Here’s a video in which I talk a little bit about the Casson family from Edmonton, AB that ran a pair of pizza shops called Pizza Plus that were an escape from Richard’s home of dysfunction.
Category: Uncategorized
Trying my hand at some videos
Okay, so I’m trying my hand at some videos for my blog.
I honestly think that I’ve run out of topics to write about, it feels like I’m writing about the same stuff over, and over again.
So, I’ll switch over to video and see if that’s any different.
Wednesday June 15 podcast
My sperm donor / my father.
Tunnel Vision
Once tunnel vision sets in all hope is lost.
Back in 2019 Netflix ran an eight part miniseries titled “Unbelievable”. It was based upon the true life story of Marie Adler.
Marie had been in foster care for most of her life. She had just turned eighteen and had been set up in her first apartment. Shortly thereafter a man broke in, tied her up, raped her, and took pictures.
Marie made a police report. The police came and investigated. Over the course of the investigation one of the two primary detectives started to latch on to some trivial inconsistencies in Marie’s story. After a little bit of badgering the detectives managed to get Marie to admit that she had made up the whole thing, that there never was a rape.
Even one of her previous foster parents had confided to the police that Marie had more than likely lied about being raped.
To teach Marie a lesson, the Lynwood Police Department pressed for charges to be brought against Marie. She ended up on probation and she had to pay a fine.
A couple of years later in a different state the FBI and a local police department executed a raid on the house of a man who was suspected of numerous rapes across multiple states.
You wanna know what they found in this man’s house?
A camera.
You wanna know what was on this camera?
Pictures of Marie being raped.
Exactly as she had described it.
The man is Marc O’leary.
Marc O’Leary was later sentenced to 327 years in prison.
https://www.propublica.org/article/false-rape-accusations-an-unbelievable-story
I urge you to read this story if you want to understand how off the fucking rails the justice train can become if cops or the superiors make leaps of judgement.
The two Lynwood detectives never apologized. The city of Lynwood settled with Marie for something around $150k USD.
She didn’t want more money.
She just wanted an apology.
It was later found upon review that the detectives became far too concentrated on issues that had no relevance to the rape of Marie Adler.
And I’ve always wondered if that is what happened in my case.
I made my complaint to the Edmonton Police Service on March 5th, 2011. I was contacted by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service on March 7th, 2011. I was interviewed by master corporal Robert Jon Hancock on March 31st, 2011. Master corporal Hancock asked me some question that upon review indicate that the CFNIS in March of 2011 knew about the connection between P.S. and Captain McRae.
Knowledge of this connection was further cemented on May 3rd, 2011 when CFNIS investigator master corporal Christian Cyr asked me if I knew anything about the base priest having been arrested for molesting children during the same time frame that I was accusing P.S. of molesting me and my brother.
There was an error that master corporal Christian Cyr mentioned to me that only could have come from the military police investigation paperwork from 1980. During this phone call Master corporal Cyr tried to tell me that P.S. was only 12 or 13 in 1980. P.S. was born on June 20th, 1965. P.S. would have been just weeks shy of his 15th birthday in 1980 when he was found buggering me in his bedroom. The only place that P.S.’s age is indicated wrong is in the CFSIU investigation paperwork from 1980. The CFSIU paperwork indicated that P.S. was 12 in 1980.
So, it’s apparent that the CFNIS in March of 1980 had access to the CFSIU investigation paperwork and no doubt the court martial transcripts. And as the Military Police Complaints Commission stated in its final report issued in November of 2020, it is very apparent that the military police in 1980 were well aware of P.S.’s molestation of younger children.
So, what happened?
The more I think about it the more it becomes apparent that the CFNIS in 2011 suffered from a very bad case of tunnel vision.
The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces are comprised of multiple units. DND and the CF have a department that specifically looks out for matters that could cause DND and the CF problems on the civil liability front. This is the Director of Claims and Civil Liabilities.
In November of 2008, the Director of Claims and Civil Liabilities indicated that the Department of National Defence was willing to make a cash offer to P.S. to have him discontinue his $4.5 million dollar action against DND in the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench for the abuse he suffered at the hands of Captain McRae. This would have had to have been approved not only by CF Chain of Command, but also the Department of Justice as the DOJ serves as the lawyer for the Government of Canada.
The lawyer for P.S. accepted the offer in late November of 2008 and the case was discontinued in December of 2008.
2 years, 3 months, and four days later I send my fateful email to the Edmonton Police Service.
How much do you wanna wager that when the CFNIS took my initial complaint and started populating the fields of their intake form that notifications popped up requesting that the investigators notify certain superiors?
Were the CFNIS investigators then briefed about the sensitive nature of this matter?
Was it suggested to the CFNIS investigators that I had somehow found out about the payday that P.S. enjoyed and that I was obviously just another shyster looking for a quick buck?
Don’t forget, the DOJ and the Legal Advisor are parts of very large bureaucracies that seemingly answer to no one but themselves.
Looking back at the CFNIS paperwork, which I did not have access to until AFTER the MPCC reviewed my complaint against the CFNIS in 2013, it became apparent right from the get go that the CFNIS had written off my complaint against P.S. as trivial.
In fact, according to the paperwork the CFNIS seemed rather hellbent on portraying me as a “societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military”, that I “frequently changed jobs and was unhappy”, and that I was always looking for easy money.
How does my father forget about the fact that it was his mother raising my brother and I and that he was rarely home?
How does the CFNIS ignore my social service records which keep mentioning “grandma” all over the place and that Mr.Gill invited his mother, the children’s grandmother into the home to raise his children after his wife “abandoned” the family instead to only concentrate on the section of the social service paperwork that says that I am an emotionally disturbed child.
How does the CFNIS justify the observation of Warrant Officer Blair Hart in July of 2011 that this investigation was unlikely to go anywhere due to a lack of evidence, before the other victims had been interviewed and before the suspect had been interviewed?
Tunnel vision.
Don’t forget, the CFNIS is part of a very hierarchical organization where it is imperative that the lawful commands of superiors are obeyed at all times.
The Vice Chief of Defence Staff can issue directions and instructions to the Provost Marshal and the CFNIS relating to ANY investigation.
What if the chain of command didn’t issue outright instructions, but let their subordinates know that I was just a scammer looking to make a quick buck?
I fully understand that my father had issues with telling the truth. He was always like that. But I can’t see my father excising his mother from about 6 years of our lives as kids unless someone had maybe explained to him prior to his interview that his son was obviously just trying to juice the military for some easy cash.
“[he] appeared concerned about [his mother’s drinking], suggesting [she was] emotionally abusive to both children, especially when inebriated. As well, [Richard] suggested that [his mother] attempts to undermine any closeness between [him] and [his sons] by telling them false stories”. Yes, my father was a psychological nutcase. That much is clear. And here he is in October of 1980 throwing his own mother to the wolves. The same woman that he desperately needed to raise his children. So yes, it would have been very easy for the CFNIS to manipulate Richard into giving him a statement devoid of grandma.
Again why?
Simple tunnel vision.
Someone up the chain of command decided that I was just some greedy civie looking to make a quick buck from the DND and the CF. This view was dispersed through the Provost Marshal and the CFNIS. Again, due to Section 83 of the National Defence Act, this view doesn’t have to be spread directly down to the actual investigators. Just high enough up that chain of command that subordinates none the less become aware of these thoughts.
And once this tunnel vision sets in it’s so very hard to take the blinders off and see the larger picture.
It will be interesting to see just how much of the truth is able to come out about not only the events on Canadian Forces Base Namao but also about the CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754 during my class action lawsuit against the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces.
Everything is “discoverable”……. everything.
Zong.
The “Gill boys” are an interesting genetic mixture.
One of the things that I didn’t really pay too close attention to in my Uncle Al’s obituary was the names of his parents.
Uncle Al’s mother’s name was Alma Zong. Alma Zong would have been my mother’s mother. So, Alma Zong is my maternal grandmother.
Zong is an interesting surname as it is purely a Chinese name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zong_(surname)
That means that Alma Zong was either full Chinese or part Chinese.
My paternal grandmother was full Swampy Cree
My maternal grandmother was Chinese.
My paternal grandfather was Irish.
My maternal grandfather was Quebecois.
What an interesting mix.
Well intentioned people often don’t realize the harm they do.
From October of 1980 to until April of 1983 I was in the care of a military social worker named Captain Terry Totzke.
Terry as I knew him.
Under Totzke’s care I had seen a few different psychologists in the Edmonton area. But even though I had been seen by various psychologists I never did receive any type of treatment even though as I would find out they were calling for drastic measures including institutionalization.
When Alberta Social Services became involved with my family in November of 1981, Terry seemed to always be at odds with Pat and Wayne. At the time I thought that Terry, Pat, and Wayne worked for the same organization.
It wouldn’t be until August of 2011 that I learnt that Terry was a captain in the Canadian Armed Forces and that both Pat and Wayne were my civilian child care workers and that Alberta Social Services had been called in due to the inactions and inability of Captain Totzke to help me with my myriad issues.
It would appear that Terry had a very different agenda from that of Alberta Social Services.
Because of the way that Terry and my father reacted to Alberta Social Services I formed very negative views not only of myself, but also of “do gooders” like Pat and Wayne.
Both Captain Totzke and my father had drilled into my head that what happened on CFB Namao was my fault, that I was to blame for what happened to my younger brother, and Terry was adamant that I had a mental illness called “homosexuality”.
I was told by both Terry and my father that I needed to be very careful with what I told Pat and Wayne as they would “twist my words” and make it sound as if I said things that I didn’t say.
I was supposed to have received psychiatric care back then.
But I never did.
Instead what I received was torment, apathy, anger, and belittlement.
It WAS my fault.
I LET the babysitter touch my younger brother.
I was just ACTING up for attention.
I was a SELFISH asshole.
I FUCKED with my father’s military career.
Throw into this mix my grandmother’s issues and my father’s issues and you hopefully can understand that my mental health and well-being were doomed.
As one would expect, a child suffering from major depression and severe anxiety often has a very hard time making friends. So I was fucking lonely.
And a kid without friends often gets beat up a lot. And I got beat up a lot.
A depressed child tends to cry a lot. Nothing would fire up my father’s temper like my “whining” and my “pouting”. Richard was always more than happy to give me something to cry about.
And this doesn’t take into account all of the memories of the sexual abuse that occurred on CFB Namao. Even though it was known what had happened on CFB Namao, Terry knew, my father knew, I received absolutely no help with the year and a half of sexual abuse and the hands of a very disturbed teenager.
So, it should be readily apparent that I am not a suitable candidate for touchy-feely, celebrate you inner-child type therapy.
I was a kid who was found in 1981 to be completely unable to display or express any type of emotion.
One coping mechanism I had found was to allow myself to be the butt of everyone’s jokes. Sure, I was being put down, but at least people were talking about me.
In my adult life I’ve had people call me a psychopath because I couldn’t display emotions.
I often get accused of “being angry” when in fact my mood is neutral. It’s just my face betrays no emotion, so people assume that I’m angry.
I like to keep to myself. So of course this means that I’m a self centred asshole who thinks he’s better than everyone else.
Anyways………..
What therapy do you think will fix this?
Hot Yoga?
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy?
Mystic Chanting?
Electro Convulsive Therapy?
Lithium?
What therapy is going to erase the gross malpractice of Captain Terry Totzke from my brain?
What therapy is going to erase the various incidents of sexual abuse from my brain?
What therapy is going to erase the abuse and neglect of my father and my grandmother from my brain?
How about the abandonment issues. My mother fled an abusive situation and left my brother and I in the care of a rage prone alcoholic. Sure, it’s more than likely that Richard used the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations to have Marie thrown out of the PMQ by the military police, but I wouldn’t find out about that until around 2014 when I received a copy of a report that looked at spousal abuse in the Canadian Forces.
My father would often take off for weeks or months and leave us in the care of his alcoholic mother or his second wife, Sue.
That has to really fuck with a person’s psyche.
Because of the war that I was caught in between Captain Totzke and my civilian social workers, I have a severe distrust of anyone in that field.
What upsets me is when people say to me that I’m not trying, implying that it’s all my fault for not seeking treatment.
It’s such an odd predicament that I find myself trapped in. A survivor of military sexual trauma who wasn’t in the military. A child living on a military base, the dynamics of which most civilian social workers don’t understand.
Military sexual trauma is a unique beast all on its own as the abuser can use the military hierarchy to control their victims. Sure, P.S. wasn’t in the Canadian Forces, but his father was. And at the time his father was a Sergeant. My father was only a Master Corporal. And then of course Captain McRae was a Captain. P.S. freely threw his father’s rank around as threats to me and the other kids he was abusing. And even though I have nothing in the way of memories after the wine in the rectory, I have no doubt that Captain McRae would have thrown his rank around to threaten the kids that he was abusing.
And don’t ever forget how homophobic the Canadian Armed Forces were back in the ’50s, ’60s,’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. If you were a male child on a military base, and you had been sexually abused by another male, you just kept your mouth shut least people assume that you were a queer, or a faggot, or a homo.
I had tried in all honesty going to a couple of sessions with the BCSMSSA – BC Society for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse. I tried, I really did. But I just felt like they didn’t believe what I was talking about. Almost as if they were disbelieving of what I was saying as I seemed “too functional” and of course I also detected a bit of skepticism when I told them that I had lived on a military base as a child.
I had tried counselling through work. At first it was great to have someone like Dave to talk to. But then it became clear that talk was all that we were going to do. Yes, it was nice to have a sounding board to reflect off of, but at the end of the day I was expected to fix my problems on my own.
I tried getting help through the EFAP program at work. But again this was more talk therapy.
The public psychiatric system is so underfunded and overwhelmed that people like me, unless we go completely off the fucking rails, we’re not on their radar. And even if we do get on the radar of the public psychiatric system, the system is so overwhelmed that it can only apply bandages to mental wounds and get the person out of the bed ASAP as there’s probably another 20 people waiting in line for that bed. Don’t forget, I work in an urban hospital with a large mental health component. I know exactly how overwhelmed the system is. People like me are not on the radar. I function. I get up in the morning. I take a shower. I take my meds. I go to work. I work. I go home. I go to sleep. I don’t pose a risk to society. Completely off the radar.
Trying to find a psychologist to give me a clear diagnosis is almost absolutely impossible. And without a clear diagnosis there is no place to start from. All I have for a diagnosis is what was contained in my social service paperwork from back in 1980 which said that I was beyond depressed and suffering from severe anxiety.
