Will it be business as usual or will there be meaningful change?
So Canada now has its second ever female Minister of National Defence.
The first ever female Minister of National Defence was Kim Campbell back in 1993. She wasn’t the Minister of National Defence for long as she went on to become Canada’s first female Prime Minister when Brian Mulroney, facing massive backlash for matters such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, decided to resign from politics.
Canada’s newest Minister of National Defence is Anita Anand. She has an extensive resume as a lawyer and as a law instructor. She was also the Minister of Public Services and Procurement since 2019. So she’s not exactly green behind the ears. And more importantly she has absolutely no connection to the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence.
Will she be able to bring change to the Department of National Defence? When I first heard that Harjit Sajjan had been designated as the Minister of National Defence in 2015 after the Liberals won the election I thought for sure that he would be able to bring meaningful change to DND and the CF as he was a soldier that actually had done tours in Afghanistan and he used to be a detective with the Vancouver Police Department. I couldn’t have been more wrong about Sajjan. So I’m not holding my breath with Anand. She is a corporate lawyer, so she might understand the legal threat that examining historical child sexual abuse might prove to be for the Government of Canada.
Minister Anand has two choices.
She can use her legal background for the greater good.
Or she can use her legal background to erect walls and barricades around DND and the CF.
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.
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.
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.
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.
From the Department of Justice page titled “Medical Assistance in Dying”
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.
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
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
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.
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 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.
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.
I received a letter today from the Military Police Complaits Commission dated June 19, 2020.
The letter informs me that the MPCC issued their interim report to the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal on June 17th, 2020 and that they are now awaiting the response from the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal.
How much hope am I holding out for this investigation?
Not much really.
The process that enables the Military Police Complaints Commission is contained within the National Defence Act.
This is similiar in a way to the school yard bully whose parents also happen to be the Principal and Vice Principal.
Sure, they may not outright vindicate their son, but they’re going to do everything they can to make sure that everyone understands that you were just as guilty as their son when their son beats you up and steals your lunch money.
The MPCC was created in the days of the fallout created by the release of the final report of the Somalia Inquiry.
An MPCC review is nothing more than a feel good exercise in futility. As I’ve mentioned before, during a review the complainant has absolutely no access to the documents placed before the MPCC by the Provost Marshal, so the complainant has no idea of the tale the Provost Marshal is feeding to the MPCC.
During an MPCC review the complainant has no access to the paperwork related to the investigation. The complainant is required to file an access to information request to get these documents.
Also, during a complaint review the MPCC cannot administer oaths, nor can the MPCC demand documents.
In otherwords, the complainant is at a severe disadvantage when making a complaint. This facet isn’t unique to the Military Police Complaints Commission though, most police review boards are designed to be like this.
What is problematic though with the MPCC is that the Department of National Defence is very resistant to Access to Information and Freedom of Information requests. Ottawa Citizen writer David Pugliese is very familiar with the delays one can face when requesting documents from DND and the Canadian Forces.
In my case, it took over 20 months for me to get my hands on the paperwork for the 2015 to 2018 portion of CFNIS investigation 2011-5754.
You have 12 months to request a MPCC review after the conclusion of a CFNIS investigation. 20 months is 8 months after this deadline.
It’s not that easy to request an extension.
And the slap in the face was the documents that the DND Access to Information office released to me were far more censored than the documents the Alberta Criminal Injuries Review Board released to me.
It was the documents from the Alberta Criminal Injuries Review Board that allowed me to see that the CFNIS in 2018 basically resubmitted the 2011 investigation to the Alberta Crown.
The CFNIS didn’t submit anything new to the Alberta Crown this time around.
What you really want to have is an MPCC inquiry. Only an inquiry has the ability to give a complainant equal footing with the CFNIS and the Provost Marshal.
Sadly, about the only way the an MPCC Inquiry can be initiated is by way of the Minister of National Defence. And Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan has already told me he considers my complaint regarding the sexual abuse I endured on CFB Namao as being nothing more than a “game”, and an “angle”.
So it’s safe to say that Minister Sajjan will not be requesting that the MPCC conduct an inquiry.
Another stumbling block with an MPCC investigation is that the MPCC only hires retired police officers to conduct the investigations. This alone has been flagged by numerous inquiries and commissions as being a bad move as the retired police investigator often views complainants as “trouble makers” and often views the officer that is the subject of the complaint as being a “brother in arms”.
The Provost Marshal has already let slip that he believes that my complaint is only about Sgt. Tenaschuk refusing to provide to me in writing a letter stating that the investigation was concluded.
This is not what my complaint was about.
My complaint was about the obvious and apparent overall interference in the investigation by the chain of command and that a significant conflict of interest existed by allowing the subordinates of the Minister of National Defence to investigate a matter that has the ability to find the Mininster of National Defence liable for civil damages.
Do I really expect anything different this time around?
Nope.
In fact, this time around the MPCC has already skipped the interview phase and has already tabled their report and is now waiting to see if the Provost Marshal agrees with the findings of the MPCC.
What are the findings of the MPCC?
I don’t know. I haven’t been informed.
Will the MPCC find in my favour?
Not likely. Remember, according to an August 2015 interview with Glenn Stannard, the fomer chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission stated that the MPCC really doesn’t understand the military police or the CFNIS.
How can an organization have the proper ability to investigate a particular agency if it doesn’t fully understand how that agency works?
In the school year of 1985 – 1986 I was in grade 8 at Pierre Laporte Junior High in what used to be North York, Ontario.
Active Surplus was a dealer down on Queen Street West between University and Spadina that sold new electronic components along with used surplus electronic equipment.
Active Surplus had just received a bunch of Pioneer Video Laser Disc players from New Way Sales. New Way Sales was a video game distributor that had been located up on Rexdale Blvd. New Way Sales was owned by brothers Paul and Jerry Janda.
The laser disc players had been removed from a bunch of Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace, Astron Belt, and other laser disc based arcade games that had been scrapped when they reached the end of their useful life.
Active Surplus was selling these for $50 a piece. I grabbed 10 of them. Bob Becker drove his cube van down and we loaded them into the van and drove them up to the base and brought them into the house.
I would eventually get 3 of these players working, but the rest I scrapped.
In reality I had bought these players for one reason, and that was for the laser tubes and the optics. Making them work for playing movies was never the goal.
The fact that I did get three of the players working probably indicated that I wasn’t quite as dumb as some people made me out to be.
Radio Electronics was a magazine that I used to buy from Coles bookstore downtown. Popular Electronics was the other. These two magazines were the primary source of my electronics education.
Both of these magazines always had projects to build. One project was a made from scratch power supply that would strike and arc in a 5mW helium neon laser tube, and then drop the current and voltage down to a safe level once the arc was established.
Each of these Pioneer laser disc players came with a 5mW Toshiba helium-neon laser tube, a collimator lens, two surface reflecting mirrors, and two surface reflecting mirrors mounted on voice coils.
The two surface reflecting mirrors mounted on voice coils were the tangential and radial correction mirrors.
Tangential / Radial tracking mirrors.
The manner in which these two mirrors were mounted allowed them to scan in an x-y pattern with one mirror moving the beam in a horizontal direction and the other mirror moving the beam in a vertical direction.
Because they were moving a laser beam around, a tiny bit of movement of these mirrors would cause a significant amount of deflection of the beam.
The voice coil on these mirrors was 8 ohms. 8 ohms was the perfect impedence for just about any power amplifier at the time.
I built a small dual channel amplifier with 25 watts per channel. 25 watts was enough power to make the mirrors move fast enough, but not enough power to overheat the voice coils.
I could feed audio into the amplifier and have the laser project odd patterns on the wall to the beat of the music. I could feed the output of a function generator and have the laser generate shapes on the wall based on the type of waveform, the amplitude of the waveform, and the frequency of the waveform.
And I could also feed the x-y voltages from a Vectrex video game console into the amplifier and I could play video games on the wall.
Vectrex was an interesting game console from around 1982. It displayed graphics by actually drawing lines on the monitor tube as opposed to how conventional video games draw images. I won’t get too detailed, but think of games like Asteroids, Omega Race, Tempest, Major Havoc, Armor Attack, Space Fury, etc. These games had a very unique look due to the way the CPU drew the images on the screen. The Vectrex console drew x-y graphics as opposed to raster graphics.
Mr. Jonathan Bowles was my grade 8 science teacher.
The first couple of times that I had taken the laser to school and set it up in science class and just bounced the beam around the room he was more than impressed. But once I got the Vectrex interfaced with the laser, he was astonished. I could set the laser up in the cafeteria / auditorium of the school and project the Vectrex images on the screen.
The first time Mr. Bowles had talked to my father about the laser, Richard blew up at me at home.
“Why the fuck did you take that to school?”
“Do you know how much fucking trouble you’re going to get me into?”
“Why can’t you just be quiet in school, do the fucking work the teachers tell you to, and stop showing the fuck off, what is wrong with you?”
“Tell your teachers that I work during the day and to stop bothering me at work, I don’t have the time for their bullshit.”
The next science class, Mr. Bowles asked me if my father had spoken to me.
I asked about what.
Mr. Bowles said that my father seemed quite pleased that I was taking an interest in science.
By this time in my life I was begining to notice that my father would often say one thing at home, and then something completely different to other people.
As per my father’s instructions, I stopped taking my laser to school for science class.
Mr. Bowles had told me once that this laser was something that I should enter into the National Science Fair in Ottawa, and that he’d be happy to talk to my father about this.
I pleaded with Mr. Bowles to never call my father again, that my father was upset about the last phone call and that my father said that none of my teachers had better interrupt him at work,
Mrs. Donskov, my grade 7 music teacher from Elia Junior High had made somewhat a similar mistake. She saw that I could keep rhythm fairly well, and she suggested that I take up bass guitar. When she called Richard to suggest a local music shop that could finance a guitar if money was tight, he exploded.
So, Mrs. Donskov did the next best thing, she arranged for me to be able to take one of the school’s bass guitars and an amplifier home to practice on the weekends. She’d even go so far as to drop the guitar and amp off on Friday and pick it up on Monday. When Richard saw me carrying the guitar and Mrs. Donskov carrying the amplifier towards our house on Canadian Forces Base Downsview, he blew up. He threatened to have her arrested by the military police if she ever though of doing something stupid like this again.
Mrs. Donskov suggested that maybe my father could set me up with drum lessons from a local teacher. Nope.
And then there was Mr. Ford, my grade 8 music teacher from Pierre Laporte. This time Mr. Ford was convinced that I had a knack for sequencing music on the new MIDI control system.
Looking back, I know a few things about my father that help me to understand what his issues were.
The first issue that he had was his grade school education.
When I examined my father for Federal Court in the summer of 2013, I asked him what school he attended as a child. He put down St. John School, Fort McMurray, Alberta. I have yet to receive confirmation, but the school Richard named also shows up on a list of schools covered under the Indian Residential settlement program. The particular school my father attended is listed as inelligable for receving settlement funds solely due to the fact the school was only the Indian Day Program and it did not have the the residential component.
Richard was half Swampy Cree and half Irish. This made him a half-breed under government definition. And yes, that was the actual legal definition for people like my father. The federal government didn’t start using small “m” metis to describe people like my father until the late ’60s and early ’70s. The Indian Day Program was leaps and bounds behind the standard public school. The Indian Day Program was only meant to teach the kids that attended the absolute basics as the government of Canada didn’t think that these kids were going to become much more than farm labourers or manual labourers.
