Rhino's Ramblings - Five Years

By Robert Thomas Opinion/Commentary

For those of you who pay attention to the news you will know with this being the month of November it is the month where I assess the past year and look at the coming year.

For it was in November of 2017 MJ Independent was born.

Despite the ups and downs plus a lot of naysayers along the way this publication has made it to an all important milestone many in the community said we never would achieve.

This publication that started so many stories ago seems like a real blur now but has hopefully served its purpose and helped to keep the public better informed.

And hopefully - something some in the community don’t like - shone some light where it needed to be shone and helped keep more people, who should be held accountable, for want of better word accountable.

But in reality all we can ever do is to strive to discover and print the truth and from there it is up to individuals to hold the powers to be accountable.

I will be totally honest with you and every November I seriously consider pulling the plug - not because it is a lot of work but in reality MJ Independent for myself has served its ultimate purpose.

What I hoped to leave to the community was a local media who were more responsive, who went out and did their job and let us just say reporting more than the usual rah rah crap which for me plagued the local media.

Nobody seemed to want to publish stories which were not only controversial but needed to be published. Lest they offend local advertisers and the bottom line.

So people know MJ Independent was not my creation. I simply inherited it.

I was simply asked if I would write here after the financial collapse of the Moose Jaw Times-Herald.

Our local daily was hemorrhaging cash to the tune of losses of $60,000 monthly and after 128 years of publication financially was forced to fold.

Two, or was it three, local guys saw it as a business opportunity and they started MJ Independent saying it was to be their fortune.

Sorry guys - Nick and Garrett - but I told you you are not going to make a nickel off of the media. Not without major up front investment.

With the demise of the Times-Herald I simply continued on with my column Rhino’s Ramblings that I use to write for the Moose Jaw Times-Herald.

I came over to MJ Independent ready to return to writing, to just get these guys started, for a year and then I was gone. In the end it was exactly the opposite.

A return for me to the wonderful world of print after my local newspaper days close to 30 years before.

Rhino’s Ramblings was really something for me to do. To try to make sense in the world I suppose after I was cut lose from my previous employment with a terminal medical prognosis.

I really had two choices at that point in my life.

To do something or simply stay at home be a medical recluse and literally die of boredom.

So I decided to just use the skills and talents God gave to me and I picked up along the way including a decade on and off in Russia.

When you experience severe physical trauma there is always a price to pay through your life.

Things never do come back together so to speak and the physical pain just lingers on. it is always there it will never go away. I remember going from just being ordinary and then being hit in the back with what at best felt like a sledgehammer.

A vest will protect you but steel on steel causes trauma. It breaks bones and damages soft tissue and organs underneath.

There is nothing all of the courses you can take in combat journalism in the world that will protect you.

You just learn to live with it is the best way to put it. Either that or you give up and move along.

I can think back over eight years ago and being in Ukraine.

The gun shots and the violence I witnessed at the 2014 May Day Parade in Odessa are still there but they are just like so much I have witnessed in my life. Too much violence.

I remember Belgorod, Grozny and Pyatigorsk over two decades ago now. Good things, bad things and horrors that will eat you alive if you let them.

The people I met in Novosibirsk as a probably their worst budding student.

I remember being told the stories of one of my relatives during the Russian Civil War in Novonikolayevsk and how as a medical doctor he stayed behind to care to the invalids from the war with Japan.

An old Don Cossack who has a brief mention in the history books for successfully running the Bolsheviks out of town with a group of equally old and wounded warriors on their one last ride.

Their penance for the 1905 failure at Port Artur.

I remember most the little things from my travels.

I remember someone I met in Russia and after about three hours of being with them they and their friends said “they (foreigners) are just like us.”

Myself with Governor Viktor Tolokonsky. Tolokonsky is the former governor of Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk. Presently under sanctions

I have met the political heavyweights in my travels and was even on a first name basis with Boris Nemtsov during his Union of Right Forces days until President Vladimir Putin (sorry I cannot prove it) decided to have someone murder him.

