10 years before strangers came to my home and took me away from my single parent to isolate me to Canaan Land, a previous situation took place involving a sinister stranger from that same church-school. By the time I was born in 1981, Pastor Keith Johnson‘s abusive system was already established and on a collision course with my life. Saskatoon Christian Centre was infected with his extremism, and sure enough one of my parents was deep into his harmful doctrines. My other parent heard about Keith's fanatical [...]

...I realized my crushing reality; I had nobody. I felt like I was a youth outcast from my church and school community - I was somebody horrible that had to be in a program for bad people. "Are you running away too?" That question haunts me to this very day. Imagine a prisoner-of-war finding his cell door wide open one day. A nearby guard says to the only remaining prisoner, "the rest of the prisoners just ran away and escaped. Are you running [...]

There was no particular reason for Jim to have his rifle with him on his deck one summer afternoon. And I was not expecting him to ask me if I wanted to try shooting it at the nearby tree. Of course, I had answered "sure!" This was a random moment where I was offered a chance to do something fun for a change. Jim showed me how to aim it through the sights and at the tree he pointed out to me to [...]

Early summer mornings for a week, the 3 dogs were barking furiously outside our lodge around 5 or 6 am for no apparent reason. The sun would barely start rising when the dogs would suddenly just start barking like maniacs and not quit. We checked on them to see if maybe some deer or porcupine got their interest, but we saw nothing as the dogs clearly were picking up on something we weren't seeing deep inside the shadowy forest. One early misty morning, [...]

"Hey Mark...come with me" Warning: The contents of this post include distressing details. It was March 25, 1997. I was a 15-year-old student at Christian Centre Academy where I'd attended since I was 9 in 1991. It was a typical Tuesday school day as I sat at my carrel office in the classroom facing the wall doing my schoolwork. There was only an hour or so of school left. I felt someone tap my shoulder and I turned to find Shian Klassen who [...]