Was Richard’s experience in the Indian Day Program the reason why he despised my school teachers so much?
I think Richard’s experience in school as a child is what poisoned him towards my teachers and my counsellors.
Cost was another issue that my father often had.
As long as a program didn’t cost him anything, or cost him very little, he was all for it.
I could join Sea Cadets in 1984, because the Canadian Armed Forces basically picked up all of the costs associated with cadets. My uniform was free, my boots were free, parade night and weekend trips to CFB Borden were free. It didn’t cost him a single nickle.
A trip to Ottawa to enter my laser into the National Science Fair ? That would cost a lot of money. There’d be the cost of the hotel room. The cost of food. The cost of this, the cost of that.
Get me a computer capable of working with MIDI? Again, that would cost money, so that was out of the question.
Buy me a bass guitar and an amplifier and lessons? Christ, forget the lessons, just buy me a guitar and amplifier? Again, this would cost money so the answer would be no.
Paid professional drum lessons? Nope.
And as he told his buddy Jacque Choquette, the only reason that Richard kept my brother and I is so that he could control the costs.
Yes, it is true that Richard did get my brother and I season passes for Canada’s Wonderland for the 1983 season and the 1984 season. But these passes were $29.95 at the time for unlimited visits.
Canada’s Wonderland served, as my brother would say, Richard’s discount babysitting service.
Richard, or Sue, would drop me and my brother off at 08:00 just about every weekend and weekday that we weren’t in school with the exception of the summer we spent in Edmonton in ’84.
We’d each be given $10 for the day.
Let me tell you, $10 doesn’t go very far in an overpriced amusement park.
Richard or Sue would pick us up at 22:00 just after the park closed. We’d have to wait in the passenger drop off / pick up area.
The novelty of Canada’s Wonderland wore off for me really fucking quick. I used to find corners of that park where I could hide and go to sleep in order to pass the time.
It got so bad that I used to pray that I would get kidnapped and then Richard would have to explain to the police why he was dropping his kids off unattended at the park all day long.
This is one of the reasons I had to do a double take when I read Richard’s statement that he had given to the CFNIS in 2011. He claimed that the school wanted to go on a trip to Canada’s Wonderland, but that he didn’t want me to go because I had been bad, and that the school had threatened him that not letting me go could be considred “child abuse”. Fucking seriosuly? This is the guy who used Canada’s Wonderland like a “discount babysitting service”. So yeah, there definately was something wrong with Richard.
What exactly that problem is, I don’t think we will ever know.
During my July 30th 2020 interview with the CFNIS, as I read off my statement, a question kept popping up in the back of my head. If Richard was so disinterested in raising me, who did?
Of course, there’s my mother, but she only lived with me until I was 5.
After that, I saw her very sporadically. Two or three times tops until the summer of 1990 when I was invited by my father to move back to Edmonton with him. Marie was living on an acreage by Wabamun with her husband Art.
My uncle Doug showed up at our PMQ just after we moved back to CFB Griesbach. He brought his wife Yvonne and their new baby.
Doug took me aside and said that my mother was living on the outskirts of Edmonton, and that if I wanted to meet her, he could arrange a meeting, but that I could not tell Richard as Doug was afraid that Richard would go off the deep end.
Marie and I met at Northgate Mall in July of 1990. She definitely wasn’t what I remembered from when I was a kid. When I moved away from Edmonton unexpectedly in February of 1992 she had a major meltdown when I called her from Vancouver. We didn’t speak again until 2013 when I had to track her down to check on one of Richard’s responses to my Federal Court examination.
What struck me the most about her was her unchecked racism and her homophobia. She worked for the Alberta Report at the time. When I met her again in 2013 her racism was still as strong as ever. In a way I’m happy that I didn’t grow up with her. But at the same time Richard and Grandma were anything but a cakewalk themselves.
Racist and small-minded or psychologically unhinged and prone to anger outbursts……….. that was my choice for parents.
Doug also wanted me to get my metis papers, but even he said that he doubted Richard would agree to that as Richard would have to sign the papers.
My metis papers really wouldn’t be worth anything, other than to be able to say that I had first nation blood. And that’s about it. This is what Doug got his papers for. There would have been no tax benefits, or any other benefit similar to what a person with full status would have. I think Doug realized how much the Gill family tree had been shaped by the treatment of the First Nations. Richard resented his First Nations heritage.
I guess that outside of my grandmother, Uncle Doug would have been the first person outside of my immediate family that helped raise my brother and I.
Uncle Doug was more “behind the scenes” than my grandmother.
Even though my father and my uncle Doug grew up in the same household, there was a world of difference between Doug and Richard.
Richard, for lack of a better explanation, was an uptight asshole who wouldn’t know how to have fun if his life depended on it. Richard’s world was full of sarcasm, put-downs, disappointment, and lies.
Richard was also a very impatient man. Red lights, slow drivers, slow bank machines, line-ups, etc, would drive Richard batty.
Richard’s anger driving, which was only amplified when he got his 1983 Ford 5 Litre Mustang GT, is probably what scared me away from driving cars. Since I was 16 years old, I’ve only driven cars for 4 years in the last 33 years. I riden motorcycles for 6 out of the last 33 years.
When I was younger, I could often feel Richard’s rage living inside. Thankfully, the longer I was away from Richard, the more Richard’s toxic anger subsided. Nowadays I can ride my motocycle and feel none of Richard’s anger or rage.
Uncle Doug on the other hand was a “happy go lucky” kind of guy. Uncle Doug drank nowhere near as heavily as Richard or Grandma.
I don’t think I ever caught Uncle Doug lying. For that matter, grandma didn’t lie either. Where Richard got his penchant for lying is anyone’s guess.
And let’s be very clear. Richard didn’t tell little innocent white lies. He would tell such bald faced lies that you couldn’t help but wonder why no one questioned him on these lies. But I’ve learnt in this life that it’s often easier to not raise a fuss about lies and liars. Just ignore the lies, and don’t involve yourself with the liar any more. This might explain why Richard had so very few friends.
Remember, Richard was found to tell conflicing stories from one meeting to another, and he was also found to tell people that he perceived to be in positions of authority what he thought they wanted to hear.
Uncle Doug also didn’t have the anger or the temper that Richard had.
Richard and Uncle Doug were night and day different.
Doug worked up in the oil fields as a cook. He’d be out for 6 weeks and back for 2.
Uncle Doug lived in the basement of our PMQ on CFB Namao. He had a cot and a sleeping area set up in the corner of the basement.
Maybe it was because Doug had no expenses and was making good money in the oil patch that he wasn’t adverse to splurging on grandma, my brother, and me when he’d come back to town.
Grandma was a decent enough cook. Grandma is the one who got me addicted to HP Sauce, Lee & Perrins Worchester sauce. And it’s because of grandma that my eggs to this date aren’t complete without paprika on them. Richard could cook hamburger helper and Kraft dinner and just about anything from a can, but beyond that, he had no cooking skills.
Starting on CFB Griesbach, after grandma moved out, McDonald’s and KFC also became staples. Probably explains why I can’t even stomach the smell of those two places, let alone eat there.
I don’t think there’s a single cullinary tradition that I picked up from Richard.
Doug on the other hand could cook. When he was home from the camps it was steak dinner, pork chops, chicken, fresh fish, you name it.
As I found out in 2013, the presents that my brother and I received from our mother from 1977 until 1981 came from Doug and not from our mother. Sure, Marie had selected the gifts, but she didn’t have the money to buy the gifts, so Uncle Doug would by them for us on her behalf.
When we moved down to CFB Griesbach from CFB Namao, I inherited my grandmother’s old stereo system when Doug bought her a brand new one. Now, this wasn’t a cheap thing, it was a fairly decent system. Uncle Doug started me on my first record collection. Richard was stuck on country. Doug on the other hand was into just about everything. Big Band, the Beatles, Paul McCartney, Joan Jett, Henry Mancini, Waylon Jennings, Dolly Parton, Kris Kristopherson, movie soundtracks, etc.
When we had our surpise move from CFG Greisbach to CFB Downsview, Richard threw all of my belongings into the trash. This was no doubt retribution for causing the family to have to relocate in order to avoid my apprehension by Alberta Social Services.
My paternal grandmother raised my brother and I from 1977 until 1981. In 1981 she moved out of our PMQ on CFB Griesbach and moved into her own apartment in Edmonton. I would have been just shy of my tenth birthday when she moved out. Grandma and Sue didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. The one nice thing about grandma moving out is that I never again had to step foot in a church. Sue said that if we didn’t want to go to church again, we didn’t have to.
Having an after school job at a young age wasn’t really that out of the ordinary considering what home life was like. The rule back then is we had to be out of the house unless it was supper time or bedtime. Richard didn’t have a lot of patience for listening to kids making any type of noise.
The food in the house was kept locked up. We could eat when we were fed. Outside of that, if I wanted to eat, the food was going to have to come from somewhere. So yeah, my after school and weekend jobs were for more than just my amusement.
After grandma moved out, my brother and I would be dropped off in the morning at the base daycare centre where we’d have to wait until it was time to go to school. As bad as things had been on CFB Namao, having to spend an hour every morning at the daycare centre until it was time for school was the ultimate in humiliation.
And yes, most of the kids at Major General Griesbach School knew that I was going to daycare in the morning even through I was in grade 4 at the time.
After school my brother and I would have to wait on the front stoop of the house until Richard and Sue got home from work. The first house key I would get was around 1986, after my bedroom had been moved into the basement on CFB Downsview. That would put me at about 14. In Edmonton in the middle of winter, sitting on the stoop could be damn cold. So it was easier to head over to the mall and stay warm. Other kids on the base knew who I was and what I had been caught doing with the babysitter on CFB Namao, so there weren’t too many homes that were friendly towards me on CFB Griesbach.
Looking back, I don’t ever remember any other kids on that base having to wait outside for their parents to come home. And looking back, the few friends that I did have weren’t allowed to come out and “play” on cold days.
Even after Richard and Sue came home, unless there was homework to do, it was out the door until supper, and then after supper it was out the door until bedtime. The weekends were much the same. Out the door first thing in the morning, come back for lunch, out until supper, out until bedtime.
And this wasn’t just the typical “playing outside is healthy for you” type of attitude. This was “I don’t care how goddamn cold it is outside, get the fuck out of the house and leave me alone” type of attitude. So yeah, it was better to get a job, no matter how young I was and no matter how menial the job was, as at least this would give me something to do.
And as allowances were something unheard of in Richard’s house, the only way I was going to get money was to earn it by working outside of the home.
When I read Richard’s statement to the CFNIS, I nearly choked. He told the CFNIS that I only called him when I needed money. Hell would have to freeze over before I’d ever call him for money.
As a kid I learnt of two things that I was never going to get from Richard. Admiration was one. Money was the other.
When we lived at Stanley Greene Park on CFB Downsview, he wouldn’t buy me a bus pass to get to school. Stanley Greene Park was close to Keele St. and Wilson Ave. Elia Jr, High was on Sentinel Road. Stanley Greene Park no longer exists, so I’ve used Downsview Secondary School as the start point as it was adjacent to Stanley Greene Park.
My counsellor was concerned about the distance that I had to walk, especially in the winter.
Richard didn’t care.
The program that I was involved in at Elia was unique to the North York Board of Education. It was for gifted students that were interested in technology.
By transferring to Pierre Laport, I was within walking distance, but I lost out on the technology immersion program.