And without a clear diagnosis there is no place to start from.
More “falling through the cracks”, a skill that I seem so very adept at.
When I hear professionals say “Oh Bobbie, why don’t you give this a try”, or “Oh Bobbie, why don’t you give that a try” all I hear is “Bobbie, your problems are far too complex to be dealt with realistically, so we’re going to blame you for not fixing yourself, you’re not trying!”.
Can’t you just do CBT? It’s all the rage these days.
Have you tried art therapy? Colouring will make your inner child happy.
Just try thinking positive thoughts Bobbie. Positive thoughts will set up positive energy and will get you in tune with the universe.
Crystals Bobbie, crystals have magical healing powers.
I hate myself. I despise myself. I hate my fucking intelligence.
In another post I’ll talk about how my fucking intelligence has been a fucking curse all of my life and how it’s caused just as many problems as it has solved.
How is a depressed person supposed to look?
One of the issues that I seem to have when being taken serious about my desire to seek Medical Assistance in Dying for mental health issues is that I don’t look “sad”, or “depressed”, or “unhappy”.
I appear smart and intelligent.
Piercings and tattoos are the only form of “self harm” that I engage in. And no, I don’t consider my tattoos or my piercings to be “self harm” or a “cry for help”.
Surely if I was depressed and wanting to die I’d be on drugs, or living on skid row, or a frequent flyer in the local psychiatric wards.
But that’s my problem.
I’ve always been on my own.
I’ve never had anyone to fall back on in times of trouble.
I’ve had to navigate life so fucking carefully that I didn’t end up an drug junkie or an alcoholic on skid row where people could say that I was the captain of my own misfortune.
If I had followed through on any of my previous suicide attempts and not succeeded there would have been absolutely no help from my father. In fact there only would have been shame and ridicule.
I’ve struggled with the fact that if I make one misstep that I’d have a very long fall down the ladder of society.
And believe me, the number of people that attempt suicide and fail far outnumber the number of people that attempt suicide and succeed.
My first attempt was way back on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach when I was about 9. I honestly don’t remember what I thought I was doing. I put the bag over my head and I held the bag around my neck. I kept breathing in and out, but as my lungs started to burn I couldn’t hold the bag any more and I let go of the bag.
The next time I tried was again on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach. This time I taped the bag around my neck thinking that would work better. It didn’t. Again I couldn’t get past the burning in my lungs and I ripped the bag off my face.
I had no idea that killing myself was actually going to be this painful.
The next time I tried suicide was in Toronto when I was living on Canadian Forces Base Downsview. This was before my bedroom had been moved downstairs into the basement in 1986. I had done a “practice run” at the Bloor-Yonge station. I actually did two practice runs. Both times I would wait on the Yonge platform until the trains had left. Then I’d take a little run and jump down on to the tracks. This was just to see if I could work up the nerve to jump down. I would then vault across the 3rd rails and climb up on the other platform and then out of the station.
However, when it came time to do it, I just couldn’t work up the nerve to jump in front of the train.
I don’t mean to sound cliche, but I did try the Bloor Street Vaiduct. Just couldn’t get the nerve to get over the railing.
There were a lot of things that kept me from following through.
Pain. I think my fear of pain has always ranked up there as the #1 reason why I haven’t succumbed to suicide. I really don’t want to spend my last 5, 1o, or 15 minutes on Earth in severe pain, gasping for breath and feeling the pain of broken bones.
Even worse, I always had visions of Andy Anderson with tubes in his skull as the doctors did everything to save his life after he slipped and fell in the bathtub in our PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Namao. Andy honestly had no life after that. They should have just let him die after his first series of blood clots and strokes. He spent the subsequent 5 years “living” in the Mewburn nursing home. He had been warehoused with other people who could no longer function on their own. And that’s another fear that I had. That I would do just enough damage to myself and that some asshole would “save me” and that I’d spend the rest of my “life” living in a facility being fed with a feeding tube.
Yet another reason that I couldn’t ever work up the courage to kill myself is my fear of Richard. I knew that if I had succeeded in killing myself that I would never have to be afraid of Richard again. But what I was afraid of the most is what Richard would do after I was dead. I knew that after I was dead that Richard would be free to blame my suicide on my insanity, that I committed suicide to weasel my way out of accepting responsibility for what I had allowed P.S. to do to my younger brother.
Richard had also impressed upon me from my time with the psychologists and social workers in Edmonton that “I was just acting up to get attention”. And as Richard had really impressed upon me that I was a worthless piece of shit that had fucked with his military career, the last thing I wanted to be seen as was an “attention seeker”.
I had so many reasons to kill myself back in the days of CFB Namao, CFB Griesbach, and CFB Downsview, but yet I couldn’t “man up” and do the deed because I was worried about what my father would say and do. Pretty fucking lame dontcha think?
My next attempt at suicide came in 1994.
I was unemployed. I was collecting E.I. as it was known back then. I had just returned from a disastrous trip out to Toronto to take a job that fell through. My E.I. got cut off because my E.I. cards were still being sent to my Toronto address so I ended up collecting welfare in B.C.
At this point in my life I had been on welfare in three different provinces. Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia at different points in time between the summer of 1991 and the spring of 1994. I had slept in various Salvation Army houses, as well as different charity dorms.
And no, there was no fucking way on Earth that I was going to endure the humiliation of calling Richard and asking him for assistance that I know wouldn’t be coming anyways.
I know the exact date of the 1994 attempt.
It was the very early morning of Sunday June 12th, sometime after midnight.
I had scoped out the Lions Gate Bridge for around a week prior. And I knew that after midnight car traffic dwindled to almost nothing. I wasn’t planning to jump of the bridge in the typical manner. I didn’t want anyone to see me. I didn’t want anyone to stop me. Earlier in the day on June 11th I had gone to a BC Liquor store and purchased a 6 pack of whatever. I didn’t drink very often, so I knew that a 6 pack would take away my chickenshit fear and would allow me to jump.
When I got to the bridge I waited for a break in traffic, then I headed onto the bridge and got to where the maintenance gondola was parked. The bridge had a gondola underneath that allowed maintenance crews to service and paint the bridge from underneath. There really wasn’t any type of security on this gondola which was amazing when you think about it. So over the railing I went and I climbed down the ladder and onto the gondola.
I don’t knowhow long I was under there. I didn’t have a watch, and this was years before I owned a cellphone. But eventually I drank the last of the six beers. The gondola was parked perfectly over the footing for the south side pylon. If I just sat on the rail of the gondola and leaned back I could hit the footing without bouncing off of any of the ironwork for the pylon. It should be quick and I was so pissed that I probably wouldn’t feel anything. But now I was fucking hallucinating. There was P.S. and my father holding hands and laughing at me. Both of them were calling me a cocksucker, a faggot, a homo. I passed out. I woke up a little while later with no shirt on and both shoes missing.
Fuuuuucccckkkkk.
So I managed to climb back up the ladder, back over the railing and walked back to the Sally Anne on Dunsmuir. Being drunk and without footwear I nearly killed myself in the process of climbing the Gondola ladder. I was screaming my lungs off as I walked through Stanley Park. I couldn’t believe how much of a fucking loser I was. I had the perfect opportunity to kill myself and my childish fears of what Richard would say after my death stopped me.
To this day I still don’t know why I feared Richard as much as I did. It made absolutely no sense. I should have hated him. But I didn’t. I feared him.
Anyways, the reason I know the exact date is that on Monday June 13th, 1994 I ended up at St. Paul’s Hospital. I could barely breath. I was coughing up blood and thick brown / green phlegm. The diagnoses was that I had come down with a bad case of community acquired pneumonia. The doctors had asked me if I had done anything out of the ordinary over the last week, if I had been anywhere unusual. Nope was my answer.
I felt like a fucking idiot.
In between 1994 and 2006 there were a few more attempts with the Skytrain, still couldn’t fucking do it.
The next time I would try to kill myself was in 2006. In August of 2006 I had called Richard and left some blistering messages on his cellphone. The next day he called me. I expected him to be angry. He wasn’t. He was quite shaken. I hadn’t really seen Richard since I moved away from Edmonton in February of 1992. Sure, I stopped in Edmonton in 2003 with my then girlfriend, but Richard barely had the time to speak to me. In my messages I had told him that I was sick and fucking tired of being blamed for what P.S. had done, I was tired of being blamed for having fucked with his military career, I was sick of everything. He knew that I was working at the hospital since the year previous as I had called him for his birthdate and my mother’s birthdate so that I could get my birth certificate replaced as the hospital needed to have a copy for my personnel file. He knew my phone number. He knew my address. But not fucking once did he ever call to see how I was making out.
So out of frustration I called him and vented into his voicemail. I was surprised when he called. I was even more surprised when it sounded like he was scared, like he had been wounded. He told me that yes, he had probably over reacted to what P.S. did ( yes, he used P.S.’s name). He didn’t mean to blame me, but that things were hectic back then. I was the older brother. I was supposed to look out for Scott. He pleaded with me to understand that he didn’t hire P.S.. He told me that he told his mother that he didn’t want P.S. around the house but that grandma kept hiring P.S.. And if I was to be angry at anyone for what P.S. had done, I should be angry at my grandmother for hiring P.S..
Things were great for about two months after this. Richard would call me on a daily basis. He even mailed me a $100 gift certificate to the Old Spaghetti Factory for my birthday. For him to tell the CFNIS in 2011 that he didn’t know how to get hold of me was a fucking crock of shit.
Anyways, just after my birthday the calls started to drop off.
By November he wasn’t calling or returning my calls.
Not a word at Christmas.
So I had decided to jump in front of a Skytrain.
Again I chickened the fuck out.
This was the last time I had ever been in a hospital.
But this hasn’t been the end of my desire to die.
As I’ve said in other posts, in the early 2000’s I had become aware of what was then called “assisted suicide” in Europe. Towards the late ’00s I had heard that in some European countries that depression was an acceptable reason to seek “medical suicide”. I knew that I would never have the money to make it over to Europe. And then the unthinkable started to happen. Jurisdictions across North America started to warm up to the idea of assisted suicide.
Medical Assistance in Dying for Mental Health reasons is so close that I can almost taste the propofol in my tongue. March 2023 to be exact.
Whether or not I have what it takes to pass the “test” to be allowed to die peacefully in my bed without any violence inflected upon my body remains to be seen.
North America has a puritanical streak in which it is believed that everyone must suffer right to the end for a death to be righteous.
I haven’t enjoyed a single fucking day in my life since Canadian Forces Base Namao. Society tells me that I am a fucking loser for wanting to die. Society tells me that I am selfish and only hurting others with my desire to die.
Society tells me that I don’t value the special and unique life that I have been “given”.
I sure as fuck didn’t ask for this. I didn’t tell Richard to fuck Marie so that I could be born.
I didn’t ask for my father to be a rage prone alcoholic in the Canadian Armed Forces.
I didn’t ask for my mother to leave.
I didn’t ask for my grandmother to hire P.S.
I didn’t ask to be molested by P.S. and Captain McRae.
I didn’t ask for my brain to be fucked with by Captain Terry Totzke.
I didn’t ask for my father to be a spineless wimp that followed along with the desires of the Canadian Armed Forces.
I have no interests.
I have no hobbies.
I have no friends.
I have absolutely nothing.
People tell me that I have to live, that I simply have to find the reasons to live, that I’m not trying hard enough.
People tell me that I’m only trying to get attention, that I’m weak, that I’m ungrateful.
People tell me to “forget the past and move on”.
How the fuck does one simply forget what I’ve been through?
Why do I have to keep suffering so that others can feel like they’ve fixed me or cured me?
Trust me, I am angry about a lot of things, but I’m not angry about dying.
Everyone dies.
My death won’t be some unusual event that no other human being has experienced.
Four simple drugs administered via a PICC catheter into the superior vena cava of my heart and I can be freed of all of this dysfunctional shit that is my life.
Midazolam
Propofol
Rocuronium
Bupivacaine
All that I want is to die a little earlier than what the cosmos has planned for me so that I don’t have to live with CFB Namao playing on an endless loop inside my skull. Richard may be dead and gone, and yes it was very cathartic when I found out that he was dead, but his ridicule, his hatred, his loathing, and his depression live inside my skull. P.S. lives in my skull. The knowledge of what Captain McRae did to me after the wine lives inside of my skull. Going to “special school” is inside my skull. Being a grade 8 dropout who missed out on a multitude of opportunities lives in my skull.
Let me go.
Let me be at peace.
Let me be free of the things that I had no control over.
Why are the CFNIS so hellbent on retaining my investigation?
In the summer of 2020 I made another complaint to the CFNIS regarding the man in the sauna that P.S. had provided me to at some point in time between May of 1980 and June 23rd, 1980.
This man was an officer of the Canadian Armed Forces who had been sent up to Canadian Forces Base Namao to assist Captain Father Angus McRae during the investigation into the “acts of homosexuality” that Captain McRae had committed with young boys on the base. This officer was a Major at the time. This officer himself would go on to have complaints of inappropriate sexual relations with children brought against him.
I made the complaint as I had evidence, paperwork from the Canadian Forces itself, that indicated that this Major was on the base during the relevant time and would have been a prime suspect as he would have no doubt been very familiar with P.S. as it was the statement of P.S. that brought Captain McRae to the attention of the military police and the CFSIU.
The investigating officer, Sgt. David Winship has only been in contact with me twice since the summer of 2020. This is not very confidence inspiring to say the least. In fact, the last time I was in contact with Sgt. Winship he said that there would only be communications from the CFNIS if something were to turn up. Basically it was “Fuck off Mr. Bees, and leave us the fuck alone. Don’t bother us with the shit from your childhood.”
Back in November of 2021 Minister of National Defence Anita Anand announced that the Canadian Armed Forces were going to hand over sexual assault investigations to the civilian police.
Adam Scotti / PMO (Canadian Prime Minister’s Office)
Not long after this story hit the media, I received this email from the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service Victim Service Coordinator
In January I received this email from James:
Why the fuck are the CFNIS so bound and determined to keep control of my investigation?
So, here I am engaged with the Military Police Complaints Commission once again.
This will be complaint #3
Complaint #1 for the original CFNIS GO 2011-5754 was a fucking unmitigated disaster. At that time I had no idea that the Provost Marshal would be looking after the complaint first and that the MPCC was extremely handicapped by the National Defence Act.
