Sunday, June 30, 2019

Forgiveness

I find it so hard to be forgiving.  The Lord’s prayer says ‘forgive me as I forgive”.

‘there is a saying, love your friends and hate your enemies. But I say: Love your enemies. Pray for these who persecute you. In that way you will be acting as true sons of your father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and unjust too. If you love only those who love you, what good is that? Even scoundrels do that much.  If you are friendly only to your friends how are you different from anyone else.  Even the heathens do that.  But you are to be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

I find this the hardest passage in the Bible to follow. It’s where the Jews and Christians parted ways.  This is the Essence of ‘being born again’.  Those who said ‘spiritual progress not perfection’ balked at this Christian calling.  I’m not a very good Christian. I know this intellectually and can be loving in theory but personally I’m still slouching towards Bethelehem.  

Thankfully Jesus said also “Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself.”  Self defence is self love.  It was warriors and men of the trades and fathers who came to Jesus not the effete and cowardly.  Thy will be done. Not my will.  David was a warrior and defended himself and his people.  I loved C.S. Lewis “Mere Christianity’ the summary of the thoughts he shared on BBC for the WWII mainly Christian troops.  I admire the Quakers and Mennonites. I appreciate the non violence of Gandhi and the exacting teachings by Buddha of doing no harm.  But I’m a doctor too and know that excision can save a life. Jesus was not kind to demons and cast them out to save lives.  He threw out the moneylenders from the temple.  

I need to be more forgiving.  Thank you. I want to walk in the path of the Lord.  Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me. Thank you Jesus 

52 yo - 54 yo Sailing Solo, Hurricane, Saipan, Stuart, Typhoon, Mom

I have written elsewhere about my sailing solo to Hawaii through hurricanes.  I was alone with a yellow tennis ball obsessed Scotty dog Stuart and a talking half Siamese cat Angel. Stuart would do his business on deck hooking his hind leg around a stanchion so he’d not get washed away. I’d put netting around the boat which would keep him going over. However the experience of having a wave wash him down the side in the middle of his business caused this creative solution. It was so cute.  In storms I’d crawl out with him and we’d both hold on.
I’ll never forget the eerie light in the eye of the storm. That experience is a lifetime great. I’d felt like I was in a washing machine in the storm any moment sure to die  and now was in this calm mixed up sea without wind and eerie light.
I forgave everyone I’d ever known because alone I had no one to blame. I listened to myself and concluded I’d never needed to divorce a woman but rather should have divorced myself. I was such a whiner and so full of fear and self pity.  
There were incredible days that went on forever of tropical sunny days with fair winds and following seas. The trade winds are a gift of God and feel like heaven to a sailor. What a wonder and joy!
Smelling Hawaii was a miracle.  Land smells like peat and flowers and musky.  I’d thought the current that flowed down around the islands was going to take me south and past them. I’d been aiming for Hawaii and made land fall at Kona. I came into the harbour and dropped the anchor and felt like I was on hardwood after weeks of constant motion at sea. I slept for a dozen hours and awoke still feeling like I was still on hardwood. The dog and cat were ecstatic but I couldn’t let them ashore. So sad. 
I’d stay for a few weeks to make repairs, and waiting for the new autopilot computer.  It died on the last day.  
When I headed out again I was immediately caught with a lee shore blow that kept me against the land and required I use my Diesel engine to keep off the shore and circle Kona. The lava at night molten red rolling into the sea steaming was a Hellish sight a hundred yards to my right.  I was afraid. I was was up all night staying off this hellish shore wind blowing me in while my trusty diesel kept me off.  I rounded the southern side and headed west only to have the wind stop. I’d motor on a couple of hundred miles but no wind. I was bobbing about at sea. I’d used half my fuel and had a thousand miles to go to the next island fuel depot. The weather channel said that there was an unusual doldrums that had taken the west pacific and winds weren’t expected for a week or two.  I wasn’t enjoying this. I was afraid I’d not have a job when I eventually got to Saipan.  I turned back.  

I put the boat on land and took what I needed on the plane, a shopping cart of luggage, plus Stuart and Angel.  The rest of my necessary ‘stuff’ especially expensive boating electronics I shipped on to Saipan.  

I flew into Saipan and loved the airport. It was great to see Willi and Anita and learn that I had a job waiting. I was very low in funds, this adventure and expedition taken all my reserve.  

The first day when I entered the hospital I was immediately accosted by a very angry belligerent suited man,

“You’re the new psychiatrist?”

“Yes,”

“I’m with the government.  You have to write an order for my wife to fly to Hawai to have her bunion removed.”  He was waving papers in front of me and pushing a pen at me , there in the hall.

“I”m a psychiatrist. That’s a surgical decision.”

“The surgeon’s here is no good. I don’t trust the surgeon. She needs to go to Hawaii.”

“It’s not something for me to do. I can’t write an order without seeing her or the chart or talking to the surgeon.  “

“You will do as you’re told right here and right now, mister or you’re not going to practice medicine in Saipan. Unless you sign this paper right now you can’t work in Saipan. So turn around and get back on the plane and get out of my country. You do as I tell you or leave.”

I’d just spent a couple of months and all my funds to get here. I expected my Mastercard could handle the trip back to Hawaii. I’d have to sail south to Australia where there was definitely work. I’d catch fish.  I was packing my bags and getting ready to leave when Willi and the head of the hospital, a marvellously wise Canadian doctor found me.  

“What’s the matter.”

“I’m packing up to leave. I was told by the government to get out because I wouldn’t sign an order for a patient I’d not seen to fly to Hawaii for her bunion repair.”

“That bastard. He’s so corrupt he’ll do anything to get a free trip for his family to Hawaii. He’s asked every doctor on the island and the surgeons say it’s not kosher. They’ve threatened to quit too if he continues to bully them. “

‘Don’t pack your bags yet.”

So Willi not wanting to lose his psychiatrist that day, exhausted from three months of on call, disappointed in this government official who’d not be doing this to an American doctor but thinking he could bully new arrival Canadian, ambushing  me  before I even get into the ward, well, he was a deeply sick man and Willi knew his family suffered greatly from living with such a man. He wrote a consult to a Hawaiian psychiatrist.  The family got their vacation.  Saipan got another psychiatrist.

I’d only arrived on the ward when the American psychiatrist returned then accosted me and said, “I”ve decided to return so how soon before you can leave.”

I was astonished. This man had left and had offended a number of people so wasn’t wanted further and now he was trying to get me to leave. I was again ready to get on the plane but now another man from the government, a truly lovely man, asked me to stay.  

I’d been 24 hours on the island and had the roller coaster of emotions which if I’d not worked in the aboriginal reserves of the north I’d be wholly unprepared for. Yet I knew ‘tribal’ culture and knew that the first man was the old way of threat and bullying and the new man was the new leader who would ensure millions of dollars came to the islands because he understood threats only went so far. Everyone indeed respected me for my willingness to leave rather than sacrifice my integrity. I felt badly that the hospital and Willi had to then come up with a novel idea to solve what was solely a political problem.  It would be a recurring theme I’d see on the island. A few individuals would be repeatedly willing to sacrifice the whole for their personal greed while there were these other amazing individuals who sacrificed themselves repeatedly for their community. The Marianas Commonwealth was a conglomeration of tribes so tribal conflicts were added.  The Chamorah were the majority with Carolingian minority but there were other tribal peoples along with Americans, Canadians, and others.  I loved to know the senatorial community leaders who had great vision and always worked for the best of all.    I’d sit in meetings and go to church with these wise altruistic people while the others , the greedy self centred ones, were popular at the liquor store and gambling casino.

Saipan got an award from Bud for ‘most beer drunk’ and a regular minority contingent thought this was the greatest achievement. I’d meet others who were war hero’s, Olympic competitors, genius and great chefs, navigators and truly amazing people. Yet there were those who thought drinking the most beer was an equal achievement to putting a man on the moon. I was again in a small society and able to watch the dynamics and gossip. The Chomorran doctors were amazing. Brilliant and so deeply caring. The hospital  it self was spectacular. The administration was the best I’d ever work with.  The surgeons were incredible. The internists amazing. Willi was a true mensch. We had the best nurses on the psychiatry ward. It was a heavenly place to work. Truly paradise.  I loved helping with the women who wanted a club house for the schizophrenics. I’d teach dance and drama in addition to doing all the regular psychiatry. 

I’d also fly to the other islands.  I’d appear in court and lunch with the judge. I loved this Texan genius whose mind worked like Lincoln. It was a delight to discuss politics and law and the island with him and initiate laws for the psychotic and dangerous. There was no asylum yet we had a group of dangerously insane non compliant schizophrenics at home with their families.  Family was amazing on the islands. Mothers were the back bone of the society and fathers really were honorable men.  I learned to love the Chomorran and Carolinian people as well as the Filipino nurses we worked with. Everyone was serious and pitched in for emergencies but once they were over it was beach time, dancing, karaoke and always dining. Everyone loved to eat and the food on the island was the best in the world.

Saipan was to Japan what Hawaii was to the US so we had the most amazing hotels with the greatest chefs and best facilities. I’d love to sit at dawn or dusk in these beach cafe’s watching the sun rise or set. The colours were glorious.

Everyone helped me.  Willi’s Pentecostal  church and minister were especially fine.  I had a second hand car and a lovely two bedroom apartment with the finest neighbours.  I’d golf every other weekend with Willi. Anita loved to golf too.  When I wasn’t golfing I was scuba diving. The Grotto was one of the scuba diving wonders of the pacific, cave diving with sharks. Then wreck diving on WWII planes and tanks and rift diving. The diving was incredible. I loved all the multi coloured fish and their interest in me and their surroundings.  It was paradise underwater and above water..  

I’d play my poor rhythm guitar with a famous local jazz guitarist who living in my building. Each weekend we’d have a fiesta on Saturday, making music and smorgasboard and dancing.  There would be great island fairs.

I’d be lonely and invite Laura to join me. She’d fly over and stay with me for an idyllic month.  She sure looked spectacular in a bikini on the white sands of Managaha..  I’d work and she’d lie on the beach sun tanning. She describes it as a time of her life. She loved Stuart and Stuart was so pleased to see her. He’d done his time in quarantine with me visitting him every day to throw ball. It was so sad those first months because he was so lonely when I came. He’d had to do jail time because an arrogant  Vancouver veterinarian had made a gross error. Thankfully Cats are Us had done the right thing for Angel and she was able to come home with me.   I’d throw ball for an hour for Stuart in quarantine, the Saipan vet, a lovely caring man, but Stuart would be so sad to see me leave. He was such a proud litttle guy. When he’d done his hard time and was free we’d got out on my roof where I’d read holding a book with one hand while throwing the tennis ball with the other hand  hour after hour. We’d have these great walks too.  He was now  so glad there was Laura to join him.

