A HARVEST AND A CELEBRATION

We've created a medical marijuana research cell while I expect my appeal
for legal access will be heard this year.

Waiting for guests to arrive, those well enough to come, I was glad my
84-year-old father and I are alive to talk about this crop. I'm his gay son
who grew up in Saskatchewan not wanting to get my hands dirty. Dad still
lives in Saskatchewan. Tonight friends with Section 56 exemptions and
caregivers were gathering in Toronto to celebrate a bountiful harvest of
premium strains of marijuana.

It was Friday, October 13: my 56th birthday. A full moon was rising. I felt
lucky.

My friend Kathy had prepared roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, mashed potatoes
and gravy, fresh vegetables, asparagus, onions, red and yellow peppers,
carrots, and loaves of sweet nut bread. A divine chocolate cake was set to
one side. Candles were lit as we sampled fresh buds of marijuana, laughing
and voting for favorite photographs shot at the plants' flowering stage.
Sweet smells of marijuana mingled with those from the feast. AIDS drugs
would go down easier and they'd stay down tonight. Vision, my favorite
cannabis sativa strain, acclaimed for its cerebral "high," was first choice
among the photographs.

Our exemptions had been well exercised. We are some of the handful of
Canadians who've been granted exemptions from the Controlled Drugs and
Substances Act by the Federal Minister of Health. I won a constitutional
exemption in the Ontario Superior Court, May 10, 1999. Illusory exemptions
subsequently created by Federal bureaucrats allow us to use and cultivate
marijuana for medical purposes, but as yet we have no legal access. No one
is allowed to help us get it or grow it. This right without remedy will be
argued again before the Ontario Court of Appeal this year. We are forced to
rely on the black market with its risks and prohibitive costs. It's an
intolerable situation.

Inspired by the work of Valerie Corral in Santa Cruz, Calif., we had pooled
our exemptions and formed a medical marijuana collective. Last spring,
while in Vancouver researching Wakeford's Wagons, a proposed meal program
for people with AIDS in Toronto, I met Hilary Black, founder of the British
Columbia Compassion Society. Hilary kindly introduced me to an experienced
medical marijuana grower who generously donated some of his finest strains
of marijuana sativas and indicas to the Toronto collective.

We were given clones, tiny fragile baby marijuana plants, carefully cut
from their mothers and gently placed in a cooler. Growing from clones
provides more assurance of female plants than growing from seeds. It's only
the female plants that yield medicine. Males are good for breeding.
Flowering female marijuana plants form resinous aromatic buds, the source
of the medicine. I thought of the clones as my little green girls.

Secure on the luggage rack above my head, I flew the clones to Toronto. I
put them on platters lined with wet paper towels under 24 hours of
continuous light and regularly fed them a special nutrient solution to
facilitate rooting. Within two weeks long white roots were shooting from
the clones' bottoms. They were in potting soil June 8.

Vision! Juicy fruit! Northern Lights! Blue Truck! We'd drooled over
photographs of them in magazines and here they were, in little pots on my
balcony. Oh my god! Is this really happening? Will they survive? Giddy with
excitement and apprehension I wondered if I'd be healthy enough to grow them.

Early in June I rigged up a clear plastic tarp to protect them from heavy
rainfalls. The tarp was rolled up on sunny days. By July small plants had
developed. The tarp was no longer necessary. Soon they needed larger pots
and by late July even bigger ones. When they outgrew the upstairs balcony,
five were moved to the downstairs balcony. They became known as my upstairs
girls and my downstairs girls. Weekly feedings of donated nutrients helped
them flourish. Late September, flowering plants formed sweet, sticky,
scented buds. Leaves yellowed and fell from stems. They'd soon have their
last feeding of nutrients. They'd be watered until harvest.

If only we'd done so well. Most of us, including me, got sick at different
times throughout the spring and summer. One was admitted for short-term
care to the hospice. Some had to adjust to changed chemotherapy regimes. It
was a difficult, stressful period. Recurring mite infestations threatened
the plants. They, too, had to be treated. Sometimes I was too sick. I
worried the crop would be ruined.

In October, the plants were cut down, hung to dry, trimmed, cured, then
weighed and divided among the exemptees. The harvest was over.

It turns out what I'd been doing all summer was cultivating an experimental
farm. We will determine which strains of marijuana sativas and indicas help
and how. Some of us are wasting. We must manage rough AIDS chemotherapy
effects -- puking, nausea, anxiety. Some of us are in pain. Some suffer
from depression and insomnia. We've had to make do with street-quality
marijuana until now. This is a whole new ball game.

We've established a medical marijuana research cell. I know this is a
temporary measure. It's another small step toward ensuring Canadians' right
to use marijuana for medical purposes.

People are helping me keep track, as health and circumstances permit, of
how this marijuana helps. This research is personal, subjective and anecdotal.

I expect my appeal for legal access to marijuana I am legally allowed to
use (and for caregiver immunity) will be heard this year.

AIDS runs at a faster pace than courts and governments. People with AIDS
live with urgency.

We're racing the virus.

As the celebration drew to a close and we said our farewells I was struck
by how little time we may have left.

"Farmer" Jim Wakeford lives in Toronto.