I think about so, so many journalists, including classmates, I have met over the years who have sadly met the same fate in Russia, Ukraine and Kazhakstan. Murdered for simply reporting the truth.

For shining the light of truth where some people don’t want it shone.

Life is a progression. You take the things you learn from it and you do your best to move ahead.

People ask me about being in the porch watching our local Tactical Unit about what happened and if I was scared. No I was not. If I was scared the video and photographs would have been shaky.

Being scared is not some sort of a he man masculine thing. You have to recognize the dangers and respect what is going on.

If you are ever confronted with the same situation - DO NOT DO IT. I learnt my skills professionally.

Being scared is being alone in the Donbass region of Ukraine in 2014 and you hear a gun jam by your ear. Since then I have been back to Lugansk three times and I am guessing the fourth will likely be my last.

It is like someone here locally told me about a week ago - your story and film is more important than your life. And yes that is how I was trained.

As I look back to MJ Independent as I reflect on my past and what the future holds I simply look at what is best.

There are so many stories in this community - both big and small - that are just out there dying which need to be told.

I don’t get paid for what I do here and in fact it costs me thousands of dollars to do what I am doing.

In many ways I actually do drool when I look at it. I have more than enough equipment now to shoot a very decent documentary. Something I am striving for.

It is why the photographs have improved so much and what sent me out to cover more high school sports.

But with that said I think about the community here and now over five years ago when I decided to write again and try to fill a still gaping hole between the coverage and the oh so many stories that need to be covered or an extra eye and depth added to it.

If you take a look at the entire background of our own Moose Jaw Police Services(MJPS) budget. Some might say I have failed in that I was unable to get more details about how 22 percent of our local property taxes are spent. Which is true.

But then again it is only partially true.

You need to look at what has happened at the Moose Jaw Board of Police Commissioners and how in January of this year they all of a sudden started to receive monthly budget updates from the MJPS. Something this Board of Police Commissioners had not been receiving before.

You need to ask yourself why all of sudden this occurred?

My guess it has something with me asking Mayor Clive Tolley for more details of the MJPS budget almost a year ago now and the Freedom Of Information request I submitted.

This is just my own opinion but nothing happens coincidentally and if you put pressure in the right place you do not need a great expose to hold people accountable.

Don’t believe take a look at the coverage in the local media about the Moose Jaw Board of Police Commissioners and how they are now reporting way more financial stories about the MJPS than they did in the period 12 - 24 months ago.

Coincidence???

Or take a look at the often stated homeless numbers of “at least a 100” and how now those figures have been 100 percent discounted as FALSE. That came about by our looking at the statistics and then asking questions to Mayor Clive Tolley.

Now are their homeless in Moose Jaw? Yes you bet there is.

Is there a need to find a solution? Yes but by using obviously false numbers to go grant hunting with I am wondering if the right approach is being taken here.

I am not saying studying the issue to death but what I am saying is there are limited tax dollars and public patience with this and a targeted Moose Jaw specific approach may well be the answer.

It is not all about grant writing and filling the bureaucrats pockets. Something we have seen oh so too often in Moose Jaw by grant farmers looking for the next financial band-aid.

It is about the people who are homeless and getting them somehow to live a more normal life and not worry about freezing and being hungry in the cold.

That is the nature of local news.

News which sometimes may only be important to a few but at the same time it is as equally important as the big national or even international news story.

I quite honestly don’t pay a lot of attention to analytics. But this year as I pondered finally closing the virtual doors and archiving this great body of work I took a look at the numbers.

To my surprise as I look at all of the previous Octobers that October 2022 MJ Independent produced 70 stories and we had our largest readership of any October - ever.

It made the decision so much easier.

With that said I have decided to commit yet another year of putting out MJ Independent.

Please stand by.