All for the sake of a student bus pass. But that was Richard. That’s just the way the way it was.
And I think the more important aspect of these job, no matter how menial they were, is that they gave me a sense of purpose that was sorely lacking in my own home.
A simple “Thank you” goes a long way for a kid from a broken and dysfunctional home. Under no circumstance would Richard have ever thanked me for anything. I was 1000 times more likely to get a sarcastic putdown or verbal abuse than a simple acknowledgement or even a thank you for having done something.
None of the people that I worked for treated me anywhere like Richard did. They liked me. They liked the work I did. They appreciated me. This was something that Richard just wasn’t capable of.
There was Terry. Not Captain Terry Totzke. This Terry was the manager of a pet shop over in North Town Mall. I used to clean the cages and fish tanks. In return, Terry set me up with a fair-sized aquarium. I remember that he also paid me money, enough that I could buy a hot dog and orange drink a couple of times a week and still have money left over to play video games at the arcade in the mall. I would have been about 9 when I started this after school/weekend job.
Next up were the Casson family. Jackie, Bonnie, and Colleen Casson ran a small pizza shop in Kingsway Garden Mall called Pizza Plus. They also had a second location down in the Cadillac Fairview Centre in downtown Edmonton. I used to help out with washing pans, bringing supplies up from the storage rooms, and other menial tasks. The best thing about working for the Cassons was the food. I could have as many slices of pizza as I could handle.
I started working for the Cassons while I lived on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach, so I’m thinking the spring of 1982. I used to walk from the base at 97th Street and 137th Ave down to Kingsway Garden Mall at Kingsway and 109th. I worked for them from the spring of 1982 until the summer of 1985. I know that when I was in the Westfield program we went to a Boston Pizza shop on 118th Ave for a school trip to make pizzas. I already knew how to measure, cut and roll the dough, as well as how to prep the pan. Fun day. Jackie was the matriarch of the family. She had a house with a swimming pool.
I’m pretty sure that it was Colleen that had the Triumph TR-7 sports car. She’d take me for rides on the roads around Edmonton when Richard had sent me up to Edmonton for the summer of 1984 and 1985 while we were living on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario.
When Richard invited me to move back to Edmonton in June of 1990, one of the first places I went to visit was the Pizza Plus in Kingsway Garden Mall. The Cassons had sold off the business and were no longer involved with Pizza Plus.
When I lived on CFB Downsview in North York, I had gotten into the habit of dumpster diving in the industrial parks north of the base. I forget how I had discovered this, but there were a lot of electronic manufacturers up there and they would throw out heaps of electronic scrap. The perfect place for a kid like me with an interest in electronics to pick up bits and pieces for electronic projects.
One day I was going through the bin behind Colour Wheel Electronics. Colour Wheel was a distributor for the very illegal Quarter Horse gambling games. This was an interesting machine. I had seen these in the pool halls around the base. The old retired guys would pump quarter after quarter into these machines. These games had various pre-recorded horse races on a video laserdisc. When a race started the machine would playback different segments of different races so that the race would end with a random winner.
The owner of the company caught me going through his dumpster and asked me what I was doing. Zellman was his name. I told him that I was looking for electronic parts to build projects with. He asked me some electronics related questions, and I more or less gave him the answers that he liked. But he said that I was far too young to work for him, so he passed my name and phone number onto another company that might be able to let me work in their shop on the weekend in trade for parts and components.
The person he referred me to wasn’t interested, solely because being 13 I obviously couldn’t drive, and most of his work was out in the field. So this route operator passed my name on to another guy. The next guy was Vincent Chong. Vincent was a swimming coach at the University of Toronto, but he also ran a small video amusement company with a business partner named Ravi. I forget where Vincent lived, but Ravi lived over near Coxwell station north of the Danforth.
Vincent and Ravi had almost no technical skills between the two, so when I came along I was a godsend. Now, I won’t bullshit you. My electronic skills were self-taught. Even though my father was involved with avionics and other electronic trades in the Canadian Forces, I picked up bugger all from him. I did however have access to all of his Canadian Forces training manuals and McGraw-Hill books education books.
I also made frequent use of Radio Electronic and Popular Electronic magazines.
For clarification, Richard as smart as he was, wasn’t able to teach. To him, I was too fucking stupid. Or so he said.
In reality, he just didn’t have any type of parenting skills. His father had fled his family early on and grandma took Richard and Doug back to Fort McMurray in Alberta. And grandma also had bugger all of parenting skills. I guess the Residential Schools were so intent on beating the Indian out of the kids that they forgot to teach the kids how to function in society.
And Richard had no ability to pass on knowledge. If you asked him a simple question, and you didn’t understand his explanation, he would get greatly upset. So yeah, one learnt not to ask Richard anything. I was just much more peaceful that way.
While I was working for Vincent and Ravi, I became involved with Bob Becker. Bob owned two companies. One was Trans-American Construction, the other was Trans-American Video Amusements. I don’t know what Trans-American Construction did, but Trans-American Video Amusements was his video game route.
Bob had exclusive agreements with Hasty Market to place two video games into each store in the Windsor to Toronto corridor. Bob also had an exclusive agreement with Holiday Inn to place video games into all of the hotels from Niagara Falls to Oshawa. There were also other locations that Bob had, mainly convenience stores and donut shops.
Bob always wore tan khakis, a cowboy hat, and cowboy boots. Almost everyone called him the Jewish Cowboy. Bob never liked my father very much. Bob said that he couldn’t understand why my father wasn’t the least bit concerned that I would stay at the workshop until late at night and almost all day on the weekends. When I left school after the start of grade 9, Richard started charging me $200.00 rent for my bedroom. This blew Bob away. He couldn’t understand what Richard was doing.
Bob was upset that Richard didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t going to school anymore. Richard couldn’t understand that this wasn’t the 1960s anymore and that grade 8 drop outs couldn’t just walk into a 30-year military career.
Bob once got furious with my father. Bob said that after everything he had been through and after all that was taken away from him, here was my father, not showing an ounce of concern.
I never knew why Bob seemed to always get upset with my father.
It wouldn’t be until the summer of 1987 that I would discover the reason why Bob was upset with my father.
Bob had an agreement with the Canadian National Exhibition to supply video games to one of the pavilions during the CNE. We had already made two trips from the workshop down to the CNE and we were now on our third trip. Bob was wearing his long-sleeved Kahki top with undershirt like he always did. It had to be in the high 20s with a typical high Toronto humidity. I kept pestering Bob all day to put on something more appropriate least he die of heatstroke. Bob would get annoyed every time I asked him.
We had just turned off Keele Street and entered the collector lanes of the 401. We moved over to the express lanes. Once we were settled in the lane, Bob looked over at me and said, “ok smart ass, if I show you something will you stop telling me to put on a short-sleeved shirt?” I said “sure”. He looked at me again and he said “If I show you this, you keep it to yourself and you don’t tell anyone what you’ve seen, this is between you and me, understand?”
Bob grabbed the steering wheel with his left hand and used his right hand to unbutton his left cuff. He then rolled up his sleeve to his elbow.
Going to school in North York, we learned about World War II, Anne Frank, the Nazis, and the concentration camps. We learnt about how the Nazis tattooed the prisoners in the concentration camps. But I had never seen anyone in person with an actual concentration camp tattoo. And Bob had a concentration camp tattoo. That’s why he never wore short-sleeved shirts no matter how hot it got.
On the way down to the CNE Bob would explain that he was from Poland. Around 1940 his family had been rounded up and sent to the camps. When the Allies finally liberated the camps in 1945, he was 14. He was also the only survivor from his family. His parents and his brothers and sisters all died in the camps.
Bob said that this is what made him angry with my father. Bob had everything in his life torn away from him, and yet he still made sure that his daughter had everything she wanted and more. The fact that my father didn’t care just drove Bob around the bend.
By late 1987, I had started working for another video game company.
This company was a side business owned by three Toronto Police Service officers. Ed from Central Traffic Unit, Dirk from 14 Division, and Gary from 52 Division. There was a fourth partner, Bruce. Bruce wasn’t a police officer. Bruce had been Ed’s childhood friend when they grew up together in Montreal.
Ed, Dirk, Gary, and Bruce owned a company called Warlock Amusements that changed its name to Rainbow Games after they bought the Classic Billiards pool hall in the plaza across from Canadian Forces Base Downsview.
I had met Ed earlier in the summer of 1987 at a donut shop down on Bloor St. where he had been trying to install a paddle control into an Arkanoid video game. Ed had no idea what he was doing. So I introduced myself and wired the controller up for him. He asked me what I wanted for helping him. I asked for a carton of smokes, a black coffee, and a donut. He obliged me and took my phone number down.
I forget when exactly I started smoking. I know that I didn’t smoke in 1985 when Richard sent my brother and I up to Edmonton to spend the summer at our grandmother’s place. I’d have to say that I was smoking by the summer of ‘86. All I know is that my brother actually started smoking before I did.
Richard was okay with my smoking so long as I didn’t take his smokes. If he was out of smokes I was expected to share my smokes with him. We both smoked Player’s Extra Light. My brother smoked Du Maurier. Richard wouldn’t smoke Du Maurier no matter how bad of a nic-fit he was having. Richard’s helping himself to my smokes got so bad that I ended up switching to Player’s unfiltered just so he’d stop taking my smokes.
Around December of 1987 I got a call from Ed asking if I’d be interested in coming to work for him. Ed was the next person that I worked for that picked up on the fact that things weren’t right at home. The fact that I preferred sleeping in the shop overnight coupled with the fact that my father never once came looking for me told Ed that something wasn’t quite right.
Ed was on good terms with a few of the customers at the pool hall, and so he started asking around if anyone had a room for rent that I could move into. By January of 1988 I was out of the house and living on my own. It was a room in a four-bedroom house. The best thing was the rent here was $50 / month cheaper than what I was paying at home. Ed, Dirk, Gary, and Bruce were okay guys.
As soon as I moved out of the house, Ed took me to a notary public so that I could attest that I was living on my own and supporting myself. This was so that I could get my learner’s permit. Once I had my learner’s permit, I was allowed on occasion to drive the company pickup truck as long as someone else was with me. Ed would also teach me how to drive in his Hyundai Pony. After I got my license, Ed would send me on service calls in his car.
It would take a chapter all on its own for me to detail all of the exploits I went on at Rainbow Games.
But I will share two.
Ed was probably the first employer that picked up that I wasn’t into girls.
Rainbow Games had a juke box, a pair of coin operated pool tables and a couple of pinball machines in a strip club out by the airport near the 427 in Toronto. I had to go service one of the pinball machines. This was before I had my driver’s licence, so Ed gave me a drive. The club manager was adament that I was not coming in under any circumstance. A deal was made between Ed and the manager. I’d go in through the rear entrance, to the machine, service the machine, and then out of the club without catching even the smallest glimpse of flesh. The pinball machine was in a part of the club not anywhere near the stage. So the club manager was okay with this. Well, that night would end up being the first time that I had been bought a beer in a strip club. That night would also be the first time (and only time) that I ever had a private lap dance…….
Yeah, my lack of interest in the girls sealed the deal for Ed.
The next event was probably the one and only time that someone has ever kneed a police officer in the balls and walked away without being arrested.
One day at work, Ed told me that I had to go with Dirk down to Ciro’s Cafe on Bloor. Apparently there was a cockroach infestation and I had to pull out the jukebox and the two counter top video games. Dirk drove me down in the pickup truck. Instead of parking the truck, Dirk said that he was going to circle the block and when I brought the machines out he’d stop and we’d load the games and jukebox in the back of the truck. “Hurry up and be quick” was all he said.
