DUCLOS, Quebec — Bob Ranger stands on his deck in a short-sleeved shirt, impervious to a cold wind. The sky, the bare trees and Lola Lake below are shades of autumn grey. He smokes a cigarette, steadying his nerves for a story that has consumed him for two decades.

It is the meanest of workplace tales, well-documented in piles of paper that populate the kitchen table and counters of his country home, a 50-minute drive from the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, where he last wore the uniform of a corrections officer on Feb. 11, 2002.

That was the day he could take it no longer.

For Bob Ranger, a barrel-chested 52-year-old, being gay had never been an issue. That changed when he became a guard in provincial jails, where “boys’ clubs” and a code of silence prevail — and bullies endure.

He faced blatant taunts and homophobic slurs. Co-workers would simulate anal sex in his presence. Managers looked the other way. Some would have preferred that Ranger quietly disappear. Instead, he stood his ground and fought.

His decision to do so made him physically sick. He contemplated suicide. It cost him a job he loved and by all accounts did well. It ruined his finances. It cost him a relationship. It ate up a dozen years of his life. And it is not over.

In July, the Grievance Settlement Board ordered the provincial government to pay Ranger almost $100,000 — the largest damages award in the board’s history. It ruled that the government utterly failed to protect Ranger from a “poisoned” workplace, and later failed to find him other suitable work.

While the size of the award raised eyebrows in government and labour-law circles, it came as an insult to Ranger, who doesn’t see evidence that his case prompted real change in how the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services deals with workplace discrimination and harassment.

“This wasn’t a career of corrections. This was a career of gay bashing,” says Ranger, who is considering further legal action. “What they have on paper, you feel protected — but it just doesn’t exist. It’s a blank sheet.”

Ranger received a high-level apology in August from Stephen Rhodes, deputy minister of correctional services, and assurances that “valuable lessons” had been learned. Four days later, Rhodes took aim at provincial jails with a memo to corrections staff under the subject heading, “The Code of Silence.” He denounced the practice, which allows bad behaviour to go unreported, as unacceptable.

A workplace setting like jails comes with unique pressures, risks and challenges. Yet many other large employers fail to control bullying behaviour, leaving desperate workers with little recourse.

One workplace expert insists it is near hopeless and ill-advised to even try to take on a bully in such companies.

“I hate to say this, but the advice given by people who cope well with bullying is to change jobs,” says Jacqueline Power, a professor at the Odette School of Business.

“It eats away at you day after day.”

Shocking rates

Workplace bullying is defined as repeated and persistent negative behaviour toward an employee or colleague, including yelling, insults, belittling, humiliation in front of others, spreading rumours, setting unrealistic deadlines and being treated like an incompetent. Studies in Europe and North America have found it is more common than racial discrimination or sexual harassment.

In Canadian workplaces, it seems to occur at a shocking rate. Fully 40 per cent of employees reported being bullied at least once a week during the six months prior to filling out a questionnaire on workplace experiences. Overall, 10 per cent were bullied five or more times each week. (The 2006 study, conducted by business management professors Raymond Lee and Céleste Brotheridge, questioned 180 public and private sector workers in Western Canada.)

Most of the bullying is done by bosses, other studies note, or by anyone with more power than the victim.

“It’s an opportunistic crime,” says Power, an expert on workplace bullying. “You do it because you can get away with it.”

Workplaces that are highly competitive and politicized seem especially prone to bullying. Some reward bullying by encouraging managers to push out workers perceived to be low performers. That has been found to be a particular danger in companies that are downsizing.

Companies pay a price through higher absenteeism, high turnover in departments run by bullies, lower commitment and lower productivity.

Women and minorities tend to be more likely targets. Victims who choose to fight back quickly realize they have few or no allies, Power adds.

“Resisting makes it worse,” she says, arguing that a common reaction from management is to “circle the wagons.”

“It’s a lot easier to attack the victim than it is to attack a manager. You tend to find that the organization in general will gang up on you. Very rarely do you get any kind of help.”

Victims of prolonged bullying suffer a range of ailments triggered by stress and anxiety, including muscle pain, headaches, insomnia, skin conditions, depression and suicidal thoughts.

The lack of support makes a sham of workplace policies that often place the onus on the victim by insisting that he or she confront the bully, says Power. It also flies in the face of Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act, which flatly states that employers must stop all harassment brought to their attention.

Power has told employers who consult her that the quickest way to stop bullying is to make it clear that employees have a right to tape record conversations with managers.

