequencing music on the new MIDI control system.
Looking back, I know a few things about my father that help me to understand what his issues were.
The first issue that he had was his grade school education.
When I examined my father for Federal Court in the summer of 2013, I asked him what school he attended as a child. He put down St. John School, Fort McMurray, Alberta. I have yet to receive confirmation, but the school Richard named also shows up on a list of schools covered under the Indian Residential settlement program. The particular school my father attended is listed as inelligable for receving settlement funds solely due to the fact the school was only the Indian Day Program and it did not have the the residential component.
Richard was half Swampy Cree and half Irish. This made him a half-breed under government definition. And yes, that was the actual legal definition for people like my father. The federal government didn’t start using small “m” metis to describe people like my father until the late ’60s and early ’70s. The Indian Day Program was leaps and bounds behind the standard public school. The Indian Day Program was only meant to teach the kids that attended the absolute basics as the government of Canada didn’t think that these kids were going to become much more than farm labourers or manual labourers.
Was Richard’s experience in the Indian Day Program the reason why he despised my school teachers so much?
I think Richard’s experience in school as a child is what poisoned him towards my teachers and my counsellors.
Cost was another issue that my father often had.
As long as a program didn’t cost him anything, or cost him very little, he was all for it.
I could join Sea Cadets in 1984, because the Canadian Armed Forces basically picked up all of the costs associated with cadets. My uniform was free, my boots were free, parade night and weekend trips to CFB Borden were free. It didn’t cost him a single nickle.
A trip to Ottawa to enter my laser into the National Science Fair ? That would cost a lot of money. There’d be the cost of the hotel room. The cost of food. The cost of this, the cost of that.
Get me a computer capable of working with MIDI? Again, that would cost money, so that was out of the question.
Buy me a bass guitar and an amplifier and lessons? Christ, forget the lessons, just buy me a guitar and amplifier? Again, this would cost money so the answer would be no.
Paid professional drum lessons? Nope.
And as he told his buddy Jacque Choquette, the only reason that Richard kept my brother and I is so that he could control the costs.
Yes, it is true that Richard did get my brother and I season passes for Canada’s Wonderland for the 1983 season and the 1984 season. But these passes were $29.95 at the time for unlimited visits.
Canada’s Wonderland served, as my brother would say, Richard’s discount babysitting service.
Richard, or Sue, would drop me and my brother off at 08:00 just about every weekend and weekday that we weren’t in school with the exception of the summer we spent in Edmonton in ’84.
We’d each be given $10 for the day.
Let me tell you, $10 doesn’t go very far in an overpriced amusement park.
Richard or Sue would pick us up at 22:00 just after the park closed. We’d have to wait in the passenger drop off / pick up area.
The novelty of Canada’s Wonderland wore off for me really fucking quick. I used to find corners of that park where I could hide and go to sleep in order to pass the time.
It got so bad that I used to pray that I would get kidnapped and then Richard would have to explain to the police why he was dropping his kids off unattended at the park all day long.
This is one of the reasons I had to do a double take when I read Richard’s statement that he had given to the CFNIS in 2011. He claimed that the school wanted to go on a trip to Canada’s Wonderland, but that he didn’t want me to go because I had been bad, and that the school had threatened him that not letting me go could be considred “child abuse”. Fucking seriosuly? This is the guy who used Canada’s Wonderland like a “discount babysitting service”. So yeah, there definately was something wrong with Richard.
What exactly that problem is, I don’t think we will ever know.
During my July 30th 2020 interview with the CFNIS, as I read off my statement, a question kept popping up in the back of my head. If Richard was so disinterested in raising me, who did?
Of course, there’s my mother, but she only lived with me until I was 5.
After that, I saw her very sporadically. Two or three times tops until the summer of 1990 when I was invited by my father to move back to Edmonton with him. Marie was living on an acreage by Wabamun with her husband Art.
My uncle Doug showed up at our PMQ just after we moved back to CFB Griesbach. He brought his wife Yvonne and their new baby.
Doug took me aside and said that my mother was living on the outskirts of Edmonton, and that if I wanted to meet her, he could arrange a meeting, but that I could not tell Richard as Doug was afraid that Richard would go off the deep end.
Marie and I met at Northgate Mall in July of 1990. She definitely wasn’t what I remembered from when I was a kid. When I moved away from Edmonton unexpectedly in February of 1992 she had a major meltdown when I called her from Vancouver. We didn’t speak again until 2013 when I had to track her down to check on one of Richard’s responses to my Federal Court examination.
What struck me the most about her was her unchecked racism and her homophobia. She worked for the Alberta Report at the time. When I met her again in 2013 her racism was still as strong as ever. In a way I’m happy that I didn’t grow up with her. But at the same time Richard and Grandma were anything but a cakewalk themselves.
Racist and small-minded or psychologically unhinged and prone to anger outbursts……….. that was my choice for parents.
Doug also wanted me to get my metis papers, but even he said that he doubted Richard would agree to that as Richard would have to sign the papers.
My metis papers really wouldn’t be worth anything, other than to be able to say that I had first nation blood. And that’s about it. This is what Doug got his papers for. There would have been no tax benefits, or any other benefit similar to what a person with full status would have. I think Doug realized how much the Gill family tree had been shaped by the treatment of the First Nations. Richard resented his First Nations heritage.
I guess that outside of my grandmother, Uncle Doug would have been the first person outside of my immediate family that helped raise my brother and I.
Uncle Doug was more “behind the scenes” than my grandmother.
Even though my father and my uncle Doug grew up in the same household, there was a world of difference between Doug and Richard.
Richard, for lack of a better explanation, was an uptight asshole who wouldn’t know how to have fun if his life depended on it. Richard’s world was full of sarcasm, put-downs, disappointment, and lies.
Richard was also a very impatient man. Red lights, slow drivers, slow bank machines, line-ups, etc, would drive Richard batty.
Richard’s anger driving, which was only amplified when he got his 1983 Ford 5 Litre Mustang GT, is probably what scared me away from driving cars. Since I was 16 years old, I’ve only driven cars for 4 years in the last 33 years. I riden motorcycles for 6 out of the last 33 years.
When I was younger, I could often feel Richard’s rage living inside. Thankfully, the longer I was away from Richard, the more Richard’s toxic anger subsided. Nowadays I can ride my motocycle and feel none of Richard’s anger or rage.
Uncle Doug on the other hand was a “happy go lucky” kind of guy. Uncle Doug drank nowhere near as heavily as Richard or Grandma.
I don’t think I ever caught Uncle Doug lying. For that matter, grandma didn’t lie either. Where Richard got his penchant for lying is anyone’s guess.
And let’s be very clear. Richard didn’t tell little innocent white lies. He would tell such bald faced lies that you couldn’t help but wonder why no one questioned him on these lies. But I’ve learnt in this life that it’s often easier to not raise a fuss about lies and liars. Just ignore the lies, and don’t involve yourself with the liar any more. This might explain why Richard had so very few friends.
Remember, Richard was found to tell conflicing stories from one meeting to another, and he was also found to tell people that he perceived to be in positions of authority what he thought they wanted to hear.
Uncle Doug also didn’t have the anger or the temper that Richard had.
Richard and Uncle Doug were night and day different.
Doug worked up in the oil fields as a cook. He’d be out for 6 weeks and back for 2.
Uncle Doug lived in the basement of our PMQ on CFB Namao. He had a cot and a sleeping area set up in the corner of the basement.
Maybe it was because Doug had no expenses and was making good money in the oil patch that he wasn’t adverse to splurging on grandma, my brother, and me when he’d come back to town.
Grandma was a decent enough cook. Grandma is the one who got me addicted to HP Sauce, Lee & Perrins Worchester sauce. And it’s because of grandma that my eggs to this date aren’t complete without paprika on them. Richard could cook hamburger helper and Kraft dinner and just about anything from a can, but beyond that, he had no cooking skills.
Starting on CFB Griesbach, after grandma moved out, McDonald’s and KFC also became staples. Probably explains why I can’t even stomach the smell of those two places, let alone eat there.
I don’t think there’s a single cullinary tradition that I picked up from Richard.
Doug on the other hand could cook. When he was home from the camps it was steak dinner, pork chops, chicken, fresh fish, you name it.
As I found out in 2013, the presents that my brother and I received from our mother from 1977 until 1981 came from Doug and not from our mother. Sure, Marie had selected the gifts, but she didn’t have the money to buy the gifts, so Uncle Doug would by them for us on her behalf.
When we moved down to CFB Griesbach from CFB Namao, I inherited my grandmother’s old stereo system when Doug bought her a brand new one. Now, this wasn’t a cheap thing, it was a fairly decent system. Uncle Doug started me on my first record collection. Richard was stuck on country. Doug on the other hand was into just about everything. Big Band, the Beatles, Paul McCartney, Joan Jett, Henry Mancini, Waylon Jennings, Dolly Parton, Kris Kristopherson, movie soundtracks, etc.
When we had our surpise move from CFG Greisbach to CFB Downsview, Richard threw all of my belongings into the trash. This was no doubt retribution for causing the family to have to relocate in order to avoid my apprehension by Alberta Social Services.