A very peculiar girl pushed her face into Stuarts. He’d not liked her and growled and backed away into the furthest corner. I was running to separate them  I”d told her to leave him alone as he didn’t like strangers when he’d come over with a friend. But she grabbed him in the corner where he’d backed and pushed her face into his. I don’t know if he bit her or her roughness and thrusting her face caught his teeth but suddenly she was bleeding from the lip  and Stuart was the ‘bad dog’.

Thankfully my colleagues at the hospital instantly told me to ask my neighbour. He was an ENT but his ‘secret’ was that he was a cosmetic surgeon. He was in love with his pediatrician wife, followed her to the island where she was doing good and saving little lives, her lifelong goal.  Having become jaded with the cosmetic surgery which had made them independently wealthy he was solely doing medical surgical life saving work now and didn’t want it known that he was a plastic surgeon. “I’d be swamped if people found out”, he’d tell me.  Now I asked him in this emergency. He saw the lady immediately and  not only a perfect repair of her lip that night  but improved on her already great beauty much to the appreciation of the lady. She wasn’t at all malicious but really was a darling air head. She told us that she ‘couldn’t understand it, this was the third time dogs have bit me. But I so love to hold them and nuzzle with them.”  

I was terrified for Stuart and not a little afraid of being sued in the US.

My overhead costs were little and taxes were so low and costs in America were so much less than Canada. It was a true eye opener to see what everything cost in reality without the outrageous gouging of Canadian taxation.  I’d pay 10% income tax too.  But doctors on the island weren’t rich. There is so much disinformation in Canada about America.  I met some of the poorest best doctors in the US but I also met some of the richest on the mainland.  The reason so many Canadians worked in the Marianas and other American territories is that the doctors carrying huge debts for medical education couldn’t afford to work in the territories which couldn’t compete with mainland.

I’d have countless incredible experiences in the Marianas Islands. I’ve written about them elsewhere. So many experiences in this extraordinary place where the greatest WWII fighting between the Americans and Japanese had occured because once it was captured the neighbouring island of Tinia became the most used military run way in the history of the war.  The Americans with an air strip finally in range of Japan flew  constant bombing flights. Suicide cliff on Saipan is among the famous monuments there visitted by Americans and Japanese. Tinia where I’d do fly in clinics and save a little girls life to the thanks of the community was the site where the Enola Gay flew from to bomb Hiroshima.  

I’d survive a Typhoon when all my windows would be blown out with Angel and Stuart hiding under the bed through out. I’ll carry forever the memory of a palm tree being uprooted and flying over my car as I drove to the hospital to help in the emergency.  It was wonderful to see the people and their government come together to clean up after the wreckage. I’d been able to share the power with my neighbours of  my generator I’d brought from my boat so no one’s freezers thawed in the days we were without power.  

The ex pat community from Canada was great. Lots of parties. Lots of gossip and generally a real selection of outstanding unique individuals who were adventurers. The married couples were the best in so many ways especially those with children. Their love was deep like Willi and Anita and they were so often doctors who wanted to serve.  

When I came a few of us from our club met with these incredible  local stalwarts who were truly joyous and free.  These few amazing individuals, true back bone of the society, met on the beach under coconut trees sharing and praying together. By the time I left there were some 50 of us and they’d throw a moving party for me thanking me for my time there.  My medical and scientific support was so appreciated given the financial competition from the gambling and drinking crowd.   We did good work and I loved joining with these amazing high minded local individuals who’d been so much longer working in the trenches on behalf of their community. but my mother was sick and I feared she’d die soon. I was flying back and forth to see her worrying.

I’d befriended this beautiful young brilliant lithe genius, a lawyer there who’d written several books, spoke several languages, played mandolin and wanted to learn to dance. Ballroom dancing was big on the island.  We became great friends making music together and talking about characters and all the while I taught her dancing. She loved ballroom dancing.  She was a quick study too.  Such elegant form and so flexible. She’d continue to take lessons and join the ballroom dance club on the island.  Asked what her own great achievement was , she’d say it was making nutritious biscuits from anything in the refrigerator. She was vegetarian and made the heaviest most nutritious biscuits that could best be described as ‘weapons grade’. 

She’d visit me in Vancouver and I’d be the ‘tourist’ guide showing her all the sites I loved about the city and environs. We’d dance to the blues bands at the Yale, so much fun. 

Years later she’d call me and remind me that I’d told her I wanted to go to Russia but would never go without someone who spoke Russian. She’d been married to a Russian doctor and spoke Russian and now wanted to return to see family.  I was invited to accompany her and jumped at the opportunity.  A great trip Moscow and St. Petersburg with a beautiful brilliant ‘guide’. I truly am blessed.  I have such fond memories of the museums and churches but especially loved sharing a train car with an old Russian she chatted with all day before we slept the night her above and me below and him above on the other side with I believe his son below. The Russian train was a delight with the memory of the beautiful young woman talking so animatedly with this twinkling eyed old old Russian so happy.  She’d been raised Catholic but become an aetheist and thanked me for sharing my love of the churches. I dragged her through the greatest there and shared my joy at seeing the painting of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt in the Winter palace.  She said she’d seen religion as the enemy but thanks to me now appreciated religion differently and felt she could be closer to her mother who was truly devout.  

She’d marry an Alaska Native leader and have a child whose definitely growing big nurtured by his mothers nutritious vegan biscuits that would put meat on a skeleton.  

She was so talented and gifted like the others I knew in Saipan.  I”d help one doctor who sailed his yacht from Mexico here losing his engine half way across. We’d tinker on boats.  

Willi and Anita would invite me to join them in the evening when they’d have nightly swims in their compound  They’d bought the loveliest townhouse.  In the tropical weather  the evening scents were glorious. 

I loved writing in Saipan. I’d write as I am now for an hour or so every morning. I’d play guitar and learn more songs. I’d really relax. I’d have the most interesting cases and work with the finest nurses. They loved to ball room dance, sing Karaoke and we all loved to eat the island smorgasbord feasts. 

It was sad it came to an end.I had an emergency in which I did my part with textbook excellence. I’m a top trained emergency psychiatrist, but there was a very bad new little administrator who was utterly incompetent in the peculiar cross cultural emergency and marital drama where no one was at risk but everyone but the nurse and I  behaved badly.  This new administrator would lie and blame me and say I’d done ‘nothing’.  “He should have given her a needle” she said. She’d shouted at me during the crisis  ‘give her a needle’ and I’d told her to leave. A mother holding her baby lovingly , the baby in no distress, (always observe) but the mother screaming in Japanese at the husband who was wringing his hands and not knowing what to do.  Finally the nurse arrived and I asked her to ‘please take the baby’ When the nurse had the baby and the woman was agreeable we gave her an injection and she calmed down and we transferred her to the psychiatry ward. 

There was an investigation which struck me as most unusual but the administrator who’d been screaming and let all the schizophrenic patients come into the office to watch the patient keening attacked me. Thankfully the nurses who were highly competent backed me 100% but I thought, damn this is dangerous if I’m being question on something I’m a leading expert in. I’d been the supervisor in the Vancouver General Psychiatry Emergency for a year and done countless emergencies as a fly in doctor in the north.  The week before this, Emergency doctors at the hospitla had  left because a lawyer had paid the administrative staff to watch for something they could sue them for and report to him. . They were on retainer to an ambulance chaser.  Those doctors left that day without notice appalled that the administration would allow such a travesty and put doctors at such risk.  

Here, I an Emergency Psychiatrist, who’d done everything right, but simply had to tell the new administrator to leave the room  because she was hysterical and upsetting the patient more.  I’d told her too  to ‘take the chronic  patients with you you let in”.  She’d left the door open to the chronic ward and these brain damaged dangerous and schizophrenic patients had followed her almost like zombies because she was utterly a fool. 

 She didn’t like my ‘tone’. How dare I order her to leave.  I couldn’t do anything but ‘watch the mother and the baby to ensure that the child remained placid and well and breathing and assured that the mother was no risk to her child. The truth would out and the husband’s ultra wealthy parents had told him to take the baby and divorce the mother or he’d be disinherited. The father and his wife had had a dispute. Th husband was caught in the middle. His parents didn’t like his ‘poor’ wife who had ‘feminist’ ideas. . He’d man up after this display confront his father and remain with his wife whose Oscar winning performance saved her baby and her marriage and gave her man some backbone He became the father’s very successful corporate head in the Pacific, the parents remaining in Japan while the wife, he and child remained in the islands. They would have ‘formal visits’ back and forth thereafter.  It would have all been better if I’d spoken Japanese. So much of my work depended on translation but we were blessed to have so many staff in the hospital who spoke so many languages. I’d always be able to get an interpreter but not necessarily in an emergency.   Only later did we have our translator, this lovely woman who would help me sleuth the back story from this young couple.  

Meanwhile the hospital government administrator was trying to back her staff and I said exactly what had occurred and when asked why “I’d not given her a needle”asked.

 “Has anyone tried to give a needle to a moving woman holding a baby?”.

“ How long would the haldol or even benzodiazepine take to work once the injection is made if it can made when it was unnessary.”  

“But what would the woman do to the baby  then since we had a screaming hysterical administrator and a dozen schizophrenics in the room  and I hadn’t a nurse at that time.”

 The nurse, a great lady, arrived and we solved the problem. The only issue was the Japanese lady spent all her time screaming at her husband, a soliloguy which saved her child. I admired her when I finally understood the Shakespearean significance. The young man trapped between his wife and father and loving the son who the grandfather wanted without his mother was classic.

The new administrator was ‘black’. I was called racist for saying she was negligent and incompetent to let the patients into the office, especially one big dangerous fellow, and to not follow my orders to get the patients out and leave but instead began telling me how to do my business when she was utterly a fool. 

I certainly wasn’t racist and while I appreciated the ‘special status’ the blacks now had in government I’d have done nothing different. Really, nothing. Mother and child and husband all survived.I did excellent work and the nurse did excellent work. The rest of the folk there behaved badly and the situation probably wouldn’t have occured if we had an ambulance to transfer the patient to the hospital rather than have them brought to me in the outpatient department a car ride from the emergency.  I just felt unsupported and had been told by the DEA that my life was already targeted because so many patietns were giving up drugs and alcohol after I identified their addiction and got them into treatment.  

I often don’t have much holding me anywhere.  I truly am a bit of a free spirit and figure I’m where God wants me to be so if that changes I am happy to go. I’ve not found a lot worth unnecessary fighting about.  