I went in and removed the cash boxes from the machines and started splitting the money 60/40.
Julie, the owner of Ciro’s asked me what was going on, this wasn’t the usual collection day and it was Dirk that usually did the collections.
I told her that Ed said we had to pull the machines out because of the cockroach infestation.
Julie looked puzzled and said that her pest control contract was up to date and that the last inspection showed nothing for cockroaches.
I told her to call Ed, maybe he knew what was up.
I finished counting the coins and gave Julie the location’s 40% of the cashbox total.
I unplugged the Ms. Pac-Man countertop and picked it up. I walked backwards towards the inside door and pushed it open with my back. Julie reached past me to hold the door. As I moved backwards towards the outside door, the smile disappeared from Julie’s face and was replaced by a look of terror. I felt the door being pulled open. Somebody yelled “14 DIVISION, THIS IS A RAID”. As the first police officer squeezed past me I felt the butt of his rifle crush into my crotch.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that crushing pain. I was down in the vestibule of the restaurant as more officers poured into the restaurant past me. There were the obligatory kicks as the officers rushed past. After the officers finished rushing into the restaurant I tried crawling out the front door. I was quickly grabbed by one of the officers and dragged back into the restaurant. I was pushed up against the front window and told to spread my arms and legs and not to move.
I watched as Dirk drove by pretending not to see what was going on.
After I was released I caught the Keele bus back up to the poolhall.
The pickup truck was in its normal spot. Ed’s Hyundai Pony was there. Bruce’s Hyundai Elantra was there too. Dirk’s Grand National wasn’t. I guess Dirk didn’t want to face up to the fact that he knew a drug raid was going down.
I walked downstairs.
Ed was behind the counter, he looked at me and said that I should have been in and out of Ciro’s faster than I was.
Bruce was sitting on his stool with his typical shamed puppy dog expression on his face.
I walked behind the counter and walked past Bruce and walked right up to Ed.
Before Ed could say anything, my right knee found his nutsack.
Ed was tall. I was a short kid. I was shorter than my father. I was even shorter than my younger brother. I would peg Ed as having been around 6’2″.
Ed fell to the ground grabbing his crotch.
Bruce nearly fell off his stool. “Bob, you better get the hell out of here before Ed gets his hands on you”.
Ed moaned “Nope, I deserved that. We shouldn’t have sent him down there. It’s my fault”. That was the first time in my life that anyone had every admitted that they fucked up and put me in danger. If this had been Richard, Richard would have blamed me for being stupid and having fucked things up like I usually did.
Dirk would never own up to who told Ed about the impending drug raid at Ciro’s.
Ed explained to me later that he wanted his machines out of Ciro’s as he knew the 14 Division drug squad was going to tear the machines apart in the quest to find hidden drugs stashed inside the machines.
And true enough, none of the machines were repairable. We scrapped them all for parts.
So that was the one and only time that I floored a cop with a knee to the nuts.
To be honest, that’s the only time in my life that I ever floored anyone.
As I said, I could write a whole chapter of my exploits at Rainbow Games with Ed, Bruce, Dirk, and Gary.
Ed had a friend named Marcia Cash. Marcia used to work for Tom at T.W. Gilchrist, a pool table and juke box distributor in Toronto. Anyways Marcia had moved up to Timmins Ontario to live with her boyfriend Barry Weiss. Barry owned A-1 Taxi and Amusements. Marcia asked Ed if Barry could “borrow” me for the summer of 1989.
I spent the late spring / summer of 1989 in Timmins Ontario helping Barry with his amusement company.
Barry had an agreement with the Minister of Northern Affairs to places videos games, juke boxes, and pool tables on the Indian reserves on James Bay. The machines were set to free-play and Barry was paid a flat fee for providing the machines and servicing them.
And that’s what I spent six weeks doing. Jumping from one reserve to the other, servicing the equipment, swapping equipment from one reserve to the next.
I moved juke boxes on the gunwales of canoes. I moved pool tables in bush planes.
I ate pemmican.
I was shocked to see the extreme poverty on the reserves.
I would often stay with the chaplain on the reserve, or with one of the senior band members.
On one reserve, the chaplain asked me if I could fix his ATV that wouldn’t start. The carburetor was all gummed up with bad gasoline. I cleaned out the carb and the fuel tank, filled it up with fresh gasoline, and it ran.
I was allowed to take the ATV out for a ride. I disappeared for about 5 or 6 hours. Basically went down one trail, parked the ATV, and then went exploring in the woods around James Bay.
It was quiet and peaceful. No cars. No noises. No nothing.
When I arrived back at the reserve, the chaplain was upset. He thought that I had wasted the tank of gas. I explained the the chaplain that I only went about 30 minutes down the trail, parked the quad and the walked on foot for a few hours. The chaplain said that he was relieved as gasoline was hard to get shipped to the reserves, and gasoline was very expensive. He was much releived to find the tank close to where it was after I filled the ATV up after having fixed it.
I had another job that started in the winter on 1990 and lasted until June of 1990. A 5 month contract with a company called Canshare Cabling. The contract was to wire up the Sears Catalogue Stores for the new computer system Sears was installing.
$15.00/hr x 60 hrs per week + $600/wk travel expenses, no receipts required meant that I had a lot of money in the bank come June of 1990.
When the job was over and I returned to Toronto, Richard discovered how much money I had, hence the invitation to move with him back to Edmonton for his final posting under the guise of “trying to be a family again”.
I honestly should have stayed in Toronto.
The move from CFB Downsview in Toronto to CFB Griesbach in Edmonton will be for another blog post.
But yeah, for the most part these are the people who raised me and the experiences that shaped my life.
I’ll probably touch on my school teachers in a different post.
All I can say is that I guess I’m lucky that I didn’t have to rely on Richard for my life lessons.
Every now and again I get weird phone calls related to my blog. The funny thing is, I haven’t really put my phone number out there.
Every now and again I get weird phone calls related to my blog. The funny thing is, I haven’t really put my phone number out there.
I don’t know who this person is, “unknown” number. But they sure had an interest in my blog postings about the MPCC.
This guy was adamant that when I made my complaint to the MPCC that I would have been allowed to view the CFNIS paperwork.
No matter how I explained to him that I did not see the CFNIS investigation paperwork until February of 2013 he wouldn’t believe me.
“What made you think that something was wrong with the investigation if you didn’t see the investigation paperwork” he asked.
I explained to him that my babysitter had his first criminal conviction for child molestation in 1984, two more convictions in 1985. And nine more convictions between 1985 and 2000. And for PO Morris to tell me on November 4th, 2011 that the CFNIS couldn’t find anything that would indicate that P.S. was capable of molesting the children he was babysitting, meant that something went wrong. I already knew about the $4.3 million dollar lawsuit between P.S. and the Minister of National Defence.
The caller interjected that just because P.S. had criminal convictions for child sexual abuse starting in 1984, this in no way automatically means that P.S. was guilty of molesting children prior to 1984. And to be fair to the mystery caller, my brother said the same thing to me back in 2013.
I explained to the mystery caller that if someone was convicted of raping a woman, and their modus operandi happened to match the modus operandi of the perpetrator in a couple of previous rapes that occured when this particular person happened to live in the vicinity of the two previous victims, you can be sure that the police would look into these matters. Sure, the similar modus operandi doesn’t mean that the three rapes were committed by the same person, but by the same token you don’t just discount any possible connection because they happened prior to the current conviction.
The mystery caller asked me why I didn’t bring this to the attention of the MPCC. I asked in response how could I when I had absolutely no idea what was done during the CFNIS investigation.
The mystery caller asked me if I was so certain that my father lied in his statement to the CFNIS why didn’t I say something to the CFNIS or the MPCC.
I tried to explain to the mystery caller that at no time during the 2011 CFNIS did the investigators ever ask me about anything my father had said to the CFNIS.
You would think that if someone said that they had been repeatedly molested for 1-1/2 years by a person acting as a babysitter, and then someone else countered and said that there never was a babysitter, that the investigators would want to follow up with the victim to understand this significant discrepancy. At no point in time in 2011 did the CFNIS ever call me to ask if I was certain that there was a babysitter.
The mystery caller then said that I should have told the MPCC about the lies in my father’s statement.
Again, I tried to expain to the mystery caller that I had no access to my father’s statement until 2013. By the time I read my father’s statement it was far too late to contest it. The CFNIS had my foster care records. I gave them a complete copy in August of 2011. They refused to consider them at all during the investigation. That means the CFNIS willfully ignored such things as:
Mr. Gill frequently contradicts himself from one meeting to the next.
Mr. Gill tells those he perceives to be in positions of authority what he believes they want to hear.
Mr. Gill brought his mother into the house to raise his children.
Mr. Gill uses work as an excuse for his frequent absences as a reason to not attend the family counselling sessions.
Robert was in the protective custody of Alberta Social Services and Mr. Gill had signed the paperwork placing Robert into the foster care system.
Mr. Gill told both Alberta Social Services and the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto that there was nothing wrong with his children, that the intense sibling rivalry between his two sons was just “boys being boys” and that the counsellors were no help at all.
The mystery caller was adamant that if this was in my foster care records, that the would have picked up on this.
I told the mystery caller that my father’s statement gave the CFNIS exactly what they wanted. According to my father, there was no babysitter in the house and that’s all the CFNIS needed.
I told the mystery caller that during the 2011 CFNIS investigation I was told repeatedly by the CFNIS investigators that there was no house fire at PMQ #26 on 12th street in the summer of 1980. It was suggested to me by various persons with the CFNIS in 2011 that the fire I was thinking of occured on 1986 and happened on CFB Griesbach, and that if I was wrong about this fire, maybe I was wrong about other things too. Maybe the babysitter didn’t molest my brother and I. Maybe it was a man who lived off the base. Maybe I was making this up.
The mystery caller wanted to know why I didn’t raise this with the MPCC if I was so certain that there was a fire.
I told the mystery caller that even though I was certain that there was a fire in the P.S. houseat #26 – 12th street that I had no proof that there actually was a fire. It was my word against that of the Canadian Armed Forces……. and why would the CF or the CFNIS lie about the fire? Again, it wouldn’t be until February of 2013 when I obtained the certified tribunal records that I would learn that the CFNIS had the Canadian Forces Fire Marshal records for the June 23rd, 1980 fire at PMQ #26 on 12th street and they knew that I had told the truth about the fire.
I really wish I knew who the mystery caller was.
Is he a member of the Canadian Forces, or maybe a reited member?
Is he another former military dependant that’s upset with the way that I’m slandering the Canadian Forces.
Other than the fact that his name was Richard Wayne Gill and that he was in the Canadian Armed Forces, I honestly can’t tell you anything about my father.
I know he worked with the Sea Kings out in Shearwater.
I know that he worked on the Argus aircraft at Summerside
I know he worked on the Chinooks at 447 SQN at Namao
I know he worked as a quality control inspector for the Canadian Armed Forces at LItton Systems inspecting the then controversial Cruise Missile when we first arrived at CFB Downsview in Ontario.
I know he did a short stint at DCIEM on Downsview
I know that he worked at 4900 Yonge Street “flying a desk” as he always called it.
I wouldn’t find out until 1985 that he was in the navy before the air force.
I wouldn’t find out until 2013 the names of the ships he served on.