Complaint #2 worked out a little bit more in my favour. The MPCC laid out that the Military Police in 1980 knew that P.S. was molesting younger children on base and that this is what led the military police and the CFSIU to investigate Captain McRae in the first place. The MPCC also pointed out that the CFNIS had the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the Court Martial transcripts in their possession during the investigation of my complaint.
It will be very interesting to see how the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal responds to my complaint this time.
My complaint this time is related to the conduct of Sgt. David Winship of the CFNIS. That’s the way it goes. As I’ve explained before a person wishing to make a complaint to the MPCC can only complain about the investigators, not the investigation.
So anyways, my complaint is related to Sgt. Winship’s failure to comply with orders of Minister of National Defence that all sexual assault investigations be handed over to the outside civilian authorities. As part of my complaint I have included the email that I had received from Sgt. Damon Tenaschuk in which a legal officer with the office of the Judge Advocate General informed Sgt. Tenaschuk that due to the 3-year-time-bar that existed prior to 1998 Criminal Code charges could never be brought against Brigadier General Daniel Edward Munro.
I explained to the MPCC that just as the 3-year-time-bar would have prevented the CFNIS from laying charges against Captain Father Angus McRae in 2011, and as the legal officer from the JAG confirmed charges could never be brought against Captain Father Angus McRae’s commanding officer Brigadier General Daniel Edward Munro I full believe the reason for the CFNIS not handing my case over to the civilian police is that no charges can ever be brought against the man in the sauna whom P.S. provided me to for the purposes of receiving oral sex from an underage prepubescent male. I explained to the MPCC that as long as the CFNIS conduct the investigation they can give the Crown the most laughable case ever, a case that the CFNIS know will not be prosecuted. Or they can delay the case until the man I have accused dies. “Sorry Mr. Bees, we tried but the Crown wasn’t going for it” or “Oh geez Mr. Bees, retired Brigadier General R.B. died, that’s the end of the investigation, sorry”.
Were they to hand my case over to the civilian police, the civilian police are more than likely completely unaware of the existence of the 3-year-time-bar that existed from 1950 until 1998 and which put a 3-year time limit on the prosecution of indictable offences committed by persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline. I don’t think that the civilian police would be willing to do a “Dog ‘n’ Pony” show investigation into my complaint for the sake of helping the Canadian Forces do a coverup. And when it came time to prosecute retired Brigadier General R.B. and then civilian authorities were informed that the 3-year-time-bar meant that prosecution was impossible, I don’t think that the civilian police would have hesitated to tell me the reason as to why R.B. gets off scot-free.
I sent a letter to Minister of National Defence Anita Anand asking her why women who served in the Canadian Armed Forces get justice while males, who were sexually abused as children, are ineligible to receive justice.
I haven’t heard anything back.
And I don’t expect anything to change.
The outside appearances.
Recently I made acquaintances with a woman named Nacy who was married to Jean-Yves Dagenais. Jean-Yves is the younger brother of my mother. He was the uncle I don’t think I ever met.
I met my uncle Albert (Al) Dagenais various times while we lived on Canadian Forces Base Shearwater. But I honestly can’t remember meeting Jean-Yves.
One interesting thing that Nancy did mention is that Marie, Nancy, and Jean-Yves drove up from Regina because Marie was in a panic that her children were in danger. It turns out that Marie was still on Prince Edward Island and had been told where Richard had moved to. Marie called up Jean-Yves and borrowed some money to fly from PEI to Regina, and then the three of them drove up to Canadian Forces Base Namao.
Apparently when they arrived the found grandma feeing my brother and I at the kitchen table. We didn’t appear to be in any distress.
I remember this visit. Not too much detail. I sure didn’t remember Nancy or Jean-Yves. I know that I had been told about my mother coming for a visit as I went and waited by the entrance to the PMQs with a flashlight for them to come. I figured that with the flashlight she’d see me better and she wouldn’t drive past.
I remember Marie bitching about the house numbering. And yes, the houses were numbered weird. Or at least weird when compared to the civilian world. In the civilian world the houses tend to be numbered odds on one side and evens on the other. The house numbers also increase typically from the lower cross street to the higher cross street.
This was not how they were numbered on CFB Namao. The houses were numbered sequentially down one side of the street and then sequentially up the other side. This is how our PMQ #11 on 12th street was literally across the street from P.S.’s PMQ #26 on 12th street.
I’ll never figure out who it was that told Marie that we were living on Canadian Forces Base Namao. There were only two people who would have told her. And they’re both dead now. It was either my grandmother, or my uncle Doug. There is no way on Earth that Richard would have ever called Marie.
Grandma was always of the opinion that Marie and Richard should never have separated and that Richard should have swallowed his pride and asked Marie back in.
Doug never really liked Richard. When uncle Doug would come back from the oilfield every six weeks or so, Doug would buy my brother and I toys and other things to Richard’s chagrin.
Most of the xmas present that my brother and I received like our little B&W tvs and the little Coleco rifle games for those TVs were bought by Doug in Marie’s name.
If I was a gambling man I’d have to say that it was Doug and not grandma that called Marie to let her know where Richard had technically kidnapped her children to.
Grandma was too afraid of Richard to have gone behind his back to tell Marie where he had moved to with their kids and without a valid custody order.
Uncle Doug just didn’t seem to give a fuck. Yeah, he wouldn’t outright antagonize Richard, but he would do things that he knew would rub Richard the wrong way.
For example, when I moved back to Edmonton in June of 1990 with Richard “so we could try to be a family again”, it was Doug that introduced me to Marie. It was also Doug that tried to get me to go for my small “m” metis papers.
Small “m” metis papers really don’t amount to too much, other than you can rightfully say that you have First Nations DNA. I think Doug knew this would kill Richard as Richard had spent his entire life pretending that he wasn’t Half Cree and Half Irish.
Nancy said that when Marie, Nancy, and Jean-Yves arrived that my brother and I were sitting at the kitchen table happily eating our breakfast. So I don’t know if Nancy and Jean-Yves came at a later time, but I do know that when Marie arrived I had my father’s military issue flashlight because it was getting dark.
Maybe Marie came up by herself initially and then Nancy and Jean-Yves came up the next morning.
Nancy said that after seeing that my brother and I weren’t in any danger that things became testy between Jean-Yves and Marie.
Nancy would go on to say that because Marie had abandoned my brother and I on Prince Edward Island and left us in the house alone by ourselves Uncle Al was furious with Marie and she didn’t think those two ever spoke again. Probably explains why Marie was never mentioned in Uncle Al’s obituary. And this probably explains why Marie wouldn’t say anything about Al when I went to visit her in 2013 and 2014.
I don’t honestly remember too much about when Marie left. I know I was crying. I know my brother was crying. And I know that Marie was crying. She packed my brother and I a suitcase each of our clothes.
Marie took us over to another PMQ on base and left us with one of Richard’s airforce buddies. I can’t remember who this guy was other than he had two kids that were older than me. It was one of these older boys that gave me their bicycle when his father bought him a new bicycle. What I also remember about this guy is that he had a reel-to-reel tape deck that I was fascinated with.
So yeah, my brother and I weren’t abandoned.
Until the day I die I will never forgive Marie for leaving me with an alcoholic rage fuelled monster suffering from PTSD and intergenerational family trauma. But no, she didn’t abandon us like Richard and his melodramatic outbursts would make it sound like.
Richard would have been fucking pissed. Richard was at sea with the airforce when Marie left. Richard was fine with having children so long as he didn’t have to look after them. And now with Marie gone, he was going to have to look after his own kids. So he brought his alcoholic and psychologically damaged mother out from Edmonton, AB to raise my brother and I.
And as we know from my Alberta Foster Care records, Richard always had to play the victim. And I kid you not, Richard was excellent at bullshitting. There’s a reason why Alberta Social Services noted Richard as “frequently telling different stories from one meeting to another”. He lied, and he lied good.
And I also know for a fact that Marie didn’t abandon us like Richard said she did. Richard made an application to the PEI courts for child custody. The application never went anywhere in the court. The court made no determination as to child custody. If Marie had abandoned my brother and I like Richard claimed she did, it would have been a slam dunk. Richard would have been awarded custody and in fact the courts may have awarded Richard child support payments from Marie.
Yet, none of this happened. Richard wasn’t a kind old man who didn’t want free money from Marie because he had a kind heart and didn’t want to cause her further distress. Richard was a man who could carry a fucking grudge better than Allied Van Lines carries furniture.
At the time it wasn’t common knowledge, but it is now that service members back in the day often abused the National Defence Act and the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations to their own advantage.
The Hillcrest housing development was built to DND spec by a private builder and was then leased to DND by this builder. Any property that is leased by DND becomes a “Defence Establishment”. Only members of the Canadian Armed Forces or civilian employees of the Department of National Defence have any legal right to be on a Defence Establishment.
Military dependents such as my brother and I and our mother have no legal right to be on a defence establishment. We’re only there at our serving parent’s pleasure.
There was a report commissioned by the Canadian Forces in 1996 to look at spousal abuse in the Canadian Forces. The report was finished in the spring of 2000 and released.
The report found that men would often use the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations to eject their spouse out of the PMQ and off the base when the marriage was breaking down.
Once kicked out of the military housing and off the base the non-serving spouse often found it impossible to serve papers on the service member as they and their lawyers would be barred from the base or from approaching military housing which was located on a base.
The report would also discover that the serving member’s superiors would often lie to outside social service agencies about the child custody status of the children, implying that the service member had custody. This would deny the non-serving spouse of any civil benefits.
Now, the odd thing about Richard’s claim that Marie abandoned my brother and I is that he himself would readily abandon my brother and I when it fit his needs.
I have no idea of who the woman was that brought me to the hospital after my bicycle incident.
But I do know that Iceland is nowhere near Prince Edward. In fact it’s 3,341km from Prince Edward Island to Iceland. By way of comparison it’s 3,359km between Vancouver, BC and Toronto, ON.
Grandma had already returned to Edmonton to be with her husband Andy Anderson when I was admitted to the hospital.
Richard received a compassionate posting from Captain Lynda Tyrell in August of 1978 and we ended up moving to Canadian Forces Base Edmonton in August of 1978.
This isn’t the only time Richard would abandon my brother and I.
One of Richard’s favourite places to drop off my brother and I was Canada’s Wonderland north of Toronto. Richard would buy my brother and I the $29.99 season’s pass. He’d drop us off just about every weekend that the park was open during the spring and the fall. He’d drop us off just about every day of the week in the summer. He’d drop us off at 08:00 in the morning and he’d pick us up again at 22:00 after the park closed. That’s almost 14 hours in that fucking park.
He’d give my brother and I $10 each for the day. Even back then, $10 didn’t go very far in a park where hotdogs were about $4 ea. I don’t know about my brother, but I used to just go hide and try to sleep for the afternoon and evening. You can only ride the same rides so many times before they become outright boring.
As my brother would call it, this was “Richard’s Discount Babysitting Service”.
I used to pray that every time that Richard would drop me off there that I would be kidnapped and killed and then when the police found my body they’d arrest Richard for child endangerment.
That’s why when I read Richard’s statement to the CFNIS on June 9th, 2011 I nearly choked.
” – In T.O. he (Richard) refused to take him(Robert / Bobbie) to Canada’s Wonderland because of (sic) he was bad; the school found out and said it was child abuse.”
“- He (Robert / Bobbie) threatened to call the police”
You get the feeling that Richard loved good ol’ melodrama and playing the victim?
I have my records from the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto. There’s nothing at all mentioned in there about Canada’s Wonderland or abuse.
The Children’s Aid records make note of the intense sibling rivalry that existed between my brother and I. The records also noted that my father didn’t perceive any trouble between my brother and I, that he but it down to “boys will be boys”. He was also adamant that our family didn’t need to be involved with social services, that our involvement with social services in Alberta was unwarranted. But the Children’s Aid records also make note that due to budget constraints and staffing issues they couldn’t dedicate a lot of resources towards my family unless someone called them about witnessing physical abuse. And living on a military base meant that no one would rat-out another family.
And I highly doubt that the school or Children’s Aid would really give a sweet flying fuck if I went to Canada’s Wonderland or not. But I’ll bet you that Children’s Aid would have loved to have known about Richard’s discount babysitting service.
Yeah, I don’t care how much my murder would have hurt, the suffering and the agony I would have gone through would have been worth seeing the police and the courts destroy Richard.
Now, back to the part where Nancy and Jean-Yves were startled to see my brother and I sitting at the kitchen table happily eating our breakfast.
In our interviews with Alberta Social Services both my brother and I described our grandmother as a threat and very authoritarian.
In my initial assessments with the psychologist hired by Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke this is what I had to say.
My desire to die is nothing new. It’s been with me for so long as I can remember. It’s just that the fear of pain has kept me alive. But yeah, I would have been 9 years old when I said this.
I guess that first impressions can be very, very deceptive and very misleading.
When Nancy, Jean-Yves, and Marie first showed up in September or October of 1978, Andy Anderson had yet to slip in the bathtub and crack his skull open. Grandma had yet to start drinking. And P.S. had yet to be our babysitter.
And almost two years to the date in 1980 I have major depression, severe anxiety, and I want to kill myself.
When I talked to my brother back in 2013, one of the things that I mentioned was that I remembered grandma having a “Block Parent” sign in her bedroom window.
My brother remarked that kids would have been better off getting into the “Free Candy Van” than coming to our house for help.
Anyways, until next time…….
40%
And that’s just those who came forward.
Well, here’s something that might come as a surprise to some people, but it doesn’t come as a surprise to me.
There were about 19,000 claims submitted for compensation.
If 40% of claimants were men that’s 7,600 men. And trust me men, especially in a military environment, are NOT going to be all that willing to come forward out of fear that others will judge them as being weak or of being a homosexual.
https://aasas.ca/support-and-information/men-and-sexual-assault/
And if one sexual abuser in the Canadian Armed Forces had five or six victims that 7,600 sexually abused men could quickly become 45,600 men. And I don’t really want to think about the total number of men that were sexually abused by other men in the Canadian Armed Forces. According to some stats, over 90% of sexual assault victims never report their assaults.
I’ve known about this since 2014 when L’Actualite ran an exposé on sexual assault within the Canadian Armed Forces. Part of this exposé looked at male-on-male sexual assault within the Canadian Armed Forces. This exposé was stripped from the English version of this article that ran in Maclean’s magazine.