My paternal grandmother raised my brother and I from 1977 until 1981. In 1981 she moved out of our PMQ on CFB Griesbach and moved into her own apartment in Edmonton. I would have been just shy of my tenth birthday when she moved out. Grandma and Sue didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. The one nice thing about grandma moving out is that I never again had to step foot in a church. Sue said that if we didn’t want to go to church again, we didn’t have to.
Having an after school job at a young age wasn’t really that out of the ordinary considering what home life was like. The rule back then is we had to be out of the house unless it was supper time or bedtime. Richard didn’t have a lot of patience for listening to kids making any type of noise.
The food in the house was kept locked up. We could eat when we were fed. Outside of that, if I wanted to eat, the food was going to have to come from somewhere. So yeah, my after school and weekend jobs were for more than just my amusement.
After grandma moved out, my brother and I would be dropped off in the morning at the base daycare centre where we’d have to wait until it was time to go to school. As bad as things had been on CFB Namao, having to spend an hour every morning at the daycare centre until it was time for school was the ultimate in humiliation.
And yes, most of the kids at Major General Griesbach School knew that I was going to daycare in the morning even through I was in grade 4 at the time.
After school my brother and I would have to wait on the front stoop of the house until Richard and Sue got home from work. The first house key I would get was around 1986, after my bedroom had been moved into the basement on CFB Downsview. That would put me at about 14. In Edmonton in the middle of winter, sitting on the stoop could be damn cold. So it was easier to head over to the mall and stay warm. Other kids on the base knew who I was and what I had been caught doing with the babysitter on CFB Namao, so there weren’t too many homes that were friendly towards me on CFB Griesbach.
Looking back, I don’t ever remember any other kids on that base having to wait outside for their parents to come home. And looking back, the few friends that I did have weren’t allowed to come out and “play” on cold days.
Even after Richard and Sue came home, unless there was homework to do, it was out the door until supper, and then after supper it was out the door until bedtime. The weekends were much the same. Out the door first thing in the morning, come back for lunch, out until supper, out until bedtime.
And this wasn’t just the typical “playing outside is healthy for you” type of attitude. This was “I don’t care how goddamn cold it is outside, get the fuck out of the house and leave me alone” type of attitude. So yeah, it was better to get a job, no matter how young I was and no matter how menial the job was, as at least this would give me something to do.
And as allowances were something unheard of in Richard’s house, the only way I was going to get money was to earn it by working outside of the home.
When I read Richard’s statement to the CFNIS, I nearly choked. He told the CFNIS that I only called him when I needed money. Hell would have to freeze over before I’d ever call him for money.
As a kid I learnt of two things that I was never going to get from Richard. Admiration was one. Money was the other.
When we lived at Stanley Greene Park on CFB Downsview, he wouldn’t buy me a bus pass to get to school. Stanley Greene Park was close to Keele St. and Wilson Ave. Elia Jr, High was on Sentinel Road. Stanley Greene Park no longer exists, so I’ve used Downsview Secondary School as the start point as it was adjacent to Stanley Greene Park.
My counsellor was concerned about the distance that I had to walk, especially in the winter.
Richard didn’t care.
The program that I was involved in at Elia was unique to the North York Board of Education. It was for gifted students that were interested in technology.
By transferring to Pierre Laport, I was within walking distance, but I lost out on the technology immersion program.
All for the sake of a student bus pass. But that was Richard. That’s just the way the way it was.
And I think the more important aspect of these job, no matter how menial they were, is that they gave me a sense of purpose that was sorely lacking in my own home.
A simple “Thank you” goes a long way for a kid from a broken and dysfunctional home. Under no circumstance would Richard have ever thanked me for anything. I was 1000 times more likely to get a sarcastic putdown or verbal abuse than a simple acknowledgement or even a thank you for having done something.
None of the people that I worked for treated me anywhere like Richard did. They liked me. They liked the work I did. They appreciated me. This was something that Richard just wasn’t capable of.
There was Terry. Not Captain Terry Totzke. This Terry was the manager of a pet shop over in North Town Mall. I used to clean the cages and fish tanks. In return, Terry set me up with a fair-sized aquarium. I remember that he also paid me money, enough that I could buy a hot dog and orange drink a couple of times a week and still have money left over to play video games at the arcade in the mall. I would have been about 9 when I started this after school/weekend job.
Next up were the Casson family. Jackie, Bonnie, and Colleen Casson ran a small pizza shop in Kingsway Garden Mall called Pizza Plus. They also had a second location down in the Cadillac Fairview Centre in downtown Edmonton. I used to help out with washing pans, bringing supplies up from the storage rooms, and other menial tasks. The best thing about working for the Cassons was the food. I could have as many slices of pizza as I could handle.
I started working for the Cassons while I lived on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach, so I’m thinking the spring of 1982. I used to walk from the base at 97th Street and 137th Ave down to Kingsway Garden Mall at Kingsway and 109th. I worked for them from the spring of 1982 until the summer of 1985. I know that when I was in the Westfield program we went to a Boston Pizza shop on 118th Ave for a school trip to make pizzas. I already knew how to measure, cut and roll the dough, as well as how to prep the pan. Fun day. Jackie was the matriarch of the family. She had a house with a swimming pool.
I’m pretty sure that it was Colleen that had the Triumph TR-7 sports car. She’d take me for rides on the roads around Edmonton when Richard had sent me up to Edmonton for the summer of 1984 and 1985 while we were living on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario.
When Richard invited me to move back to Edmonton in June of 1990, one of the first places I went to visit was the Pizza Plus in Kingsway Garden Mall. The Cassons had sold off the business and were no longer involved with Pizza Plus.
When I lived on CFB Downsview in North York, I had gotten into the habit of dumpster diving in the industrial parks north of the base. I forget how I had discovered this, but there were a lot of electronic manufacturers up there and they would throw out heaps of electronic scrap. The perfect place for a kid like me with an interest in electronics to pick up bits and pieces for electronic projects.
One day I was going through the bin behind Colour Wheel Electronics. Colour Wheel was a distributor for the very illegal Quarter Horse gambling games. This was an interesting machine. I had seen these in the pool halls around the base. The old retired guys would pump quarter after quarter into these machines. These games had various pre-recorded horse races on a video laserdisc. When a race started the machine would playback different segments of different races so that the race would end with a random winner.
The owner of the company caught me going through his dumpster and asked me what I was doing. Zellman was his name. I told him that I was looking for electronic parts to build projects with. He asked me some electronics related questions, and I more or less gave him the answers that he liked. But he said that I was far too young to work for him, so he passed my name and phone number onto another company that might be able to let me work in their shop on the weekend in trade for parts and components.
The person he referred me to wasn’t interested, solely because being 13 I obviously couldn’t drive, and most of his work was out in the field. So this route operator passed my name on to another guy. The next guy was Vincent Chong. Vincent was a swimming coach at the University of Toronto, but he also ran a small video amusement company with a business partner named Ravi. I forget where Vincent lived, but Ravi lived over near Coxwell station north of the Danforth.
Vincent and Ravi had almost no technical skills between the two, so when I came along I was a godsend. Now, I won’t bullshit you. My electronic skills were self-taught. Even though my father was involved with avionics and other electronic trades in the Canadian Forces, I picked up bugger all from him. I did however have access to all of his Canadian Forces training manuals and McGraw-Hill books education books.
I also made frequent use of Radio Electronic and Popular Electronic magazines.
For clarification, Richard as smart as he was, wasn’t able to teach. To him, I was too fucking stupid. Or so he said.
In reality, he just didn’t have any type of parenting skills. His father had fled his family early on and grandma took Richard and Doug back to Fort McMurray in Alberta. And grandma also had bugger all of parenting skills. I guess the Residential Schools were so intent on beating the Indian out of the kids that they forgot to teach the kids how to function in society.
And Richard had no ability to pass on knowledge. If you asked him a simple question, and you didn’t understand his explanation, he would get greatly upset. So yeah, one learnt not to ask Richard anything. I was just much more peaceful that way.
While I was working for Vincent and Ravi, I became involved with Bob Becker. Bob owned two companies. One was Trans-American Construction, the other was Trans-American Video Amusements. I don’t know what Trans-American Construction did, but Trans-American Video Amusements was his video game route.
Bob had exclusive agreements with Hasty Market to place two video games into each store in the Windsor to Toronto corridor. Bob also had an exclusive agreement with Holiday Inn to place video games into all of the hotels from Niagara Falls to Oshawa. There were also other locations that Bob had, mainly convenience stores and donut shops.
Bob always wore tan khakis, a cowboy hat, and cowboy boots. Almost everyone called him the Jewish Cowboy. Bob never liked my father very much. Bob said that he couldn’t understand why my father wasn’t the least bit concerned that I would stay at the workshop until late at night and almost all day on the weekends. When I left school after the start of grade 9, Richard started charging me $200.00 rent for my bedroom. This blew Bob away. He couldn’t understand what Richard was doing.
Bob was upset that Richard didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t going to school anymore. Richard couldn’t understand that this wasn’t the 1960s anymore and that grade 8 drop outs couldn’t just walk into a 30-year military career.