 I was already feeling guilty not being closer to my mother.  There was a sea change in the government.  I’d had my dog Stuart poisoned by drug dealers who wanted me as Medical Review Officer to lie about their positive urines to get jobs in government.  I refused as did the South African doctor. Our dogs were dead days later. We were both the Medical Review Officers for the hospital. You couldn’t get a job without a clean urine. The addiction was so severe that these criminals couldn’t stay clean for a month to get a clean urine and get a job. They wanted to get government jobs , much sought after for pension and security but also wanted to be able to steal from the pharmacy.

The other MRO doctor had before coming here been a Navy Seal commando in South Africa.  

He told me, “don’t worry. It will be taken care of.  You don’t just kill a doctor’s dog.”   I thought of Stuart and how I’d failed him.   

The man who bragged about killing our dogs died of an accident some weeks later. 

I left always regretting it  but thankful for the time I’d now be able to spend with my mother and father in the final months of her life. She’d been admitted to hospital and Dad in winter was taking a two hour bus ride to see her, bundling her up and then pushing her in a wheelchair in a large circle  about the hospital so she could sit outside and watch and listen to the birds. My father and mother were saints.  They might well have been Franciscan monks.  My mother always loved to feed the wee birds in winter when it was 40 below and there was no food. She’d always kept a full feeder outside our kitchen window.  I will never forget that image of love, the old crippled man pushing his wife through snow drifts so they could sit and feed the birds outside the hospital in the coldest of Winnipeg winter. 










Saturday, June 29, 2019

50 to 53 yo: Christ Church Cathedral, Regent College, VST, St. Mark’s, ‘the club’.

I woke this morning remembering my 50th year birthday.  It was 2002.  Millennial madness had come and gone.  9/11 had rocked the world. I was anxious about Canada’s changing politics and the Dessert Storm Arms Bazaar.

Willi and Anita invited me to a birthday party in Chilliwack. I remember being there with them and a few family friends  feeling how kind they were. They’d talk of their missionary medicine days in Africa, delivering babies in primitive conditions, witnessing miracles.  

My friend Kirk and Dr. George and a few others in Vancouver had celebrated my birthday too.  Since my divorce when I’d been a kind of ‘hostage’ I’d developed this vast network of friends and was ever being asked out to dinners. I was out most every night, meetings, round ups, Bible study. My beautiful neighbour from Winnipeg greeted me at my first Vancouver North Shore Round Up. She’d told me she’d arrived a decade before and said it would be okay. I met Bill Gyles there as well and felt that I was with friends from Winnipeg in this new land.  The only status here was the days of fasting.

I became a half a century old.  I was lonely in a way. I remember that odd feeling. I was closer to God and surrounded by close friends and acquaintances. Still I felt I’d come this far and yet I felt I’d not accomplished anything.   With Tom as my sponsor I”d been baptized at Christ Church Cathedral by Bishop Ingram and Rev. Peter Elliott.  They were controversial characters but deeply moving human and spiritual men whose genius I admired.  I’d read Bishop Ingham’s book “Many Mansions’ and been moved. I loved Ecumenical Christianity. I believed spiritually that God showed himself to all and called all. I summed my own personal journey at that time as having ‘known Christ but now I knew Jesus”.  In my Baptist youth and study of Eastern spirituality I had come to know the Messiah and feel the world at the death of Jesus  permeated by the Holy Spirit.  It had changed.  There was a cataclysmic shift.  It’s been called  Christ Consciousness by some and I felt that I’d known this since I began formal daily meditation in my 20’s and carried on for decades.  

I was attending Christ Church Cathedral where my lovely Oxford Group friend had encouraged me to be a reader. She’d actually taken me sailing in the harbour with her friend for a day when I’d been heart broken, a restless landlubber and still without my sailboat. 

Not long after I would be  living on my sailboat anchored in False Creek. I’d have these months at a time when I couldn’t find a marina slip so anchored in the harbour and would dinghy a shore. I’d arrive at my office on Broadway in wet rain gear , slipping that off to don my sport jacket for the day of patients before the evenings of study for Addiction medicine exams or for theology classes with John.  

I’d actually thought marijuana was a ‘spiritual herb’ that enhanced my awareness but then over time wine and women and rock and roll intervened.   In the end it all seemed shallow and hedonistic. I’d truly felt like I’d lost God in the storm at sea when my crew mutinied and I found myself fervently praying the Lord’s Prayer. I felt that all I had after that, to fall back on, if it ever got worse,  was singing “Jesus Loves me”.  I was that far from the ‘home’ I’d know in Christ.  My crew and my wife were Christians and we all talked that night about Christ as I asked each if they’d been praying to Jesus and they admitted that they too had.  I felt then a great sea change.  The effects of that night would resonate and I believe lead to the beginning  of the great ‘fast’ a year and a half later.  I’d sit in church on Sunday’s crying when I saw the children and smelt the ‘church smells’ and felt the smoothness of the wood pews remembering the ‘innoscence’ and ‘comfort’ I’d known in church with my father, mother, brother and aunt.  I’d felt so long from home.  I was the prodigal son returning.    I’d know Jesus as my personal saviour and friend then and now. 

Today I joke because I am optimistic and believe we are evolving and ‘all roads lead to Rome’ but I say that being Anglican I’m going to be in a better housing district than others especially those who land on the ‘other side of the tracks’. There is a great awakening.  I love the Call.

When I’d studied Tagore and knew his songs were sung in India in the mainstream I so longed to be surrounded by spiritual music. I’d always loved the Beatles and other rock groups for songs like Let it Be, My Sweet Lord. I’d love Pete Seegers Ecclesiastes’s,  I was always touched by soul music.  Today there’s Praise music on the radio . Communism fell in Russia and when I visitted Moscow and St. Petersburg the Orthodox churches were full. Dr. Lam introduced me to Chinese psychiatrists from underground churches there.  

Before I’d sail to Hawaii I’d have gone on to complete my American Society of Addiction Medicine Exams and  my Medical Review Officer exams.  I’d also achieve my Canadian and International Society of Addiction Medicine Certification.  One of the highlights of that time was my forming a study group. I learned from the Society who was preparing for the exams that year and called them up inviting them to a monthly study session. That’s how I met Paul Sobey whose sense of humor and joie de vivre still delights me today.  

I’d become friends with Dr. John Christiansen through his sister Kay. She was friends of Suzanne. Being a member of an elite club, called ironically, the ‘last club on the block’ I’d be surrounded with the most extraordinary women. Truly beautiful and elegant ladies who had amazing senses of humor. Suzanne was such a lady. Great spring hats, tall, eye catching and always haute couture fashion. She’d actually been a beauty consultant and I always considered her make up and her face a work of art.  Kay another beauty but one who quite well might have sheered sheep in her no nonsense mood would walk on either side of me as we moved down a street.  Never has my ‘credit’ among men been higher.  We especially loved our Commercial Drive on Saturday rambles, often joined by Dr. George. Breakfast laughter, amusing anecdotes, just a splendid time all round. Dr. George was the greatest raconteur and the ladies loved him.  He was a jazz pianist as well as a greatly admired doctor.  We’d both done our tours of duty in the north, he serving in the Queen Charlotte Islands before establishing his practice in North Vancouver and raising his great family.

We were all Christians. It was amazing how much fun we had. Absolutely none of the pompish non Christian petty judgementalness that  passes for some as pseudo spiritual. The women were lithesome and robust, ladies of course, but oozing sensuality and walking like large cats or dancers. The conversation was free flowing and no one ever considered ‘correcting’ anyone or ‘being offended’. We were Christians and it felt so good to be among such great minds and with people who had lived fully, raised Christian and now again devoted to Christ.  It was so alive and authentic and I felt that through the strangest journey I’d arrived where I’d always longed to be.   

I felt like I’d found the Christian world of my Baptist Aunt Sally. She’d been the assistant to the Canadian Ambassadoor in Washington and her blond friend, Babe, had driven ambulances through the war.  Babe swore like a trooper yet had the heart of mother Teresa. Their Christianity wasn’t the anemic parlour sort that reeked of pious judgementalness.  Both those Christian ladies who’d travelled the world together retained their laughter.  True Adults never had had time to ‘sweat the small stuff’ which shows the absurdity of today’s bureaurcracy and other Monty Python sources of humor.  I loved the stories of Jesus with Fishermen, Soldiers and Mary Magdalene. Years later I’d have Passover Supper in Safed at Hotel Ron joining in the laughter and enjoyment of conviviality of shared meals with a Rabbi who well could have been one of the men who broke fast, a joyous time, with Jesus. 

John was in a wheel chair. He’d been head of the UBC Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Society, one of the founders.  He’d had a horse back riding accident, much like Superman ‘s Christopher Reeve.  In his way John was a spiritual superman.  He’d say that “if I had to become the man I was before , I’d rather stay in this chair.’  He told me of white light spiritual experience he’d had as his neck broke. “I felt my neck break and knew something terrible had happened but I also felt like I was finally falling into His hands.”  He’d go on to tell me his life story, riding a motorcycle in the outback of Australia without a helmet of course.  We seemed a fitting pair, him quadriplegic with his scars on the outside and me with my mind and soul troubled and so many scars on the inside. He’d laugh and say, “sometimes listening to you Bill I’d rather be trapped in this chair than trapped in your mind.”  We ‘d go on walking and rolling dog walks and share thoughts and stories and insights on shared Christian readings. 

I’d begun taking theology courses at UBC.  I loved one at Vancouver Theology School where the Anglican professor introduced us to Julian of Norwich. All shall be well, all shall be well and All manner of things shall be well.  My focus was Christian Spirituality. Dr. James Houston, former classmate of C.S. Lewis, had taught geology at Oxford , before coming to UBC to found Regent College. He’d become the chancellor but much preferred simply teaching Christian Spirituality. I’d invited John to join me and for years we’d spend evenings at the university taking in Dr. Houston moving lectures and then going back to John’s for pizza and coffee. We then studied with Prof Shirley Sullivan at the St. Mark’s  catholic seminary at UBC.  Laura and. I were friends then and she’d attend with us the St. Augustine lectures Shirley Sullivan gave on St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul.  I loved reading Dr. James Houston’s book on Prayer and was deeply touched by Brother’s Laurence “practicing the presence’.  After John could no longer make the courses at UBC James would come for dinner at John’s and we’d have these moving meals always joined by beautiful intelligent Christian women. Helen would go off to be a missionary in Sudan. I’d be so blessed by God to be able to listen to these great spiritual men share of their lives of services in amusing heart warming. anecdotes

I had Stuart at the time and Laura would take him when John and I would go off to study.This was all before Saipan. I’d sail to Saipan in 2003 when I was 53.

