PORT BOOSTERS PUSHING HEMP CONNECTION

PRESCOTT -- With industrial hemp making a mini comeback as a
legitimate Canadian crop after 60 years languishing as a banned
substance, some people are already starting to think big about the
future potential ... very big.

A group of like-minded individuals gathered earlier this week at the
Port of Prescott for a tour and a discussion of how trafficking in
hemp, marijuana's stable alter-ego, might help revive the fortunes of
the underused processing, storage and shipping facility.

The big thinkers came to the right place. One of the largest
structures on the St. Lawrence Seaway west of Montreal, the massive
port and grain elevator operation dates back -- perhaps a harbinger of
things to come again -- to the days before popular and useful hemp was
banned by federal authorities, to the days when it was farmed as
routinely as corn.

The visitors knew that, for the past two years, Canada Ports
Corporation has been trying to divest itself of its grey elephant at
Prescott. There was no commercial interest in its offer and now the
corporation is poised to turn it over to the municipality in which it
sits. That municipality is Edwardsburgh Township which entered into
serious discussions with federal officials earlier this year
concerning the future of the regional landmark. After several deadline
extensions, both sides hope to come to finalize an agreement within
weeks.

The precedent for municipal ownership has been set at Port Colborne
where the federal corporation, after months of negotiations, is about
to ink a final agreement with the city, allowing it to download its
considerably smaller operations there.

Edwardsburgh Township has a vested interest in seeing the Port of
Prescott continue as a viable entity: With a federal grant in lieu of
taxes of about $360,000 going into municipal coffers every year, the
port is the largest single contributor to Edwardsburgh's revenues,
says administrator Richard Bennett: "Somehow, we've got to do whatever
we can to preserve what's there," he says, adding the facility employs
as many as 40 full and part-time local residents.

With an assessed commercial value of $4-$5 million, the Port of
Prescott "package" includes a terminal category grain elevator;
loading and unloading services for trucks, trains and vessels; bulk
commodity storage; a marina, restaurant and about 20 cottages sitting
on leased federal land.

The elevator offers cleaning, drying and storing for up to 154,000
tonnes of wheat or other grains; the port property also stores Eastern
Ontario's annual 218,000-tonne requirement of road salt which it
receives from Goderich and Windsor; and it ships out an equivalent
amount of crushed stone.

A price even approximating the commercial value will not be part of a
final deal reached with Edwardsburgh, both parties acknowledge. It's
more likely the sum will be a token one, considering that one level of
government is transferring taxpayers' property to another level. But
how to keep the operation up and running after it's acquired?

Turn it into a hemp receiving, processing, and shipping centre, says
Ottawa's Don Dean, one of the recent visitors to the port who wants to
set up a Ukraine-style co-operative to make it happen.

Owner of a consulting business called Hempen Heritage, the diminutive
Dean is a hemp guru who got turned on to the plant's industrial and
commercial possibilities after touring the former U.S.S.R. right after
its collapse and seeing first-hand the high regard in which the crop
was held.

Dean, who lives a life of "voluntary simplicity," is a former
helicopter mechanic who spent several years in the North West
Territories. He claims to have inadvertently supplied an impressive
portion of the tonnes of hemp's naughty nemesis -- marijuana --
instrumental in the success of the infamous Woodstock hippy hoe-down
more than a quarter century ago.

For most of this decade, Dean has been singing the praises of hemp and
was instrumental in the national lobby which finally led to the
plant's return to legalized respectability earlier this year.

Dean has a dream... to turn the Port of Prescott into an eastern
Canada and US centre of excellence for the production and processing
of hemp. It's a dream that's beginning to be shared by several other
people who want to see hemp return big-time and who want to see the
port survive. The way Don sees it, the port would receive ships from
Ukraine laden with certified hemp seed which would then be planted
throughout Eastern Ontario, with the crop returned to Prescott for
processing and shipping to markets throughout North America. He's also
talking of further processing, for example, of manufacturing ice cream
from hemp seed oil, a process which is already well
established.

After visiting the Prescott elevator, Dean says it's in good shape and
already well-equipped to serve the needs of a hemp centre. For no more
than $100,000, a few items such as a seed dehuller and an oil press
could be added to the inventory to allow advanced processing.

Dean notes the facility is extremely well situated with about 70% of
the potential market lying across the river into the US where
cultivation of hemp remains illegal, but where there's a huge demand
for products made from the plant's fibre and seeds.

His piece de resistance would be to acquire a used, fully-equipped
factory ship which would be berthed at the port to be used to flash
freeze hemp food products, as well as serve as backup power source in
the event of a major hydro outage such as that which occurred as a
result of January's ice storm. Partly because nobody has come up with
a better plan, port and municipal officials are taking Dean quite
seriously. The process of reinventing the port has so far proved to be
quite futile, says Prescott general manager Ray Robusky. While there
has been talk of alternate uses, there has been little hard cash to
back it up.

While an engineering study has confirmed the elevator and associated
services aren't "A-1 spanking new," they've been certified to be in
very good working condition, Robusky says.

Traffic at Port of Prescott began to decline with the opening of the
Seaway 40 years ago. Once a mandatory stop for smaller grain-laden
ships plying the river, the deeper Seaway resulted in Prescott being
bypassed by larger boats headed for larger centres. Robusky estimates
25-30 vessels now stop at Prescott on a yearly basis, only a fraction
of former traffic.

Do Dean and his hemp hipsters think a new traffic jam might be right
around the corner?

Checked-by: Patrick Henry