I don’t honestly remember much of him on Shearwater, he was frequently away.
I don’t remember much of him on Summerside, again he was frequently away.
I don’t remember much of him on Namao.
And he wasn’t around that often on Griesbach.
As a kid I never went to a single hockey game, football game, or even baseball game with him. It’s not that I didn’t want to. He just never took us.
Derek’s father often took him to see the Oilers and Northlands.
Trevor’s father was an Eskimo’s fan, and they frequently went to games.
We lived in Edmonton when the Oilers were the kings of the NHL. And not once did we ever go see a game.
Richard loved the Toronto Maple Leafs, and yet we never attended a single game while we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview. And this is the guy who would yell and scream at the TV while watching Leafs games. He would become so fixated on hockey games that you didn’t dare interrupt him while he was watching. He would become very irate if you bothered him while a game was on.
I once made the mistake of asking Richard for a ride to go to a place where I was working while a hockey game was on. He was so enraged by this that he ended up rear ending a Jaguar car at an intersection on Don Mills Road.
The first time I ever I went to a football game was the summer of 1984. Grandma took my brother and I to an Edmonton Eskimos football game on a couple of occassion. She scored some tickets from the Bissell Centre in Edmonton where she volunteered.
But not once in my entire childhood can I ever recall going to anytype of event with Richard.
Cadets nights? Nope.
School performances? Nope.
Sure, my mother didn’t do any of those things either, but she left when I was 5 years old.
My stepmother Sue? We weren’t her kids, so I wouldn’t expect the same from her as I would from Richard.
Even social services noted in 1982 that there didn’t appear to be anything our family did together.
Yeah, a little bit more than just a “smack across the face” would happen in our household.
When grandma moved in with us at CFB Summerside she enrolled me into Sunday bible school. She also put me into Beavers which was held at the Knights of Columbus hall. For that matter she got us involved with the Knights of Columbus.
In the spring of 1978 my grandmother returned to Edmonton to be with her husband. My father obtained a compasionate posting to CFB Namao to be close to his mother so that she could look after my brother and I.
When grandma moved into the PMQ on Namao, I was placed into Beavers. Grandma got me on the base hockeyteam for kids my age called the CFB Squirts. I played basketball on the Knickerbokers. I was enrolled into the Red Cross swimming program. I was also in the YBC youth bowling program. I had first communion at the chapel.
Guess which one’s me…..
In 2013, I examined my father for Federal Court. Here are a pair of questions that I asked of him:
These were his answers:
This is me, having no interest apparently.
Once we moved to CFB Grisbach, grandma had very little input into our lives.
She moved out in the spring on 1981.
I know that Richard took Captain Totzke’s suggestion to heart that I shouldn’t be allowed in changerooms with other boys as I might not be able to control myself. Captain Totzke had the idea that what happened on CFB Namao between 8 year old me, and the 14 year and 11 month old babysitter was due to “homosexuality” that I was apparently exhibiting.
It wasn’t that I didn’t show any interest.
On Griesbach, there was no more hockey, definitely no more swimming, no basketball, no cubs. Nothing.
This was my punishment for me having sex with P.S..
My younger brother didn’t have the involvement I had with Captain Terry Totzke.
Why Richard didn’t put my younger brother into any of those programs?
Richard had no interest.
Period.
I honestly don’t think it was the cost involved. We were a military family and I know that bowling, hockey, basketball, and swimming would have cost almost next to nothing. I know there were no fees for swimming. And I know there were no fees for skating. Bowling I think was dirt cheap, less than a quarter a string. Even the movies were dirt cheap at the base cinema.
Grandma was that one who would always take me to hockey. And even though her arthritis would limit her ability to tie my skates, she wouldn’t have any issue with coaxing the other fathers to tie my skates.
Richard just didn’t have the interest.
When I joined Sea Cadets in 1984, it was because a friend of mine from Elia Jr. High got me interested.
I was sure that Richard wasn’t going to allow this.
But after John Potter confirmed to my father that there was no cost, that the uniforms and all equipment were free, and that there were no fees to join, Richard allowed me to join.
But yeah, Richard never came to a single parade night or other cadet related function.
It’s amazing and somewhat disturbing how the Department of National Defence still gloats about the findings of the Military Police Complaints Commission.
If one wishes to make a complaint against the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, one does so at their own risk.
This risk is especially true for a civilian with no connection to the Canadian Forces as the civilian receives none of the assistance that a service member would receive whilst making a complaint against the military police or the CFNIS.
You would think that a person wishing to make a complaint against the CFNIS would be granted access to the CFNIS investigation paperwork so that one could indicate to the MPCC exactly what the issue is.
However, there exists no mechanism within the Military Police Complaints Commission guidelines that require or even allow for the complainant to view the military police / CFNIS paperwork.
And as former MPCC chairman Glenn Stannard told the Globe and Mail in 2015, the MPCC has never been given the full and complete set of documents that detail how the military police operate and function. According to Stannard, this means that the Military Police Complaints Commission has no idea of what documents to request from the Provost Marshal during a review.
So, if the MPCC doesn’t even truly understand how the Military Police Group works, how the hell is a civilian such as myself supposed to know how the Military Police Group operates?
The only way a person can obtain copies of the CFNIS investigation paperwork is to file an Access to Information request for the documents.
The delay between requesting the documents and receiving the documents can be quite substantial. For example, when I submutted my request in 2018 for the CFNIS investigation paperwork it was 20 months before I received the records.
The complaint to the MPCC is supposed to be made within one year of the event that gave rise to the complaint. 20 months is well outside of that 12 month window.
I even had to enlist the help of the Information Commissioner of Canada to give DND a swift kick in the ass to get DND to release the requested documents.
The OIC did find that my complaint of “Deemed refusal” was valid. “Deemed refusal” means that the party that is supposed to supply the documents is using delay as a tactic in the hopes that you will simply give up and abandone your request
DND acknowledged my original request on July 30, 2018.
DND finally released the documents to me on February 6th, 2020 I received the documents.
It must be remembered that by MPCC rules, you only have ONE year from the date of the matter you are complaining about to file a complaint with the MPCC.
The documents that I received are redacted almost to the point of being useless.
For example, completely missing from the CFNIS records that I requested is the brief sent to the Alberta Crown in 2018. Lucky for me, I already had made a complaint to the Alberta Criminal Injury Review Board in relation to a decision by the Alberta Victims of Crime Board. As a result of this complaint, the ACIRB released to me the documents that had been supplied to the AVCB. In this release of documents was the 2018 CFNIS investigation submission to the Alberta Crown. The CFNIS in 2018 basically just refiled the 2011 Crown Briefing which included my father’s faulty statement. The CFNIS did not make any attempt to clarify that other agencies had information that indicated what my father stated to the CFNIS in 2011 was not actually truthful. The CFNIS made no mention of the other victims of P.S. that came forward as a result of the Crime Stoppers Appeal. The CFNIS also made no mention of the other victims that I had placed in contact with the CFNIS in 2015 and 2016.
It was, as Sgt. Tenaschuk told me, that my complaint against P.S. was limited to only the one day in particular in the spring of 1980 when P.S. had been discovered buggering me in his bedroom of PMQ #26 – 12th Street.
Sgt. Tenaschuk had stated that his superiors had determined that my complaint was going to have to stand on it’s own merit. The statement given by P.G., another victim of P.S., was not going to be included in my complaint as determined by CFNIS brass.
Reading the CFNIS investigation paperwork I have no idea if Sgt. Damon Tenaschuk re-interviewed my father to ascertain the large discrepancies between my father’s statement to the CFNIS in 2011, and my foster care records from Alberta Social Service.
During the 2015 interview when I was interviewed by RCMP Major Crimes investigator Akrum Ghadban I supplied Mr. Ghadban with the relevant sections of my foster care records along with my father’s sworn statement that was entered into Federal Court in 2013.
These are the same foster care records that I supplied to the CFNIS in 2011 and which I would discover in 2013 that the CFNIS had excluded from the investigation.
Some examples of these descripancies:
In 2011 my father stated to the CFNIS that his mother only looked after my brother and I for a very short period of time, stating that grandma stopped looking after my brother and I after Andy died hinting that Andy shortly after he slipped in the bath tub in our house on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
Andy lingered in the Mewburn nursing home at the University of Alberta until he died just before the summer of 1985.
The reality is that our grandmother raised my brother and I from the spring of 1977 until the summer of 1981.
My father told the CFNIS in 2011 that we never had a babysitter in the house.
The problem with that statement is that from the summer of 1978 until the spring / summer of 1979 my father had been dating a woman named Vicki in Wetaskiwin, Alberta. In the summer of 1979 he briefly saw another woman before he started dating Sue. This woman was in the Canadian Forces and lived on CFB Griesbach in the row house PMQs on the north side of the base. My father started dating Sue shortly after he broke up with the woman from Griesbach. From the summer of 1979 until the summer of 1980, Sue lived in an apartment building over by Londonderry Mall in Edmonton. In August of 1980, Sue moved into our house on CFB Namao.
While Richard was dating these women, he’d often stay at their place. This was especially true when he was dating Vicki who lived in Wetaskiwin which is a town south of Edmonton.
Richard would also often go away on training exercises. These exercises were sometimes as long as 6 to 8 weeks. I know my father did Arctic training in the winter of ’79 and the winter of ’80.
So, if our mother “abandoned” the family in 1977 and Sue didn’t move into our house on CFB Namao until 1980, who was looking after my brother and I.
Now, you might ask why I didn’t raise these points during the 2012 MPCC investigation.
Remember, the MPCC is not required to allow the complainant to view the evidence and documents that the CFNIS had submitted to the MPCC.
I only discovered my father’s horrific statement to the CFNIS in 2013 when I received the certified tribunal records from the MPCC. However, by this time it is far too late to contest anything erroneous that was discovered as any documents entered into court to prove these errors will not be allowed as this is now considered to be “New Evidence” and will not be allowed into federal court.
Even when I examined my father by legal order in 2013, his answers were a stark difference to what he had stated to the CFNIS in 2011.
Why, yes, our grandmother did live with us.
Yes, there was a babysitter.
No, he didn’t actually have legal custody of my brother and I.
Sgt. Christain Cyr had drastically altered what I had discussed with him on May 3rd, 2011 and had even told the MPCC that he had flown out to Victoria BC and met with me in person. The problem with Sgt. Cyr flying out to Victoria to meet with me is that I have never met Sgt. Cyr in person.
On May 3rd, Sgt. Cyr asked me if I remembered anything about the base chaplain having been charged with molesting children during the same time period that I was aledging that P.S. abused me, my brother, and four other children.
I told Sgt. Cyr that I remembered going on five different visits to the rectory at the base chapel, that we’d play board games, watch TV, listen to records in the Padre’s “stereo chair”, and that I could never remember anything after I was given a “sickly sweet grape juice”.
Sgt. Cyr wrote in his notes that when he asked me about Captain McRae, that I remembered going to the chapel with P.S., but that nothing sexual ever occurred.
That’s not what I said.
Even the next day, when I sent emails to Sgt. Cyr indicating which chapel it was that P.S. had taken me to, Sgt. Cyr called me back and told me that I had to have been mistaken as the chapel that I indicated on the maps I drew was a new building that didn’t exist in 1980 when I lived on the base.
I tried to introduce these emails into Federal Court, but the Attorney General demanded that they be struck as I hadn’t provided these emails to the MPCC during their investigation. The problem was that during the MPCC investigation I had no idea that Sgt. Cyr had failed to make mention of these emails in his police reports so therefore I had no reason to introduce these emails to the MPCC.
