THE RETURN OF SIR TALK-A-LOT

It's Fast - And Noisy - When Activist Marc Emery Returns To His Roots.

It's Friday morning, and Marc Emery is eating breakfast in a downtown hotel.

At first, there's seems nothing noteworthy about this. Apart from the
fact that the London native is quite possibly the world's leading
marijuana activist -- a man who has been targeted for extradition by
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and who has returned to his
hometown to see a new play about his life -- there seems little out
of the ordinary.

Only later, after following Emery around the city for five hours,
does it occur to me how extra-ordinary this moment is.

Because right now, Emery is silent.

After I join him at his breakfast table, Emery introduces me to his
partner, Jodie Giesz-Ramsay. In addition to living together, the two
Vancouverites co-ordinate the multi-pronged aspects of Emery's
pro-pot empire: Cannabis Culture magazine, Pot TV (an online news
service), the B.C. Marijuana Party, the B.C. Marijuana Party bookshop
and a "vapour lounge" where patrons inhale the fruits of his efforts.

Emery, who spews words like a blowtorch emits heat, launches into an
excited ramble about the actor portraying him in a local play and
how, according to a Free Press review, the last line of the play ("Oh
God, I am so sick of being right all the time!") is so apt.

"I am always right!" he says.

Giesz-Ramsay nods. Then Emery slides into an animated rant about the
unreliability of eyewitness accounts and how people constantly fall
victim to their own self-deceptions.

As he talks, his eggs and bacon sit on the plate, slowly going cold.

In the lobby of CJBK radio on Wellington Road, Emery waits for an
on-air interview with News Talk 1290 hosts Scott Kitching and Shauna Rae.

As he waits, Emery explains how he's been invited to attend a weekend
conference for activists in Toronto. He says he'll be meeting some of
his supporters, including a Woodstock OPP officer who sent him a
donation and complained that while police drug units boast budgets of
increasing size, homicide divisions struggle to make ends meet.

While he leafs through a glossy wedding magazine from a nearby table,
Emery promises to say "something outrageous" during the opening
minutes of the show to ensure lots of callers.

During the hour-long live radio show, Emery explains how he is facing
a sentence of 30 years to life in the United States for selling
marijuana seeds to Americans through his mail-order Internet service.
Last July, the thriving business was shut down by Vancouver police,
acting at the request of U.S. authorities.

Emery dismisses an on-air suggestion he's in it for personal gain,
claiming to have given away about $4 million in profits to various
radical political causes.

"I used that money to subvert the democratic process," he says. "To
get our people free from bondage and legalize marijuana."

When asked to defend his prideful personality, Emery argues that
anyone who's confident and trying to spread a message has to be arrogant.

"But all that evades the central issue," he says. "Is what I'm saying true?"

Strangely, for the first half of the radio show, there are no
callers. Perhaps sensing this, Emery quips that, "If there weren't
Nazis in Ottawa, what would I be doing?"

After the radio bit, Emery admits that when he received the notice of
extradition from U.S. authorities, "time froze."

"I realized I'd finally got the battle I'd been waiting for," he
says. "Now I'd have the final combat, because ultimately this battle
will go on unless something really dramatic happens.

"I've always believed that someone has to die in order to change
these marijuana laws," he says. "So I've been a willing sacrifice to
this cause. And I wasn't surprised. I've never been scared of it. . .
. I'm looking forward to the confrontation."

I suggest to Emery that his electric energy belies the classic
stereotype of the lazy stoner.

"We're stuck with the Cheech and Chong paradigm," he says. "A lot of
people who we associate with productive, energetic lifestyles are not
telling people they smoke marijuana."

Once again, Emery insists the prohibition on pot is mainly an attack
on alternative lifestyles.

"Once we've smoked marijuana . . . we see everything as the fraud and
phoney nature that it is," he says. "Governments need conformity and
they need obedience, and marijuana fosters the exact opposite."

Back at his former Richmond Street business, City Lights book shop,
young employees stand around sheepishly as current co-owner Teresa
Tarasewicz shows Emery around his old digs.

Maybe they're not so much sheepish. Maybe it's more a case of nobody
can get a word in edgewise.

Emery walks amid the shelves, pointing out titles ("In 17 years, I
never sold a single book by that guy"), analysing floor plans ("The
porn has to be where the staff can see it, or customers steal stuff")
and offering advice about online sales.

Later, he recounts how he started his first business at age nine (he
sold postage stamps by mail order), wrote his first letter to the
editor at age 14 (he complained about the continuity of the Little
Orphan Annie comic strip) and how someone once told him there are
mainly four famous Londoners: Guy Lombardo, Slippery the Seal, former
TV host Jenny Jones and him.

"I outlasted Jenny Jones," he quips. "I'm not sure I'll outlast Guy Lombardo."

It's mid-afternoon, and Emery is posing for pictures on the set of
the play about his life. As he does, he talks about how greatly his
late father influenced him.

Alfred Emery, he says, always encouraged his son to forge ahead,
follow his instincts and do what he had to do -- and then talk to him
later about the results.

"He was a great teacher without words," says Emery.

As I wander out of the art gallery/theatre and onto Dundas Street, I
hear Emery in the background.

He's still talking.

MARC EMERY IN LONDON

- -1975 -- Opens City Lights, a used book store on Richmond Street.

- - Begins three-year fight against London Downtown Business
Association for extracting mandatory fees from all core shops for
beautification programs.

- - 1984 -- Campaigns against London's bid to host the 1991 Pan
American Games, saying the city will lose millions.

- - Founds the Freedom Party of Ontario.

- - 1990 -- Rents Museum London for first pro-pot rally.

- - 1991 -- Defies the province's Sunday shopping laws, spending time
in jail, and campaigns against London's bylaw prohibiting sidewalk signs.

- - 1992 -- Convicted for selling copies of 2 Live Crew rap music
video, which was deemed obscene by the courts.

- - 1992 -- Sells City Lights, moves to Sumatra.

- - 1993 -- Moves back to Canada and establishes his pot empire in
Vancouver, including founding the Cannabis Culture magazine, opening
several pot and hemp-related enterprises -- evolving from mail-order
to Internet ventures -- and appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1998.

- - Tangles with U.S. drug officials, attending a $500-a-table
Vancouver speaking engagement for John Walters, Washington's drug czar.

- - 2003 -- Smokes marijuana cigarette in front of London police
headquarters on Dundas Street.

- - Has also: hired a "parking meter Santa Claus" to put coins in
expired or soon-to-be expired meters to fend off tow trucks, attacked
smoking bylaws, unions and strikes, taxes and socialized medicine,
and condemned the school system as "prisons for children" and taught
his two sons at home.