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
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