Duane Hicks
A local medical marijuana wellness clinic is “growing.”
One year after opening Rainy River Cannabis Collective (RRCC) here, Angela and Brad Olson opened a second location in Thunder Bay last week–and are eyeing future expansions.
“It has been equal parts rewarding and equal parts blood, sweat, and tears,” Angela Olson said of RRCC’s first year in business after opening its doors at 520 Scott St. on Jan. 16, 2017.
“It’s been great. We’ve helped a lot of people,” she noted.
“There’s been blood, sweat and tears but I think when you’re as passionate about the industry as we are, you don’t feel it,” Olson added.
“You just go through it.”
Since opening here last January, RRCC has helped more than 1,600 patients, also known as “members.” About 980 of them hail from Rainy River District, with the balance living across Canada.
“I knew we were going to do well,” Olson said. “I knew it was important work.
“But what was surprising to me was the amount of people that came to us from across the country,” she admitted.
“We’ve got patients everywhere from B.C. to Nova Scotia.
“So what that tells me is there’s not enough places like us sprinkled throughout the country because they’re having to go to someone like me so far away,” Olson reasoned.
“I think you and I would agree it would be better if there was something closer to them.”
In addition to expanding to sites in Dryden, Kenora, and Winnipeg, and opening a licensed production facility in Thunder Bay, future plans could include spreading the RRCC brand even further abroad.
“If we’re getting that many patients coast-to-coast, I think we can make a good case that this business model works, this business model satisfies the Supreme Court’s requirement for reasonable access for medical users,” Olson remarked.
“And I think that this business model could be copied coast-to-coast.
“We’re always going to stick in the Northwestern Ontario area,” she added. “We want to do what we do really well and we want to care for our own, but one thing we’re eyeing up is franchising out these clinics across the country.
“Hopefully, these provinces are making sure that medical patients are getting all of this good stuff–not just a bag of cannabis,” she stressed.
“They need more than that.”
Every one of 1,600-plus members has seen RRCC’s full-time physician, Dr. Stephen Brake, either in-person or via telemedicine, and provided proof of their medical condition(s), Olson noted.
After getting their prescription, most have moved on to growing their own medicine.
“We love that,” Olson enthused. “We really love to see people be self-sufficient and take their health into their own hands.
“It’s been great,” she added. “We’ve designed some grow rooms and some systems for some folks, and taught them how to grow and how to harvest and how cure and make the products they want to make.”
Olson said the fact that people are using these support services to such an extent here indicates senior levels of government should be focusing less on recreational marijuana and more on its medicinal use.
“What we need to do is create more services on the medicinal side of things, and then if you are going to work on the medicinal side of things, make sure that you’re hitting all of the points that we hit,” she noted.
“Our patients use all of those services, and that’s probably not a unique thing to Fort Frances,” she added.
“That’s probably a good indication that medical patients need those services.
“We’re actually creating best practices and industry standards, and we can actually share what we’ve learned so that the government can make an informed choice on what they require from someone working on the medical side of things,” Olson said.
“Because we know what people want and use, we can voice that and make sure the government requires that of anyone else entering the industry.”
Olson said RRCC’s work is not just important because they’re helping patients right now, but because the work they do can be tapped into by the government to create best practices for the industry.
“We’re almost like a really cool little petri dish here in Fort Frances,” she remarked.
Any questions? Contact “Rainy River Cannabis Collective” on Facebook or drop by their Scott Street location.
