Rick Canhan
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Rick Canhan
Breaking Silence - Finding Strength
by
This account is written from memory, experience, and reflection.
It is not intended to sensationalise, embellish, or provoke. It exists to record a life shaped by institutional care, silence, service, and delayed reckoning. Where possible, events have been verified against available records. Where records no longer exist, lived experience remains.
This is not an account of grievance. It is a record of consequence.
I came from regular parents of English extraction in a country still struggling with post war conditions in 1959. Times were hard and employment scarce. Already my parents were not getting along. So, it was a humble beginning for myself and my elder brother, Gary, and despite being in an orphanage from a young age, I have never really spent too much time complaining about my life.
My maternal grandparents were staunch and very strict Scottish; they had disapproved the union between my parents from the very start and when it failed, they refused to provide support. I was to learn much later in life that it was my grandfather who was ultimately responsible for us being placed into the orphanage, when he told mum, “You need to get a job.” “But first of all, you need to get rid of those boys”. We learned from an early age to deal what was in front of us and to keep moving forward. That mindset - born from necessity rather than choice – shaped every chapter that followed. I recognise that while my life was never easy, it has been meaningful, dignified, and richer than my beginnings ever suggested it could be.
Life was never meant to be easy, it is what it is, and you will read I’ve learnt to adjust to the lows as well as the highs. Some of the unpleasant events we experienced were shared by others who lived under the same systems at the similar time. Their public corroboration confirmed what survivors have long known: these were not isolated incidents, but patterns enabled by institutional failure.
I write not for sympathy, but for accuracy. Not to reopen wounds, but to ensure they are acknowledged. It was not written in anger or regret, but in clarity. It is a record of endurance, service, and ultimately closure. Silence protected the wrong people for too long.
This is testimony, memoirs of my life as I recalled.
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”
John Kennedy
Rick Canhan, Aust Army Veteran, Father-Grandfather and Author
Rick Canhan is an Australian Author, Army veteran, Justice of the Peace, father and grandfather, speaker, and advocate whose work is grounded in lived experience. Born in the UK in 1959, he spent part of his early childhood in institutional care—an experience that shaped a lifelong commitment to truth, accountability, and resilience. Following a diverse working life, Rick now focuses on writing and public advocacy. He supports people harmed in care, raises funds for veteran-focused initiatives, and advocates broadly for men’s health and wellbeing. His work centers on recognition, reform, and constructive change, with an emphasis on dignity, fairness, and long-term recovery. Measured, direct, and principled, Rick’s voice is guided by the belief that speaking truthfully—without exaggeration or malice—is essential to justice, healing, and ensuring that unheard voices are finally acknowledged.
Discovering more than the lost canopy buried in the desert
“In the heart of the Simpson Desert, two brothers confront the past in search of more than a lost canopy”
Two short stories to ignite the imagination
Puzzled — Literary Thriller
Something is wrong, though nothing appears to be.
Puzzled is a quiet work of literary horror in which an ordinary moment begins to fracture. As familiar details subtly shift, the narrator is drawn into a tightening spiral of unease—where certainty erodes and meaning becomes dangerous.
The story explores the horror of misalignment: when the world refuses to behave as expected and the mind can no longer trust its own patterns. With restrained prose and mounting dread, Puzzled reveals how terror does not always arrive loudly, but seeps in through doubt, repetition, and the fear that reality itself has become unreliable.
Unsettling and precise, Puzzled lingers as a question that refuses to resolve.
Beneath The Southern Cross
Set in rural Australia, Beneath The Southern Cross centres on a sudden, destabilising incident that disrupts the fragile balance of everyday life and binds together those caught in its wake.
What begins as an ordinary day unfolds into crisis, forcing individuals and families to confront fear, responsibility, and the emotional weight of the past. As the aftermath ripples outward, relationships are tested, buried truths surface, and the characters must reckon with choices made in moments when there is no time to hesitate.
The Australian landscape looms large throughout the novel—beautiful, indifferent, and relentless—mirroring the inner lives of those who live and labour beneath it. Blending grounded realism with subtle, unsettling undertones, Beneath The Southern Cross explores how a single moment can alter the course of a life, and how meaning is forged not in the event itself, but in how it is remembered, endured, and carried forward.
This is an intimate, emotionally resonant novel about resilience, consequence, and the quiet, lasting impact of moments that cannot be undone.