Basically, it was found that male-on-male sexual abuse in the Canadian Armed Forces had nothing to do with “homosexual” relationships. The article found that male-on-male sexual abuse was more about exerting dominance and punishing others for perceived bad behaviour.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8360601/canadian-veteran-military-sexual-assaults-misconduct/
https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2021/04/24/i-was-going-to-get-raped-former-soldier-speaks-out-about-his-being-sexually-assaulted-in-canadas-military.html
Male-on-male sexual abuse was frequently used to shame other members into compliance or to humiliate members that had “caused trouble” or used to blackmail a member into silence least his coworkers, friends, and family discover that he had participated in anal intercourse.
And I have absolutely no doubt that many male children living on the bases were subjected to this “discipline” in the household.
If a member of the Canadian Armed Forces is willing to force anal intercourse on a fellow adult member or if a member of the Canadian Forces is willing to force another adult member to perform fellatio on him in order to teach the other member a lesson or to change the other member’s non-conforming behaviour, you can bet that this type of behaviour found its way back into the PMQs on base.
Here’s a story from the New York Times that deals with male-on-male sexual abuse in the US mIlitary. There are numerous similarities between the US Military and the Canadian Forces.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/10/us/men-military-sexual-assault.html
Almost every type of discipline these men were taught would find its way back into the homes on base.
Once you engage in the military life, it’s almost impossible to separate and segregate the military life, the military training, and the military discipline from the home life.
I have absolutely no doubt that there are many a male military dependent that have some rather fucked up hazy memories from way back then. After all, it’s not like these male members were engaging in routine homosexual activities. They would just use male-on-male as a disciplinary tool.
It might have happened once.
It might have happened twice.
But I would be more than willing to believe that if it happened once or twice, that this would have been buried in the dark recesses of one’s mind.
Especially if it happened on a military base.
Who are you going to tell?
Who is going to believe you?
Are you really going to risk having your serving parent booted from the military?
Are you really going to endure the wrath of your serving parent if they found out that you tried to rat them out to the military police?
Sure does raise some interesting questions, doesn’t it?
Maybe this is one of the reason why the Canadian Armed Forces refuse to investigate historical child sexual abuse.
Maybe this is one of the reasons that some former serving parents are always telling their kids to forget about the past and to let sleeping dogs lie. Even if the serving parent in question didn’t abuse their own kids, were they aware of other service members that abused their own kids? Hard to keep secrets during an investigation, isn’t it?
Might be best to just deny anything and everything, right?
Going to Case Management
Yesterday I received a phone call from my lawyer who is representing me in my class action against the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence.
The Department of Justice has responded and has agreed to take the matter before a case management judge.
My lawyer expects the judge to agree to allow this matter to proceed as a class action.
This should occur around October.
If everything goes as planned, the real action will start in the spring of 2022.
This case won’t be a slam dunk.
You can bet that the Department of Justice, the Canadian Forces, the Department of National Defence, and the office of the Minister of National Defence will do everything in their power to portray myself and all of the other class members as money hungry liars out to squeeze the poor military for a quick buck.
The Department of Justice will also do everything in their power to keep this matter hushed. My matter only deals with Captain Father Angus McRae who served on four different Canadian Forces Base and Stations from 1973 until 1980. At the time the Canadian Forces had over 60 defence establishments in Canada. Each with its own Catholic chapel. Granted, not all chaplains were sexually attracted to children. But let’s say that 10 to 15 percent of all military chaplains molested children during their service careers between the 1950s and 1998. That’s potentially a lot of sexually abused children. And that’s potentially a lot of other class action lawsuits.
How many members of the Canadian Armed Forces involved with the Catholic Chapels am I aware of that were investigated for sexually abusing children?
Captain Father Angus McRae;
Brigadier General Roger Bazin;
Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan.
Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan was the member of the Canadian Forces who had been booted out of the military in 1985 for molesting a group of early teens on CFB Gagetown. The problem with Sullivan is that he was being actively investigated in the 1970s for molesting young boys in the Ottawa area when he was involved with the Boy Scouts. How did Sullivan join the military if he had been under investigation? Your guess is as good as mine. Sullivan was convicted and sentenced to prison in 2019 for molesting the kids in the 1970s. The Ontario Crown prosecutor knew nothing about Sullivan’s conviction in a court martial for the molestation of the teens on CFB Gagetown. Sullivan’s convictions in 1984 were removed from his service record by the Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada due to technicalities with the case, not because he was innocent.
How many other child molesters joined the Canadian Armed Forces bypassing the military’s obviously lax background checks?
Alexander Kalichuk comes to mind.
Military children whom had been sexually abused on base by either service personal or other military dependents had to depend on a defective “disciplinary ” system for justice. A system that had some very horrific flaws. These children would sometimes end up in the care of the Canadian Forces military social workers much like I did.
In my case it turns out that the Chain of Command on CFB Namao decided to not call in the RCMP because amongst other issues, they believed that my babysitter, P.S., was only 12 years old in 1980. P.S. was born in June of 1965.
And don’t forget, rank very much carries a lot of privilege in an organization such as the Canadian Armed Forces. No private or corporal is going to make allegations against a master warrant officer for molesting their kid. No master corporal or sergeant is going to make allegations against a captain or lieutenant colonel for molesting their kid. No commanding officer is going to allow a “flirtatious or promiscuous” 12 year old to ruin the military career of his outstanding master warrant office. And these were all well documented flaws known to exist prior to major amendments to the National Defence Act which occurred in December of 1998.
How many military parents would have allowed their male children to be involved with any child sexual abuse investigation if it meant that their son or sons were going to be tarred with the brush of “homosexuality”? That’s what the Canadian Armed Forces termed male child sexual abuse to be when the abuser was also a male. “Acts of homosexuality “. It also didn’t help the matter much the the Criminal Code offence of “Buggery” (anal intercourse) was considered to be a victimless offence with both parties equally to blame.
With the military police unwilling to investigate my matter, and with the civilian police unwilling to investigate my matter, and with my care at the hands of the military social worker burnt into my mind, and with my father’s opinions of the abuse burnt into my mind, I kept my mouth shut until 2011.
How many other former military dependents kept quiet over the years? I’d say there’s quite a few. I have spoken personally with some former dependents who are still terrified all these years later of anyone discovering that they had been sexually abused on base. Sadly, all of this silence has worked to the advantage of the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence.
When my father was interviewed by the CFNIS in 2011 he gave a statement to the CFNIS that was so devoid of reality that it wasn’t funny. Was he coached or coaxed into giving his statement? Did the Canadian Forces threaten his pension or his medical plan? Did he make a deal with the military back in 1980 that in trade for his silence in the P.S. / McRae matter that he’d receive a favour in kind? Is that why his statement is so easily torn asunder by various legal records? And let’s be clear, he didn’t just make one or two misstatements. He practically gave the CFNIS everything they would’ve asked for.
Fred Cunningham was very concerned in 2011 that I not tell anyone what he had told me. He seemed to be implying that there would be very serious consequences if anyone found out what he had told me.
Anyways, enough for now.
Seek Help Sooner…..
One question that I know will come up during my class action lawsuit against the Government of Canada is why didn’t I seek professional help sooner if the events on Canadian Forces Base Namao had such a profound effect on me.
I know that question will also come up in my civil action against the Canadian Corp of Commissionaires.
When I became involved with Captain Terry Totzke starting in November of 1980, it was very clear to me that I was being blamed for what had happened to me on Canadian Forces Base Namao. It was also made very clear to me in no uncertain terms that I was to blame for what P.S. had done to my younger brother.
My father, as his psychological interview indicated, refused to take responsibility for his family and always needed to blame others for the problems with his family. Instead of my father owning up to the fact that he was ultimately responsible for the sexual abuse my brother and I endured at the hands of P.S. and Captain McRae from fall of 1978 until the spring of 1980, my father needed to push the blame on to someone else.
That someone else was me.
And as it turns out it appears that it was the Canadian Armed Forces that was bound and determined to keep me from receiving help.
I know that my father knew about what happened on CFB Namao. There were various times between 1980 and 1987 when my father would bring up the topic of the babysitter and what I had allowed him to do to my younger brother. In August of 2006 my father didn’t feign any ignorance about P.S. when I brought up the subject with him, but this time he was blaming his own mother for hiring P.S. against his wishes.
I know that Captain Terry Totzke knew about what happened on CFB Namao as he would often talk about P.S. during our counselling sessions.
I know from talking to retired warrant officer Fred Cunningham that the military police and the chain of command knew full well what P.S. had done between the fall of 1978 until the spring of 1980.
The CFSIU investigation paperwork shows that the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit and the chin of command knew full well what Captain McRae and P.S. had been doing together on the base.
The Court Martial transcripts illustrate that it was various reports of P.S. molesting younger children on Canadian Forces Base Namao that brought him to the attention of the base military police. It was his statements to the base military police that caused the base military police to call in the CFSIU to investigate Captain McRae.
So people knew.
I knew that people knew.
Yet I was blamed for what had happened.
When I went to Glenrose Psychiatric hospital for a brief stay for observation my father made it clear that this was because I was still kissing other boys.
When I started in the Westfield Program for emotionally disturbed children in the spring of 1982, my father kept telling me that I was in this program because I wouldn’t stop kissing other boys.
When we fled the province of Alberta in the early spring of 1983, my father made me understand that he was saving me from the drugs my civilian counsellors wanted to give to me to make me stop kissing boys.
At this point in my life I was sleeping very poorly at night. I would frequently wet the bed. I started falling deeper and deeper into the world of depression and anxiety.
I have absolutely no idea who issued the orders, but it would appear that someone in the Canadian Armed Forces made the decision that I was not to be placed into any form of civilian care. I was to remain solely in the care of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke.
If I had to hazard a guess, it would be that the Canadian Armed Forces didn’t want the Canadian Public to know that they had a problem with kiddie diddling clergy just as the Catholic Church was having in the civilian world.
This would have been the worst absolute disgrace for the military to have faced.
On Canadian Forces Base Namao, Captain McRae was found to have molested well over 25 children. This number is probably higher due to the number of families that would have moved off the base to other postings prior to the CFSIU investigation of Captain McRae. Also, as my lawyer rationalized in the filing of the class action against the Government of Canada, how many children did Captain McRae molest on the three bases he was posted to prior to arriving on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
Captain McRae started of his career at Canadian Forces Base Kingston. He then went to Canadian Forces Base Portage La Prairie. He was then transferred to Canadian Forces Station Holberg on Vancouver Island. He was then transferred to Canadian Forces Base Namao in the summer of 1978.
Captain McRae had been investigated by the CFSIU in 1973 at RMC Kingston for a suspected act of homosexuality. In May of 1980 Captain McRae was investigated by the CFSIU for having committed “acts of homosexuality ” with teenage boys living on the base. The Canadian Forces were using the phrase “Acts of Homosexuality ” to describe sexual assaults committed against underage male minors.
So how many children did Captain McRae molest at those four postings?
In June of 1980 prior to McRae’s court martial in July of 1980 McRae underwent an ecclesiastical trial in the Archdiocese of Edmonton. During this ecclesiastical trial he admitted to church officials that he had been having sex with male children for years.
The Canadian Forces must have been worried about how the Canadian public would have reacted to being informed that children living on secure defence establishments in housing provided by the Canadian Forces were being sexually abused by an officer of the Canadian Forces.
This is why the Canadian Forces hid the Captain Father McRae court martial away from the public eye using the ridiculous excuse of “protecting the morals of Canadians “.
The Canadian Forces had the need to keep these matters quiet. The Canadian Forces had the power to keep these matters quiet.
Unfortunately, I as well as many others, paid the price for this desire for silence.
Between November of 1981 and January of 1983 whenever we went to family counselling Captain Totzke and my father would tell me to watch what I said to my civilian social workers and counsellors. I don’t think that Captain Totzke was too happy with our teachers and principal at Major General Greisbach for having called Alberta Social Services on our family in November of 1981.
In January of 1983, when Alberta Social Services issued the ultimatum to my father, it was quite amazing how fast strings were pulled to get my family out of the province of Alberta in order to avoid my apprehension.
Why would the Canadian Forces go through all of the trouble of relocating my family just to avoid me going into foster care or residential care?
Why would the Canadian Forces go through all of the trouble to ensure that I kept my mouth shut?
Simple. Captain Totzke would have been aware that as long as I lived in my father’s house and as long as I was blamed for what happened on CFB Namao and as long as I was terrified of my father, I wouldn’t tell anyone about what had happened on CFB Namao. However, if I was pulled out of the house and placed into foster care or residential care, how long would it be until I started receiving treatment for my depression and anxiety? How long would it have been until I started talking freely about what had happened on Canadian Forces Base Namao from the fall of 1978 until the spring of 1980? How long would it have been until my comments made it to the public realm? How long until an interested person called for an investigation or an inquiry?
Am I the only child from Canadian Forces Base Namao that received this “care” from a military social worker?
No.
I’m pretty sure that other children that had been caught up in the Captain Father Angus McRae / P.S. child sexual abuse scandal also varying degrees of this manner of care.
The Canadian Armed Forces had decided that my mental health and my wellbeing could be sacrificed for the greater good of the military.
Prior to 2011, I had tried to get psychiatric help a few times. But what kept getting in the way was my distrust of counsellors. When I was a child living on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach I was caught in a war between my military social worker and my civilian social workers. To the military social worker I presented a risk if I started to tell my civilian social workers what had occurred on CFB Namao. To my civilian social workers I was just some petulant little child who was acting up for no reason at all. If there were issues like child sexual abuse in my past, surely Captain Totzke and my father would have told them, right?
And having my own father blame me for what had occurred on Canadian Forces Base Namao as well as blaming me for “fucking with his military career” meant that I learnt to internalize a lot of this crap. Counselling is only for victims, right? Terry and my father both said that I wasn’t a victim.
And surely, if my father thought that what Captain Totzke was doing was wrong, he could have just got me help regardless of what the Canadian Armed Forces wanted, right? Wrong. His rank of master corporal at the time as well as the National Defence Act’s requirement for him to obey the lawful commands on his superiors meant that what the Canadian Forces wanted is what the Canadian Forces got.
I’m currently trying to obtain counselling. But the problem I face is this. As bad as the sexual abuse was. And as damaging as the sexual abuse was. My treatment at the hands of Captain Totzke and my father was by far worse. The sheer hell I was put through between October of 1980 and April of 1983 is many magnitudes worse than the sexual abuse. So I can’t benefit from counselling for the sexual abuse until I receive counselling for the psychological abuse I endured.
