An Outlandish Journey

(2023) Yes the Ellen Atkin story needs to be told. I'll have a go. It begins in Quebec where she was born in April 1962 - to parents who were both patients of Dr Ewen Cameron who abandoned his practice in 1963 when he submitted his resignation and eventually left McGill under a cloud of disgrace. Many lives hung in the balance and many of his victims never recovered. Six months later John F. Kennedy was shot, the CIA shut down Cameron's lab and Cameron moved back to Albany where he died while mountain climbing. It was a turning point for many of his victims. The Atkins moved back to southwestern Ontario, which became Canada's new MKULTRA hub. While Ruth was a late Boomer, Ellen and her brother were neglected, abused, Generation X kids -- all three going in and out of social services and institutions while their mother lay in bed and their father hobnobbed with the likes of Marshall McLuhan. Chosen at age 10 to be a page in the Ontario legislature, at 15 Ellen ran a...

MGM released "High Society" on July 17, 1956 https://share.google/sBiRNtaqXW1puLTiN Three weeks later, on August 4, my twin brother and I attended a party at Ravenscrag mansion on Mount Royal. It was for children only, plus the scientists. A few children died that sweltering afternoon playing games like "Jack in the Box". After the fun and refreshments -- LSD-spiked punch served in plastic cups -- they put on a record. Boys and girls paired up ballroom-style and danced to "True Love" sung by Grace Kelley and Bing Crosby. I danced with the boy from England.

Camille doesn't realize how much she's helping me write about a dark period I have deep reservations about delving into. Some people like to label everything in black and white. "Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones are Satanic" -- is a cliché we're all very familiar with. I prefer "Luciferian". The British Invasion was cooked up in London and served to America in 1964. Before the Beatles there was plenty of great music on American AM stations - I grew up listening to it and still know most of it by heart. But then came the Beatles -- exotic, cute and clever, promoted to the hilt so even though my pubescent friends and I were underwhelmed by their first appearance on Ed Sullivan, the hype primed us for things to come, i.e. the bad boys who really rocked, who really ripped this joint. The Rolling Stones we'd been waiting for, who came from Hell. My version of this often-told tale begins when I'm 5 and placed in an experiment at McGill Universi...

stalk2 /stôk/ verb gerund or present participle: stalking 1. pursue or approach stealthily. "a cat stalking a bird" Similar: creep up on trail follow shadow track down go after be after dog hound course hunt pursue chase give chase to run after tail literary move silently or threateningly through (a place). "the tiger stalks the jungle" 2. harass or persecute (someone) with unwanted and obsessive attention. "for five years she was stalked by a man who would taunt and threaten her" 3. stride somewhere in a proud, stiff, or angry manner. "without another word she turned and stalked out"

Thank you, Brad. I appreciate your apology and also your prayers. A public correction by Camille would also be appreciated. For example, taking decades-old screenshots and quotes out of context to build the case that I have been "brawling" with Leonard Cohen for years -- I began writing about Leonard Cohen in self-defense, after I left Montreal to teach in BC in 2000. A very damaging story was circulating, that I had never known Cohen but just "imagined" that I did. After putting up with it for years, in the summer of 2001 I decided to write down all my experiences with Cohen going back to 1970 -- the process took two months and 300 pages of mostly straight narration. I posted the chapters in a blog which I didnt advertise, at a site which was hard to find. Eventually it got noticed and made the rounds. I used a hit counter so I know for sure only 65 readers ever made it to the final chapter which was the one with the paragraph about Cohen's daughter reporti...

Hi Camille You have been sending me emails intended for Ellen Atkin. "What is your plan?" you ask. "We are praying for this." I hope this answers your prayers. My plan is to straighten out the vexed issue of journalistic ethics. Or at least you seem vexed by it. I can see your X posts although you have blocked me, so I followed your link to that Auticulture podcast just to find out why Jasun called me a "yellow journalist." He didnt really- he said making statements of fact without proof is "yellow journalism." In this case, I was talking about evidence that had been removed or hidden between one visit to the Cohen archive and the next, six months later. It's an interesting conversation with no real hint of yellow journalism. I was honest about what had happened but Jasun was impatient because my "proof" had vanished, therefore the whole story became unbelievable in his mind at the time. I talked about the difficulty of producin...