Bob once got furious with my father. Bob said that after everything he had been through and after all that was taken away from him, here was my father, not showing an ounce of concern.
I never knew why Bob seemed to always get upset with my father.
It wouldn’t be until the summer of 1987 that I would discover the reason why Bob was upset with my father.
Bob had an agreement with the Canadian National Exhibition to supply video games to one of the pavilions during the CNE. We had already made two trips from the workshop down to the CNE and we were now on our third trip. Bob was wearing his long-sleeved Kahki top with undershirt like he always did. It had to be in the high 20s with a typical high Toronto humidity. I kept pestering Bob all day to put on something more appropriate least he die of heatstroke. Bob would get annoyed every time I asked him.
We had just turned off Keele Street and entered the collector lanes of the 401. We moved over to the express lanes. Once we were settled in the lane, Bob looked over at me and said, “ok smart ass, if I show you something will you stop telling me to put on a short-sleeved shirt?” I said “sure”. He looked at me again and he said “If I show you this, you keep it to yourself and you don’t tell anyone what you’ve seen, this is between you and me, understand?”
Bob grabbed the steering wheel with his left hand and used his right hand to unbutton his left cuff. He then rolled up his sleeve to his elbow.
Going to school in North York, we learned about World War II, Anne Frank, the Nazis, and the concentration camps. We learnt about how the Nazis tattooed the prisoners in the concentration camps. But I had never seen anyone in person with an actual concentration camp tattoo. And Bob had a concentration camp tattoo. That’s why he never wore short-sleeved shirts no matter how hot it got.
On the way down to the CNE Bob would explain that he was from Poland. Around 1940 his family had been rounded up and sent to the camps. When the Allies finally liberated the camps in 1945, he was 14. He was also the only survivor from his family. His parents and his brothers and sisters all died in the camps.
Bob said that this is what made him angry with my father. Bob had everything in his life torn away from him, and yet he still made sure that his daughter had everything she wanted and more. The fact that my father didn’t care just drove Bob around the bend.
By late 1987, I had started working for another video game company.
This company was a side business owned by three Toronto Police Service officers. Ed from Central Traffic Unit, Dirk from 14 Division, and Gary from 52 Division. There was a fourth partner, Bruce. Bruce wasn’t a police officer. Bruce had been Ed’s childhood friend when they grew up together in Montreal.
Ed, Dirk, Gary, and Bruce owned a company called Warlock Amusements that changed its name to Rainbow Games after they bought the Classic Billiards pool hall in the plaza across from Canadian Forces Base Downsview.
I had met Ed earlier in the summer of 1987 at a donut shop down on Bloor St. where he had been trying to install a paddle control into an Arkanoid video game. Ed had no idea what he was doing. So I introduced myself and wired the controller up for him. He asked me what I wanted for helping him. I asked for a carton of smokes, a black coffee, and a donut. He obliged me and took my phone number down.
I forget when exactly I started smoking. I know that I didn’t smoke in 1985 when Richard sent my brother and I up to Edmonton to spend the summer at our grandmother’s place. I’d have to say that I was smoking by the summer of ‘86. All I know is that my brother actually started smoking before I did.
Richard was okay with my smoking so long as I didn’t take his smokes. If he was out of smokes I was expected to share my smokes with him. We both smoked Player’s Extra Light. My brother smoked Du Maurier. Richard wouldn’t smoke Du Maurier no matter how bad of a nic-fit he was having. Richard’s helping himself to my smokes got so bad that I ended up switching to Player’s unfiltered just so he’d stop taking my smokes.
Around December of 1987 I got a call from Ed asking if I’d be interested in coming to work for him. Ed was the next person that I worked for that picked up on the fact that things weren’t right at home. The fact that I preferred sleeping in the shop overnight coupled with the fact that my father never once came looking for me told Ed that something wasn’t quite right.
Ed was on good terms with a few of the customers at the pool hall, and so he started asking around if anyone had a room for rent that I could move into. By January of 1988 I was out of the house and living on my own. It was a room in a four-bedroom house. The best thing was the rent here was $50 / month cheaper than what I was paying at home. Ed, Dirk, Gary, and Bruce were okay guys.
As soon as I moved out of the house, Ed took me to a notary public so that I could attest that I was living on my own and supporting myself. This was so that I could get my learner’s permit. Once I had my learner’s permit, I was allowed on occasion to drive the company pickup truck as long as someone else was with me. Ed would also teach me how to drive in his Hyundai Pony. After I got my license, Ed would send me on service calls in his car.
It would take a chapter all on its own for me to detail all of the exploits I went on at Rainbow Games.
But I will share two.
Ed was probably the first employer that picked up that I wasn’t into girls.
Rainbow Games had a juke box, a pair of coin operated pool tables and a couple of pinball machines in a strip club out by the airport near the 427 in Toronto. I had to go service one of the pinball machines. This was before I had my driver’s licence, so Ed gave me a drive. The club manager was adament that I was not coming in under any circumstance. A deal was made between Ed and the manager. I’d go in through the rear entrance, to the machine, service the machine, and then out of the club without catching even the smallest glimpse of flesh. The pinball machine was in a part of the club not anywhere near the stage. So the club manager was okay with this. Well, that night would end up being the first time that I had been bought a beer in a strip club. That night would also be the first time (and only time) that I ever had a private lap dance…….
Yeah, my lack of interest in the girls sealed the deal for Ed.
The next event was probably the one and only time that someone has ever kneed a police officer in the balls and walked away without being arrested.
One day at work, Ed told me that I had to go with Dirk down to Ciro’s Cafe on Bloor. Apparently there was a cockroach infestation and I had to pull out the jukebox and the two counter top video games. Dirk drove me down in the pickup truck. Instead of parking the truck, Dirk said that he was going to circle the block and when I brought the machines out he’d stop and we’d load the games and jukebox in the back of the truck. “Hurry up and be quick” was all he said.
I went in and removed the cash boxes from the machines and started splitting the money 60/40.
Julie, the owner of Ciro’s asked me what was going on, this wasn’t the usual collection day and it was Dirk that usually did the collections.
I told her that Ed said we had to pull the machines out because of the cockroach infestation.
Julie looked puzzled and said that her pest control contract was up to date and that the last inspection showed nothing for cockroaches.
I told her to call Ed, maybe he knew what was up.
I finished counting the coins and gave Julie the location’s 40% of the cashbox total.
I unplugged the Ms. Pac-Man countertop and picked it up. I walked backwards towards the inside door and pushed it open with my back. Julie reached past me to hold the door. As I moved backwards towards the outside door, the smile disappeared from Julie’s face and was replaced by a look of terror. I felt the door being pulled open. Somebody yelled “14 DIVISION, THIS IS A RAID”. As the first police officer squeezed past me I felt the butt of his rifle crush into my crotch.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that crushing pain. I was down in the vestibule of the restaurant as more officers poured into the restaurant past me. There were the obligatory kicks as the officers rushed past. After the officers finished rushing into the restaurant I tried crawling out the front door. I was quickly grabbed by one of the officers and dragged back into the restaurant. I was pushed up against the front window and told to spread my arms and legs and not to move.
I watched as Dirk drove by pretending not to see what was going on.
After I was released I caught the Keele bus back up to the poolhall.
The pickup truck was in its normal spot. Ed’s Hyundai Pony was there. Bruce’s Hyundai Elantra was there too. Dirk’s Grand National wasn’t. I guess Dirk didn’t want to face up to the fact that he knew a drug raid was going down.
I walked downstairs.
Ed was behind the counter, he looked at me and said that I should have been in and out of Ciro’s faster than I was.
Bruce was sitting on his stool with his typical shamed puppy dog expression on his face.
I walked behind the counter and walked past Bruce and walked right up to Ed.
Before Ed could say anything, my right knee found his nutsack.
Ed was tall. I was a short kid. I was shorter than my father. I was even shorter than my younger brother. I would peg Ed as having been around 6’2″.
Ed fell to the ground grabbing his crotch.
Bruce nearly fell off his stool. “Bob, you better get the hell out of here before Ed gets his hands on you”.
Ed moaned “Nope, I deserved that. We shouldn’t have sent him down there. It’s my fault”. That was the first time in my life that anyone had every admitted that they fucked up and put me in danger. If this had been Richard, Richard would have blamed me for being stupid and having fucked things up like I usually did.
Dirk would never own up to who told Ed about the impending drug raid at Ciro’s.
Ed explained to me later that he wanted his machines out of Ciro’s as he knew the 14 Division drug squad was going to tear the machines apart in the quest to find hidden drugs stashed inside the machines.
And true enough, none of the machines were repairable. We scrapped them all for parts.
So that was the one and only time that I floored a cop with a knee to the nuts.
To be honest, that’s the only time in my life that I ever floored anyone.
As I said, I could write a whole chapter of my exploits at Rainbow Games with Ed, Bruce, Dirk, and Gary.
Ed had a friend named Marcia Cash. Marcia used to work for Tom at T.W. Gilchrist, a pool table and juke box distributor in Toronto. Anyways Marcia had moved up to Timmins Ontario to live with her boyfriend Barry Weiss. Barry owned A-1 Taxi and Amusements. Marcia asked Ed if Barry could “borrow” me for the summer of 1989.
