DAD KNEW HIS HEMP

But Weekend Expo Would Shock Him

My old man lives on as a god in the world of hemp, a sainted king of cannabis.

Not a ganja god like Bob Marley or Cheech and Chong.

But CBC never wrote a ballad about Cheech and Chong. And Kentucky
never made Bob Marley an honorary colonel.

My dad's spirit is all over the first Medical Marijuana and Hemp Expo
this weekend. Where's it held? A back alley in Kensington? A basement
in the Beach? A secret meadow in Meaford?

Nossirree. The Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Your hemp's gone
Hollywood, Pop.

Joe Strobel Dreams Marijuana Dreams, the Los Angeles Times proclaimed in 1994.

"Mr. Strobel, a lively, 65-year-old retired physical education
teacher, has become the hemp movement's top salesman." the story said.

"He brings to the crusade the kind of bouncy enthusiasm that once led
him to develop a fitness program called the Health Hustle, which has
been adopted by schools throughout Canada and in parts of the United States."

Lively? Bouncy? Sheeesh. We Strobel men hate being called that.

Small price to pay for the cause, my dad figured.

The Times guy and other scribblists had descended on the family
tobacco farm near Tillsonburg to witness hemp history.

A year earlier, we got the first experimental licence to grow
cannabis in North America since the Second World War.

Ten acres, hidden from sight. Mounties on patrol.

The stuff grew like, well, like weed. It towered over my dad, who was six feet.

Man, those were high times.

Dad's cannabis sativa was so low in THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the
business end of pot, that your lungs would implode long before you got high.

But you can't tell potheads anything. They regularly ran the RCMP
gauntlet to snatch samples.

One guy left a bottle of wine and a thank-you note in our mailbox.

Dad told media the harvest was stored "in a secret location." In
fact, it was stacked in a neighbour's shed and soon to be turned into
particle board, or some such wonderful use for hemp, other than inhalation.

The old man's eyes would bug out at what they make out of hemp
nowadays, besides rope.

Soap, salad oil, massage oil, ice cream, jeans, socks, underwear,
wallets, tents, chairs, candles, candy, paint, beer .

It's in many car door panels. You can mix it with yogurt, drizzle it
on pasta, or slather it on your lips.

And you were thinking brownies, right?

My dad was an uneasy ally of the potheads and their "happy stuff."

And this Expo has both sellers of good shirts and sellers of good sh--.

"I'm still in shock that this show can be, in a place like this, in
downtown Toronto," Cliff Wiltshire, 53, tells me during setup yesterday.

Not even the snack shop is ready. I assume they're ordering extra potato chips.

Cliff owns Rasta Troll, a head shop in Nanaimo, B.C. His wares
include bongs, pipes, vaporizers, grinders. Sounds like a sausage
shop, but it's not.

Other booths sell seeds from Amsterdam. I was there in April. You can
get a joint nearly as easily as a Heineken, not that I use either.
The current rage is "magic" truffles.

This Expo is geared to legal use of medical pot. But, frankly, you
can buy a bong or a baggie of seeds of Dutch Passion blueberry pot,
even if you're healthy as a horse.

The Dutch have the right idea. Make pot legal, control it, and the
criminals are out. And imagine the tax goldmine.

Besides, I hate to break it to you, but most of your kids, your
neighbours and your co-workers indulge in a little weed now and then.
It ain't going away.

But back to the Expo.

Local exhibitors include Kushh, a head shop above a Starbucks at
Bathurst and Wilson, in North York, far from funky Queen St.

"Five years ago, the shop could not have happened up there," says
manager Carlie MacPherson, 23. "But we aren't seen as criminals
anymore. This is a growth industry."

So, party down at the convention centre. Don't forget to raise a toke to my dad.