Dedicated readers of The Outlook newspaper may know that every week, we feature a retrospective piece called ‘Stored Stories’ in which we highlight news points from the pages of this newspaper that date back as far as 100 years ago.
It’s something that runs specifically in the print edition, so if you’re curious about checking it out, better hit the newsstand each week or call us for a subscription!
*shameless plugging disengaged*
Now you have to realize that as far back as 100 years ago, The Outlook was a very, very different newspaper. I mean, heck, we’re literally talking about two different centuries here! The front page contained very few to no photographs, just long blocks of text with the intention of jamming as many articles on the front as humanly possible. On top of that, unlike today where our sole focus is giving you local news about local events and happenings, the paper contained news articles and tidbits from all over the province and even across the country.
So it just so happened that as I was writing this week’s ‘Stored Stories’, I came across a very grisly and descriptive story that appeared in The Outlook 100 years ago this week. Apparently, a man from Moose Jaw named William Bromley, an employee of the Dominion Express Company at the time, had just absolutely snapped on one particular night while his wife was out for the evening attending a “picture show”. Bromley had apparently become so irritated and incensed at his children making so much excessive noise that he took a razor and actually murdered all five of them. I swear, I’m not making some sick joke! I’ll show you the article myself if you come by the office!
I’ve written ‘Stored Stories’ for the last few years so I eventually realized that it wasn’t entirely uncommon to read about someone tragically drowning in the South Saskatchewan River back in those days, but an account of a father going ballistic and slaughtering his own children? In OUR newspaper?!? That definitely got my attention.
But it got me to thinking about some of the more alarming stories that I myself have had to write in my 11.5 years here. The landscape may have been a little more like the Wild West 100 years ago, but we’re not exactly immune to shock, tragedy or controversy at times these days, either. In our biz, that’s what’s called ‘hard news’; those ‘breaking news’ articles that put a jolt up your spine for a while as everyone gets caught up in the emotion of it all.
For example:
The Broderick murder: During the middle of the night back in March 2010 in the sleepy village of Broderick, Brigitt Blanchard took a steak knife and violently attacked her boyfriend, Rick Murphy. Rick tragically died from his injuries, which included 22 wounds in total, with more than half of them in and around his skull. The death shook up this entire community and Murphy’s funeral was the definition of what happens when a grieving family has friends, neighbors, and even complete strangers to lean on in the hardest of times.
I don’t mind telling you that Blanchard’s trial one year later really tested me as a reporter because I felt I was doing some kind of balancing act. I was compelled to tell the facts as I heard them in a court of law, yet I also felt a need to ‘cushion the verbal blow’ so to speak because I was writing about a family that I knew and who I knew was still grieving very hard and dealing with a world of heartache.
I think the hardest thing I witnessed during that trial was Rick Murphy’s dear friend Ken take to the stand and proceed to break down multiple times during questioning. The heartbreaker was Ken’s revelation to the court room that he had actually been awakened by the sound of Rick screaming in the dead of the night, but had thought nothing of it. My heart just broke for the guy, but I still jotted down notes and quotes to use. I’ve never felt like more of a robot in this job, and from that point on I made a vow to inject more humanity into my writing. Hopefully, readers have seen that humanity.
Sometimes the hard news gets hard to write. It’s even harder to write when you’re someone who may know the people involved.
But we write it because you deserve to know what’s happening; good, bad, or ugly.
As for the once-sane William Bromley? The article says he was being kept at a Regina jail until his trial in November. I guess we’ll all have to wait until I’m writing ‘Stored Stories’ for that month to see if there was any update on the trial of Ole Razor Bill.
For this week, that’s been the Ruttle Report.
