MLA'S DAUGHTER IS POT-RALLY ORGANIZER

Taylors Agree To Disagree About Illegal Substance

Veteran Tory MLA Brooke Taylor's daughter is one of the main organizers
behind metro's Canada Day marijuana rally that blows smoke in the face of
authority every July 1.

Julie Taylor has helped run the event - where huge crowds of people gather
to flaunt Canada's drug laws and smoke pot openly - since it started here
in 1996.

"We don't really talk about it, because it's definitely not a cause that is
his," the pleasant young woman, who works as a body piercer, said of her
father, the deputy House Speaker.

"But at the same time, I don't think anyone expects anyone to have control
over their 30-year-old child."

Other rally organizers have brothers and sisters who are RCMP officers, she
said. "So, it is odd."

Brooke Taylor, 51, said decriminalizing marijuana is not one of his
priorities, though he does believe there is some justification for its
medical use.

The MLA said he's had "numerous conversations" with his daughter about the
illegal weed.

"There's a lot of areas, quite frankly, where we disagree," he said.

Despite their differences, Brooke Taylor calls his eldest child a "very
intelligent young lady."

"I still love my daughter, and I'm proud of her," he said. "However, she is
not probably receiving the support from me she would like to."

The Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley representative admitted he has smoked
marijuana before.

"Unlike Bill Clinton, I have to breathe in and out to exist," Brooke Taylor
said, referring to the former U.S. president's admission that he once
smoked pot, but didn't inhale.

Julie Taylor said she's never been contacted by police over her marijuana
activism. And cops don't seem to pay much attention to the pot rallies, she
said.

"The first thing people get told at Cannabis Day is stay in the centre (of
the crowd), because they're not going to arrest us if we're together," she
said.

Metro's first Cannabis Day - as organizers bill the event - took place on
the Dartmouth Common.

Since then, the event moved to the Halifax Common to accommodate more pot
enthusiasts. But today, it is crossing the harbour once again for another
smoke-in on the Dartmouth Common, starting at 2 p.m.

"We're not going to do a rock concert this year," said Julie Taylor.

"We're concentrating on talking."

But after the serious speeches on decriminalizing marijuana wind up at 4:20
p.m., organizers promise in a news release "the biggest joint east of
Vancouver" will be lit.

"People will probably only get it once," said Julie Taylor.

"Everyone will want a hit off of that."

She wants other people to get involved in organizing the annual ganja
rallies. But Julie Taylor's not giving up the fight to decriminalize marijuana.

"I'm going to go and smoke weed in public every July 1, until I'm free to
grow it on my doorstep," she said. "I want there to be no laws about it,
just like there's no laws about tomatoes."