I spent the late spring / summer of 1989 in Timmins Ontario helping Barry with his amusement company.
Barry had an agreement with the Minister of Northern Affairs to places videos games, juke boxes, and pool tables on the Indian reserves on James Bay. The machines were set to free-play and Barry was paid a flat fee for providing the machines and servicing them.
And that’s what I spent six weeks doing. Jumping from one reserve to the other, servicing the equipment, swapping equipment from one reserve to the next.
I moved juke boxes on the gunwales of canoes. I moved pool tables in bush planes.
I ate pemmican.
I was shocked to see the extreme poverty on the reserves.
I would often stay with the chaplain on the reserve, or with one of the senior band members.
On one reserve, the chaplain asked me if I could fix his ATV that wouldn’t start. The carburetor was all gummed up with bad gasoline. I cleaned out the carb and the fuel tank, filled it up with fresh gasoline, and it ran.
I was allowed to take the ATV out for a ride. I disappeared for about 5 or 6 hours. Basically went down one trail, parked the ATV, and then went exploring in the woods around James Bay.
It was quiet and peaceful. No cars. No noises. No nothing.
When I arrived back at the reserve, the chaplain was upset. He thought that I had wasted the tank of gas. I explained the the chaplain that I only went about 30 minutes down the trail, parked the quad and the walked on foot for a few hours. The chaplain said that he was relieved as gasoline was hard to get shipped to the reserves, and gasoline was very expensive. He was much releived to find the tank close to where it was after I filled the ATV up after having fixed it.
I had another job that started in the winter on 1990 and lasted until June of 1990. A 5 month contract with a company called Canshare Cabling. The contract was to wire up the Sears Catalogue Stores for the new computer system Sears was installing.
$15.00/hr x 60 hrs per week + $600/wk travel expenses, no receipts required meant that I had a lot of money in the bank come June of 1990.
When the job was over and I returned to Toronto, Richard discovered how much money I had, hence the invitation to move with him back to Edmonton for his final posting under the guise of “trying to be a family again”.
I honestly should have stayed in Toronto.
The move from CFB Downsview in Toronto to CFB Griesbach in Edmonton will be for another blog post.
But yeah, for the most part these are the people who raised me and the experiences that shaped my life.
I’ll probably touch on my school teachers in a different post.
All I can say is that I guess I’m lucky that I didn’t have to rely on Richard for my life lessons.
Every now and again I get weird phone calls related to my blog. The funny thing is, I haven’t really put my phone number out there.
Every now and again I get weird phone calls related to my blog. The funny thing is, I haven’t really put my phone number out there.
I don’t know who this person is, “unknown” number. But they sure had an interest in my blog postings about the MPCC.
This guy was adamant that when I made my complaint to the MPCC that I would have been allowed to view the CFNIS paperwork.
No matter how I explained to him that I did not see the CFNIS investigation paperwork until February of 2013 he wouldn’t believe me.
“What made you think that something was wrong with the investigation if you didn’t see the investigation paperwork” he asked.
I explained to him that my babysitter had his first criminal conviction for child molestation in 1984, two more convictions in 1985. And nine more convictions between 1985 and 2000. And for PO Morris to tell me on November 4th, 2011 that the CFNIS couldn’t find anything that would indicate that P.S. was capable of molesting the children he was babysitting, meant that something went wrong. I already knew about the $4.3 million dollar lawsuit between P.S. and the Minister of National Defence.
The caller interjected that just because P.S. had criminal convictions for child sexual abuse starting in 1984, this in no way automatically means that P.S. was guilty of molesting children prior to 1984. And to be fair to the mystery caller, my brother said the same thing to me back in 2013.
I explained to the mystery caller that if someone was convicted of raping a woman, and their modus operandi happened to match the modus operandi of the perpetrator in a couple of previous rapes that occured when this particular person happened to live in the vicinity of the two previous victims, you can be sure that the police would look into these matters. Sure, the similar modus operandi doesn’t mean that the three rapes were committed by the same person, but by the same token you don’t just discount any possible connection because they happened prior to the current conviction.
The mystery caller asked me why I didn’t bring this to the attention of the MPCC. I asked in response how could I when I had absolutely no idea what was done during the CFNIS investigation.
The mystery caller asked me if I was so certain that my father lied in his statement to the CFNIS why didn’t I say something to the CFNIS or the MPCC.
I tried to explain to the mystery caller that at no time during the 2011 CFNIS did the investigators ever ask me about anything my father had said to the CFNIS.
You would think that if someone said that they had been repeatedly molested for 1-1/2 years by a person acting as a babysitter, and then someone else countered and said that there never was a babysitter, that the investigators would want to follow up with the victim to understand this significant discrepancy. At no point in time in 2011 did the CFNIS ever call me to ask if I was certain that there was a babysitter.
The mystery caller then said that I should have told the MPCC about the lies in my father’s statement.
Again, I tried to expain to the mystery caller that I had no access to my father’s statement until 2013. By the time I read my father’s statement it was far too late to contest it. The CFNIS had my foster care records. I gave them a complete copy in August of 2011. They refused to consider them at all during the investigation. That means the CFNIS willfully ignored such things as:
Mr. Gill frequently contradicts himself from one meeting to the next.
Mr. Gill tells those he perceives to be in positions of authority what he believes they want to hear.
Mr. Gill brought his mother into the house to raise his children.
Mr. Gill uses work as an excuse for his frequent absences as a reason to not attend the family counselling sessions.
Robert was in the protective custody of Alberta Social Services and Mr. Gill had signed the paperwork placing Robert into the foster care system.
Mr. Gill told both Alberta Social Services and the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto that there was nothing wrong with his children, that the intense sibling rivalry between his two sons was just “boys being boys” and that the counsellors were no help at all.
The mystery caller was adamant that if this was in my foster care records, that the would have picked up on this.
I told the mystery caller that my father’s statement gave the CFNIS exactly what they wanted. According to my father, there was no babysitter in the house and that’s all the CFNIS needed.
I told the mystery caller that during the 2011 CFNIS investigation I was told repeatedly by the CFNIS investigators that there was no house fire at PMQ #26 on 12th street in the summer of 1980. It was suggested to me by various persons with the CFNIS in 2011 that the fire I was thinking of occured on 1986 and happened on CFB Griesbach, and that if I was wrong about this fire, maybe I was wrong about other things too. Maybe the babysitter didn’t molest my brother and I. Maybe it was a man who lived off the base. Maybe I was making this up.
The mystery caller wanted to know why I didn’t raise this with the MPCC if I was so certain that there was a fire.
I told the mystery caller that even though I was certain that there was a fire in the P.S. houseat #26 – 12th street that I had no proof that there actually was a fire. It was my word against that of the Canadian Armed Forces……. and why would the CF or the CFNIS lie about the fire? Again, it wouldn’t be until February of 2013 when I obtained the certified tribunal records that I would learn that the CFNIS had the Canadian Forces Fire Marshal records for the June 23rd, 1980 fire at PMQ #26 on 12th street and they knew that I had told the truth about the fire.
I really wish I knew who the mystery caller was.
Is he a member of the Canadian Forces, or maybe a reited member?
Is he another former military dependant that’s upset with the way that I’m slandering the Canadian Forces.
The media in this country is a fickle beast of sorts.
I realize that media consolidation is a major factor. Back in the good ol’ days, every newspaper practically had it’s own editorial board that would decide what stories to investigate and what stories to pass on. But now with media consolidation, one editor can determine the editorial content of a hundred or so newspapers all in one go.
And that type of control also affects competition. If you know that your competitors aren’t going to run a particular story, then why should you. If your job is to push “infotainment” and to give the readers / viewers what they want, then give ’em lots of tits and ass. The public loves T&A. T&A moves newspapers. If your competitors are giving the public T&A stories and all of the other hollywood fluff, then why shouldn’t you?
Besides, most news rooms in this country run on skeleton crews. It’s no longer like it was back in the ’70s or ’80s, or even as recently at the ’00s. News wire services are where it’s at now. That’s one of the reason why American celebrity coverage has become so abundant in Canadian media. It’s what the news wire services are running. Why spend money on an investigative team, when you can simply buy pre-formatted news articles from a wire service?
If I were to call up the media and tell them that I was the bastard love child of some rich hollywood actor, the media would jump all over this in a heart beat with the absolute minimal requirement for proof.
Yet, when it comes to the Canadian Armed Forces, the media in this country love to run protective defence for the military.
No matter how many scandals the Canadian Forces are involved with, the media won’t touch the Canadian Forces when it comes to the topic of child sexual abuse. It’s like the Canadian Forces get a free pass from the media.
We’ve known since the mid ’90s that the Canadian Armed Forces had a major problem with sexual assaults against women.
We’ve known since the mid ’90s that the Canadian Armed Forces disciplinary system has had major issues that required an Act to be passed in Parliament to partially remedy.
We know that the 3-year-time-bar and the Summary-Investigation-Flaw still affect victims of military child sexual abuse to this day.
We’ve known since the early ’80s that the Catholic Church was having significant problems with kiddie diddling priests. According to Court Martial Appeal Court records and other public documents, the Canadian Armed Forces also seem to have been having a problem with their catholic clergy.