“You should see the expression on their face when I suggest that.”

Labour lawyer Donald Eady, who represented Ranger and his union in the record-setting grievance, notes that the kind of blatant discrimination Ranger faced is not the norm.

“The types of discrimination and meanness are often more subtle today, but people still discriminate. It’s not calling people names in the workplace. Everybody knows you can’t do that, and you can’t be obvious about discriminating against people.

What does happen, for example, is people are excluded from meetings. They are denied the same workplace advancement opportunities, such as mentoring, given to others.

“It’s that kind of stuff, and it’s really hard as a lawyer to make arbitrators or judges see that and to be able to prove that,” says Eady. “It’s easy to prove when you say, ‘A guy called me a f---ing n----- to my face and three people heard him.’ It’s harder to prove discrimination when it’s, ‘How is it that the black guys always get the worse shifts?’ ”

Bob Ranger’s story

Growing up in St. Isidore, a small Ontario community near the Ottawa River and Quebec border, Bob Ranger knew before his 10th birthday that he was attracted to boys. But coming out was not an issue. The question simply never came up.

“I didn’t know it was called gay,” says Ranger. “It is a small town, but it wasn’t a problem. I don’t look gay — don’t think I sound like it, I don’t walk like it — so it wasn’t a question.”

Ranger took a vacation day to speak with Star reporters. As he talked, the dates and stories from 20 years of bad memories came out, at times, in emotional flurries. Striker, his white-eyed 7-year-old Labrador/husky mix, for the most part lay under the kitchen at his feet.

Ranger worked with patients in a nursing home when he was 19, and later in a hospital. He studied to be a registered nursing assistant. He says he never faced sexual discrimination.

“Everything was fine until I got into corrections and saw that it was an issue and had to come out. It was crazy.”

In 1990, Ranger landed a part-time job as a corrections officer at a “bucket jail” — a small prison — in L’Orignal, west of Hawkesbury on the Ottawa River. It was built in 1825, and until it was decommissioned in 1998 was the oldest functioning prison in Ontario. On a typical day, there’d be 35 to 40 inmates.

“I loved the work,” says Ranger. “It was the job I was meant for.”

Then one day, an inmate who knew Ranger from his hometown checked in. He knew Ranger was gay, and Ranger assumed it was only a matter of time before word would spread.

To head off any controversy and for his own safety, Ranger felt he had to inform his supervisors and his union — the Ontario Public Service Employees Union — about his sexual orientation, since some of his duties involved inmate intakes, where strip searches were conducted.

It was 1992; Ranger was 31. Soon after, a pattern of homophobic behaviour by superiors began.

He was called a “pink skunk,” and people mimicked him walking in a feminine fashion. “All of it was geared toward getting rid of me,” says Ranger. “It was just plain harassment for the obvious reasons.”

Some colleagues firmly supported him.

“When in the hell are you going to do something about this treatment?” Ranger recalls one colleague asking him. “If you’re not going to, I will.’”

“Going into work, I had panic attacks, anxiety attacks, shortness of breath, sometimes so severe that there’d be chest pains. I’d have these emotional feelings, on the verge of crying. I would just push myself and just kept doing it.”

It went on for four years.

He went on sick leave in April, 1997, suffering from stress, anxiety and depression. Ranger filed a grievance about the harassment and in 1998 agreed to a settlement that included $2,000 for pain and suffering.

In the meantime, a relationship he was in broke down. He saw a psychiatrist and was placed on medication. His finances suffered. For a spell, he took work as a flight attendant. He had to remortgage his home three times.

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All this while he wanted to return to the job he loved.

In late 1998, he was placed at the young offenders unit at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre. By then, many of the corrections staff from the mothballed L’Orignal jail had been moved to the Ottawa jail.

The knowledge that Ranger was gay came with them. It wasn’t an issue on the youth wing, where Ranger was promoted to operations manager. There, he connected with the youth and even offered haircuts. “They maybe weren’t the best ones,” jokes Ranger, “but they were happy to get their hair cut off.”

Ranger keeps a handwritten note passed to him from a youth he reprimanded for being in a scuffle. It is a heartfelt apology that brings him close to tears. “Isn’t that what the job is all about?” Ranger says.

After three years, in February, 2001, Ranger was moved to the adult unit and a year from hell began.