Willi invited me to come to Saipan. I’d take time off from my practice thinking that I’d have some weeks in the tropics and return to another winter in Vancouver.  As it turned out the other psychiatrist there had quit and a position was open.They desperately needed another psychiatrist as Willi became the only one there.  The Northern Marianas needed three psychiatrists and Guam had needed another 2. Willi and I would get by with two, the actual hospital and day to day management not at all onerous except for the wearing one in two call. One in three call had become the industry standard as constant and even one in  two so affected sleep and the capacity to relax.  

I’d return to Vancouver and close my practice.  Laura and I would become intimate only after we were no longer working together and I could enjoy our time together with Stuart. Tom and I had been finishing off the boat.I’d decided to sail to Saipan even though the weather window was past and it was going to be winter sailing.  I’d know this wonderful freedom from the constant grind and overbearing threat of the College autocracy with their regal  arbitrary moodiness and political favouritism.  Laura was such a beautiful person and I  felt badly we’d only found each other as it were when I was setting out to leave essentially for good.  


Friday, June 28, 2019

46 - 50 years old SV Giri, Vancouver, Saipan, Chinatown

I’d just witnessed my truck stolen and sold without papers. I was chccking the auto sales periodically wondering about this. I wasn’t doing the same for my sailboat.  As far as I knew  the sailboat, in my name, was in Guaymos where I’d left it.  I simply happened to buy a sailboat magazine and there was the SV Giri up for sale.  It had illegally been taken back from Mexico without my consent.  It had illegally been put up for sale without my consent. I’d had all my money moved from my account and I’d signed $50,000 loan with her and a lawyer for ‘our’ business but that money had not gone into the business and  presumably up her nose.  She still had millions, the process of divorce showing the tens of millions she had squirrelled away and how through our marriage we’d mostly  used only ‘my money’, and for the most part I was working when she wasn’t and I was being paid as a doctor and she was paid as a student.

I was chivalrously taking the fall for her. We’d tried to protect her name sending her to San Diego for treatment. Now I was getting beat up for 2 very important reasons.
1. I’d offended the people who own the Indigeous land of Vancouver in the Jack Cram case
2. I’d reported the son of a famous Jewish family for abuse of power and sodomizing me.
I felt the ‘pay back’ was mostly to do with the latter but couldn’t be certain. I’d been told by the Jewish psychiatrist to ‘stop talking about your professor’. 
3. I was divorcing a rich educated woman. Men were always wrong in divorce. 

Now my boat was taken by my ex and I stopped blaming myself.

I believe that everything is ‘God and me.”  I spent years studying ‘determinism and fate versus free will’.  Most people say it’s ‘fate’ when bad things happen to them and ‘free will’ when good things happen. I don’t deserve bad but I deserve good is the prevailing logic. The thinking is very sloppy.  I also believe in the one becoming many and the many becoming one. We’re all interconnected.
She had caused an ‘unnecessary death’.  I’d reported a person who had done that but I’d covered for her negligence and her drug abuse. I’d managed her patients repeatedly when she was not at work. I’d repeatedly corrected her mistakes.  She had been grossly unreliable but had moments of brilliance. Off drugs she was depressed.  She had terrible mood swings.  Now to my mind she’d stollen my sailboat.  I’ve never hit a girl. I’ve never fought with girls or women. My friends said I lost a lot not having a sister and learning how mean they can be.  I was a ‘gentleman’ who used the ‘fuck’ word but otherwise believed in the code of chivalry.

Feminists were turning the code of chivalry against men, taking it for themselves when it served them, then using it against men.  They were classic borderlines crying to be treated as little girls and rescued only to turn into homicidal maniacs attacking when they didn’t get their way.  The key thing with borderlines is that they need to be in control and will manipulate with threat of suicide and when that doesn’t work will become homicidal or vice versa.  Attacking they will then switch to suicidal response.  The  suicidal bomber response is borderline on a larger scale. “ I’m a victim,” they say, “ that’s why I’ve a ton of C4 wrapped around my waist. I come in peace, but I’m wearing a bomb vest.  I love you. It is better that we die together than you should live.”

My wife had almost got us killed a dozens times and almost got me killed many more. 

Seeing my boat up for sale I snapped inside. This was just not right.  I called my lawyer and she said ‘you’re right, it wasn’t right.”  My lawyer, Stephanie was one of the most beautiful pure souls I’d ever have the benefit to know. I loved to watch her mind move with Godly precision. She was Dr. Lam’s friend and the two of them were so humble and gracious, it was like being in the presence of one of Jesus’s original disciples.”      

Since we were in a divorce property in dispute could not be disposed of for profit.

I phoned the salesman and found that the boat had already been sold for pittance to a fellow in Alberta I recognized as a relative of hers. I phoned him.

“Hi I’m Captain Bill I understand I’m coming to live with you.”
“Who is this?
“I’m Captain Bill.  I’m the skipper of the SV Giri and I understand you’re buying this boat and moving it to Alberta. I just wanted you to be perfectly clear that that is my boat regardless of anything you might have heard and I will go with that boat where ever it goes. Buying the boat is a package deal. The boat and I go together.”
“How did you get this number.”
“I don’t think that matters. I just thought you’d appreciate a phone call before I come with the boat to Alberta.’ 

That day the gentleman cancelled the ‘quick deal.”  I’ve heard of women selling their husbands ferrarri’s out of spite, destroying millions of dollars of property out of spite. This was ‘spite’. My ex didn’t want the boat and certainly didn’t need the boat and had been willing just then to sell the $150,000 boat for $10,000 .

The vendor was displeased. I’d spoken to him.  It was on the lot where I’d done all the repairs on the boat and everyone knew me and were positively inclined towards me. No one had seen my ex. 

My friend Bill Gyles thought it best to take the boat.  Possession was 90% of the law it seemed.  It was on indigenous land. I had the ownership papers. I got a call from Bill Gyles and Dr. George. They wanted to use my credit card to get an outboard motor. I gave them the numbers.

“Best you not be here. “ Bill said. “ We’ll take care of things. The vendor wants his percent of sale and had an underhanded agreement with you ex. Apparently he was involved in the movement of the boat and now wants to hold onto the boat to get more money. He really didn’t have any ‘rights’ except through her and she had no ‘ownership. Ownership and authority was with me the Skipper and owner.  Further the natives apparently didn’t like this sleazy businessman. 

A marvellous native man who worked for the marina and band ,  moved the boat. I thought that fitting.  Bill and his ‘sponsee’ with Dr. George’s moral support and the letter of ownership from my lawyer faxed to the marina, had picked up the boat and put it in the water. Bill then used  the outboard took the boat out to sea.  

He said the ‘movement” had caused the lock on the door to ‘fall off’. It must have been lost overboard.  Dr. George and Bill and I have a picture of triumph somewhere.  I had my home back. I’d lived on the SV Giri for years and would continue to live on it for another decade.  She got the Shaughnassey mansion and swimming pool that was half mine and I just wanted my boat and as far from her chaos as I could be.  I understood she was sick and toxic but I couldn’t survive anymore in her world of anger and drug abuse.  She had no desire for sobriety and was continuing to lie. 

I was so thankful for all the family physicians who’d referred to me previously. They referred to me again. I had a full practice within weeks with a waiting list of months.  

One after another Jewish and Gentile family physicians phoned me to say, “we heard there was something wrong but we’re just glad you’re well and over it and ‘would you see this patient ‘again’ or ‘would you see this new patient’.  Initially I’d been called ‘anti Semitic’ for reporting the sexual abuse but this “ad hominem’ accusation against me was dropped within months.  

“I believe he was sleeping with students,” a Jewish psychiatrist colleague shared with me. “ We know now there’s others but they won’t come forward.  “.   I certainly couldn’t blame the Jewish community for circling the wagons when one of theirs was attacked given the wide spread anti semetism.  I was thankful to see that they were more than just a tribal group but adhered to a higher power of truth.   

The College assistant registrar had said I’d hurt countless people in my practice, implying wrong medical and psychiatric decisions and orders.  I tediously and methodically reviewed every file and found that now I was ‘officially sober’ I’d not have made any decision in any way differently in the past. The College Assistant registrar had lied and I’d almost killed myself based on this psychotic sociopaths deceitful abuse of power.  

It was only further possible to confirm  the sociopath in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC when I applied for other work and different positions. Then I’d hear that this person had illegally bad mouthed me to the skies , all manner of character assassination. ‘They sounded like they were on drugs. Phoned us at night. Whenever we asked what had he;d done wrong clinically they had nothing to say.” I

The universal response to this ‘character assasination’ and the unprofessionalism of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC was that ‘you must be the greatest clinician alive to survive with that amount of animosity against you and no solid evidence for their venom.”

A doctor with the Canadian Medical Protective Association said, “You’re the most persecuted doctor in Canada.”

I was thankful because the CMPA would defend my practice there after. Each of these ‘complaints’ would cost me $50,000 in loss of time, reviewing records, meeting with lawyers and then meeting with the College  which on occasion seemed like it was more impaired than any physician I’d ever known.  I concluded that the ‘selection bias’ that resulted in these doctors being chosen was the weak link in the process. There was also a move towards communism and the destruction of the professions.  Increasingly ‘political correctness’ or ‘cultural Marxism’ was the basis of the complaints.

Doctors could kill patients so long as they didn’t ‘swear’.

I refused to see a Jewish patient because she said her ex husband was ‘unforgiveable’. She demanded she see me because I was a Christian doctor and she’d converted to Christianity.  Her previous Jewish psychiatrists had totally sided with the husband and said that she was psychotic and schizophrenic. I didn’t know this at the time. I give everyone the benefit fo the doubt.  

The key issue of Christianity is ‘forgiveness’.  Christians are taught ‘judgement is the Lords’.  When she insisted that her ex husband was unforgiveable and that she refused to take medication there was nothing more that I could do.  She was not ‘treatable’ with the Christian form of ‘insight psychiatherapy:  I had trained extensively as a psychoanalytic psycoatherapist. Christian psychiatric psychotherapy is  a specific type of psychotherapy which aims at a person seeing this as a lesson in forgiveness and how they can move forward leaving the judgement to God.   

She was simply not  ‘open minded’ and by change standards ‘’not open to change.’  We use medication therapy specifically for patients untreatable with psychological treatments because they don’t perceive anything wrong with themselves anyway but may take medication as it ameliorates the anxiety. . Her narcissism was a problem as well.  She was ‘all right’ and ‘ex was all wrong’. I normally make a decision as to whether a person is a psychotherapy candidate in 1 to 3 sessions. I kept trying to see if she had any capacity for empathy or to see that the other person might have human failings.  A characteristic of psychosis is ‘black and white thinking’.  “I”m right , you’re wrong’ .  To be a psychoanalytic psychotherapy candidate you must be willing to ‘reconsider’ your point of view.  She wasn’t . She was ‘fixed’ in her belief she was all right and her husband was all wrong. Further she wanted ‘vengeance’.  