And besides, where would I get the counselling for the psychological abuse?
There’s nothing more guaranteed to bring a look of confusion to someone’s face than to say that you were in the care of a military social worker as a child.
So believe me, it’s not from a lack of trying.
Depression and Anxiety
Almost 42 years ago in October of 1980 my brother my brother and I were sent for psychological review just after we had arrived at our new school on Canadian Forces base Griesbach. This was done after our teachers had noted our “odd behaviour” when we arrived at the new school.
Our father was also interviewed by the psychiatrist.
This is one of the observations of the psychiatrist “Robert sees his environment as being harsh, threatening and fearful, His world seems unstable and is full of aggressive, frightening events. Major concern and anger is directed toward his grandmother who he sees as authoritarian and oppressive. Robert indicated a strong coalition between he and his father directed toward the removal of his grandmother from the household.”
Further the psychiatrist noted “He indicates a feeling of helplessness and frustration as indicated by his comments , “my nerves are disintegrating, my mind tells me I’m going to kill myself, people are grouchy and mean, I’m best when no one is around me, I’m going to have a nervous breakdown if granny doesn’t leave our home soon”.
When interviewed by the psychiatrist, my father was found to not be surprised by what my brother and I had said. My father acknowledged and confirmed many of the family problems that my brother and I had indicated. Very little commitment was received from my father, so my family’s file was handed over to Canadian Armed forces officer Captain Terry Totzke, the military social worked from Canadian Forces base Edmonton.
When I saw Terry as a child, I only knew him as Terry. I wouldn’t discover until 2011 that Terry was a captain in the Canadian Forces.
When I was involved with Terry, he was very concerned that I had been caught having sex with another boy (P.S., my then 15 year old babysitter). Terry told me that he had the base military police watching me and that if they ever reported to Terry that I kissed or touched another boy that I would be going to the Alberta Hospital for treatment.
Terry had told me that what I had done on CFB Namao indicated that I was a homosexual and that homosexuality was a mental illness.
Looking back on things, I don’t think Terry had ever been concerned with how bonkers things were in the Gill household. Terry must have been absolutely certain that my issues were related to the homosexuality I had exhibited on CFB Namao
This explains why in November of 1981 our teachers at school called in Alberta Social Services to deal with my brother and I. This came as a result of the teachers and principal at Major General Greisbach School becoming frustrated with the inaction of Captain Totzke.
I went for another psychological review. This time I was found to be beyond despair and beyond depression. I was found to be terrified of my father and I was convinced that my father was going to kill me. The psychiatrist conducting the interview wondered if I had ever had a day free from extreme anxiety in my life.
By the spring of 1982 yet another exam had found that I had become sufficiently emotionally disturbed that it was recommended that I be placed into a psychiatric hospital for care.
And in the winter of 1983 just after Alberta Social Services tried to remove me from the home, both my father and Terry promised that I would be institutionalized at the Sick Kids hospital in Toronto.
I was caught between people who legitimately wanted to help me and people who wanted to help the Canadian Armed Forces keep a lid on the 1980 Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse sex scandal that occurred on Canadian Forces Base Namao from October of 1978 until May of 1980.
At this point in time I’ll never know who was calling the shots back then. And at this point I really don’t care. I know that my father was a lowly cog in the wheel, a master corporal that was bound to follow his orders. Captain Terry Totzke would have been superior to my father and my father would have had no option but to obey Captain Totzke’s directives. And in turn Captain Totzke would have been following his orders from somewhere up the chain of command
The Canadian Armed Forces cannot find my records from the time I was involved with Captain Totzke. For comparison I have all of my civilian social service records and all of my hospital records from my childhood. If it wasn’t for my civilian social service records, I would never have known that I had been involved with military social workers on two different Canadian Forces Bases.
What upsets me the most about all of this is that it was known as far back that I was beyond depressed and dealing with severe anxiety.
I’d like to think that I’ve done a decent job of living my life the best I could with the demons of despair, depression, and anxiety living in my head.
Then along came COVID-19.
Where I work, I was put under an extreme amount of stress due to the age of the facility and the neglect of the facility and the need to have the facility cope with the requirements of COVID-19. And this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
About a month ago, after a couple of emergency consults with my family doctor I ended up with a prescription of escitaloprám otherwise known as Lexapro or Cipralex. I was started off on 5mg as a test run. I was then bumped up to 10mg. I’ve been on 10mg for a few weeks now. We’ll have to play it by ear, but the the length of time that I’ve had untreated depression and anxiety I’ll probably be on this for the rest of my life.
Escitaloprám is an SSRI. An SSRI is a Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitor. Basically escitaloprám prevents the neural transmitters in my brain from reabsorbing serotonin. This means that it’s easier for the neural transmitters in my brain to send signals. And somehow this helps with major depression and general anxiety disorders.
What’s it like being on escitaloprám?
Well, I can think clearly for the first time in my life.
I’m not euphoric. I’m not exactly emotionally numb. I don’t have the depression and despair hanging around my neck anymore. But I’m not exactly doing cartwheels down the street either.
For the first time ever in my life I can actually go to bed, sleep through the night, and wake up in the morning before the alarms go off.
I don’t have to take three or four naps through the day.
Dreams. I’m actually having vivid dreams, not horrifying nightmares. The nightmares were typically replays of CFB Namao and CFB Griesbach.
The only thing that I have to watch out for at this point is if my body builds up a tolerance to the SSRIs. Apparently within 2 years, 25% of patients prescribed SSRIs no longer respond to the medications.
And having had a taste of “normal” for the first time in my life, I really don’t want to go back to the way things were.
What caused my depression and anxiety?
The typical belief is that 40% of persons with major depression had it passed to them through their genes. The other 60% received their depression through environmental and other factors.
I’m thinking that some of my depression came down via my father’s genes. He was a severe insomniac. He was also an alcoholic. Research has shown that the same genes that make a person prone to alcoholism will also predispose that person to major depression.
Drinking for me amplified the dark thoughts. I haven’t had a drink since 2011. And even before that I can count the number of times I drank on both hands. Seeing my grandmother drunk and seeing my father drunk and then dealing with the two of them when they were dealing with their hangovers wasn’t pleasant.
Growing up in Richard’s house was anything put peaceful.
Between his drinking, his anger, and his complete indifference.
According to Pat Longmore, when my father was stationed at Canadian Forces Base Shearwater in Nova Scotia, my mother and my brother and I would sometimes take advantage of the “battered wives club” and we’d go stay at friendly safe houses when Richard was dealing with one of his anger outbursts.
My mother left when I was 5. This was a very abrupt departure. When I talked with her in 2013 it seems that she may not have had much say in the matter. It seems that there were very specific rules that applied to civilians living in the PMQs.
When I was 7 in the summer of 1979, my father started dating the woman who would become my stepmother. She was only 13 years older than I was. She was honestly like the older sister I never had and yeah, we could fight like brother and sister at times.
I was sexually abused by both P.S. and Captain Father Angus McRae along with an older male that P.S. took me to see in the men’s sauna at the base pool.
After I was caught being sexually abused by P.S. I was frequently beat up by the older kids on CFB Namao. This led to my family being moved to CFB Greisbach.
At CFB Namao I was put in the care of Captain Terry Totzke, whose primary concern seemed to be giving me “conversion” therapy to cure me of the “homosexuality ” that I had exhibited by being sexually abused on CFB Namao.
When my father was forced to move to Ontario to skip out on my apprehension by Alberta Social Services, he used to unload on me for “fucking with his military career”. A lot of the beatings that I took from him on Canadian Forces Base Downsview were no doubt due to his frustration at losing his career as a CH-147 Chinook Mechanic that he had been specially trained for.
As a kid, school was a complete disaster. Richard only had a grade 8 education. To him school was nothing more than a glorified daycare centre.
The there was the sexual abuse at the hands of Earl Ray Stevens at the Denison Armouries when I was in cadets.
So yeah, I guess you could say that I’ve had a lot of episodes in my life that would account for my major depression and anxiety disorder.
So, we’ll see where escitaloprám can take me. I’m dealing with one of the side effects. And honestly I can handle this one with all of the peace and quiet that escitaloprám has brought to me. When I tell you that the war war in my mind has reached a cease fire, I mean that the war has stopped. And I’m hoping that the escitaloprám will work for years to come because I’m terrified of going back.
The hardest post to write.
I can’t go on with P.S., Captain McRae, Captain Totzke, my father, my social workers, other men who sexually abused me, and the never ending flashbacks of the abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao bouncing around in my skull and popping up when least expected.
Mental Torture.
This will probably be a very polarizing blog post to write.
Feel free to read it, but please understand that it is I who have lived through this, and not you.
In October of 1980 I was found to be in between despair and depression with an unhealthy does of extreme anxiety.
By the summer of 1981 I was found to be so emotionally disturbed that I was supposed to have been institutionalized.
In the spring of 1982 my father signed the paperwork placing me into the Alberta foster care system. I don’t think that Richard really understood what he had signed. But this paperwork was the first step apparently required for me to be placed into the Westfield program for emotionally disturbed children.
My case workers with Alberta Social Services along with my child care workers in the Westfield program were beginning to realize that there were substantial problems with my father and that I needed to be removed from his care and placed into foster care or residential care if there was any hope of me recovering.
I still don’t know if my civilian social workers knew all of the details from 1978 to 1980.
It was apparent that Captain Terry Totzke had his own agenda, and that agenda didn’t gel with the agenda of my civilian social workers.
As I was a military dependent living on a Department of National Defence military base and as I was in the care of Canadian Forces military social worker Captain Terry Totzke, Alberta social services needed to inform Captain Totzke of my pending apprehension.
Within days of this notification my father received an out of the blue “Hail Mary” posting to Ontario.
It was indicated to my civilian case workers by either my father or Captain Totzke that I would be placed in the Sick Kids hospital in Toronto for psychiatric care. I never was. An ATI request with Sick Kids in Toronto showed that they had never heard of me and had absolutely no paperwork related to me.
My father placed my brother and I into the same public school. The school board ended up sending my brother to a different school due to intense sibling rivalry.
So, as of this writing it’s been 41 years since the abuse ended on Canadian Forces Base Namao that ended up driving me into the depths of mental illness.
To be clear the abuse I endured at the hands of P.S. wasn’t the only bad thing going on in my life at the time. But it was probably the most substantial. P.S. was a young teenager at the time. He obviously had no impulse control. Captain McRae was smart. Captain McRae gave us alcohol to drink to mask the sexual abuse he was inflicting upon us. P.S. wasn’t that smart or well thought out. P.S. thought that physical beatings were enough to get us to remain quiet. It obviously didn’t work as one of the kids that P.S. was abusing must have told their parents. As the Military Police Complaints Commission stated in the 2020 report, it was obvious that the base military police on CFB Namao were well aware of what P.S. was doing with younger children, and it’s these assaults that ultimately brought Captain McRae to the attention of the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit.
In addition to the abuse I endured at the hands of P.S. and Captain McRae, I had to frequently watch while P.S. abused my younger brother. P.S. was our babysitter. He had access to my brother and I at the same time. Uncle Doug’s sleeping cot in the basement was the usual place the abuse would occur. P.S. would also abuse kids over at the base swimming pool.
Sure, I could have told a responsible adult…… if there was one around.
My grandmother was an alcoholic with anger issues from her days spent in Indian residential school. She lived by the maxims of “Children only speak when spoken to” and “Children are better seen than heard”
My father had his own issues stemming from the HMCS Kootenay gear box explosion on October 23rd, 1969. His mother was not the best parent. So Richard had his own demons. Alcoholism and an uncontrollable rage. Richard was not home often, hence why grandma was living in the PMQ and raising my brother and I.
As indicated by the Alberta Social Service records, my father would not take responsibility for his own family. Therefore the abuse that my brother and I endured at the hands of P.S. was not Richard’s responsibility due to his frequent absences from the home, nope, the abuse was my fault. By assigning responsibility for the abuse to someone else, he was making it known that he wasn’t responsible, it was the fault of somebody else.
So yeah, 41 years of dealing with untreated depression and anxiety and a plethora of other issues foisted upon me by persons in the employ of the Canadian Armed Forces has caused me some pretty significant issues.
I was tested in 1980 and found to have an IQ of 136 +/6 on the Wechler Intelligence Scale for Children.
I don’t know what I would score on an actual IQ test these days, but I know that I have some remnants of that score with me to this day.
My problem solving abilities are obviously a benefit to any employer.
My frequent and unpredictable bouts of crushing depression obviously aren’t a benefit to any employer.
As a kid I was taught by both my father and by Captain Terry Totzke to not say anything to counsellors.
Both my father and Captain Terry Totzke were blaming me for what had occur on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
I was taught by my father that I was just making these things up in my head and that I was only acting out to get attention.
It wasn’t until 2011 when I received my hospital records and social service records from across Canada that I realized for the first time just how bad off I had been.
The unfortunate thing is that trying to receive counselling on the level that I would require is almost impossible. Most psychiatrists and psychologists are not covered by any provincial medical plan. Then there’s the fact that the unique environment that I grew up in is beyond the comprehension of most civilian counsellors, psychiatrists and psychologists .
And even as my current physician said, I may be far too jaded and will see right through anyone who tries to help me.
Untreated mental illness has a downside…………….
An unsavoury topic
Back in 2011 when I first started dealing with the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service in order to try to obtain justice for what had happened on CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980 I started a blog on the Google Blogger service.
That blog ended up becoming this blog.
One of the topics that I have steered well clear of is the topic of suicide.
I’ve had my ideations in the past.
I still get ideations to this day.
However, rest assured dear reader that I’m fairly certain that I will never act upon them.
it’s not that I value my life.
It’s just that I don’t relish the idea of more pain and suffering no matter how brief that might be.
If I’m trying to end my pain so why do I want more just before the end?
Shouldn’t my escape be peaceful?
And I’ve never relished the idea of foisting my corpse on the unsuspecting schmuck that finds the results of my suicide.
It’s honestly not pleasant leaving an unrefrigerated and unembalmed body out for others to discover.
That doesn’t mean that I still don’t want to die.
It’s just that a while ago I decided to go a different route.
M.A.i.D.
Maid is not someone that comes and cleans your house.
M.A.i.D. in this sense is Medical Assistance in Dying.
A few Northern European countries have had some fairly liberal laws in regards to M.A.i.D. since the early 2000s.