He would later allege in a provincial Worker Discrimination and Harassment Prevention policy complaint that he was repeatedly called a “c---sucker,” and that prison guards simulated anal sex acts in his presence. There were also offensive emails, including one forwarded to him of a graphic PowerPoint presentation ridiculing transsexuals.

The final straw came on Feb. 11, 2002, at a software training session. A colleague had trouble logging into the computer system. Another loudly suggested Ranger could help “get it in.” One guard laughed so hard he almost choked.

At lunch break, Ranger left for good.

Later that year, while on sick leave, he contemplated ending his life by running the car in his garage with the windows down. “I would think about how I could bring a warm blanket and pillow and just go to sleep,” Ranger wrote in an affidavit.

Instead, in December, 2002, he launched a new grievance claiming the ministry condoned a discriminatory and poisoned workplace. The decision in his favour would come in 2010, and the record award in 2013.

One prison guard in particular stood out for Ranger: Mark Grady, who served as the local union president and, despite Ranger’s complaints against him, became deputy superintendent of the Ottawa jail in 2005. An initial internal investigation in 2003 questioned his credibility and found him responsible for the “c---sucker” comments.

At Ranger’s lengthy hearing before the Ontario Grievance Settlement Board, the board’s vice-chair, Deborah Leighton, relying on witness testimony, upheld Ranger’s complaints.

“I find there is ample evidence to support the allegations,” Leighton ruled in a January, 2010, decision . “There can be no doubt that the grievor was harassed and discriminated against because of his sexual orientation by others at OCDC and particularly by Mr. Grady, and that he was working in a poisoned workplace …

“At least three managers testified that they were aware of the discrimination and harassment against Mr. Ranger and for various reasons nothing was done.”

A number of witnesses testified that homosexuals were often referred to in derogatory terms, including “flaming fag” and “f---ing queer.”

Ranger was “an excellent employee, hard working and professional in his manner,” said Leighton, citing a senior manager at the Ottawa jail.

In July, 2013, Leighton awarded Ranger the record-setting settlement.

“The harassment and discrimination that created a poisoned workplace at OCDC was vile,” she wrote. “The chief culprit and his entourage taunted and humiliated Mr. Ranger repeatedly and the employer did almost nothing to address the homophobic atmosphere in the jail. The employer is liable for this failure.”

The government also failed to get Ranger other work. One Manulife rehab consultant who worked with Ranger said she had “never seen an employer so reluctant to return an employee to work,” Leighton wrote.

The ordeal made Ranger ill, she noted, adding he’ll likely continue to suffer from anxiety and depression.

Grady was fired without cause after the 2010 decision. He did not respond to Star messages, but he denies all of the allegations and disputes the findings in court filings viewed by the Star.

In a 2012 statement of claim, Grady sued the ministry, the union and Ranger, alleging wrongful dismissal, negligence and breach of contract.

He notes he was never called to be a witness at Ranger’s 66-day grievance settlement-board hearing, which stretched over several years. Grady, in documents, claimed his reputation was ruined. He had to quit an assistant coaching job with the Ottawa 67’s junior Ontario Hockey League club.

Grady says he’s suffered “extreme bouts of depression and anxiety” and can’t find work that pays as well as his old job. One court document states he was working in a scrap yard.

Grady’s civil suit against the union and Ranger was dismissed by Superior Court in February for jurisdictional reasons. John Yach, Grady’s lawyer, says all legal proceedings in the civil suit have been “resolved/settled.”

Ranger missed just shy of 10 years of work while on short and long-term disability. The rest of the time, he bounced around from a posting in probation and parole, to the Ministry of Finance, where no one cared about his sexual orientation but he was ill-suited for the job.

Today, he is back with probation and parole, working out of an Ottawa courthouse.

The grievance board decision restored his lost back pay, and pay premiums he would have earned as a jail guard have been tacked on to his salary.

As for the record damages — $98,000 — Ranger sees it as a pittance. The union had sought $3.6 million. He is now contemplating other legal action, including a civil suit against the government and his own union, and has retained Toronto lawyer Selwyn Pieters.

He points to the slew of grievances filed against the corrections ministry as evidence of an employer that has failed to change. A search of CanLII, an online legal database that includes Ontario grievance board decisions, turns up hundreds of cases.

“It is outrageous,” says Ranger. “The ministry is what it labels inmates: repeat offenders. This is a repeat offender and has got to be hit hard, because that’s how they treat repeat offenders.

“I’m not only doing it for myself. Things have got to change.”