BEAVIS AND BERTON?

Famous History Buff Talks To CBC About Marijuana Matters

Asked where he gets his weed, Pierre Berton doesn't hedge at all on an
answer. Says Canada's most famous history buff: "From my kids."

Berton says that and much more in an upcoming CBC-TV special about matters
marijuana entitled Play goes to Pot. That he's smoked up for close to 40
years now. That, unsurprisingly, he thinks that some of the laws around the
Woody Harrelson puff are draconian. That he might have minded talking
openly about this 30 or 40 years ago, but now he doesn't care because
"people just think I'm a batty old man." That, although he once famously
quipped that "a Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe,"
he absolutely does not believe in getting "stoned" and canoeing.

Jian Ghomeshi, the interestingly-haired host of the in-depth special, tells
me that the 84-year-old author, who just completed his 50th book, was
"fragile but lucid" when he visited him at his country home last month.
Speaking further about this particular segment in the special -- some may
call it Beavis and Berton -- the CBC boldface says that getting the views
of the Canadian legend was important because he's such an icon and "there
isn't a more authoritative author in the Canadian pantheon." Furthermore,
says Ghomeshi, "he flies in the face of the stereotype of the Canadian
counter-culture smoker."

Among the others who appear in Play goes to Pot: Tommy Chong of Cheech and
Chong fame (who Ghomeshi interviewed in a California jail where Chong is
serving time for selling bongs on the Internet), Vancouver Mayor Larry
Campbell (who looks as proud as the mom of a kid who won the school
spelling bee when told that Vancouver is the pot capital of Canada), and
Michelle Philips of the Mamas and Papas (a prepubescent fantasy of
Ghomeshi's from way back, and also more recently when, as Ghomeshi reminds
me, she played Kelly's mom on Beverly Hills 90210).

The pot culture special airs Friday night on the main CBC network at 11:30
ET, and repeats on Newsworld the following day.