I’d spend hours with my brilliant Orthodox Jewish friend Doctor Sam debating this role of ‘vengeance’ and  ‘forgiveness ’ in spirituality.     I’d later attend Regent College and finally hear Dr. James Houston say ‘this is where the Jews are wrong and Christians and Jew’s are not in agreement” . There’s a tendency to mush differences in the strive for multiculturalism.  There are differences and the devil surely is in the details. JudeoChristian, Judaism and Christianity are all separate constructs. 

I discussed the issue of this woman’s position with other Christian Doctors’ and got back what I believed .that she was nominally Christian because she’d married a ‘born again’ Christian but did not embrace the trinity of God or the fundamental idea of Jesus on the cross saying “forgive them for they know not what they do.”

So according to secular psychiatry she was not amenable to psychoanalytic psychotherapy, could get ‘counselling’ which I wasn’t doing or even ‘supportive psychotherapy ‘ which I wasn’t doing much of at the time. I was focussed on insight oriented psychotherapy and selecting patietns specifically for this change focused therapy and offering a service only psychiatrists were trained in and was strongly acknowledged as critical and beneficial for patients . There als was ‘medication therapy’, psychopharmacology’ and I provided that with supportive psychotherapy but this only required visits every 3 - 6 months .Weekly visits and twice weekly visits were strictly insight psychotherapy visits or crisis. The patient was very demanding and bullying and showed no capacity for change. 

She demanded everything. I said I couldn’t provide it.

She complained to the College of Physicians and Surgeons that I used the ‘fuck’ word.  The irony was that she demanded that the College force me to see her. However the College had no real interest in her complaint or her design but as always took the opportunity to punish doctors in general and me in particular.   The prime minister used the ‘fuck’ word. Books had been written about it.  Jesus used ‘bad language’ in his day speaking as the fishermen and workers spoke. One of the traits of psychopaths and sociopaths is that they look good on the outside. Appearances are easy to change Psychopaths are reptilian developmentally lacking true emotional development but having excellent chameleon capabilities. I like using the ‘fuck’ word.  It’s like Jesus saying “shit’.  

The College said it was unprofessional.  The Jewish CMPA lawyer defended me against the Jewish Christian and the Communist College. Every visit to the College is like a Monty Python meeting with folk who spend their days practicing funny walks.  They ‘s always  seeme to object to my accusing a Jewish Psychiatrist of sodomizing me during my residency and doing drugs with me to achieve his end.  They ‘d seem to be serving the financial elements in the city and courts who held  a grudge against me for saying that Jack Cram was not psychotic. They had hoped when they were unable to destroy him completely with character assasination to list him as ‘schizophrenic’ and ‘psychotic’ .   I didn’t make my self any more attractive by advocating for chiefs who had been sodomized in the residential school affairs which had avoided looking at the administrators who were involved. 

The term ‘invalid’ is tied to the idea of ‘invalidation’.  If a president is psychotic or even diagnosed schizophrenic they’d certainly take the black box for starting nuclear war away from him.

We’ve seen this rise in ‘ad hominem’ the last 20 years. It was always used in ‘communist’ countries saying that a person ‘wasn’t true to the communist party’.  So if you steal a million from the crown rather than discuss your theft the idea is to ‘kill the messenger’.  

This Jewish lawyer, fairly secular, didn’t understand any of the Christian discussion but he defended my license and ability to work. There’s been concern about the lawyers ‘appeasement’ but their mandate has not been ‘right or wrong’ but rather to protect the good doctors ability to maintain an income. They’ve been excellent in this regard.  It’s all  about plea bargaining. It’s so often a horrible medical outcome and horrendous public health but it’s probably good ‘law’ as the ‘law’ is not about ‘justice’ but about ‘money’.  Everyone gets rich and compromises are the norm.  

I’ve only been able to practice because the other issue with the College of Physicians and Surgeons is ‘favouritsm’ and the ‘appearance of doing their job’.  So like the police who catch jay walkers they can honestly say they were working but the murderers are getting off all the time. Everyday we’d see horrendous health care but the College would rightly be able to say they were saving the world from Dr. Hay who you know said the word ‘fuck’.  

I’ve been told that ‘we are a sick as our secrets’ and I’ve adopted a rule of ‘transparency’ because I’ve seen the disease in the college behind the closed doors shit.  At one point I used a ‘freedom of information’ request and saw my file,  “the most heavily redacted file in government history’. I think they call them their ‘black books’ because there’s nothing left to read, everything redacted.    It was right out of Monty Python.  A box of blacked out files as if I was a national security risk. Nothing exposes the depth of the corruption of the government agency than the redaction which had nothing to do with protecting patients but solely blacked out all the ‘doctor hay is a fucking piece of shit’ that had apparently been used behind closed doors because I questioned their premises.  A person told me that in the midst of my trial on the ‘unprofessionalism’ of the ‘fuck’ word, a College member liked to refer to me as “that fucking piece of shit.’  The hypocricy in the quasilegal authorities is profound.   

Just to get the “black file” I had to devote the equivalent in time and requests of $100,000. The government has endless resources of tax payer money.  
I have a job to do and a real life, not something petty and putrid like the dirty conniving petty administion but real, like giving hope and saving lives.  

I’d befriend Dugald Christie in church .  We were attending a service where the minister was particularly biblical and enlightened. The theological discourse was enriched. We’d spend hours together thereafter comparing psychiatry and law, discussing Jesus and the call to service, justice and divine justice, God,  the atheism of communism, Secularism and the bastardization of secularism by the aetheism.We used metaphors like Satan and both loved C.S.Lewis. Screwtape Letters is the best description of the modern day devil or demonic.  Mostly Satan rules today  working through corrupt bureaucracy. 

Dugald had started the pro bono legal service for falsely accused. He’d defend the poor and had ridden his bicycle to the Supreme Court burning his robes on the stairs to highlight the ‘lack of justice ‘ and ‘lack of legal service’ for the poor.  He’d co opt me to come to the jails with him and write legal reports for patients . It was so sad to see these men who’d had forensic psychiatrists write reports ‘against’ them and they’d not been able to ‘afford psychiatric consultation’.  I wrote the reports and Dugald got them the proper services, usually drug and alcohol treatment and a change of sentencing in some way.  It was apparent to my self and Dugald confirmed this that ‘poor people’ fell through the cracks. He was however a great defender of the BC Courts. 

“I’ve only asked you to see a few cases because the courts do a really good job over all. I’m proud to be a lawyer and just don’t like the way money ensures justice for the rich but lack of money results in poor people not having ‘access’ to the ‘court system.’

Like me he had seen that the BC Judges were collectively great.  While I’d seen how family law fucked over families and children I’d actually been impressed with  Criminal and property law in BC. Mostly the judges were really good.  It seems the evil lay in the politics. At the time the Supreme Court Judge from BC was advocating for transparency.  PM Harper would eventually institute transparency in the native affairs only to find so many chiefs were stealing the band’s money and setting up off shore accounts. Immediately PM Justin Trudeau took office he stopped transparency which certainly served a number of wealthy powerful corrupt chiefs. 

The politics of indigenous law and land cases continued to make lawyers rich beyond imagination but ‘justice’ marched on.  I’d seen in my own divorce that my ex and her lawyer were willing to use millions to ‘stonewall’ and deny me a ‘decision’.  My ex so sadly befuddled by drugs and insaneity and vengefulness would have continued the case for ever but thankful my lawyer. Stephanie heard me say I just want my boat and to be free of her. I can’t live her suicidal and homicidal and mood swings and anger and lying. 

I’d told my wife before I left, I can see hundreds of patients or I can see you but I can’t do both. If I was to work as a psychiatrist I had to have some oasis of saneity. Alone with my dog I was fine. Living with an active cocaine addict and a liar was impossible. I felt badly I was a lesser man and hoped she’d  find help or someone wealthy enough for her needs and working some emotionally  undemanding field or independent enough to devote their lives to what I’d come to view as a princess and overgrown adolescent. She was great as a drinking and drugging buddy and good for fun and sports but when it came to ‘work’ she’d just stay in bed, or not show up or do cocaine instead of being present.

It was my fault though that we began smoking dope again in Cabot San Lucas.  I was offered a joint by a Mexican Indian and asked her if we should do it. I wasn’t going to do it alone but she lit up to see it and the next months we’d be back to smoking a joint a day. We’d actually had 3 months without it and she’d not done cocaine since we left Victoria.  We were technically detoxed when this little Indian man offered me a joint. HE didn’t even speak English just handed it to me in the pub.  We liked smoking dope together and we loved sharing a bottle of wine. It would be our pattern during the time we were in Mexico. Another boater had found a bushel of dope floating at sea and gladly sold us a little bit which kept us supplied in Columbian.

So here I was a year sober.  I’d not done drugs and alcohol for a year and really felt I had my ‘wits about me.’ Most importantly I had a whole network of doctors around the world and new friends in the province who were themselves no longer drinking and a whole networks of Christian friends.  I was no longer isolated by my shame about homosexuality and being sodomized.  I even had a homosexual priest and a homosexual doctor I discussed sexuality with on a personal basis.  I was no longer isolated by the shame of addiction. I had learned to ‘ask for help’, ‘consult’, ‘call me’.  Dr. Bernie was the best. Made me phone him each week ‘just to check in . It will get you in the habit of picking up the phone.  You’ll then know how to do it when you need it.”

I’ll never forget the time I phoned him and I was simply ‘catatonic’.  I don’t even remember what the ‘crisis’ was . I just remember that I was ‘frozen’ . I was so sad and angry and tired I was again experiencing  ‘incomprehensible demoralization” and yet I was months sober at the time. It probably had to do with some combination of College of Physicians and Surgeons, banks and my ex with all her histrionics and her lying lawyer.  

Bernie heard the tone of utter defeat in my voice and told me to come over. He gave me coffee in his townhouse.  Then he picked up his banjo and played and sang “how great thou art’.  I was in total despair and began to cry. When he had finished his song I wiped my tears, thanked him and said I knew I had to trust in God and would carry on.  Things just got better. I stayed sober mainly by asking for help. Rather than pick up the bottle or light a joint I’d phone Dr. Willi or Dr. Bernie or Hank or Ray or Graham or Art  or Peter or Kirk or any number of angels I had about me now that I accepted that addiction was ‘false relationship’ and ‘false god’ and that God acted through people.  

When the College of Physician and Surgeon’s psychiatrist had asked me what I wanted, I’d said “I just want my wife clean and sober. I want her to be in a program of recovery.”  He’d said , “Women don’t go to AA and women don’t do well in recovery.’  He was a chauvinist who gave all the power to men and believed that women’s problems and solutions were all outside themselves and totally depended on him. To hear him talk though you’d never know that. He was all about the ‘little woman’.  He called himself a feminist and I’m sure he was in the worst way.