We’ve know since 2010 that according to the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal that the Canadian Forces have a “disturbingly higher incidence of sexual crimes involving children”.
We’ve know since 2014 that according to the findings of the External Review conducted by retired Supreme Court justice Madame Marie Deschamps, that the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service didn’t have the training or the experience to properly investigate sexual assaults.
We’ve also know since the release of the findings of the Fynnes Inquiry that the CFNIS investigators are not independent of the chain of command and that the CFNIS investigators do not own their own investigations and that every step that a CFNIS investigator takes must be vetted by the chain of command and that this chain of command often does not have any legal training or any experience with the topic at hand.
We’ve known since May of 2000 that the Canadian Forces have acknowledged that the military community had a significant problem with the abuse of female spouses by serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
We’ve even known since 2011 that the Canadian Forces willingly denied benefits and compensation to a group of 13 to 18 year old army cadets who were killed and injured due to the negligence of a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. In fact, according to news reports, the Canadian Forces seemed hellbent on blaming the kids for sneaking the grenade into the barracks.
And yet the media shows absolutely no interest in child sexual abuse within the defence community.
The media seem to think that because I was a military dependant, that I have every other military dependant on speed dial and therefore I can just get 20 or 30 other people to call in with their tales of abuse.
The media seems to think that there is some sort of agency that tracks and looks after former military dependants.
With the CFNIS grabbing all of the investigations from the various civilian agencies and the RCMP, there’s going to be no independent agency that can say they’ve noticed a problem.
I wish I had more time to dedicate to this matter, but with work and my social life keeping me occupied, I just don’t have the time to “pitch” this to the media.
Maybe one of the issues that I’m running into is that I don’t fit the preconceived notion of what the media believes that a victim of military child sexual abuse and conversion therapy should look like. I guess the fact that I’m not an alcoholic, that I don’t have a crack problem, and that I don’t have an unstable employment history means that there is no way that I could have endured what I said that I endured. And this obviously sets off the B.S. alarms in the media. Because everyone knows that a victim of military child sexual abuse and military conversion therapy could never have a functional life, right?
I’m also well aware that the media suffer from “Major Dad” syndrome. Most reporters these days grew up watching Major Dad back in the ’80s and use that TV show to form their thoughts on what life was like on a military base for a military dependant.
Other than the fact that his name was Richard Wayne Gill and that he was in the Canadian Armed Forces, I honestly can’t tell you anything about my father.
I know he worked with the Sea Kings out in Shearwater.
I know that he worked on the Argus aircraft at Summerside
I know he worked on the Chinooks at 447 SQN at Namao
I know he worked as a quality control inspector for the Canadian Armed Forces at LItton Systems inspecting the then controversial Cruise Missile when we first arrived at CFB Downsview in Ontario.
I know he did a short stint at DCIEM on Downsview
I know that he worked at 4900 Yonge Street “flying a desk” as he always called it.
I wouldn’t find out until 1985 that he was in the navy before the air force.
I wouldn’t find out until 2013 the names of the ships he served on.
I don’t honestly remember much of him on Shearwater, he was frequently away.
I don’t remember much of him on Summerside, again he was frequently away.
I don’t remember much of him on Namao.
And he wasn’t around that often on Griesbach.
As a kid I never went to a single hockey game, football game, or even baseball game with him. It’s not that I didn’t want to. He just never took us.
Derek’s father often took him to see the Oilers and Northlands.
Trevor’s father was an Eskimo’s fan, and they frequently went to games.
We lived in Edmonton when the Oilers were the kings of the NHL. And not once did we ever go see a game.
Richard loved the Toronto Maple Leafs, and yet we never attended a single game while we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview. And this is the guy who would yell and scream at the TV while watching Leafs games. He would become so fixated on hockey games that you didn’t dare interrupt him while he was watching. He would become very irate if you bothered him while a game was on.
I once made the mistake of asking Richard for a ride to go to a place where I was working while a hockey game was on. He was so enraged by this that he ended up rear ending a Jaguar car at an intersection on Don Mills Road.
The first time I ever I went to a football game was the summer of 1984. Grandma took my brother and I to an Edmonton Eskimos football game on a couple of occassion. She scored some tickets from the Bissell Centre in Edmonton where she volunteered.
But not once in my entire childhood can I ever recall going to anytype of event with Richard.
Cadets nights? Nope.
School performances? Nope.
Sure, my mother didn’t do any of those things either, but she left when I was 5 years old.
My stepmother Sue? We weren’t her kids, so I wouldn’t expect the same from her as I would from Richard.
Even social services noted in 1982 that there didn’t appear to be anything our family did together.
Yeah, a little bit more than just a “smack across the face” would happen in our household.
When grandma moved in with us at CFB Summerside she enrolled me into Sunday bible school. She also put me into Beavers which was held at the Knights of Columbus hall. For that matter she got us involved with the Knights of Columbus.
In the spring of 1978 my grandmother returned to Edmonton to be with her husband. My father obtained a compasionate posting to CFB Namao to be close to his mother so that she could look after my brother and I.
When grandma moved into the PMQ on Namao, I was placed into Beavers. Grandma got me on the base hockeyteam for kids my age called the CFB Squirts. I played basketball on the Knickerbokers. I was enrolled into the Red Cross swimming program. I was also in the YBC youth bowling program. I had first communion at the chapel.
Guess which one’s me…..
In 2013, I examined my father for Federal Court. Here are a pair of questions that I asked of him:
These were his answers:
This is me, having no interest apparently.
Once we moved to CFB Grisbach, grandma had very little input into our lives.
She moved out in the spring on 1981.
I know that Richard took Captain Totzke’s suggestion to heart that I shouldn’t be allowed in changerooms with other boys as I might not be able to control myself. Captain Totzke had the idea that what happened on CFB Namao between 8 year old me, and the 14 year and 11 month old babysitter was due to “homosexuality” that I was apparently exhibiting.
It wasn’t that I didn’t show any interest.
On Griesbach, there was no more hockey, definitely no more swimming, no basketball, no cubs. Nothing.
This was my punishment for me having sex with P.S..
My younger brother didn’t have the involvement I had with Captain Terry Totzke.
Why Richard didn’t put my younger brother into any of those programs?
Richard had no interest.
Period.
I honestly don’t think it was the cost involved. We were a military family and I know that bowling, hockey, basketball, and swimming would have cost almost next to nothing. I know there were no fees for swimming. And I know there were no fees for skating. Bowling I think was dirt cheap, less than a quarter a string. Even the movies were dirt cheap at the base cinema.
Grandma was that one who would always take me to hockey. And even though her arthritis would limit her ability to tie my skates, she wouldn’t have any issue with coaxing the other fathers to tie my skates.
Richard just didn’t have the interest.
When I joined Sea Cadets in 1984, it was because a friend of mine from Elia Jr. High got me interested.
I was sure that Richard wasn’t going to allow this.
But after John Potter confirmed to my father that there was no cost, that the uniforms and all equipment were free, and that there were no fees to join, Richard allowed me to join.
But yeah, Richard never came to a single parade night or other cadet related function.
That one sentence has always stuck with me since I first read it when I obtained the Certified Tribunal Records from the Military Police Complaints Commission when I made my application to Federal Court in February of 2013.
The conversation between P.S. and Sgt. Robert Jon Hancock From the Military Police Complaints Commisison Certified Tribunal Records 2013
Sgt. Hancock had called Jack, the father of P.S. earlier in the day of August 9th, 2011 and asked Jack to have P.S. give him a telephone call. P.S. called Sgt. Hancock in the afternoon.
What’s interesting about this is not the part “he further indicated that anything he had been involved in as a youth had already been handled by the military”, nor the part “he furhter stated that if charges were brought against him a lawyer would be handling that”. What’s interesting is that only one of those two statements would be introduced into the brief sent to the Alberta Crown.
From the Certified Tribunal Records from the Alberta Criminal Injuries Review Board June 2019
There are two things that I find interesting about what Sgt. Damon Tenaschuck submitted to the Alberta Crown in 2018.
The first is that my father’s statement is still in there even though I had illustrated during the September 2015 interview with RCMP Inspector Akrum Ghadban that it was our grandmother raising my brother and I during this period of time. I also supplied to Mr. Ghadban the answers from my father’s written examination in which my father admits that there was a babysitter in the house, but that it was his mother who hired the babysitter.
Nowhere in the submission to the Alberta Crown is any mention of my foster care records which would indicate that my father’s statement didn’t actually reflect what family life was like in the Gill household back then.
But more interesting is what was removed from the record of the telephone conversation between Sgt. Robert Jon Hancock and P.S.. The statement “he further indicated that anything he had been involved in as a youth had already been handled by the military” was removed yet the statement “he further stated that if charges were brought against him a lawyer would be handling that” remained.
What was so controversial about that one statement that it needed to be removed. The second statement wasn’t removed, so that shows that the CFNIS weren’t trimming out superfluous excess for the sake of brevity. I mean, if P.S. was charged, a lawyer would be handling that. That’s how the criminal justice system works in this country, right?