I also obtained from the Department of National Defence a copy of the blueprints for ” Our Lady of Loretto” chapel that showed the chapel was built in the 1950s. These were struck from the federal court as well.
If you go to the MPCCs website and look at previous REVIEWS (not inquiries, inquiries are completely different) you’ll find that reviews almost always find in favour of the Military Police.
This is not an accident.
As was discovered in the civilian world, the majority of these police review boards are stacked against the complainant and are biased in favour of the police.
Take for example the fact that the MPCC can only hire retired police officers to be investigators. Many inquiries into civilian police review boards have found that these investigators almost always have a bias against the complainants. It’s part of the “Us vs Them” mentality that permeates police departments across North America.
The rules that the Military Police Complaints Commission works under are biased against the complainant as well.
The MPCC cannot share any of the information that the Provost Marshal has provided to the MPCC to the complainant so that the complainant can advance their complaint against the military police and the CFNIS.
The MPCC cannot even ask the complainant questions based upon the documents supplied to the MPCC by the Provost Marshal.
An MPCC review is seriously nothing more than a fell good exercise practically designed by the agency that it is supposed to oversee.
During an MPCC review, the MPCC cannot administer oaths, the MPCC cannot subpeona documents or witnesses.
During an MPCC review, the complainant cannot examine the military police or the CFNIS.
An MPCC review is easily controlled by the Provost Marshal as the Provost Marshal can determine which documents are and which documents are not issued to the Military Police Complaints Commission.
It’s almost as if the MPCC was set up specifically to hide the defects of the military disciplinary system from the eyes of the general public.
And considering that it is the National Defence Act that establishes the Military Police Complaints Commission I think it’s pretty obvious that the MPCC isn’t designed to benefit the complainant.
I might have the ear of a news reporter that is willing to look at my matter.
This reporter is more interested in some of the results I have recevied from the Department of National Defence in response to my various Access to Information requests.
The most recent results I recevied were from an Access to Information Request that I filed with the Department of National Defence in 2019.
In April of 2019, I had been contacted by the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada. I was told by the OIC that DND had released documents to another party that were the same documents that I had been requesting since 2012 and therefore I should submit a new request for the exact documents that DND had just released.
The records that I had requested were for the July 18th, 1980 court martial of Captain Father Angus McRae.
I made an application for these documents on April 3rd 2019. DND acknowledged this request a few days later.
In July of 2020 I finally received the documents that I had requested.
This is the cover page of the documents.
The cover letter
The second page is a photocopy of the file folder from the office of the Judge Advocate General.
The coverpage of the Judge Advocate General file folder
The third page states that pages 2 to 266 are being exempted under the privacy act section 19(1).
Everything has been exempted to protect Captain McRae’s privacy, who has been dead since May of 2011.
So, basically, I recevied three worthless but very humorous pages from DND.
The interesting thing about this information is that a Toronto Star reporter had access to this information back in 1990 for a news story he was writing about Captain McRae having been busted for molesting more children at a Scarborough Ontario church.
Kevin Donovan, Toronto Star Feb 11, 1990 Page A 14
Also, an instructor with the Canadian Forces College had access to these documents.
Dr. Chris Madsen Canadian Forces College
So, why am I not being given access to McRae’s court martial records?
In plain and simple terms. There’s a coverup under foot.
The DND Access to Information Office, the Judge Advocate General, the Provost Marshal, the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, they all work under the same minister.
This is the same minister that must be sued in any civil action brought against a current or former member of the Canadian Forces.
This is the very same Minister that asked me “What my angle was”, and “What game was I playing” when I went to speak with him in 2016 at his constituency office in Vancouver.
There is nothing in the language of the National Defence Act whch exempts the Judge Advocate General, the Provost Marshal, or anyone in the Canadian Forces Military Police Group from Section 83 of the National Defence Act.
Chapter N-5, Section 83 National Defence Act
What does this have to do with the refusal of DND to release the requested documents to me?
During the 2nd portion of CFNIS investigation GO2011-5754, the investigators with the CFNIS noted that although my name wasn’t mentioned in CFSIU investigation DS-120-10-80 they would ask me a series of questions to see if my answers matched details within CFSIU DS 120-10-80.
Excerpt from GO 2011-5754 The first report would be CFSIU DS-120-10-80 which commenced on May 12th, 1980 The second report would be the base military police investigation of P.S. for what he had been doing with younger children on the base.
I was never asked any questions.
The goal was never to connect me to P.S. or Captain McRae.
The goal was a “Dog and Pony Show” investigation that wouldn’t lead to any charges against P.S., but would give me the feeling that something had been done.
Yes, P.S. would never face a court martial. But you have to remember that at the start of this investigation back in March of 2011, Angus McRae was alive and well.
The CFNIS had to structure the investigation around the fact that even if P.S. were to implicate Captain Angus McRae, the Canadian Forces would never be able to bring charges against Captain McRae due to the 3-year time bar that existed pre-1998.
The Minister of National Defence, the Judge Advocate General, and the Provost Marshal do not want to establish that I or any other child from CFB Namao were involved with the P.S./ Captain McRae child sexual abuse scandal on CFB Namao.
The decision was made in 1980 to only charge Captain McRae with committing “Acts of Homosexuality” against P.S. as P.S. was the only boy above the age of 14.
14 was the age of consent in 1980.
And as was explained in the Court Martial Appeal Court ruling in the matter of Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan vs. Regina, the Canadian Armed Forces have the right to conduct a court martial for “Gross Indecency”, “Indecent Assault”, and “Buggery” so long as consent could have been a consideration.
Regina vs. Sullivan Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada
This implies that if consent wasn’t given, then the Canadian Forces couldn’t conduct a service tribunal. The matter would have to go before a civilian court. And in a civilian court, the Department of National Defence would have a much harder time throwing a “wall of secrecy” around the matter.
It must be remembered that at the time in 1980, 14 was the legal age that a child could consent to sexual activities.
1970 R.S.C. Chapter C-34 Criminal Code of Canada Section 140 – Consent Children under 14 cannot consent.
This is why the Chain of Command, according to Fred Cunningham, dropped all of the charges against McRae except for the charges related to P.S.. P.S. was the only boy over the age of 14. Instead of this being a matter of child sexual abuse, now this was a matter of “homosexuality”.
CFSIU Investigation DS 120-10-80
P.S., being the only boy over the age of 14 would have been the only one who could have possibly “consented”.
If the Canadian Armed Forces had tried to charge Captain McRae with molesting the children that were between the ages of 4 and 14 that both he and P.S. molested both individually and together, the Canadian Armed Forces would have lost the ability to conduct a court martial against Captain McRae.
The problem this posed for the Canadian Armed Forces is that Captain McRae was the first officer in the Canadian Armed Forces investigated for molesting children.
In a court martial, the Minister of Defence may allow the proceedings to be moved “in-camera” and thereby keep an embarrassing situation out of the media.
If the Canadian Forces had charged Captain McRae with molesting the children under the age of 14, McRae would have had to be prosecuted in civilian court.
To move a court martial “in-camera” is far easier than it is to try to move a civilian court case “in-camera”.
This also explains why the base military police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit were not allowed to call in the RCMP to deal with P.S..
If P.S. had been investigated and charged with molesting the children he had been babysitting, he would have been dealt with under the Juvenile Delinquents Act.
There was an odd section of the Juvie Act which allowed for the adult that contributed to the delinquency of a minor to be found guilty on summary conviction.
Section 33 Juvenile Delinquents Act
Had the Chain of Command in 1980 allowed either the base military police or the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit to call in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to deal woth P.S., the Canadian Forces would have lost all ability to control the narrative of the eventual investigation into Captain McRae.
By keeping things “in house”, the Chain of Command knew they could keep a very embarrassing situation out of the local media.
The problem that created is that any of the children being molested by P.S. and Captain McRae would be forever denied acknowedlegment or justice.
On Thursday July 30th, 2020 I was interviewed again by the CFNIS Western Region.
This interview was for the “man in the sauna”
We’ll see how this plays out.
I have an idea of who the man in the sauna was.
A name was mentioned in Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit investigation DS 120-10-80. This name has had previous charges related to sexual acts with underage children.
This man was sent from National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa specifically to help Captain McRae deal with his affairs during the CFSIU investigation DS-120-10-80.
But sadly, there seemed to be quite a few perverts on Canadian Forces Base Namao / Canadian Forces Base Griesbach back in the ’70s and ’80s.
In addition to Corporal Larry King who had been tried in civilian court in 1980 for raping a 16 year old girl on CFB Griesbach, and in addition to P.S. who had molested numerous children in 1979 and 1980 as well as a 9 year old boy in 1985 on CFB Namao, there was a man at the rec centre who had exposed himself to some young girls at the base rec centre. And then there was another man from CFB Griesbach who had exposed himself to a young girl over at one of the malls just on the other side of 97th Street.
With the exception of P.S., was the man in the sauna one of these men?
How many other pedophiles were on CFB Namao / CFB Edmonton in the ’70s and ’80s?
Sadly, the only witness to this whole event is none other than P.S.
Will P.S. talk?
I don’t see why he would. He was allowed to play the role of the “innocent angle” all those years ago. And from the looks of it, the Canadian Forces are more than willing to allow P.S. to continue on in this role.
OPP Det Sgt. Jim Smythe was able to get Canadian Armed Forces officer Colonel Russell Williams to confess to the murders and rapes that Williams had committed.
At the time, the OPP had very little to go on other than some matching tire treads and some boot prints. Those on their own weren’t enough to indicate that Williams had done sweet bugger all.
Opp Det. Sgt. Jim Smythe basically let Williams talk himself into his own arrest.
What deals did the Canadian Forces and the Department of Justice reach when they settled out of court with P.S. in November of 2008?
Again, who knows.
But remember, our government has often agreed to bad deals.
Karla Holmolka is walking the streets and Paul Bernardo is rotting away in prison.
I’m not saying that Paul, should be free.
I’m saying that Karla should have been sentenced to a very lenghty sentence as well.
She supplied the animal tranquilizers.
She administered the animal tranquilizers.
She killed the girls.
But the Clown Prosecutors and the Attorney General decided that it was better to make a deal with her (the infamous Deal With The Devil), than it would be to lose the case against Paul Bernardo.
After all, Paul had to be the worst of the two, right?
In 2011, when contacted at home by Mcpl Hancock, P.S. told Mcpl Hancock that “anything he had been involved in as a youth has already been handled by the military”.
Was this another “Deal with the Devil”?
Did the Canadian Armed Forces, the Provost Marshal, the office of the Minister of National Defence, or even the Attorney General of Canada make a deal with Mr. P.S.?
During the interview, I read a fairly long statement.
This statement was very detailed.
In 2011, my statement was very specific. It only related to the abuse that I endured at the hands of P.S. from late fall 1978 until the spring when someone discovered him buggering me in his bedroom. My statement also included all of the abuse that I saw P.S. committ against my brother as well as the abuse he committed against four other children.
My stupidity lay in the fact that I didn’t describe my home life.
Because I didn’t describe my home life right off the bat, my father was able to substitute his own fantasry for reality.
Whether my father had some help in shaping his fantasy is anyone’s guess. But my father’s version of reality simply didn’t match the social service records and other records that I came into possession later.