I had to come to terms with the idea that I couldn’t ‘help everyone’ and that in the triangle of relationships the other had a major part.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons were solely advocates for patietns and saw their role not as helping patients but as punishing doctors and protecting patients from bad doctors. This was destroying medicine along with all the other ‘divide and conquer’ tricks of the declining administration.   Administration was solely into control and dominance and centralizing authority as communists always do.  The Canadian ‘federation’ was wholly different from this but this systemic problem had infiltrating the ranks of professions big time.

I had friends in law societies,  engineering societies, and accounting societies and it was common that the destruction of the ‘self regulating’ and ‘independent ‘ profession was occurring,  just like the “communist play book’ demanded. I’d just end up in the midst of these forces which as Christians we called ‘principalities’.  The whole metaphor of demonic and the struggle between ‘right and wrong’ was real since the ‘propaganda’ and competing corporations with aims for world dominance of markets was obvious.

I like to think I was just doing my job but often I’d be pulled into the melee by a patient wrongly persecuted by the system. The normal psychopharmacoalogical response was to ‘blame the victim’. The nonepecific diagnosis of ‘’bipolar II’ which allowed use of all the pharmacopeia and had no clear boundaries was used to subsume ‘adjustment disorder ‘and all the stress disorders such as ‘acute stress disorder’ and ‘post traumatic stress disorder’. Further everyone with addiction or those in recovery for less than a year ‘appeared like’ ‘bipolar II’ so more ‘blame the victim’.  More medication invalidation and silencing. I’d be asked to see the patient and literally word diagnosis ‘grief’ or ‘drug addiction ‘or ‘ptsd’ when someone had negligently diagnsed’ only as having  “mood disorder’.  If a person wasn’t depressed by their situation they would have been stark raving mad instead yet by restricting the terms of reference of the assessment to ‘junior neurology’ the psychiatrists who was supposed to be a bio, psycho, social clinician, could avoid the heavy lifting of doing more than just asking the question what drug did the patient need.  Everyone was bipolar.  They  making themselves rich as friends of the pharmaceutical companies in league with government and College of Physicians and Surgeons in what was increasingly defined as a ‘consumer model of health care’. It was medical negligence to consistently ‘miss’ the diagnosis of ‘drug and alcohol abuse” , PTSD, neuropsychiatric disorder, trauma, brain injury yet no one was looking at that.  Millions of dollars of resources however could be allegated at the drop of a hat when doctor hay said the word ‘fuck’.  

Thanks to great lawyers and great judges I’d be in court on behalf of my patients saying that their being shot at repeatedly in war zones as combat veterans entitled them to the ‘compensatable diagnosis ‘ of PTSD and that they were not simply blame the victim  ‘bipolar ii’.  I was blessed to work with a truly wise and compassionate military physician who referred veterans to me who had been denied compensation because the government especially in Eastern Canada did less for the west and there was an ongoing disregard and disrespect for Vets. The vary fee for doing these kinds of reports was literally half what specialists received doing ‘real work’. No one liked paper work so by default the voterans were screwed. I spent hours doing reports for the veterans, my time pro bono, and felt that I was doing this for my dad an RCAF vet who’d I ‘d want treated as I treated people with respect and thoroughness. I never lied. I simply filled in the forms , the long way, the way that the military accountants and chair warmers demanded. It was really time consuming but at the tend of the day the military physician told me we’d been able to move millions of dollars out of eastern canada to the vets in western canada. It was just a matter of a psychiatrist filling in all the boxes. Really. All these people needed was for us to do as the military told .  I couldn’t believe how many people simply didn’t accept the authority that the vets were under so that authority rejected the claim because the psychologists and other doctors had simply not done exactly as they were told because it was ‘silly’ and it was ‘time consuming’ and there was no funding for ‘the details’.  

As my work had been focused on ‘noncompliance ‘ and I accepted that who paid the piper called the tune I worked for less and served my patients. Helping vets who were due compensation for their service was one of the best parts of my work at the time.  The vets were truly mature and wonderful people collectively.  I loved the military too when you simply did as you were told. It wasn’t rocket science.  

I continued to live on my sailboat and continued to sail with my dog every weekend  I’d leave harbour Friday afternoon and return Sunday afternoon in all weather and all conditions. I especially loved crossing the Strait of Georgia when the ferries were grounded and shipping had stopped. I was becoming adept as a solo sailor and just loved getting away from the city on the weekends and holidays. I’d sail solo in the glorious Broken Islands on the west coast of Vancouver Island,  catch a freezer full of salmon. I was always catching salmon and lingcod and making the most amazing Boullibaises and barbecued fish.

Despite the evil College of Physicians and Surgeons in the background I was loving my career. I’d made friends a number of Addiction Medicine doctors in the US. A number of my friends who were psychiatrists there had also done Addiction Medicine. The Addiction Psychiatry wasn’t reommended. Those who had that designation at the time told me.

“Addiction Medicine is about treatment of whole patients. It’s recovery focused and bio psycho social.”
“Addiction psychiatry is dominated by the pharmaceutical industry and solely interested in finding medicine to give to addicts.’  An organization ‘like minded doctors’ would eventually form to provide balance and express concern for the vulnerable patents.  

When I asked the general practitioner at the College of Physicians and Surgeons who claimed to be the leading authority in addiction medicine in BC what her credentials were she showed me.  “The Addiction Psychiatry people gave me a ‘Honary Degree’ .  I really think you should train with them and get a speciality like I have.”  She was stark raving mad and didn’t know that her ‘honary degree’ wasn’t a reall degree like the ones I had in Psychiatry, addiction medicine, Medical Review OFficer, American and Canadian degrees, expert witness Canada and the US and a decade of sobriety myself.  She was truly starkers , bat shit crazy. I would on behalf of myself and patients present her with the leading research and papers to support this and her only response was ‘anybody can write any opinion’.  She was ignorant of science and discredited all research. 

I actually ask another general pratictioner from the College, as communists collectively elevated the untrained and inexperienced to play to their grandiosity and ensure their loyalty. She was a gp who claimed to teach psychiatrists and other than a general practice degree claimed her credential was that her son was a psychiatrist. I was was taken aback to say the least to hear this when she was supposed teaching ‘boundaries’ to psychiatrists.  I was thankful that the CMP lawyers told me that the College had severe problems with boundaries and I learned that their own internal counsel had filed suit against them for abuse of power, the case being decided like all such cases ‘behind closed doors’ with no ‘transparency’ and I would suggest if the files were released under the freedom of information act they would more black books because of almost complete redaction to protect the college members abuses and unprofessionalism. 

We were all concerned about these shifts in the recovery community because the ‘pill solution’ had been the downfall of addiction.  Now I actually had colleagues telling me “You know Dr. Hay, you’re one of the best clinicians I know in working with addiction but you’re not on the same page as us. You want your patients off drugs and we just want our patietns off the street drugs and coming to us for the drugs. Our drugs are better and safer whereas the street supply is not.”

I’d be asked to investigate the leading ‘government supported’ addiction society at the time.  The NDP were actually involved in the multi million dollar adventure. The head of the Portland Hotel Society said .” We don’t want a doctor to ‘interfere with the culture of addiction’. We want a doctor who will help addicts get stuff but not stop their addiction. You seem intent on stopping their addiction. We respect this as a ‘cultural choice’.  “

I’d be drug tested ad infintum to the point where the addiction doctors wrote a letter to the College of Physicians and Surgeons saying that “There is no clinical or medical reason for drug testing doctor Hay. If you wish to continue to use this as punishement then you will have to write the orders yourself.”

I’d fire a secretary who was using my office computer to develop porn pictures and stealing from my office and smoking crystal meth on breaks so patients complained to me.  She was saying racist things against East Indians and just became increasingly bizarre. My mother had died and the minister who’d brought this girl in to help her had taken her pay but done no work. My accountant at the time either had a nervous breakdown or a drug psychosis but threw his clients files out on the street showing up on the cover of the local newspaper. With my staff not doing any billing and stealing from me and my accountant psychotic I was truly thankful that the Bank of Nova Scotia manager told me that my accountant was lying saying he was working with him. He said he felt badly because the government had garnisheed my account at that moment because I’d done as my accountant said exactly only to have him carried away in a wagon after appearing on the front page of the newspaper. He was the accountant to the head of medicine and countless other doctors and I couldn’t blame my self for the decision. Thanks to the bank manager I realized CRA had been surprisingly correct and truthful and I gladly paid them what they wanted because it turned out my staff had done none of the work they said they had. It took a month to sort all this out but my mother was dying and I had literally no money and had to borrow money for an air ticket to see her before she died because while I had tens of thousands the office  administrator, this recent graduate minister,  and the accountant and the ganisheeing of my active bank account resulted in my having no ‘cash’.  I contacted my accountant friend and my brother and they lead me through the amazing mess the Christian Minister Administrator had done in 3 months with her thieving psychopath wing man.  I ‘found’ the ‘$30,000’ dollars money and sorted matters out with the CRA who were really very helpful.  

It was a difficult time for me manageing a medical practice with these glorious nut bars playing greedy games and me trying to keep my patients from suiciding and homiciding while the children got their money and stole mine.

I fired the secretary who then complained to the college and as my CMPA lawyer pointed out the College lacks ‘boundaries’ and don’t seem to acknowledge this is just a case of ‘disgruntled employee’ . The police showed she was stealing. She’d said in a letter ‘give me $5000 or I’ll accuse you of sexual harrassment’.  Well damned if any woman could accuse any man in Canada over night of ‘sexual harrassment’ and the man was like all communist countries ‘guilty until proven inoscent’.  There was no ‘innoscent until proven guilty’ now in the matriarchal communist country Canada had become.  The CMPA fought the College for me. I was vindicated as always but I was subjected to see the most frightful image I’d ever see to this day. I’d never  get it out of my head and have about this Methusalah.  .

This female doctor, assistant registrar, a bureaucrat, highly paid, and with outrageous power stood  screaming at me  in a board room, “Women don’t lie about sex!!!! Dr. Hay.”  

The College was clearly more psychotic than my patients.  I paid the extortionist psychopath her $5000 and learned that dozens of doctors had been hit up when they fired women from the work place. One man with dozens of psychologists working for him said the ‘going rate is $1000 , we pay it as a price of doing business. There’s no sexual harrassment but they know they can extort the money because the cost of fighting it was so much.”