The basic idea is that a person’s life belongs to that person alone and to no one else.
It’s not up to the state or the followers of some imaginary friends in the sky to determine when a person’s time has come.
Now, that’s not to say that anyone who wants to end their life will obtain M.A.i.D.. There are some fairly rigorous protocols in place to ensure that a person wishing to die, especially if they are not terminally ill with a life ending illness, is aware of what they are doing and that once initiated there is no coming back.
That said, countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands readily accept mental illness as a valid reason for M.A.i.D.
I’m an atheist..
With 7 billion people on the face of the Earth, life really isn’t that much of a miracle.
And the number of people killed in traffic collisions by impatient car drivers shows that individual life really isn’t valued all that much when you look at the rather paltry sentences and fines handed out to car drivers who kill innocent people.
The number of children that die every day from war, starvation, neglect, or from easily prevented diseases shows that human life really isn’t all that valued or unique.
And when you look at our place in the time line of the ever expanding universe, we’re nothing.
The Milky Way is 13.5 billion years old.
The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old.
The Sun will start becoming brighter over the next 1.3 billion years to the point that life will die on this planet.
In about 5 billion years the Sun will have expanded to the point of enveloping and vaporizing the Earth.
The universe will keep on expanding for billions of years after the Andromeda galaxy crashes into the Milky Way.
In the overall grand scheme of things, we don’t matter.
There is no afterlife.
There is no heaven and there is no hell.
There is no gold medal for living the longest.
And when a person struggles with mental illness and derives little pleasure out of life, maybe it’s time that they be allowed to go to sleep.
Yes, I understand that it probably is perplexing to a lot of people as to why I would like to die.
It’s simple.
I can’t go on with P.S., Captain McRae, Captain Totzke, my father, my social workers, other men who sexually abused me, and the never ending flashbacks of the abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao bouncing around in my skull and popping up when least expected.
These flashbacks got tiring quite some time ago.
Yes, death may seem like a high price to pay to make the depression, the anxiety, and the flashbacks stop.
But death is a bargain price to pay when compared to me spending the next twenty years of my life with all of that rubbish floating around in my head.
The time for treatment and therapy was just after the abuse on CFB Namao, not when I’m about to turn 50.
I used to cry frequently up until around the time I tried to deal with P.S. in 2011.
After having dealt with the defective military “justice system” I couldn’t cry anymore.
I’ve just become so numb on the inside that I can’t cry anymore.
M.A.i.D. in Canada
In 2021 the Government of Canada introduced legislation to make amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada to allow for persons experiencing pain, but who are not near the anticipated end of their lives, to request Medical Assistance in Dying.
You can read more here: https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/ad-am/bk-di.html
You can download a brief guide here:
Up to this point in time you pretty well had to be knocking on death’s door before any physician would be allowed to provide a patient with the drugs required for death.
The Senate notified Parliament that to not allow persons suffering from mental illness to request M.A.i.D. would be discrimination and urged Parliament to pass the required legislation to allow for M.A.i.D. for mental illness. Parliament indicated to the Senate that it required more time to write these amendments.
The Senate requested that Parliament pass the required amendment within 18 months. Parliament indicated that it would have new legislation addressing M.A.i.D. for purely issues of mental illness within 24 months.
In 2023 it is expected that M.A.i.D. for mental illness will become legal in Canada.
What this will look like is anyone’s guess.
I have my fears that the legislation introduced will end up looking like a bastard child resulting from a Rube Goldberg machine mating with Jospeh Heller’s novel “Catch-22”.
What I would like to see for requirements for approval are just some basic checks.
Is the person requesting death lucid?
Is this person making this request on their own?
Is there the slightest evidence that this person is being goaded or coerced into requesting M.A.i.D. by others?
Has the person been diagnosed with a mental illness?
Does this mental illness interfere with the enjoyment of life?
Does this person understand that by ingesting the provided drugs that they will die?
And in the end M.A.i.D. for metal illness may be far too difficult to obtain in Canada.
Even though M.A.i.D. for mental illness hasn’t been approved in Canada I have already asked my physician to start the process to find out how I would go about requesting M.A.i.D. after the legislation is passed in 2023.
The nice thing is my physician didn’t question or second guess my request. He said that I did seem to be quite rational in my request and the reasoning for my request. So he agreed to start getting me in contact with the required people.
So, we’ll have to wait and see what my future awaits.
One thing that could complicate matters and make obtaining M.A.i.D. difficult is that M.A.i.D. legislation does not force doctors to participate in M.A.i.D.
This means that I could pass the tests, but so far as finding a physician willing to either mix the oral solution or insert the IV into my vein may prove difficult. I would imagine that there are doctors that will equate M.A.i.D. with murder and will refuse to participate. Then there’s also the fat that the physician would have to be present while my death occurs in order to pronounce me dead and to officially record the time and cause of my death.
The two different methods of M.A.i.D.
The oral method
Currently there is the oral method in which the patient drinks a lethal dosage of barbiturates which will put the patient into a coma after anywhere from 2 to 12 minutes after ingestion. Respiration can take up to 120 minutes to cease. There is the very rare chance that the patient will come out of the coma and will require an IV injection to complete the death.
I would much prefer the IV method.
The IV method
In the IV method an IV line is administered to the patient. This line is connected to a set of IV dosing pumps. Much like in the oral method, it is the patient, not the attending physician, that initiates the death process. Once the patient is ready, the patient starts the pumps with the push of a button.
There are two methods of IV euthanasia. One uses two drugs and one uses three drugs.
The dual drug method uses a drug that will induce an immediate coma. This drug is administered at far greater doses in euthanasia than it is in medical treatments. This drug surprises the level of consciousness to barely detectable. One this drug has been fully administered a second drug is introduced into the patient. This drug paralyzes the striated muscles. It stops your breathing and eventually it stop your heart.
The three drug method is the same as the dual drug method, except prior to the coma inducing drug, a sedative is administered. This apparently allows for a more peaceful and gradual decent into death as opposed to the abruptness of just the coma inducing drug on its own.
If given the choice I’d gladly take the IV method over the oral method.
Alternative jurisdictions.
At this point in time the only two jurisdictions in the world that allow for M.A.i.D. for mental issues are Belgium and the Netherlands. Both countries do allow for “tourists” to undergo a M.A.i.D. procedure.
I haven’t looked into what is required to travel to Belgium or the Netherlands as I know that this is cost prohibitive. However, with a recent civil action being initiated on my behalf, I have asked that if at a later date I am still requesting to die, the the DND and the CF pay for the travel expenses and accommodations.
The reason that I want DND and the CF to pay for the travel and accommodation expenses is why should I have to pay to die out of my own settlement?
When?
I don’t know. That’s a good question.
So far it looks as if it will occur after 2023
I have two civil actions that are slowly proceeding through lawyers.
One matter is probably 25% to 30% completed.
The next matter has just recently commenced and is probably at the 1% to 2% mark.
I know it sounds silly, but I would like to have all of this wrapped up before I go.
If there are settlements in either case, I figure that it would be nice to somewhat enjoy them.
But I have to be truthful and rational, no matter what the settlements are, they’re not going to evict the tenants in my head.
I definitely don’t want to carry this rubbish into my 60s.
I’ll be 60 on 2031.
Not making any promises, but I would like to go closer to 2023 than 2031.
It’ll probably take a year or two after that to pass the required tests to show that I am competent to request my own death.
In 2026 I’ll be 55 and that’s the earliest that I can retire.
Guess we’ll just have to sit back and see.
But when a date is chosen, you’ll be posted.
I don’t intend to pass away silently.
The oddest thing.
I began making my plans for assisted dying back around 2016.
These plans involved heading over to Europe.
I didn’t really put much effort into it though as the cost was truly prohibitive.
However, my determination to seek assistance in dying became much stronger when the Military Police Complaints Commission released their final report in 2020 and indicated that the military police in 1980 knew the full extent of what Captain McRae had been doing on Canadian Forces Base Namao, and that it was the involvement of P.S. with younger children living on the base that led to the investigation of Captain McRae in the first place.
And to be clear, it wasn’t the report that increased my desire for M.A.i.D.
It was finally being able to see in black and white that I had been telling the truth.
No, P.S. hasn’t been officially implicated in abusing me and my brother.
And yes, I’m still technically on the hook for letting P.S. abuse my brother.
No, I don’t think that we’ll ever know what happened to me at the hands of Captain McRae in the rectory of the base chapel during the visits in which P.S. would take me over and give me alcohol.
But I’m one step closer to being absolved for the actions of P.S., Captain McRae, Captain Terry Totzke, MCpl Richard Wayne Gill.
Once I had the final report in my hand, my determination to seek M.A.i.D. increased significantly.
The thought of dying through M.A.i.D. has actually brought me a certain serenity.
I now know that there will come a day when I no longer have to listen to the voices of P.S., Captain Totzke, my father, and the myriad of others with secrets to keep.
I can plan to finally sleep in peace and not wake up grinding my teeth into nothing.
A Nice Song
Years ago when I received my hospital records from Summerside, PEI I came across and interesting factoid. On the day that I was injured in a bicycle accident and had to be admitted to hospital it was noted that I was admitted by a neighbour as my father was in Iceland with the Air Force and would be returning later that evening.
My mother had left earlier in the year.
My grandmother had returned to Edmonton.
I was kinda curious about what type of aircraft could make it back from Iceland between my admission time and “the evening”.
It turns out that it would have been the Lockheed Aurora CP-140.
Although there were Grumman Trackers on CFB Summerside they didn’t have the airspeed or the range that the Auroras had. The Tracker had a maximum speed of 450 km/h, the Aurora was just shy of 800 km/h. The Aurora had a maximum range of 9,300 km. The Trackers only had about 2,100 km.
According to Google Maps. Iceland to PEI is 3,341 km.
So, Aurora it was.
And besides, before the big domestic dispute in our CFB Downsview PMQ in 1985, Richard had a scale model of an Aurora on top of the entertainment unit so I knew that he had some connection with the air plane.
Around 2016 I was searching for a picture of an Aurora aircraft and I just typed in “Aurora” expecting the results to be either the Aurora Borealis or the CP-140 Aurora.
Instead, I ended up being introduced to this Aurora:
Aurora is a singer / songwriter from Norway. She’s a very interesting singer / songwriter to say the least.
One of her songs that really hit home for me was a song called “Lucky” from her album “All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend”.
When, when I am down
I lay my hands upon this ground
For the thousandth time
I call him in, his earth is mine
Before I make the offering
Remember all the faces that I’ve seen
Now all the marks have settled on my skin
From all the different places that I’ve been
That I’ve been
And I feel the light for the very first time
Not anybody knows that I am lucky to be alive
And I feel the light for the very first time
Not anybody knows that I am lucky to be alive
War inside my mind
Behind my eyes it’s coming down
For the thousandth time
I feel too numb to even mind
Before I make the offering
Remember all the faces that I’ve seen
Now all the marks have settled on my skin
From all the different places that I’ve been
That I’ve been
And I feel the light for the very first time
Not anybody knows that I am lucky to be alive
And I feel the light for the very first time
Not anybody knows that I am lucky to be alive
I, I don’t know where I am, or where I’ll go
Where to even begin when I know
What lies behind makes no sense in my mind
But I know that it’s time to let go
And I feel the light for the very first time
Not anybody knows that I am lucky to be alive
And I feel the light for the very first time
Not anybody knows that I am lucky to be alive
I’m lucky to be alive
I’m lucky to be alive
Songwriters: Aurora Aksnes / Odd Martin Skalnes
Lucky lyrics © Rolf Budde Musikverlag Gmbh, Insieme Songs, Kmr Music Royalties Ii Scsp
This is one of those songs that can have different meanings depending on how it is interpreted.
I don’t really know how this song was meant to be interpreted.
All I know is that this song speaks to me in a way that I think would surprise most people.
Is this song sung from the perspective of a person who had all but given up on life but who has recently begun viewing life in a positive light.
Or is this song about someone who has realized that they’ve reached the end of their battles, and it’s time to let go.
Letting go of their demons?
Or are they letting go of something else?
I invite you to take a listen and see which way you interpret this song.
Crimes were committed.
I was going to go after the media in this post, but I’ll save slagging the media for the next post. I’m going to share some information in this post that I was going to keep quiet about until I found a lawyer willing to take on this matter. But after the most recent lawyer I talked to walked away from this matter I figure what the hell, everyone should know what I know now.
Back in November of 2020, the Military Police Complaints Commission released its final report.
The report was very interesting in the way that it said that it couldn’t find anything that would substantiate my complaint against the CFNIS.
However, the MPCC did find fault with the CFNIS for leaning far too heavy upon the opinion of the Alberta Crown. It seemed that when the CFNIS told me on November 4th, 2011 that they couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that P.S. had molested me and my brother, this wasn’t true. The MPCC said that the initial 2011 investigation had ample evidence to indicate that the sexual assaults had occurred and that even the CFNIS chain of command was of the opinion that P.S. had molested my brother and I. The MPCC further indicated that the 2nd CFNIS investigation which took place from 2015 to 2018 further reinforced the 2011 CFNIS investigation.
The MPCC said that the CFNIS was wrong to have relied on the decision of the Alberta Crown to not prosecute as the Crown has a much higher bar for evidence than what a civil matter would require. A civil matter relies on the probability that a crime occurred. A criminal matter needs hard evidence to show that a crime did occur.
The Alberta Crown also has to take into account that if they did decide to prosecute P.S. for the crimes he committed from 1978 until 1980 that they’d have to pay for his travel expenses. The Crown would also have to pay for my travel expenses. And even if P.S. was found guilty, all they could do is sentence him to reform school as that was all that you could sentence a juvenile delinquent to. And I just can’t picture a 50 something male being sentenced to reform school (if those even exist anymore).
The probability in this matter comes from the fact that P.S. was indicated in the court martial records and the CFSIU investigation paperwork to have been on the radar of the military police in 1980 for having sexually assaulted numerous children on the base.
“X” is P.S., my babysitter from CFB Namao
What is interesting about the 2nd investigation is according to the Military Police Complaints Commission, it affirms that the Canadian Forces military police in 1980 were aware that P.S. was sexually abusing children on the base. The MPCC labeled Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae as a pedophile. The MPCC further said that it appears that P.S. was committing sexual assaults as a result of being sexually assaulted himself at the hands of Captain Father Angus McRae.