Why did the CFNIS decide that the Alberta Crown didn’t need to know that the military has already handled things for a multi-time convicted child molester? It wasn’t as if P.S. had never been convicted of child molestation before.
And we know that our government often enters into some rather boneheaded deals with criminals.
I honestly don’t believe that I am the only person who has ever come forward with complaints against P.S.. I can only wonder how many of the charges that P.S. was subject to between 1985 and 2000 were due to other dependants from CFB Namao coming forward with their own complaints.We know that the Department of National Defence accepted General Liability for the damages that P.S. suffered at the hands of Captain McRae on Canadian Forces Base Namao. Would that also mean that anyone that P.S. was convicted of molesting could also bring their own civil actions against the Department of National Defence?
Is this why the CFNIS has bent over backwards to ensure that no charges would ever be brought against P.S. thereby ensuring that the Canadian Forces would not be breaking the terms of the settlement reached in November of 2008?
Another interesting item is this:
From the Certified Tribunal Records from the Alberta Criminal Injuries Review Board June 2019
In both 2011 and 2018 the CFNIS determined that there was “insufficient evidence” to lay charges which was supported by review conducted by the Alberta Crown.
So why througout 2018 was Sgt. Tenaschuk telling me he expected that charges would be laid this time?
Email between myself and Sgt. Tenaschuk
The investigation was all bullshit, wasn’t it.
Nothing more than theatre for the mind.
The illusion of justice while being nothing more than a perversion of justice.
It’s amazing and somewhat disturbing how the Department of National Defence still gloats about the findings of the Military Police Complaints Commission.
If one wishes to make a complaint against the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, one does so at their own risk.
This risk is especially true for a civilian with no connection to the Canadian Forces as the civilian receives none of the assistance that a service member would receive whilst making a complaint against the military police or the CFNIS.
You would think that a person wishing to make a complaint against the CFNIS would be granted access to the CFNIS investigation paperwork so that one could indicate to the MPCC exactly what the issue is.
However, there exists no mechanism within the Military Police Complaints Commission guidelines that require or even allow for the complainant to view the military police / CFNIS paperwork.
And as former MPCC chairman Glenn Stannard told the Globe and Mail in 2015, the MPCC has never been given the full and complete set of documents that detail how the military police operate and function. According to Stannard, this means that the Military Police Complaints Commission has no idea of what documents to request from the Provost Marshal during a review.
So, if the MPCC doesn’t even truly understand how the Military Police Group works, how the hell is a civilian such as myself supposed to know how the Military Police Group operates?
The only way a person can obtain copies of the CFNIS investigation paperwork is to file an Access to Information request for the documents.
The delay between requesting the documents and receiving the documents can be quite substantial. For example, when I submutted my request in 2018 for the CFNIS investigation paperwork it was 20 months before I received the records.
The complaint to the MPCC is supposed to be made within one year of the event that gave rise to the complaint. 20 months is well outside of that 12 month window.
I even had to enlist the help of the Information Commissioner of Canada to give DND a swift kick in the ass to get DND to release the requested documents.
The OIC did find that my complaint of “Deemed refusal” was valid. “Deemed refusal” means that the party that is supposed to supply the documents is using delay as a tactic in the hopes that you will simply give up and abandone your request
DND acknowledged my original request on July 30, 2018.
DND finally released the documents to me on February 6th, 2020 I received the documents.
It must be remembered that by MPCC rules, you only have ONE year from the date of the matter you are complaining about to file a complaint with the MPCC.
The documents that I received are redacted almost to the point of being useless.
For example, completely missing from the CFNIS records that I requested is the brief sent to the Alberta Crown in 2018. Lucky for me, I already had made a complaint to the Alberta Criminal Injury Review Board in relation to a decision by the Alberta Victims of Crime Board. As a result of this complaint, the ACIRB released to me the documents that had been supplied to the AVCB. In this release of documents was the 2018 CFNIS investigation submission to the Alberta Crown. The CFNIS in 2018 basically just refiled the 2011 Crown Briefing which included my father’s faulty statement. The CFNIS did not make any attempt to clarify that other agencies had information that indicated what my father stated to the CFNIS in 2011 was not actually truthful. The CFNIS made no mention of the other victims of P.S. that came forward as a result of the Crime Stoppers Appeal. The CFNIS also made no mention of the other victims that I had placed in contact with the CFNIS in 2015 and 2016.
It was, as Sgt. Tenaschuk told me, that my complaint against P.S. was limited to only the one day in particular in the spring of 1980 when P.S. had been discovered buggering me in his bedroom of PMQ #26 – 12th Street.
Sgt. Tenaschuk had stated that his superiors had determined that my complaint was going to have to stand on it’s own merit. The statement given by P.G., another victim of P.S., was not going to be included in my complaint as determined by CFNIS brass.
Reading the CFNIS investigation paperwork I have no idea if Sgt. Damon Tenaschuk re-interviewed my father to ascertain the large discrepancies between my father’s statement to the CFNIS in 2011, and my foster care records from Alberta Social Service.
During the 2015 interview when I was interviewed by RCMP Major Crimes investigator Akrum Ghadban I supplied Mr. Ghadban with the relevant sections of my foster care records along with my father’s sworn statement that was entered into Federal Court in 2013.
These are the same foster care records that I supplied to the CFNIS in 2011 and which I would discover in 2013 that the CFNIS had excluded from the investigation.
Some examples of these descripancies:
In 2011 my father stated to the CFNIS that his mother only looked after my brother and I for a very short period of time, stating that grandma stopped looking after my brother and I after Andy died hinting that Andy shortly after he slipped in the bath tub in our house on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
Andy lingered in the Mewburn nursing home at the University of Alberta until he died just before the summer of 1985.
The reality is that our grandmother raised my brother and I from the spring of 1977 until the summer of 1981.
My father told the CFNIS in 2011 that we never had a babysitter in the house.
The problem with that statement is that from the summer of 1978 until the spring / summer of 1979 my father had been dating a woman named Vicki in Wetaskiwin, Alberta. In the summer of 1979 he briefly saw another woman before he started dating Sue. This woman was in the Canadian Forces and lived on CFB Griesbach in the row house PMQs on the north side of the base. My father started dating Sue shortly after he broke up with the woman from Griesbach. From the summer of 1979 until the summer of 1980, Sue lived in an apartment building over by Londonderry Mall in Edmonton. In August of 1980, Sue moved into our house on CFB Namao.
While Richard was dating these women, he’d often stay at their place. This was especially true when he was dating Vicki who lived in Wetaskiwin which is a town south of Edmonton.
Richard would also often go away on training exercises. These exercises were sometimes as long as 6 to 8 weeks. I know my father did Arctic training in the winter of ’79 and the winter of ’80.
So, if our mother “abandoned” the family in 1977 and Sue didn’t move into our house on CFB Namao until 1980, who was looking after my brother and I.
Now, you might ask why I didn’t raise these points during the 2012 MPCC investigation.
Remember, the MPCC is not required to allow the complainant to view the evidence and documents that the CFNIS had submitted to the MPCC.
I only discovered my father’s horrific statement to the CFNIS in 2013 when I received the certified tribunal records from the MPCC. However, by this time it is far too late to contest anything erroneous that was discovered as any documents entered into court to prove these errors will not be allowed as this is now considered to be “New Evidence” and will not be allowed into federal court.
Even when I examined my father by legal order in 2013, his answers were a stark difference to what he had stated to the CFNIS in 2011.
Why, yes, our grandmother did live with us.
Yes, there was a babysitter.
No, he didn’t actually have legal custody of my brother and I.
Sgt. Christain Cyr had drastically altered what I had discussed with him on May 3rd, 2011 and had even told the MPCC that he had flown out to Victoria BC and met with me in person. The problem with Sgt. Cyr flying out to Victoria to meet with me is that I have never met Sgt. Cyr in person.
On May 3rd, Sgt. Cyr asked me if I remembered anything about the base chaplain having been charged with molesting children during the same time period that I was aledging that P.S. abused me, my brother, and four other children.
I told Sgt. Cyr that I remembered going on five different visits to the rectory at the base chapel, that we’d play board games, watch TV, listen to records in the Padre’s “stereo chair”, and that I could never remember anything after I was given a “sickly sweet grape juice”.
Sgt. Cyr wrote in his notes that when he asked me about Captain McRae, that I remembered going to the chapel with P.S., but that nothing sexual ever occurred.
That’s not what I said.
Even the next day, when I sent emails to Sgt. Cyr indicating which chapel it was that P.S. had taken me to, Sgt. Cyr called me back and told me that I had to have been mistaken as the chapel that I indicated on the maps I drew was a new building that didn’t exist in 1980 when I lived on the base.
I tried to introduce these emails into Federal Court, but the Attorney General demanded that they be struck as I hadn’t provided these emails to the MPCC during their investigation. The problem was that during the MPCC investigation I had no idea that Sgt. Cyr had failed to make mention of these emails in his police reports so therefore I had no reason to introduce these emails to the MPCC.
I also obtained from the Department of National Defence a copy of the blueprints for ” Our Lady of Loretto” chapel that showed the chapel was built in the 1950s. These were struck from the federal court as well.