“I put $50,000 of my time and staff time I paid into proving that her claims were all famous, many  made when I was out of town, when witnesses showed she was lying, there were even patients who said she’d said she wanted to have sex with them and would but she had a boyfriend a psychopath who kept threatening to kill me waiting for me outside offices. HE was wiener so I just ‘please make my day’. I did object though to the government allowing this violent sociopaths to sit in meetings with her because she said that she was afraid of me.  These cases are truly Hollywood dimension and hopefully society as at large with wake up to the danger before the next invasion.  Rome was destroyed from with in by lead in the water supply. The west is falling fast by false allegations and death of truth and fact.  .  It was indeed a patient who told me she was stepping out of the office when I was seeing patients and smoking crystal meth outside. He ‘d arrive early and sit in the coffee shop and watch her go round the corner to smoke her pipe. He sad that was the smell upset him. . I’d not recognized the crystal meth smell until he pointed it out. 

Knowing I’d never done anything wrong. I said ‘fuck off” but I’d never said any of things she said, I  falsely believing the truth would out. But despite proving her ‘litany ’ of lies and amassing a mass of documentation to show she was fundamentally a liar. I still had to fight the college and human rights and end up paying this psychopath $5000.  Later I’d learn that ‘truth’ is no longer a part of ‘post modern society’ and that of course if the judge is deciding ‘he said she said ‘ cases without reliance of ‘evidence’ or ‘truth’ then all the power goes to the state. These quasi legal bureaurcratic authorities worked strictly on the basis of ‘who comes first’ and that the ‘complainant is a victim.”  Women don’t lie about sex.  

The funniest case that came out of this was a gay man being accused of sexual harrassment at the bath house by the gay man he refused to have sex with. There he was in front of a tribunal of ignorant judgemental bureaucrats who actually believed they could judge whether or not ‘sexual harrassment’ occured in a bath house and unwilling to look at the extortion and unwilling to question the ugly accuser with a tiny penis.  My secretary was a legend in her mind but not as attractive as any of the women I’d known including my girlfriend of the time.  

The College of Physician and Surgeons holds that the patient is always right. When a patient who threatened to kill his boss and his boss’s dog, his lawyer and his lawyer’s dog and threatened to kill me and my dog because I refused to see him went to the College, College bureaucrat said to me ‘don’t you wish now you’d just seen him.’  Note that they maintain the false chamberlain belief  that you can appease and negotiate with Nazis.  Our foolish PM says that ISIS killers can be cured with counselling.  

I’ve come to the point in my career that I accept there are psycbopaths and sociopaths. I loved Robert Hare’s research and the book Snakes in Suits.  With enough time and resources they might well be salvageable.  However “Polly anna’ is what caused WWII, Chamberlain is as much at fault as Hitler.  Sins of Omission are as dangerous as sins of commission just as covert aggression is probably more deadly than overt aggression

The College of Physicians and Surgeons tends to get a particularly skewed selection of doctors to work with them and they’re never truly ‘vetted’ today because I’ve met at least one who was so batshit crazy that it was a disservice to bats to compare her lunacy to them and there’s one true sociopath who is like this evil mole in the midst of some otherwise  rather fine individuals. I’m always amazed that these good people can work alongside these deeply disturbed or evil people and yet that’s how government bureaucracies work. Mind your own business. Lie lie lie deny deny deny.  Deniability is all important. That and the paycheque and pension.  . Arendt’s study of the Nazi bureaucracy and her final comment describing the ‘banality of evil’ was a true eye opener.

I found the study of ‘totalitarian isntitutions’ also extremely insightful

All this learning helped my patients immeasurably because people who don’t have direct contact with these institutions who play the game can’t quite believe how wrong they can be. The fact remains that we are fortunate in Canada yet, that most of the time most of the people are civilized.  Unfortunately the German people were the most civilized and they fell furthest in history. Even now the finest Iranian people are dominated by religious police who by all non religious police are considered worse than batshit crazy.   

I found the whole notion of the forces of evil and forces of goodness and societal sickness and societal health fascinating.I’d studied two years of community medicine and public health and sociology so saw myself as quite insignificant in the bigger picture. There’s always a bigger picture. So much occurs outside my control. Shit happens.  Dr. Carl Rid had introduced me to Kafka and I now saw his wisdom in the insaneity of the institutions. The College Physicians and Surgeons was the Castle. The government in general was a living entity.  The ‘State’ could be an ‘enemy’ or ‘friend’ of the people. The computer “Hal “ that went crazy on the spaceship really did reflect the history of the Aetheists Communist State against the individual.  

I found myself meditating and praying a whole lot more and finding that in the texts of Buddha and Kierkegaard and frankly in the teaching of Jesus, my Lord there were answers to the questions asked to day. I found that sober i was able to see all the addictive thinking that Rabbi Dr. Twerski described so well in his book of that name. I loved meeting Rabbi Dr. Twerski.  I was having these great lunches and debates with Dr. Sam , my favourite mensch.

Dr. Willi would invite me to join him in Saipan. I’d sail solo to Hawaii in winter through a hurricane. I’d not sail on because of unusual doldrums and the the threat that my job would not be there if I didn’t arrive shortly.  I’d been delayed a month by weather already.  I left my boat in Hawaii. I could face hurricanes but days and nights bobbing about at sea, dependent on wind, with not enough fuel to do the distance between islands, I turned back. I left my boat on Kona.  I gathered my dog STuart and cat Angel up and the three of us flew onto Saipan. 

I’d work there for a couple of glorious years making friends and coming under the most amazing of the local folk who were sober and under the amazingly spiritual people in the churehes and government there.  It was a joy to know Willi and Anita and see the love that grew from the depths of their love for each other and for God.  


My ex had not forwarded any mail from our practice and destroyed much of the correspondence. I actually lost my  Yukon license because of her passive aggressiveness and medical incompetence.  I never understood why the College of Physicians and Surgeons would leave her in charge of the practice considering she had no experience, knew nothing and did nothing. It was like they were complicit in the destruction of the business.  When I finally learned the devastation she had caused I had to subsequently write letters to patients and doctors telling them that the medical corporation and practice was defunct. I proceeded to pay back all her debts as well as my own knowing she had millions and millions of dollars while I was working extra hours and living cheap.  I’d learned though that if all you had was money then you were truly poor. I was advised to go backrupt three times but felt good doing the right thing though I can’t say it served me. 

I’d not return to serving in the north but having serving in the Aids Epidemic began working in the DTES where the drug epidemic was morphing into the Fentanyl epidemic.  

My secretary at the time said she didn’t want to work in the China Town areas and insisted I work in West Vancouver. “You’re too good a doctor to waste your talents with those sick people. I want you to move to West VAncouver .  I like patients there. They like me because I”m sophisticated like them. . I don’t to work with those drug addicts”.  People don’t appreciate the stigma that exists even in medical offices. I ddn’t know her true feelings which she no doubt let show when I wasn’t about till the issue came to a head.  Doctors are often held accountable for things staff do and yet because they’re focused on their patents they don’t know that their staff are not only not covering their back but sometimes actually stabbing them in the back. 

She’d go and the door would open to years of joyful work with more of the finest asssistants I’d be blessed with. I’d really had great assistants overall in my life, especially when I worked in Morris and then when  I first worked on Broadway. Now here I was in China Town and DTES and truly blessed with the finest staff. I’d again have these great assistants who made life so enjoyable.  The patients loved them and they just made the office wonderful. My dog Stuart had been killed by a drug addict but now I felt so good and safe for a change for a long time that with my friend Laura I took the risk of getting Gilbert. Laura and my assistant Aim and I would know the love of this puppy who’d bring joy to our lives and to the lives of patients.  

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

46 years old: CMDS, IDAA, George, Bill Giles, New Practice, SV Giri

I returned to Vancouver. I’d been to Homewood. I’d met George. George became a life long friend. I was trusting people again. I was still fairly paranoid. I’d known some serious betrayal and had good reason to be distrusting. There was a deeply evil person in the College of Physicians and Surgeons. He was connected with the Jack Cram case or a gay guy that thought he was ‘defending LGBT’ by persecuting me after I’d reported ‘abuse of authority’. It wasn’t even gay.  I just wanted to be a doctor and I didn’t ask to be used sexually and said no to it but eventually left. It  wasn’t  a Jewish thing though people made it that way. It was a narcissist taking advantage of his position of power and having no respect for authority.

I joined CMDS. This was the Christian Medical and Dental Association. Before this I’d associated with other doctors who were smart and good but the attraction was drinking and drugging. Now I associated with doctors who were Christian.  I had felt afraid of ‘doctors’ but had felt safe going to Willi.  Willi and Anita were the kind of people my family were. They were like my mentor Dr. Carl Ridd. There was something intrinsically safe in Christians.  I felt good in their company. I felt peace studying the Bible. I loved the name of Jesus Christ.  

I had continued to go to church with Tom and became close with Father John. We’d discuss religion and philosophy.  I’d eventually be baptized Anglican at Christ Church Cathedral with Bishop Ingram and Peter Elliott. I’d meet Dr. Lam who was a Christian Chinese family physician who was truly spiritual. We’d go cross country skiing each week on Grouse Mountain.  

George and I having met in Homewood continued to meet. We’d go to church together and attend Whitecliff AA meeting.  Dr. Bernie would continue to inspire me. He’d one time play “How Great Thou Art’ on his banjo and sing this song to me. He taught me to pray, “Holy Spirit Come”.  

I’d find this bachelor suite in Vancouver. I had a wonderful Jewish landlord. A kind and considerate man. I began to believe that Jews weren’t all wanted to fuck me. I stopped waiting for the ‘surprise’.  

Since I wasn’t doing drugs and drinking things were G.O.D.  Good Orderly Direction.  Life was unfolding as it should. I wasn’t interfering. I felt that from that day I’d prayed and surrendered to God in the cabin of the SVGiri I’d initially not fulfilled my part of the bargain and God had sent his enforcement team to bring me back into the fold.  I really did feel dragged.  My lesbian friend once said ‘I never surrender, my position gets over run’.  I had that feeling. 

My old life was behind me and I was beginning a new life. I was walking with Jesus, walking with God, walking with Christ.  My mother was thankful and my Father was Glad that I was no longer worrying my mother. 

I was having coffee at the Cactus Club on Broadway, thinking about an office and looked up. There was the VAncouver Medical Centre.

“I’m going to get an office.”  

They had the smallest office imaginable with hardly a wait room and little room for a secretary. It was an old building. 

“I told the suspicious Chinese landlady that I was a doctor who would take her office if she gave me a month rent free upfront as I’d not be able to pay her till the second month when I’d have money coming in.”

She required I bring in my Medical Degree and confirm my identity and then said yes.  She’d have a very good tenant for years thanks to the risk she took on me.  