The MPCC made a recommendation to the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal that the Provost Marshal submit more evidence to the Alberta Victims of Crime Tribunal. The Provost Marshal agreed to this.
In February of 2021 the tribunal reviewing the 2018 decision of the Alberta Victims of Crime Board to deny me benefits overturned the decision of the board. The Tribunal indicated that as a result of receiving more information from the Canadian Forces Military Police and after having read my Alberta Social Services foster care records that it was very apparent that I had been a victim of numerous sexual assaults, that these assaults were committed by multiple parties, that I endured numerous penetrations, and that my social service records indicate that I suffered psychological trauma as a result.
Why didn’t the CFNIS tell me on November 4th, 2011 that they believed me, and that their investigation indicated that P.S. did assault me and my brother?
I don’t think it’s accidental that the CFNIS leaned too heavily upon the decision of the Alberta Crown.
Even though the Alberta Crown did urge me to file a civil action against P.S., this would have been an impossibility. No lawyer in this country would have taken on this matter if the police investigation didn’t indicate even in the slightest likelihood that a criminal offence occurred.
Was the CFNIS protecting P.S.?
No.
I fully believe that the CFNIS were protecting the Minister of National Defence.
Or more precisely, I believe the office of the Minister of National Defence via the Vice Chief of Defence Staff wanted to ensure that any potential link between P.S. and Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae was not established via the CFNIS investigation.
As laid out in the 2020 Final Report of the Military Police Complaints Commission, P.S. was abusing children as a direct result of the abuse that P.S. was receiving at the hands of Captain McRae.
P.S. was a juvenile at the time.
The Juvenile Delinquents Act at the time indicated that the adult who contributed to the delinquency of a minor was culpable for the crimes committed by that child.
Section 33
Angus McRae was a member of the Regular Force at the time of the sex abuse scandal on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
The office of the Minister of National Defence has an obligation to defend not only the Canadian Armed Forces against civil actions, the office of the Minister of National Defence is also expected to defend members of the Canadian Forces.
This means that if I wanted to initiate a civil action against P.S. for the damages I incurred as a result of the abuse I suffered at the hands of P.S., I would actually have to name Captain McRae in the action as Captain McRae was the adult that contributed to the delinquency of P.S.
The abuse occurred on a secure defence establishment, for which the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence had the sole authority to allow or deny access to.
The Canadian Armed Forces also supplied, trained and staffed the law enforcement agency that was responsible for the security and safety of all persons on that secured defence establishment.
Captain McRae was a member of the Regular Force who had been hired and vetted by the Canadian Armed Forces recruiting process.
The Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit were aware of the fact that Captain Father Angus McRae was giving alcohol to the children on the base, and was sexually abusing children in the rectory at the base chapel.
For all of these reasons, the Minister of National Defence would have to be named in any civil action.
The Minister of National Defence would be represented by the Attorney General of Canada and the Department of Justice.
Both the Attorney General of Canada and the Minister of National Defence are represented by the Department of Justice.
All three of these agencies have access to unlimited tax payer funds to “defend” the Office of the Minister of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces from their responsibilities.
In 2015 I spoke with the lawyer that had represented P.S. in his action against the Minister of National Defence. This lawyer said that he would never take on a matter like this again. The Minister of National Defence and the Department of Justice enjoy access to unlimited funds from taxpayers and they also have a plethora of lawyers and law firms at their disposal.
As P.S. stated in his Notice of Claim, there exists a great power imbalance between the plaintiff (P.S.) and the Defendants (the Archdiocese of Edmonton and the Department of National Defence).
Edmonton Journal page B8
In his civil action against the Minister of National Defence, P.S. was requesting $4.3 million dollars in damages. I don’t have access to the settlement figures, but based on the type of paperwork present in the settlement, P.S. seems to have received less than $250.000.00 from the Minister. There were two other parties, and all three parties agreed to pay equal amounts. So, it would appear that P.S.settled his $4.3 million dollar action for less than $750,000.00.
From the Department of Justice paperwork that I have, it appears that it was the Department of Justice that was doing all of the heavy lifting on behalf of the other two parties.
The Department of Justice was trying to put together an argument that while Angus McRae was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces Regular Force, DND and the CF shouldn’t have been liable as what McRae was doing was illegal and not part of his expected duties. This argument would have been laughed out of court. But DND had strung P.S. and his lawyer along long enough that it appears that they took the much reduced settlement offer in November of 2008 with the realization that DND could play the waiting game for the rest of eternity.
It took 8 years for DND and the DOJ to settle with P.S. even though Captain McRae had been directly convicted of abusing P.S..
Which brings me to the topic of lawyers.
Yes, I have tried everything in my power to get lawyers to look at this matter.
I had even assumed that with the findings of the Military Police Complaints Commission and the Alberta Tribunal that things would be so much easier.
Well, they’re not.
It comes down to the fact that any lawyer that I want to hire would have to face off against the Attorney General of Canada and the Department of Justice.
So no, it’s not for a lack of trying. It’s just the no lawyer in their right mind wants to spend the next 15 to 20 years trying to reach a settlement with an agency that has an unlimited amount of tax payer dollars at its disposal.
P.S. was very lucky that he was named as the sole victim of Captain Father Angus McRae in 1980.
The rest of us would have to fight this lawsuit based on circumstantial evidence and probability.
The Department of Justice would be able to use its infinite resources to drag this matter out so long in court that all of the victims of P.S. and Captain McRae either die off of old age, or the lawyer involved just gives up and walks away.
Lawyers aren’t stupid, and I don’t blame them for walking away from these matters. I just wish that they’d be more upfront about the unlikelihood of this matter succeeding.
And I also understand why lawyers want $20k retainers and all invoices paid on a monthly basis. No one is going to take a matter like this on contingency. You’d have to be insane. Especially when the Government of Canada can throw unlimited tax dollars at this case.
That’s it for now.
In the next blog post I’m going to get around to dealing with the media.
The Chain of Command
Or How the Minister of National Defence Controls ALL aspects of the military Justice System.
It may seem hard to believe, but the Minister of National Defence is probably one of the most powerful ministers in the Canadian Government. And I don’t mean this because the minister controls the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces.
I say this because the Minister of National Defence has the ability to directly control investigations undertaken by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service and the Canadian Forces Military Police.
And don’t forget, as the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are not legally responsible for the damages suffered by civilians on Defence Establishments, a civilian wishing to receive compensation for the damages suffered at the hands of a member of the Canadian Armed Forces on a Defence Establishment would have to initiate a civil action against the Minister of National Defence.
Yes. That Minister. The very same Minister that can issue commands to ANY member of the Canadian Forces. And that member may have the ability in turn to issue further commands to a subordinate.
Section 83 of the National Defence Act deals with ‘INSUBORDINATION”.
Section 83 of the National Defence Act applies equally to ALL members of the Canadian Forces. There are no exceptions for the Provost Marshal, the commanding officer of the CFNIS, or the division commanding officers of the CFNIS.
And the National Defence Act uses the term “lawful” instead of “legal” for a reason. Not every command a commanding officer gives is legal. And in the exception of outrageously illegal orders i.e. firing on unarmed civilians, the solider receiving the order isn’t expected to weigh the legal merits of the order.
The Chain of Command for the Canadian Armed Forces looks like such:
Minister of National Defence –> Chief of Defence Staff –> Vice Chief of Defence Staff –> Provost Marshal –> CFNIS Commanding Officer –> CFNIS detachment commanding officer –> CFNIS investigator.
This more than qualifies as an example of a “conflict of interest scenario”.
Another issue is Section 18.4 and Section 18.5 of the National Defence Act.
Section 18.4 of the National Defence Act give the Provost Marshal command over any investigation undertaken by any subordinate within the Canadian Forces Military Police Group, the Canadian Forces Military Police, and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service.
Section 18.4 also gives the Provost Marshal the responsibility for conducting the initial Professional Standards Review that must be undertaken prior to a person making a complaint to the Military Police Complaints Commission.
This means that the Minister of National Defence knows exactly what a complaint against the CFNIS is all about.
Section 18.5 ensures that the Minister of National Defence pretty well has a direct pipeline into any investigation undertaken by the military police. Including not only the investigation of criminal code matters which could subject the minister to civil actions, but also the subsequent Professional Standards Review conducted after the CFNIS completes its investigation.
If the Vice Chief of Defence Staff issued any instructions or guidelines to the Provost Marshal, these instructions or guidelines are supposed to be made public. However, the Provost Marshal can simply decline to issue these instructions or guidelines. And as the Vice Admiral Mark Norman affair indicated, when you go hunting for information like this within the Canadian Forces and Department of National Defence, it may not be easy to obtain if the CF or DND have used code names or code words for the file or documents that you are requesting.
If I were to submit an ATI to DND requesting copies of any directions or instructions issued by the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff to the Provost Marshal, unless DND used my name in the document or some other identifying information, I wouldn’t be able to request the document.
In my matter from Canadian Forces Base Namao, this is why the CFNIS were hellbent on establishing that I was not sexually abused by P.S.. P.S. was a juvenile at the time. And at the time the Juvenile Delinquents Act held that an adult that contributed to the delinquency of a minor was culpable for the crimes committed by that juvenile. It was established in CFSIU investigation 120-10-80 and court martial CM62 July 18th, 1980, that Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae was abusing numerous children on Canadian Forces Base Namao from August of 1978 until May of 1980.
P.S., who had been my baby-sitter on CFB Namao from late 1978 until spring of 1980 had been sexually abusing numerous children on the base, and had been taking some of us to be abused at the base chapel.
If the CFNIS were to have established that P.S. did in fact molest numerous children on the base as a result of the abuse he endured at the hands of Captain McRae as well as instructions given by Captain McRae, the Office of the Minister of National Defence would surely be subject to numerous civil actions.
However, if the CFNIS were unable to substantiate that a person with multiple convictions for child sexual abuse had in fact molested numerous other children on Canadian Forces Base Namao from late 1978 until the spring of 1980, that would pretty well ensure that the Office of the Minister of National Defence would not face the risk of civil actions. After all, you can’t sue for something that didn’t occur.
And isn’t in convenient that the police agency responsible for finding this criminal connection is also under the direct command of the agency that would face litigation in a civil action.
It is readily apparent in the current matter involving both Vance and Sajjan that there is corruption within the Canadian Armed Forces.
And this corruption is nothing new.
This corruption has been allowed to exist because the Canadian Forces have been able to keep control of their own in-house “justice system”. A system that really isn’t concerned about justice but seems to be more concerned about keeping secrets.
The more things change, the more they stay the same
So, it turns out that Minister Sajjan not only refused to allow the Canadian Forces Ombudsman to investigate complaints against General Jonathan Vance, but Sajjan also started to avoid communication with the Office of the Ombudsman.
What is really disappointing about this whole sad affair is that it illustrates how much power is concentrated in the hands of the Minister of National Defence.
The Government of Canada often trumpets the “independence” of the Canadian Forces Ombudsman, however it’s becoming readily apparent that the Ombudsman is under the direct control of the Minister of National Defence.
The rules that govern the operation of the Canadian Forces Ombudsman can be found here:
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/corporate/policies-standards/defence-administrative-orders-directives/5000-series/5047/5047-1-office-of-the-ombudsman.html
The Ombudsman may be independent of the chain of command and the management within the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence, but they are firmly on the leash of the Minister of National Defence.
The Ombudsman acts solely on the Minister’s behalf and reports directly to and is accountable to the Minister of National Defence.
This is the same Minister of National Defence that seems to have an intense desire to hide and bury any type of sexual misconduct within the Canadian Forces. As I said in a previous posting, we’re very lucky that Sajjan wasn’t the Minister of National Defence when Stephanie Raymonde went public with her matter in 2014. I don’t think that Sajjan would have acknowledged the matter nor would Sajjan have called for an Independent Review as was conducted by Madame Marie Deschamps.
How are investigations by the Canadian Forces Ombudsman commenced?
According to Section 4(a), the Minister of National Defence can give a written directive to the Canadian Forces Ombudsman. This would be similar to when the former cadets from the grenade incident at Canadian Forces Base Valcartier asked former conservative Minister of National Defence Rob Nicholson to look at their issue even though the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence had no legal obligation to these former cadets.
According to Section 4(b), the Ombudsman can undertake an investigation AFTER informing the Minister of National Defence of their intention to do so. And as we’ve heard recently, Minister Sajjan would not allow the former Canadian Forces Ombudsman to look into allegation made against former Chief of Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance. Minister Sajjan would also not authorize the Canadian Forces Ombudsman to review the matters surrounding the 1980 court martial of Canadian Forces officer and serial child molester Captain Father Angus McRae.
What are the difference between Nicholson and Sajjan?
Nicholson was a lawyer before he entered politics. Nicholson had absolutely no connection to the Canadian Armed Forces and therefore in the matter of the grenade incident Nicholson would have been more inclined to do what was right as opposed to lifting the corner of the carpet and sweeping things under.
Sajjan on the other hand has been involved with the Canadian Forces since back in the early ’90s. He was also a member of the Vancouver Police Department. The VPD were the police department that allowed the Pickton murders to occur due to their absolute lack of concern for the women who were going missing from the downtown east side. I was a victim of a mugging in ’95. The VPD officer that was investigating the matter was sure that I was to blame as I must have been trying to pick a guy up. It’s not far fetched to say that police in general have a very wary eye towards “victims” and treat them as part of the problem.
Sajjan was also a member of the Canadian Forces reserves and did numerous tours overseas in the ’90s and ’00s. He’s a military man through and through. And if there’s one thing that Sajjan is not going to do is he’s not going to shit in the bed that he sleeps in. Men like Sajjan are the reason why the military justice system progressively went off the rails right from the work go back in the ’50s when Canada had it’s first National Defence Act which allowed for the military police and the CFSIU to look after criminal matter “in-house”. It took the murder and subsequent cover up of Shidone Arone in Somalia to expose just how corrupt the military justice system was. It wasn’t that the military justice system was inherently evil. It’s that the military justice system was being administered by men who (a) didn’t want to rock the boat, (b) didn’t want to be the one to piss on the Canadian Forces, and (c) didn’t want questions asked about their leadership abilities.
“That Lonely Section Of Hell” is a book by former VPD detective Lori Shenher. In this book she describes the toxic environment that existed within the Vancouver Police Department during the 1990s and into the 2000’s.