If you go to the MPCCs website and look at previous REVIEWS (not inquiries, inquiries are completely different) you’ll find that reviews almost always find in favour of the Military Police.
This is not an accident.
As was discovered in the civilian world, the majority of these police review boards are stacked against the complainant and are biased in favour of the police.
Take for example the fact that the MPCC can only hire retired police officers to be investigators. Many inquiries into civilian police review boards have found that these investigators almost always have a bias against the complainants. It’s part of the “Us vs Them” mentality that permeates police departments across North America.
The rules that the Military Police Complaints Commission works under are biased against the complainant as well.
The MPCC cannot share any of the information that the Provost Marshal has provided to the MPCC to the complainant so that the complainant can advance their complaint against the military police and the CFNIS.
The MPCC cannot even ask the complainant questions based upon the documents supplied to the MPCC by the Provost Marshal.
An MPCC review is seriously nothing more than a fell good exercise practically designed by the agency that it is supposed to oversee.
During an MPCC review, the MPCC cannot administer oaths, the MPCC cannot subpeona documents or witnesses.
During an MPCC review, the complainant cannot examine the military police or the CFNIS.
An MPCC review is easily controlled by the Provost Marshal as the Provost Marshal can determine which documents are and which documents are not issued to the Military Police Complaints Commission.
It’s almost as if the MPCC was set up specifically to hide the defects of the military disciplinary system from the eyes of the general public.
And considering that it is the National Defence Act that establishes the Military Police Complaints Commission I think it’s pretty obvious that the MPCC isn’t designed to benefit the complainant.
I might have the ear of a news reporter that is willing to look at my matter.
This reporter is more interested in some of the results I have recevied from the Department of National Defence in response to my various Access to Information requests.
The most recent results I recevied were from an Access to Information Request that I filed with the Department of National Defence in 2019.
In April of 2019, I had been contacted by the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada. I was told by the OIC that DND had released documents to another party that were the same documents that I had been requesting since 2012 and therefore I should submit a new request for the exact documents that DND had just released.
The records that I had requested were for the July 18th, 1980 court martial of Captain Father Angus McRae.
I made an application for these documents on April 3rd 2019. DND acknowledged this request a few days later.
In July of 2020 I finally received the documents that I had requested.
This is the cover page of the documents.
The cover letter
The second page is a photocopy of the file folder from the office of the Judge Advocate General.
The coverpage of the Judge Advocate General file folder
The third page states that pages 2 to 266 are being exempted under the privacy act section 19(1).
Everything has been exempted to protect Captain McRae’s privacy, who has been dead since May of 2011.
So, basically, I recevied three worthless but very humorous pages from DND.
The interesting thing about this information is that a Toronto Star reporter had access to this information back in 1990 for a news story he was writing about Captain McRae having been busted for molesting more children at a Scarborough Ontario church.
Kevin Donovan, Toronto Star Feb 11, 1990 Page A 14
Also, an instructor with the Canadian Forces College had access to these documents.
Dr. Chris Madsen Canadian Forces College
So, why am I not being given access to McRae’s court martial records?
In plain and simple terms. There’s a coverup under foot.
The DND Access to Information Office, the Judge Advocate General, the Provost Marshal, the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, they all work under the same minister.
This is the same minister that must be sued in any civil action brought against a current or former member of the Canadian Forces.
This is the very same Minister that asked me “What my angle was”, and “What game was I playing” when I went to speak with him in 2016 at his constituency office in Vancouver.
There is nothing in the language of the National Defence Act whch exempts the Judge Advocate General, the Provost Marshal, or anyone in the Canadian Forces Military Police Group from Section 83 of the National Defence Act.
Chapter N-5, Section 83 National Defence Act
What does this have to do with the refusal of DND to release the requested documents to me?
During the 2nd portion of CFNIS investigation GO2011-5754, the investigators with the CFNIS noted that although my name wasn’t mentioned in CFSIU investigation DS-120-10-80 they would ask me a series of questions to see if my answers matched details within CFSIU DS 120-10-80.
Excerpt from GO 2011-5754 The first report would be CFSIU DS-120-10-80 which commenced on May 12th, 1980 The second report would be the base military police investigation of P.S. for what he had been doing with younger children on the base.
I was never asked any questions.
The goal was never to connect me to P.S. or Captain McRae.
The goal was a “Dog and Pony Show” investigation that wouldn’t lead to any charges against P.S., but would give me the feeling that something had been done.
Yes, P.S. would never face a court martial. But you have to remember that at the start of this investigation back in March of 2011, Angus McRae was alive and well.
The CFNIS had to structure the investigation around the fact that even if P.S. were to implicate Captain Angus McRae, the Canadian Forces would never be able to bring charges against Captain McRae due to the 3-year time bar that existed pre-1998.
The Minister of National Defence, the Judge Advocate General, and the Provost Marshal do not want to establish that I or any other child from CFB Namao were involved with the P.S./ Captain McRae child sexual abuse scandal on CFB Namao.
The decision was made in 1980 to only charge Captain McRae with committing “Acts of Homosexuality” against P.S. as P.S. was the only boy above the age of 14.
14 was the age of consent in 1980.
And as was explained in the Court Martial Appeal Court ruling in the matter of Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan vs. Regina, the Canadian Armed Forces have the right to conduct a court martial for “Gross Indecency”, “Indecent Assault”, and “Buggery” so long as consent could have been a consideration.
Regina vs. Sullivan Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada
This implies that if consent wasn’t given, then the Canadian Forces couldn’t conduct a service tribunal. The matter would have to go before a civilian court. And in a civilian court, the Department of National Defence would have a much harder time throwing a “wall of secrecy” around the matter.
It must be remembered that at the time in 1980, 14 was the legal age that a child could consent to sexual activities.
1970 R.S.C. Chapter C-34 Criminal Code of Canada Section 140 – Consent Children under 14 cannot consent.
This is why the Chain of Command, according to Fred Cunningham, dropped all of the charges against McRae except for the charges related to P.S.. P.S. was the only boy over the age of 14. Instead of this being a matter of child sexual abuse, now this was a matter of “homosexuality”.
CFSIU Investigation DS 120-10-80
P.S., being the only boy over the age of 14 would have been the only one who could have possibly “consented”.
If the Canadian Armed Forces had tried to charge Captain McRae with molesting the children that were between the ages of 4 and 14 that both he and P.S. molested both individually and together, the Canadian Armed Forces would have lost the ability to conduct a court martial against Captain McRae.
The problem this posed for the Canadian Armed Forces is that Captain McRae was the first officer in the Canadian Armed Forces investigated for molesting children.
In a court martial, the Minister of Defence may allow the proceedings to be moved “in-camera” and thereby keep an embarrassing situation out of the media.
If the Canadian Forces had charged Captain McRae with molesting the children under the age of 14, McRae would have had to be prosecuted in civilian court.
To move a court martial “in-camera” is far easier than it is to try to move a civilian court case “in-camera”.
This also explains why the base military police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit were not allowed to call in the RCMP to deal with P.S..
If P.S. had been investigated and charged with molesting the children he had been babysitting, he would have been dealt with under the Juvenile Delinquents Act.
There was an odd section of the Juvie Act which allowed for the adult that contributed to the delinquency of a minor to be found guilty on summary conviction.
Section 33 Juvenile Delinquents Act
Had the Chain of Command in 1980 allowed either the base military police or the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit to call in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to deal woth P.S., the Canadian Forces would have lost all ability to control the narrative of the eventual investigation into Captain McRae.
By keeping things “in house”, the Chain of Command knew they could keep a very embarrassing situation out of the local media.
The problem that created is that any of the children being molested by P.S. and Captain McRae would be forever denied acknowedlegment or justice.
During the July 30th interview at VPD headquarters, one of the investigators kept mentioning that this case would be tough due to the 40 years that have passed.
Well, this isn’t exactly true.
Former Canadian Armed Forces corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan was convicted in 2019 for molesting numerous boys from the Ottawa area in the mid ’70s.
Sullivan had been a boy scout leader when the Ottawa police in the ’70s started to get complaints.
Sullivan disappeared off the radar so to speak. The police couldn’t find him.
Turns out he had joined the Canadian Armed Forces.
However his stint in the Canadian Forces wasn’t enough to disaude him from molesting young boys.
In 1984, he was given a court martial for his assaults against the boys.
In 1985, he tried to appeal his conviction via the Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada.
The CMAC ruled that the Canadian Armed Forces had the legal right to conduct a court martial for the crimes of “Gross Indecency”, “Indecent Assault”, and “Buggery”.
The interesting thing about Sullivan’s court martial conviction is that it did not show up in his civilian records and was not taken into consideration during his sentencing in 2019.
When I brought Sullivan’s military convictions to the attention of the reporter covering the 2019 convictions, he passed this information on to the Ontario Crown.
The Crown was not too pleased to hear this.
Below are a sampling of historical child sexual assault cases from the 1970s and 1980s.
All I searched for was “canada man charged for sexual assaults in the 1970s”
There’s the ongoing saga of Gordon Stuckless from Maple Leaf Gardens in the ’80s who to this day is still facing more charges as more adults keep coming forward.