Bill Gyles, my family friend from Winnipeg, long time sober, would come to my rescue here. I needed a desk and the office needed painting. Julie our friend, one of the original beauties of Bay Watch, had decided against the very expensive paint she ‘d bought for her West Vancouver mansion.  Bill asked her if he could have it for a doctor’s office and she said ‘sure’. Her producer director husband Bill and she would be my greatest fans cheering me on and praying for me.  

Bill painted the offices. I might have helped. I had so many things to do because I was under pressure to make money. I contacted the doctors I knew some previous patients, got cards from Business Now and a couple of chairs. 

The other big issue was the secretary desk.

“Tell her not to open the drawers.’  Bill said the morning we opened. The drawers were full of eggs. 

“My friend had it in his barn and the chickens had been using it . I forgot to check the drawers. I’ll get it cleaned up later.”

I hired a delightful woman to be my secretary. I had had no money. I ‘d been living on $1000 a month, disability, had received a $1000 and with Tom’s help bought the Chevy Beretta and watched a true miracle unfold.  I’ve written that story somewhere else as God’s direct hand in my personal affairs. A hailstorm destroying the paint on my beautiful blue beretta which had no brakes, raw tires and other ‘issues’. I was devastated whereas Tom was running his hands with glee saying ‘god surely loves you’. 

I could not see this. 

“The car’s a write off”.

I still couldn’t see how this was God’s love.

“We’ll get a thousand dollars for it. You’ll get new tires and a break job and the transmission fixed and the car will be perfect. ‘

“But it’s all pock marked.”

“That’s just appearances. What counts is the engine. It will get you anywhere. ‘

It became my recovery car.

Both Dr. Ray and Dr. Willi said I should report the transgression that had occured in my residency and education.  

“It’s the right thing to do.  The university and hospital need to know that their doctor is misusing his position.

In retrospect I know that both of them have stood up to authority when it was wrong but I don’t think they fully appreciated how entrencherd the corruption and how severe the cover up would be.  I’d write a letter to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba.

They got back to me in the winter. I had my car and was living on disability paying the collection agency and half my income to rent the trailer and having little money for food. I did have the library and was meditating and praying. I’d taken my axe and knife into the woods and made myself some more chairs and a table.  I was sketching. It was a simple life. I thought of Walden Pond. I was playing guitar. My mind seemed to be adjusting. My world was coming back on line. My heart softening. I had great friends in AA and Church who were having coffee with me for hours after meetings.

 I was shadowing Tom in his eccentric bachelor life, feeling a bit like Mark Twain’s characters. All these men who would go fishing, sit for coffee, do some chores, make a little money ,get by. None of them accountable to anyone. All of them relatively happy but all complaining.  It was a Slesse Park collection of characters.  Everyone had a ‘woman done me wrong’ story and how the courts had taken and destroyed life works, the government was corrupt and their response was a prolonged ‘giant pout’.  Meanwhile some woman out there was raging and complaining and getting her ‘proxy warriors’ to fight her fight forever so the war continued. The men were emotionally at sea and half the country’s work force , the best of the best, seemed to be at the mercy of the courts. The courts and beurocrats were making a killing. The children were suffering and the country dying.

I was seeing a whole other side of the world that I’d only peripherally been exposed to. No one was hurting me.  No one was stealing .  There was even some reciprocity. I was also meeting these wonderful people who’d become life long friends and inspire me.

Willi and Anita and their family are really the Rockwell family. They are the back bone of society and yet the College of Physicians idealogues with their  horrendous tunnel vision had tried to destroy this man who’d been a missionary doctor, was one of the finest physician I knew or ever would know and s greatest ‘sin’ was ‘praying with people’.  The new game in town was for drug addictted psychotic people to have delusions about their psychiatrist and the College bureaurcrats would believe this , run a smear campaign, threaten the doctor and hound him all in the name of ‘their virtue signalling’ and them ‘looking like they were doing real work’.  Now the millions of dollars that lawyers and bureaucrats put on were justified for murders and such but the growth of the College bureaurcracy was such that they were a cancer. Imagine a police force so bloated and full of it’s own arrogance that officers would jump out of cop cars with  swat teams and take down jay walkers. That was the new College of Physicians and Surgeons Modi’s Opperandi . It also meant they looked like they were working when the lowest of the low among doctors just seemed to get a pass. It was hard to believe how any doctor could work for their and hold his head up with all the shame that must gnaw at them.

They were further infiltrated by evil people with their own agends’. The worst were the anti Christian aetheists who didn’t care how many people died so long as ‘religion was eradicated.’  The other College registrar was a gravely psychotic lady who had rage attacks was possessed and screamed ‘Women don’t lie about sex.” A doctor had divorced her obviously because she was insane and she’d worked out her personal issue by attacking every male doctor with the weight of the College behind her.

Setting up a practice again after what I’d witnessed was scarey.

But I drove my Beretta from Vancouver to Winnipeg through a blizzard, the heater didn’t work. I didn’t have a block heater. At a motel when I couldn’t get the car started the lovely lady leant me her hair drier . I ran a cord to the car and thawed the engine so I could drive on to meet with the College of Physicians and Surgeons. I ‘d actually known the registrar when he was a kid and very bright and from a good family. He’d joined Darth Vader and gained an autistic insensitivity that no one would have predicted.

I met at the College and these two doctors told me ‘There’s nothing we can do. The other doctor says none of what you say is true. So it’s a he said she said scenario and that’s all we can do. It’s also not really a College matter because you weren’t his patient. ”

It was always Animal Farm. Some animals are more equal than others. I saw first hand the terrible gender discrimination against male victims of homosexual assault. 

“I didn’t want you to do anything. I just wanted to report it. Why the hell did you have me come thousands of miles to hear this. You could have put it in a letter or told me on the phone. I’ve just driven three days and nights through blizzards to do ‘my duty’ and you didn’t need me to be here.’

“It’s protocol’ , he said.

 “Fuck protocol.  You’re supposed to be doctors. Have some care for people and their time and resources. I did my job. I reported to you and all you’ve done is punished me and made yourself “look’ like you care.  Thank you . No thank you.” I said. 

“You should notify the university.’ They said. 

I contacted the university complaints and told what sounded like a flaming gay man that my professor had sex with me when I was a student.”

“How dare you question that great man. “ he shouted at me “ I’m not going to investigate this. There’s no proof. It’s just your word against his.  You’re slandering his name. He’s a great man.  You homophobic and the university doens’t tolerate that .  “

He might have just been very effiminate. His voice was soprano when he was shouting at me.  

“Are you going to do anything else?” I asked 

“No.”

“Thank you for your time.” I hung up. I’d done my duty. 

I’d done the right thing. I’d already been down this path. I’d reported a murderer and a dozen natives had been killed. 

He could continue to have sex with students .  He really was a pretty good guy with a minor ethical glych , a superego lacunae, as we say in the trade. But his offence was not nearly has heinous as the College and the University. The college had required me to meet with them in person. It’s not the 19th century. I’d told them before setting out that I thought they could just discuss the matter on the phone or put it in writing but they had their “virtue signalling “ ‘protocol’ . 

They were insensitive rich bastards, elites, privileged, with  no empathy for victims or no understanding of reality. I have seen this disregard and abuse of ‘victims’ a hundred fold by the bureaucracy that does their little dance and ‘virtue signalling’ and leave everyone but themselves feeling defiled. 

The University of Manitoba didn’t even investigate the report and their complaints officer was utterly incompetent, irresponsible, biased and frankly ‘evil’.  

I would love being with my family. That was half the reason for going. I’d visit with my mom and make her winter. She loves her kids and grand kids . Dad laughed when he saw my car and thought it a great adventure that I’d taken that half across Canada.  

‘You don’t even have snow tires.” Dad laughed. He liked hearing how I unthawed the engine with a lady’s hair dryer. 

“I didn’t have tires till the hail storm struck”. I said. 

I told them the story and they laughed. “God works in mysterious ways.”  They asked about Tom and Willi and loved that Shinto was doing so well. Dad loves dogs. Mom loves children. The dogs love mom as well.  

It was a great time with mom and dad and mom sent me away with jars of stew. Mom would slip her son  “gas money”. I’d take it . I drove back to Vancouver in better weather having done my duty.  I’d done the right thing.

The Jewish community pulled back. I had no friend or colleague talk to me for a year. I was being watched. They are a paranoid lot. I was approached by an orthodox friend. I explained that I had no animosity to Jews. I certainly wasn’t anti semetic. I’d just been told to do the right thing and at serious cost to myself , yet again, I’d done the right thing.

 Our friendship restored. He told me homosexuality wasn’t a Jewish spiritual thing. A year later it was as if the Jews accepted I had no bad feelings.  It wasn’t a Jewish thing. It wasn’t even a gay thing. My gay friends thought gays shouldn’t use schools and churches to act out their fantasies. “It gives the rest of us a bad name.”  I had made a Jewish sober friend in AA . I loved his wit and humor. “I converted a Catholic priest and a Rabbi when I was younger” he laughed 

I had an office thanks to Bill. I had an apartment in Vancouver. I began seeing patients.   I was no longer running with the Turkeys. Instead I was surrounded by Eagles. I was surprised that while I was with the drunks and drug addicted psychiatrists and physicians there had been all these other people going about their business chopping wood and hauling water.  

The CMDS is full of the finest people. These are the doctors that attracted me to the profession. All of them trying hard to be moral and ethical No hedonism. I’d learn the physicians prayer. I’d love to pray with my fellow doctors. I’d take the Hippocratic oath again. 

At IDAA in Toronto,  Hank , a Baton Rouge Psychiatrist in recovery , former Naval Flight Surgeon, Anglican and old old money and tradition, would take me under his wing. I loved the psychiatrists I met at IDAA. I loved Dr. Talbot. I’d meet a whole group of brilliant Addiction Medicine specialists like Dr. Ray Baker and Dr. Hedges. I’d want to know more about the field. I was loving learning the 12 steps. I was profoundly moved by the 12 and 12, some of the greatest philosophical reading I’d had since I read Emerson, the father of American philosophy. I loved the pragmatism of William James. 

 I was attending Christ Church Cathedral . The choir and music there was the finest in the world. Bach was healing my soul.  I loved Handel. Listening to Dr. Anna Borowska sing soprano I felt uplifted.

I’d now with the help of Stephanie, Bill and George get back the SV Giri which had been moved illegally across 2 borders and put up for sale without my knowledge, just like my truck had been sold without papers. There was this whole other illegal world that the blue collar and white collar accessed. I was certainly being lessoned in realpolitik. I was resisting being jaded.

I had good friends now. I was not alone. Even now when I say,  “I am not alone” I cry. I’d felt so alone and alienated. 

Anxiety is a measure of your distance from God I heard one night from an old doctor in a late night meeting .”It’s also a measure of your humanity”.  










At 9 am, with