The sad thing about the 2011 CFNIS investigation GO 2011-5754, is that once the CFNIS had what they wanted, they ran with it, even after I provided my foster care records, my Alberta Social Service records, my Children Aid Society of Toronto Records, PEI Family Court Records, the CFNIS still absolutely refused to admit that they fucked up the case pretty bad.
After all, if the Government of Canada had made a deal with P.S. related to his out of court settlement relating to the matter of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae, the government wouldn’t reneg on that deal, would they?
Sure, the MPCC gave the CFNIS a gold star in 2013.
However, during the 2012 – 2013 MPCC review, the MPCC shared absolutely none of the documents with me that the Provost Marshal had provided to the MPCC. This meant of course that I was unable to raise my concerns with any of the numerous flaws with the 2011 CFNIS investigation, such as Mcpl Cyr’s faulty transcription of what I told him on May 3rd, 2011, my father’s obviously distorted reality, or the fact that the CFNIS refused to look at the connection between P.S. and Captain McRae, or the fact that the CFNIS refused to consider what the Alberta Social Service records and the Children Aid Society of Toronto, or the IWK Children’s Hospital had to say about my father.
Yes, I did go to Federal Court. However almost all of the documents that I had submitted to the MPCC were struck from the hearing as this was considered “new evidence”. Basically, you can’t introduce “new evidence” into your hearing for judicial review if it wasn’t before the tribunal you wish to have reviewed. However, as you have no idea of what is in front of the tribunal, you have no idea of what to introduce.
It’s a vicious Catch-22 that seems to have been designed like that on purpose.
So, we’ll have to wait and see how this one plays out.
Yes, the CFNIS and the Canadian Forces allowed me to have Earl Ray Stevens. But Earl represented absolutely no risk of liability to the Canadian Forces or the Federal Government.
The same cannot be said about P.S., nor can the same be said about the “man in the sauna”
Remember, under the National Defence Act, there is absolutely no exception to section 83 of the National Defence Act for members of the CFNIS.
If the CFNIS investigators Chain of Command decide the direction of the investigation, the investigators must obey those orders. The independance of the CFNIS investigators is an illusuion at best.
Here is a copy of CFAO 19-20 for your reading pleasure.
CFAO 19-20 pretty well went hand in hand with the Federal Government’s determination to weed out homosexual and other sexual deviants using such unorthodox methods like the infamous “Fruit Machine”.
CFAO 19-20 was only supposed to apply to Canadian Forces personnel.
However, this toxic attitude applied to just about everyone living in the military community, including the children of service members living on the bases.
Back in 2019, I was trolling around the government website that lists all ATI requests that have been filed with the various departments and what the outcome of those reports was.
One ATI request caught my eye. Someone had requested a copy of all of the General Occurence Reports from DND related to “Sexual Assault” that occured on CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980.
I filed a request with DND for a copy of this information on October 10 2019.
I just received a copy of this report on Friday July 3rd 2020.
There were three “sexual assaults” on CFB Namao in the years of 1978 until 1980.
The first was related to a male exposing himself to young females at the base rec centre. The fact that the military police administered a polygraph to this person indicates that this person would have been subject to the Code of Service Discipline. This event occured in November of 1978.
The next incident occured in the vicinity of Northtown Mall in May of 1979. A member of the Canadian Forces exposed himself from his waist to his ankles to a girl. The City of Edmonton police and the CFB Edmonton police worked on this matter. The fact that the incident report indicate that the male was “dress in civilian clothing” and the fact that the CFB Edmonton military police we called in by the Edmonton Police Service also indicates that this was a person subject to the Code of Service Discipline.
Then of course there’s the matter of Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae.
Curiously, there is one incident that is missing.
In June of 1980, Corporal Larry King, who was 39 years old at the time, had been sentenced to 3 yers in prison for choking and raping a 16-year-old Edmonton girl.
Corporal Larry King, 39, was sentenced in civilian court to three years in prison for choking and raping a 16-year-old Edmonton Girl
There were three sexual assaults in two years in addition to all of the sexual assaults that P.S. and Captain McRae committed on CFB Namao. You can’t tell me that the Canadian Forces was a safe environment for children to grow up in.
Dr. Hedy Fry, the member of Parliament for Vancouver Centre has determined that because there are no military bases in Vancouver Centre, that she can’t help people who were sexually abused as children.
A while ago, it was suggested to me that maybe I should try the petition route to get my matter before the House of Commons seeing as how the Department of National Defence has no legal obligations towards military dependants.
I submitted the following petition to the House of Commons petition website on April 12th, 2020. I required five supporters. I was able to get the maximum of ten supporters. The way it works is you select ten people that you know will support your petition. The House of Commons will email these people to verify their eligibility to support the petition. The first five people to reply to the House of Commons become the supporters of your petition.
I was notified by email that Dr. Hedy Fry had declined to authorize the petition. Below is her answer in highlight.
There are no military bases in the riding of Vancouver Centre
“There are no military bases in the riding of Vancouver Centre”, yep, that’s what she said.
I haven’t really had any dealings with Hedy Fry directly. Most of my dealings were filtered through her assistant Steven Bourne. In one of our meetings, Steven brought up the subject of Hedy Fry and her comments about the KKK burning crosses in Prince George, BC and that how even though she was eventually vindicated, that he’d be very cautious about letting Hedy get embarrassed like that again.
I’ve lived in the West End of Vancouver since 1992. That’s coming up on 27 years now. Hedy has been my member of Parliament since then. I have been her constituent. Never have asked anything of her before.
However, it appears that because there are no military bases in the riding of Vancouver Centre, she can’t raise an important issue within the House of Commons.
And this got me to wondering.
How many other former military dependants have gone to their respective Member of Parliament for assistance only to have their MP tell them that they can’t get involved because there “are no military bases” in their riding.
How does this affect people who were sexually abused on bases that no longer exist due to budget cuts and downsizing…….. “sorry, that military base no longer exists, I can’t get involved” .
I have tried enlisting the help of MPs in other ridings previously, but unless you reside in their riding, the MP is not obligated to assist you in any manner.
Are former military dependants expected to move to ridings that have military bases if they want to enlist the help of a Member of Parliament?
Do I really have to quit my job and eat into my savings in order to move to a riding that has a military base?
No wonder the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence don’t seem worried. Between Members of Parliament that don’t want to do anything, and Acts that are so vague they can have 20 different interpretations, there’s no reason for DND and the CF to worry about the ghosts from their past haunting them.
Why would the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service be instructed to conduct such a weak investigation into the criminal actions of P.S. which P.S. committed on CFB Namao between June 20th, 1979 and June of 1980?
It’s not like P.S. would see any serious form of punishment if he were to have been charged in the present day for the crimes he had committed while he was subject to the Juvenile Delinquents Act.
P.S. was born on June 20th, 1965. As of June 20th, 1979 P.S. would have been fully culpable for any Criminal Code offence that he had committed. This would have included having had any type of sexual relation with a minor under the age of 12. The fact that he was acting as the babysitter for many of these children would have compounded his problems. The law at the time would not have looked to kindly upon him for having anal and vaginal intercourse with children as young as four years of age or demanding oral sex from those same children.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Chapter J-3 Juvenile Delinquents Act
The Juvenile Delinquents Act was in force from 1908 until April 2nd, 1984. Prior to the Juvenile Delinquents Act of 1908, children of any age were treated similar to adults. In Ontario in 1850 a nine year old boy was sentenced to hang for the murder of a four year old girl. Children were often sent to prison for petty crimes. And while awaiting trial, children were often housed in the same cells as adults.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Chapter J-3 Juvenile Delinquents Act
The goal of the Juvenile Delinquents Act was reformation instead of incarceration. It was thought that the child could become a productive member of society if they simply received the proper manner of reformation. Typically this would have been accomplished by counselling, or in the more serious cases, “reform school” otherwise known as “industrial school”.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Chapter J-3 Juvenile Delinquents Act
Under the Juvenile Delinquents Act children who reached the day of their 14th birthday could be found guilty of committing Criminal Code offences. Actually, children as young as seven could be found guilty so long as the police and prosecutor could convince the courts that the child ought to have known right from wrong.
The actual age limits of the Juvenile Delinquents Act are set by the Criminal Code of Canada.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Chapter C-34 Criminal Code of Canada
The above simply means that a 14 year old hasn’t reached 14 years of age until the expiration of their birthday anniversary. A child would be 13 years old until the day of their 14th birthday has been fully completed.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Chapter C-34 Criminal Code of Canada
The upper age limit of the Juvenile Delinquents Act was set by the Juvenile Delinquents Act itself.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Chapter J-3 Juvenile Delinquents Act
Under the Juvenile Delinquents Act, children as young as 14 could still be executed, but to do so their case would have had to have been moved to adult court. Steven Truscott serves as an example of this. At the age of 14 Steven Truscott had been sentenced to hang for the murder of Lynne Harper. A conviction that was very dubious in nature considering the presence of Royal Canadian Air Force Sgt. Alexander Kalichuk.
However, in the case of P.S., I don’t think that he would have faced any serious sanctions under the Juvenile Delinquents Act.
When I spoke with Fred Cunningham on November 27th, 2011, he stated that during the Captain McRae investigation that the “brass” prevented both the CFSIU and the base military police from calling in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to deal with P.S. for the crimes he had committed between June 20th, 1979 and June of 1980.
Who this brass is is anyone’s guess.
According to the findings of the Somalia Commission of Inquiry, base commanders were known to have an undue amount of influence over military police and CFSIU investigations. And in the case of Captain Father Angus McRae, the base commander was Captain McRae’s commanding officer.
Who was the base commander?
According to the Department of National Defence, <retired>Colonel Dan Munro was the base commander of Canadian Forces Base Namao at the time. The Canadian Armed Forces have also confirmed that <retired>Colonel Dan Munro was Captain McRae’s immediate superior.
What information could <retired>Colonel Dan Munro shed on the events and decisions of 1980? No one knows at this point in time as Sgt Damon Tenaschuk’s legal advisor in Ottawa would not allow Munro to be investigated due to the 3-year time bar that existed prior to 1998.
It must be remembered though that base commanders have to follow the orders of their superiors.
Without speaking to anyone associated with the Canadian Forces senior leadership from back then, I don’t think we will ever know the true reasons as to why the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were never called in to deal with P.S..
I have one very damning hypothesis supported by not only the actions of the Canadian Forces moving Captain McRae’s court martial “in-camera”, but also by curious language contained within the Juvenile Delinquents Act.
1970 Revised Statutes of Canada Chapter J-3 Juvenile Delinquents Act
A summary conviction requires far less evidence for a conviction to be secured than an indictable offence. Captain McRae was charged and convicted for committing “Acts of Homosexuality” with P.S.. As P.S. was 14 years of age as of June 20th, 1979, P.S. could have been charged and convicted for committing sexual acts against children between the ages of 4 and 12 had the Royal Canadian Mounted Police been informed of his deviant behaviour. This meant that Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae would have more than likely been found guilty upon summary conviction in Juvenile Delinquents Court of having contributed to the delinquency that P.S. was exhibiting when P.S. molested the children for which he would have been convicted had someone not prevented the RCMP from being called in.
Why was this done?
Was this done to protect P.S.?
From what I’ve been told by some of the former brats that lived on the base at the time, due to the number of children that P.S. abused there were plans afoot in the Junior Ranks mess to lynch P.S..
By not handing P.S. over to the RCMP for investigation, did the Canadian Forces chain of command believe that they were diffusing a bad situation.