There’s also the curious case of Kenneth Estabrooks from St. John, New Brunswick. Mr. Estabrooks died in the early 2000’s. After his death, numerous people came forward with complaints that Mr. Estabrooks had abused them while they were in his custody in the juvenile detention system.
The City of St. John hired a private investigator to look into these complaints. The investigator came to the conclusion that Estabrooks had in fact sexually abused well over 260 children that had been placed into his care.
Even though Estabrooks is long since dead, the city is facing numerous lawsuits and in fact is facing a class action lawsuit.
So, why would the CFNIS make such a big deal about the fact that the abuses I reported occured from 1978 to 1980.
It’s obvious that smaller civilian police departments without the budgets or the manpower of the Canadian Armed Forces have absolutely no problem bringing charges.
If I had to guess, I would assume that the risk or potential for civil actions arising out of the actions of former employees of the Department of National Defence plays a major role in determining whether or not charges will be laid.
Again, the investigators with the CFNIS are still subject to the Chain of Command. There is no language in the National Defence Act which exempts investigators with the CFNIS from section 83 of the National Defence Act.
Yes, the CFNIS and the CFNIS investigators are supposed to be independent of the Chain of Command. But, there is no language in the National Defence Act that exempts the Provost Marshal, the Military Police Group, or the CFNIS from the Chain of Command.
A simplified outline of the Chain of Command in the CFNIS hierarchy is :
Minister of National Defence -> Chief of Defence Staff -> Vice Chief of Defence Staff -> Provost Marshal -> Commanding Officer CFNIS -> Regional Commanding Officer CFNIS -> CFNIS investigator.
In March of 2001, when my former babysitter, Mr. P.S. sued Angus Alexander McRae, P.S. was obligated to sue the Minister of Defence as at the time McRae abused P.S., McRae was a member of the regular force.
The Canadian Forces did accept legal liability for the abuse that P.S. had endured at the hands of Captain McRae on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
At the time of my Federal Court appeal in October of 2013, I didn’t have access to the Department of Justice paperwork from when the Department of Justice defended the Canadian Forces in P.S.’s civil action.
However, now that I have that paperwork, I know that a settlement was reached.
If the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service had brought charges against P.S. for the abuse he committed against myself, my brother, P.G., M.O., and the other 25 children that McRae and P.S. were known to have abused on CFB Namao from 1978 to 1980, this would have opened up a civil action Pandora’s box.
So, how will my matter with the “man in the sauna” conclude?
Well, first off the only witness to the abuse in the sauna was P.S..
Depending on how the CFNIS approach P.S., he may or may not be willing to talk.
Under the current Minister of National Defence, Harjit Sajjan, I can’t see the CFNIS being permitted to approach P.S. as a witness.
In 2011, when the CFNIS became aware of the direct connection between P.S., Captain McRae, and 5 distinct visits that P.S. had taken me on over to the chapel, the CFNIS outright refused to change the scope of the investigation from investigating P.S. as the main suspect to investigating P.S. as another victim of Captain McRae who had used P.S. to bring young children over to the chapel for McRae to abuse.
In the current investigation of the man in the sauna, it is apparent that whoever this man was used P.S.. Therefore P.S. is not a suspect in this investigation, nor should he be considered a suspect.
However, I have no doubt in my mind that the CFNIS will not be permitted to approach P.S. as a witness.
The CFNIS will approach P.S. in a manner guaranteed to make sure that he is as uncooperative as possible.
This way, when this investigation concluded, the CFNIS can shrug their shoulders and say “We tried, but 40 years is a long time, there’s nothing we could do” thereby ensuring that no civil actions can be brought against the Canadian Forces.
On Thursday July 30th, 2020 I was interviewed again by the CFNIS Western Region.
This interview was for the “man in the sauna”
We’ll see how this plays out.
I have an idea of who the man in the sauna was.
A name was mentioned in Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit investigation DS 120-10-80. This name has had previous charges related to sexual acts with underage children.
This man was sent from National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa specifically to help Captain McRae deal with his affairs during the CFSIU investigation DS-120-10-80.
But sadly, there seemed to be quite a few perverts on Canadian Forces Base Namao / Canadian Forces Base Griesbach back in the ’70s and ’80s.
In addition to Corporal Larry King who had been tried in civilian court in 1980 for raping a 16 year old girl on CFB Griesbach, and in addition to P.S. who had molested numerous children in 1979 and 1980 as well as a 9 year old boy in 1985 on CFB Namao, there was a man at the rec centre who had exposed himself to some young girls at the base rec centre. And then there was another man from CFB Griesbach who had exposed himself to a young girl over at one of the malls just on the other side of 97th Street.
With the exception of P.S., was the man in the sauna one of these men?
How many other pedophiles were on CFB Namao / CFB Edmonton in the ’70s and ’80s?
Sadly, the only witness to this whole event is none other than P.S.
Will P.S. talk?
I don’t see why he would. He was allowed to play the role of the “innocent angle” all those years ago. And from the looks of it, the Canadian Forces are more than willing to allow P.S. to continue on in this role.
OPP Det Sgt. Jim Smythe was able to get Canadian Armed Forces officer Colonel Russell Williams to confess to the murders and rapes that Williams had committed.
At the time, the OPP had very little to go on other than some matching tire treads and some boot prints. Those on their own weren’t enough to indicate that Williams had done sweet bugger all.
Opp Det. Sgt. Jim Smythe basically let Williams talk himself into his own arrest.
What deals did the Canadian Forces and the Department of Justice reach when they settled out of court with P.S. in November of 2008?
Again, who knows.
But remember, our government has often agreed to bad deals.
Karla Holmolka is walking the streets and Paul Bernardo is rotting away in prison.
I’m not saying that Paul, should be free.
I’m saying that Karla should have been sentenced to a very lenghty sentence as well.
She supplied the animal tranquilizers.
She administered the animal tranquilizers.
She killed the girls.
But the Clown Prosecutors and the Attorney General decided that it was better to make a deal with her (the infamous Deal With The Devil), than it would be to lose the case against Paul Bernardo.
After all, Paul had to be the worst of the two, right?
In 2011, when contacted at home by Mcpl Hancock, P.S. told Mcpl Hancock that “anything he had been involved in as a youth has already been handled by the military”.
Was this another “Deal with the Devil”?
Did the Canadian Armed Forces, the Provost Marshal, the office of the Minister of National Defence, or even the Attorney General of Canada make a deal with Mr. P.S.?
During the interview, I read a fairly long statement.
This statement was very detailed.
In 2011, my statement was very specific. It only related to the abuse that I endured at the hands of P.S. from late fall 1978 until the spring when someone discovered him buggering me in his bedroom. My statement also included all of the abuse that I saw P.S. committ against my brother as well as the abuse he committed against four other children.
My stupidity lay in the fact that I didn’t describe my home life.
Because I didn’t describe my home life right off the bat, my father was able to substitute his own fantasry for reality.
Whether my father had some help in shaping his fantasy is anyone’s guess. But my father’s version of reality simply didn’t match the social service records and other records that I came into possession later.
The sad thing about the 2011 CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754, is that once the CFNIS had what they wanted, they ran with it, even after I provided my foster care records, my Alberta Social Service records, my Children Aid Society of Toronto Records, PEI Family Court Records, the CFNIS still absolutely refused to admit that they fucked up the case pretty bad.
After all, if the Government of Canada had made a deal with P.S. related to his out of court settlement relating to the matter of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae, the government wouldn’t reneg on that deal, would they?
Sure, the MPCC gave the CFNIS a gold star in 2013.
However, during the 2012 – 2013 MPCC review, the MPCC shared absolutely none of the documents with me that the Provost Marshal had provided to the MPCC. This meant of course that I was unable to raise my concerns with any of the numerous flaws with the 2011 CFNIS investigation, such as Mcpl Cyr’s faulty transcription of what I told him on May 3rd, 2011, my father’s obviously distorted reality, or the fact that the CFNIS refused to look at the connection between P.S. and Captain McRae, or the fact that the CFNIS refused to consider what the Alberta Social Service records and the Children Aid Society of Toronto, or the IWK Children’s Hospital had to say about my father.
Yes, I did go to Federal Court. However almost all of the documents that I had submitted to the MPCC were struck from the hearing as this was considered “new evidence”. Basically, you can’t introduce “new evidence” into your hearing for judicial review if it wasn’t before the tribunal you wish to have reviewed. However, as you have no idea of what is in front of the tribunal, you have no idea of what to introduce.
It’s a vicious Catch-22 that seems to have been designed like that on purpose.
So, we’ll have to wait and see how this one plays out.
Yes, the CFNIS and the Canadian Forces allowed me to have Earl Ray Stevens. But Earl represented absolutely no risk of liability to the Canadian Forces or the Federal Government.
The same cannot be said about P.S., nor can the same be said about the “man in the sauna”
Remember, under the National Defence Act, there is absolutely no exception to section 83 of the National Defence Act for members of the CFNIS.
If the CFNIS investigators Chain of Command decide the direction of the investigation, the investigators must obey those orders. The independance of the CFNIS investigators is an illusuion at best.
Child sexual abuse in the Canadian Forces 