“The Somalia Experience in Strategic Perspective : Implications for the Military in a Free and Democratic Society” and “Independence in the Prosecution of Offences in the Canadian Forces : Military Policing and Prosecutorial Discretion” are two books that are required reading if one wishes to understand just how dysfunctional the military justice system was during the lead up to the Somalia fiasco.
So, who can avail themselves to the Canadian Forces Ombudsman?
Under section 12 (f), I have the right to make a complaint to the Canadian Forces Ombudsman. My father was a member of the Regular force at the time of the Captain McRae child sexual abuse fiasco on CFB Namao. We lived in housing on a Defence Establishment which at the time of the fiasco was directly owned and administered by the Department of National Defence. Access to this Defence Establishment was controlled and limited to persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline or their guests. Captain Father Angus McRae was a member of the Regular Force and was also residing on the Defence Establishment in housing provided to him by the Canadian Forces. Security and policing services were also provided by persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline. And finally the prosecution of Captain McRae was also conducted by persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline.
Of course, there are limitations to what the Ombudsman can investigate:
Section 14 (a), section 14(b), and section 14(e) would all seem to indicate that the Ombudsman could not investigate what occurred on Canadian Forces Base Namao between May12th, 1980 and July 18th, 1980.
However, I haven’t asked the Ombudsman to redo the investigation of Captain Father Angus McRae that commenced on May 12th 1980 at the request of base security officer Captain David Pilling. Nor have I asked the Ombudsman to reopen the court martial of Captain Father Angus McRae.
We know that the Canadian Forces knew that Captain McRae was molesting numerous children on the base at the rectory and that he was using alcohol to do so. We also know that Captain McRae abused and groomed his altar boy P.S. and was using P.S. to bring younger children over to the chapel for McRae to abuse.
What I have asked the Canadian Forces Ombudsman to investigate is how the decision to prosecute Captain Father Angus McRae for “acts of homosexuality” may have negatively affected the lives of his victims. I know this fixation on “homosexuality” is why I spent 1-1/2 years receiving “conversion therapy” at the hands of the Canadian Forces social worker that I was placed under the care of when I was 9 years old. I also asked the Canadian Forces Ombudsman to look at how the sweeping of the victims under the rug would have also affected the lives of the victims. None of these asks would have run afoul of 14(a) and 14(b).
14(e) isn’t a signifiant issue to overcome either. In 2010 Minister of National Defence Rob Nicholson asked the CF Ombudsman to review the 1974 CFB Valcartier Grenade incident even though the event occurred 24 years before the date specified in 14(e) and legally the Canadian Armed Forces was not responsible for these children on a Defence Establishment.
So, why doesn’t Harjit Sajjan want the Canadian Forces Ombudsman to review the 1980 investigation and court martial of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae?
I think that Sajjan doesn’t want the Canadian public to discover that children living on Canadian Forces bases were not safe from child predators wearing the uniform of the Canadian Forces. I also think that Sajjan doesn’t want the Canadian public to discover just how truly horrifically flawed and out of control the military justice system was. Sajjan more than likely doesn’t want the Canadian public to know that male children living on the bases who were sexually abused by members of the Canadian Forces were considered to be “homosexual” and were given counselling by the military. Sajjan probably also doesn’t want the Canadian public to find out that some people committed suicide due to the way the military handled this matter. And more importantly, Sajjan doesn’t want other childhood victims coming forward with their tales of abuse at the hands of Canadian Forces personnel on the various different bases in Canada.
Right now, the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence have been able to keep a very tight lid on this. However, if the Ombudsman conducts one publicized investigation, I have no doubt that this will lead to far many more complaints. And more complaints leads to civil actions. And this will not do.
Think back to the matter of Donald Jospeh Sullivan who in late 2019 was convicted and sentenced to court for molesting boys in the Ottawa area in the 1970s when he was involved with Scouts Canada. Donald was under investigation by the Ottawa Police Service in the ’70s after the OPS started to receive complaints. Donald disappeared. The OPS couldn’t find him. Turns out that Donald Joseph Sullivan had enlisted into the Canadian Armed Forces. That’s how low the bar was for the Canadian Armed Forces. The Canadian Armed Forces were hiring people that were the subject of police investigations. Sure, the Canadian Armed Forces more than likely had no idea that they were hiring a child molester. But still, there obviously wasn’t that deep of a back ground check performed. How many other men slipped into the military like Sullivan only to find themselves with easy access to children. Children that moved from base to base frequently. Children that weren’t likely to say anything least they be seen as liars or troublemakers.
Child sexual abuse in th Canadian Armed Forces is a matter that the Canadian Forces Ombudsman should be able to investigate.
The fact that Sajjan won’t allow the Ombudsman to do so speaks volumes about what is already known in the halls of 101 Colonel By Drive.
In a holding pattern
Okay, so I haven’t been updating this blog as frequently as I used to, and there are reasons for that.
We’ll have to wait and see.
But this should get interesting this time around.
On to other news.
It looks as if the Canadian Armed Forces have yet another little shit storm brewing on the horizon.
It seems that Gary Walbourne, the former Canadian Forces Ombudsman, is testifying before the Standing Committee on National Defence that he told the Minister of National Defence, Harjit Sajjan, about the allegations of sexual misconduct that had been brought against former Chief of Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance.
It seems that Harjit didn’t want his sensibilities offended by the allegations and ignored the allegations which meant that the Canadian Forces Ombudsman couldn’t review the matter.
And as the Minister of National Defence, Harjit is technically the top cop in the Canadian Forces. By way of the chain of command Harjit has control over the Chief of Defence Staff, the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, the Provost Marshal, and the various commanding officers of the CFNIS.
When I first met with Harjit Sajjan back in February of 2016, I thought that the meeting would be an eye opener for Sajjan. After all, he seemed to be the no-nonsense law and order kind. He was a police officer with the Vancouver Police Department before he joined the Canadian Armed Forces.
The meeting though quickly went off the rails. At the start of the meeting he wanted me to understand that he was meeting with me as the Member of Parliament for Vancouver South and not as the Minister of National Defence. At the time I didn’t understand why he was so intent on making this clear to me. But there would have been legal ramifications if he were to have met with me in his role as the Minister of National Defence. This I wouldn’t learn until a few years later.
I discussed the issue of Captain Father Angus McRae and McRae’s altar boy P.S. and the fact that I had received what amounted to be “conversion therapy ” at the hands of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke. Harjit Sajjan didn’t care. During our 15 minute meeting he interrupted me and asked me what my “angle was” and “what game was I playing”.
Between the meeting on February 6th, 2016 and the current day, I have asked the Canadian Forces Ombudsman to review the 1980 CFSIU investigation. Yes, the 1980 CFSIU investigation is well beyond the mandate of the Military Police Complaints Commission, however it is not beyond the mandate of the Canadian Forces Ombudsman. The Minister of National Defence just has to ask the Ombudsman to investigate. This would be the same as when then Minister of National Defence Rob Nicholson asked the Canadian Forces Ombudsman in 2013 to investigate the 1974 CFB Valcartier grenade incident that killed 6 children and injured over 100 more.
Yet Harjit Sajjan has refused to request the Ombudsman to review the 1980 CFSIU investigation of Captain Angus McRae and his altar boy P.S..
I have absolutely no doubt in mind that had Harjit Sajjan been the Minister of National Defence in 2013, he would have not allowed the Ombudsman to review the 1974 CFB Valcartier grenade incident.
Harjit is a soldier’s soldier.
Harjit is beholden to the military and to no one else.
Harjit will not allow anything to potentially darken the reputation of the military.
I’m just thankful that the CFB Valcartier grenade incident investigation was undertaken prior to Harjit’s tenure.
I’m also thankful that the Colonel Russell Williams matter occurred prior to Harjit’s tenure.
And I’m also thankful that Madame Marie Deschamps was tasked with conducting her review prior to Harjit’s tenure.
Sadly I don’t think that Harjit is going to lose his ministerial position no matter how badly he deserves to be punished for this appalling coverup.
Justin Trudeau won’t do it. Justin doesn’t have the power or the will to stand up to a person like Harjit.
Tossing Harjit out of his ministerial position would cost the Liberal party of Canada too many votes.
So, we’re stuck with Harjit for the foreseeable future.
And we’re also stuck with a man who places his pride in the military above all else.
We’re stuck with a man who is willing to allow the old military ways of sweeping everything under the rug to become the new way of conducting business.
And this is a shame after so many years of progress.
A little bit of good news.
Back in November of 2020, the Military Police Complaints Commission released their final report of their review of the 2015 through 2018 portion of CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754.
Although it was just a review, and although the review had to be conducted as per rules that the Canadian Armed Forces shaped, the MPCC did find that the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal did err when it relied upon the decision of the Alberta Crown as meaning that no crime had been committed. The Crown had opined that there was insufficient evidence to lay charges. The Crown made no determination on the guilt or innocence or P.S..
The MPCC was of the opinion that there was ample evidence to indicate that a crime had been committed.
Generally, the Crown has a very high bar for determining whether or not to pursue charges in court. This is because the accused stands to lose their personal freedom and suffer penalties and sanctions administered by the courts.
However, just because this bar is set high doesn’t mean that the accused is innocent.
And that was one of the findings of the Military Police Complaints Commission.
There had been crimes committed.
But, for some reason when dealing with the outside civilian agency the CFNIS had chosen to use the opinion of the Alberta Crown and not its own opinion in determining if a crime had been committed.
I think this refusal to go on record and state that crimes had occurred comes down to not wanting to expose the Minister of National Defence to civil actions and the resultant public humiliation that the Canadian Forces knew that over 25 children had been sexually abused on a secure defence establishment by an officer of the Regular Forces and instead in 1980 set about to sweep everything under the rug and hide it from the public eye by a very questionable publication ban.
The MPCC recommended that the Provost Marshal supply more documentation from the investigation to the outside civilian agency that was reviewing this matter on my behalf.
Upon receipt of these documents, the outside civilian review agency concluded that I had in fact been the victim of multiple sexual assaults by multiple perpetrators and that these assaults had in fact caused psychological issues as indicated by my Alberta social service Foster Care records. These were the records that were submitted to the CFNIS in August of 2011, but which the CFNIS completely ignored for the most part as they directly conflicted with the statement that my father had given (coerced, coached, or otherwise) to the CFNIS in June of 2011.
Relying on the opinion of the Provincial Crown is apparently nothing new for the Canadian Forces military police.
A former crown prosecutor from New Brunswick who had declined to recommend charges against 5 soldiers from CFB Gagetown who had raped a mentally challenged spouse of a service member remarked that the military police did this as a way of shifting the blame to the Crown for the failure to prosecute.
Why did the CFNIS and the Provost Marshal rely so heavily upon the Alberta Crown report? Was this due to a desire for a “softball” investigation that wouldn’t break any agreement between P.S. and the Minister of National Defence?
That’s beyond the scope of the MPCC. The MPCC cannot, by its enabling legislation, review interference complaints unless the complaints are made by CFNIS investigators directly involved with a particular investigation. As the MPCC indicated in its own submission to the “2nd Independent Review of Amendments Made to the National Defence Act” which was published in 2011, the CFNIS investigators may not even be aware that interference has occurred in their investigation if that interference happens high enough up the chain of command.
And is a superior really interfering with an investigation if they are issuing “lawful commands” that their subordinates are legally bound by the National Defence Act to obey?
CFNIS investigators do not “own” their investigation. They cannot make their own decisions and their own determinations. Everything they do must be approved by the Chain of Command.
In the 2015 to 2018 portion of the CFNIS investigation into my complaint against P.S., even though the Crime Stoppers appeal had generated numerous other tips which resulted in other victims coming forward, the CFNIS chain of command made the decision that each complaint had to stand on its own and that none of the complaints would be used to strengthen the other complaints.
Someone involved with the CFNIS decided that there was far too much risk in presenting a strong case to the Alberta Crown.
In 2020, the CFNIS undertook the investigation into my complaint that P.S. had supplied me for sexual purposes to a man at the base swimming pool in the period of time between having been caught in the bedroom of P.S. and the subsequent house fire at the residence of P.S.. I had made mention of this man previously during the 2011-5754 investigation. Because of paperwork related to the 1980 investigation of Captain McRae released to me under the Access to Information legislation in 2019, I became aware of a very likely possibility of who this man was so I decided to make a formal complaint.
In January I was contacted by the CFNIS investigator handling my case. He said that he was making arrangements with the Vancouver Police Department for me to view police line-up photographs to see if I could identify the man that P.S. had supplied me to. Then suddenly a week ago this investigator contacted me and said that his superiors had decided to scrub the photographs and that they were working on other possible ways for me to identify this man.
I know for sure that the CFNIS are not simply going to pay Mr.P.S. a visit and ask him the name of the man. So I can only wonder how they intend for me to identify this man.
So again, it’s not the CFNIS investigator the runs the investigation, it’s the CFNIS chain of command and the Provost Marshal chain of command that run the investigations.
Under the National Defence Act, the Vice Chief of Defence Staff has the right to issue guidelines and instructions for any investigation undertaken by the CFNIS and that although these instructions are to be made public, these instructions do not have to be made public of the Provost Marshal decides against releasing them.
The Vice Chief of Defence Staff must obey the lawful commands of the Chief of Defence Staff.
The Chief of Defence Staff must obey the Minister of National Defence.
The office of the Minister of National Defence is civilly liable for the actions of any person subject to the Code of Service Discipline while that person is on a Defence Establishment.
This isn’t the first rodeo for the Canadian Armed Forces.
They have a massive legal department.
They also have the benefit of the Department of Justice.
The Canadian Forces have legislation on their side that says that they have very little if any responsibility for civilians injured on Defence Establishment.
About the only thing that would circumvent that implied immunity to civil action would be criminal charges connected directly to a person who was subject to the Code of Service Discipline.
In the case of P.S., that person was Captain Father Angus McRae. Under Canadian law at the time, McRae would have been fully responsible for the delinquency of P.S.
In the case of the man at the base swimming pool, I’m pretty sure that this man was a major in the Canadian Forces at the time. He went on to have his own legal problems involving sexual relations with underage persons.
If the Canadian Forces are unable to find a criminal connection between myself and P.S. or myself and the man at the base swimming pool, the odds on me ever being able to launch a successful civil action against the Minister of National Defence are slim to none.
Minister of National Defence -> Chief of Defence Staff -> Vice Chief of Defence Staff -> Provost Marshal -> Commander of the CFNIS -> Divisional Commander CFNIS -> CFNIS investigator.
Child sexual abuse in the Canadian Forces 