Or, was there something else afoot in the decision to not call in the RCMP to deal with P.S..
I think this had everything to do with legal liability.
Had P.S. been handed over to the RCMP, and had the RCMP charged P.S. for the sexual acts he had committed with children as young as four years of age, and had the Crown prosecuted P.S. and secured convictions, Captain McRae could have been summarily convicted in Juvenile Delinquents Court for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
By convicting Captain McRae of contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor, the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence, being the employer of Captain McRae, could have been found liable for the actions of their employee.
In 2011, when I made my complaint to the Edmonton Police Service Angus McRae was alive and well.
The Canadian Forces knew right from the start of the connection between P.S. and Angus McRae.
The Canadian Forces knew that if the CFNIS brought charges against P.S., these charges would have to be brought under the Juvenile Delinquents Act as P.S. had committed these offences while the Juvenile Delinquents Act was in power.
This means that Angus McRae could also be charged under the Juvenile Delinquents Act for contributing to the Delinquency of a minor.
The fact that Angus McRae died over three months after the start of the investigation into my complaint against P.S. is of little concern as Angus McRae plead guilty before a courts martial on July 18th, 1980 to having committed “Acts of Homosexuality” with P.S..
In November of 2008 the Canadian Forces Director of Claims and Civil Litigation accepted General Legal Liability for the personal damages P.S. suffered at the hands of Angus McRae while Angus McRae held the rank of Captain and was an employee of the Canadian Forces.
I think what the Canadian Forces have feared all along is the liability.
Under the Juvenile Delinquents Act, the concept of an adult being responsible for the delinquency of a minor was well established.
This one fact alone poses a problem for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces. Even though Angus McRae had been mentally incompetent since June of 2007 and obviously couldn’t be prosecuted, DND and the CF had a problem.
McRae already plead guilty of his own free will on July 18th, 1980.
Captain McRae admitted to committing the exact same offences against P.S., that P.S. in turn committed against us much younger children. Acts such as Indecent Assault( sexual touching of the private areas), Gross Indecency(non-penetrating sexual acts between males, i.e. masturbation), and Buggery( anal intercourse).
So as long as P.S. had at least been charged, with or without a conviction, a civil action could have been commenced against the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces.
And considering that Canadian laws at the time provided the ability to hold an adult responsible for the delinquency of a minor, I think that the victims of P.S. and McRae would have had success in obtaining compensation in court.
For further proof of the issue of liability, look no further than the matter of Earl Ray Stevens, the commissioner from my time when I was enrolled with the Sea Cadets at the Denison Armouries in North York, Ontario.
I was first interviewed by the CFNIS on April 11th, 2017 at the Vancouver Police Department Headquarters. By June the CFNIS had handed the case over to a detective with the Toronto Police Service. Through June and July I had some telephone conversations with this detective.
On August 14th, 2017 I was informed by the Toronto Police Service that Earl Ray Stevens had been arrested and charged with 6 counts of Sexual Assault.
On August 21st and 22nd 2018 I participated in the preliminary hearing. During the preliminary hearing the Crown Prosecutor laid out the charges against Earl. Earl’s defence attorney was allowed to examine me and ask me questions. At the conclusion of the preliminary hearing the justice overseeing the preliminary hearing ruled that there was sufficient evidence to proceed to trial.
Unfortunately Earl died of bladder cancer before we could get to trial.
So, why did the Canadian Forces allow me to get Earl and not Peter.
Again, it’s liability.
The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are not legally responsible for cadets, even if those cadets are participating in a cadet parade night in a building that is owned and operated by the Department of National Defence.
If you want proof of this, look no further than the cadets from CFB Valcartier in 1974.
In 1974 a group of army cadets were at Canadian Forces Base Valcartier for their summer training course. One day the cadets were in one of the barracks receiving safety training for live munitions. This was not so they could handle live munitions, but so that when they were out on the training ranges, they could recognize live munitions and safely stay away from them.
The instructor for the course, a Captain with the regular forces, brought a case of dummy grenades into the class. Amongst the dummy grenades was an actual live grenade. To this day, no one has ever established how the live grenade got into the class. According to witness testimony, one of the boys picked up the real grenade and asked the instructor if the grenade was real, the instructor assured the cadet that the grenade was not real. The cadet then pulled the pin out of the grenade and released the fuse handle while holding on to the grenade. The cadet and 5 other boys between the ages of 13 and 15 were killed immediately when the grenade exploded. 155 other cadets that were in the room suffered various physical and mental injuries.
It wasn’t until March of 2017 that the Department of National Defence agreed to compensate the families of the boys who had been killed by offering each family $100,000.00. The survivors or their families will be eligible for $42,000.00. They will also be allowed to apply for up to an additional $310,000.00 for pain and suffering.
For forty years the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces fought paying the families any manner of compensation even though the deaths and injuries were caused by a military grenade, on a military base, while a bunch of children between the ages of 13 to 18 were under the control of a member of the regular forces.
Under no circumstance would I ever be able to seek compensation from the Department of National Defence for the abuse I endured at the hands of Earl Ray Stevens.
To further insulate the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence from any type of civil action is the fact that Earl Ray Stevens was not an employee of either the Department of National Defence or the Canadian Armed Forces. Earl Ray Stevens worked for an outside contractor that provided security services at the Denison Armouries.
The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence could allow me to have Earl Ray Stevens as Earl Ray Stevens presented absolutely no legal risk to either the Department of National Defence or the Canadian Armed Forces.
P.S. is a problem for the Canadian Armed Forces.
P.S. is a path of direct liability.
In 2008, the Department of National Defence admitted to full legal liability for the personal injuries that P.S. suffered at the hands of Captain McRae.
The Department of National Defence paid P.S. compensation.
On July 18th 1980, in Court Martial CM62, Canadian Armed Forces Officer Captain Father Angus McRae plead guilty to all of the charges that he had been charged with in relation to the crimes he had perpetrated against P.S.
The Juvenile Delinquents Act at the time said that adults could be held directly responsible for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Whether or not Angus McRae is alive or dead is a moot point.
Yes, he cannot be charged criminally.
However, Angus McRae already plead guilty.
The victims of P.S. only needed P.S. to be charged and convicted for the door of civil liability to be flung wide open.
This is something that the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces were not going to allow.
If the Canadian Forces could be held liable in a civil damages trial for the matter of Captain McRae, how many other victims of sexual assault on the many different bases would also be able to sue?
P.S. isn’t some random guy that I picked out of the phone book. I suffered for over a year at his hands, as did my brother, and four other kids that I know of.
P.S. had his first criminal conviction for child molestation just four years after he had been caught buggering me in his bedroom in May of 1980. In 1984 P.S. was charged and convicted with molesting an eight-year-old boy on a Canadian Forces Base in Manitoba.
In 1985, after his family had been posted back to CFB Edmonton from CFB Petawawa, he was arrested and charged with molesting a nine-year-old boy on CFB Namao. As a result of this the Canadian Forces kicked P.S. off the base. J.S., the father of P.S. rented P.S. an apartment in the west end of Edmonton. P.S. lured a thirteen-year-old newspaper boy into his apartment and molested the boy. In August of 1985 P.S. was convicted on both counts.
According to an RCMP constable who had run a CPIC check on P.S., P.S. had many more charges between 1985 and 2000. Most charges were for sexual assaults, some charges were for assault, and a few charges were for robbery. Most charges ended up with convictions, and some charges were stayed or dismissed.
So, when Petty Officer Morris told me on November 4th, 2011 that the CFNIS just couldn’t find anything to indicate that P.S. was capable of the crimes that I had accused him of, I immediately knew there was something else at play.
That something at play was the desire to avoid liability.
No charges against P.S. = no connection to Captain McRae.
No connection to Captain McRae = No liability for the Canadian Force or DND.
And this is one of the many “conflict of interest” scenarios that should have seen the CFNIS recuse themselves from this matter. The CFNIS, as per Canadian Forces Provost Marshal policy CFMP 2120-4-0, should have offered this matter to the outside civilian authorities having jurisdiction.
CFPM policy Directive CFPM 2120-4-0
P.S. was at the time of the commissions of his crimes from June 20th, 1979 onward, a civilian with absolutely no connection to the Canadian Forces.
CFPM Directive 2120-4-0 clearly stipulates that these matters are to be offered to the outside civilian agencies first.
The CFNIS didn’t do that for investigation GO 2011-5754.
The CFNIS did however follow this proceedure in the matter of Earl Stevens when they offered the case to the Toronto Police Service and the TPS accepted the case.
Liability is what it all boils down to.
It has nothing to do with protecting P.S.
P.S. would have faced almost nothing in consequences as he would have had to be dealt with under the Juvenile Delinquents Act. Any loss of liberty, P.S. has already endured as a result of his convictions from 1984 onward.
The only agency with anything to lose is the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence.
And it just so happens that the police agency that would have to bring charges against P.S. just also happens to be within the chain of command of the organization that would suffer civil action should charges be brought against P.S.
Not really too much independence from the Canadian Forces chain of command, is there.
The VCDS is the Vice Chief of Defence Staff.
The CFPM is the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal
The CO CFNIS is the commanding officer for the entire CFNIS division.
The CFNIS Regional Commanders are the Officers Commanding for the different divisions such as CFNIS Pacific Region, CFNIS Western Region, CFNIS Central Region, etc.
The Vice Chief of the Defence Staff reports directly to the Chief of Defence Staff.
The Chief of Defence Staff in turn reports directly to the Minister of National Defence.
In total the CFNIS investigator is 5 steps removed from the Minister of National Defence.
Section 83 of the National Defence Act states that all subordinates must obey the lawful commands of their superiors.
You can hopefully understand why I think something stinks about this whole matter.
If somebody wanted to initiate a civil action for damages they endured at the hands of a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, they’d have to name the Minister of National Defence.
P.S. vs. Minister of National Defence et. al. Alberta Court of Queens Bench action Q0103 08346 claim amount $4.3 million
Here is the request for payment after the Department of National Defence agreed to accept General Legal Liability for the personal damages that P.S. endured.
Shortly after this request being issued the lawyer for P.S. filed a motion for a discontinuance.
Alberta Court of Queens Bench Procedure Card Action Number Q0103 08346The comments P.S. made to Sgt. Robert Jon Hancock of CFNIS WR on August 9th, 2011
I’m still really curious as to what is was that the military “handled” for P.S.. But in the end, I don’t believe that this was the reason the CFNIS in 2011 conducted such a laughable investigation.
I believe that the reason the CFNIS conducted such a soft investigation in 2011 was due to a chain of command desire to prevent further settlement payments to in the matter of P.S. & Captain Father Angus McRae.
I believe that the 2015 restart of the 2011 CFNIS investigation was just a worthless “Dog and Pony show” to try to put a positive spin on what had been a really bad investigation.
And I honestly believe that the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence are very well aware of the problems they were having with the Catholic Clergy on the bases in Canada. Hence why in the 1980s they shut down the rectories on all the bases.
And if liability wasn’t a concern, what’s this about then?
If you think that the Canadian Forces made it harder to obtain baptismal records because they want to “respect the Federal Privacy Act and to alleviate identity fraud”, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn that I’d like to sell to you. If you can’t prove that you were baptized in the Catholic faith, then it’s even harder for you to prove that you had any legitimate reason to be at the base chapel.
You wanna buy a bridge? Have I got a bridge for you.
Child sexual abuse in the Canadian Forces 