FLIN FLON HAS TOTALLY GONE TO POT

In days of yore, before the federal government decided to get into the drug
harvesting business, the pride of Flin Flon - a little mining town stuck in
the rocky folds of the Canadian shield - was divided between Bobby Clarke
and the size and quantity of their insects.

On one of the two roads into the only North American town named after a
cartoon character, a billboard proudly informed visitors they were entering
the birthplace of a famous hockey player. Tourist shops, on the other hand,
offered T-shirts with pictures of a giant mosquito and a slogan that read:
"I gave blood in Flin Flon, Manitoba."

But in recent years, the town of 8,000 has found another claim to fame: it
has become the site of Canada's first medicinal pot program. Tourist shop
T-shirts boast that Flin Flon is now "the pot-growing capital of the world"
and all of a sudden, it's cool for me to admit that I grew up there.

Since had become now something akin to a tourist destination, I visited
Flin Flon last summer expecting the town to be reeling from its newfound
celebrity. It wasn't. The poster town for hockey, mosquitoes and medicinal
marijuana was exactly the same as I had left it. All the guys who had dents
in their hair from ballcaps in high school still had dents in their hair
from ballcaps. All the girls became hairdressers and talked nasty about all
the other girls who became hairdressers. All in all, people were mainly
excited about the new Wal-Mart. The pot mine? Who cares? Only one guy we
went to school with works there and he has no illegitimate children or
psycho ex-girlfriends of which to speak. It's far more interesting to talk
about the town's latest procreation sensations or about all the people who
got jobs at Wal-Mart.

I did what befitted a former Flin Flonner and got my eyebrows waxed, my
hair cut and listened to tales of scandal and questionable paternity.
Seeking a deeper purpose for my trip, I stopped in at the local bar to
check out who got fat, and ran into the one guy I know who works at the pot
mine. We proceeded to have a long and meaningful conversation in which I
used all my investigative journalistic skills to find out what really goes
on underground.

Here's what I got out of him.

Me: Sooo, I hear you work at the pot mine.

Guy Who Works At Pot Mine: Didn't you move?

Me: I, uh, hear you're in charge of quality control (hee, hee).

GWWAPM: Yup.

Me: Sooooo, what'd ya have to do to get that gig?

GWWAPM: Get a degree in biochemistry.

Me: Right. So, how do you "test" the quality of the material? Wink, wink,
nudge, nudge.

GWWAPM: In a laboratory.

Me: Right.

GWWAPM: Didn't you move?

Me (saving face): Wow, did you see the size of her butt?

GWWAPM: I'm going to go stand over there now.

Now I don't say this often but personally, I think that GWWAPM could use
some of the non-laboratory type of quality control ... but that's just me.
As for returning to Flin Flon any time soon, it definitely won't be for the
rousing conversation or for the pot mine.

Government stupidity manifests itself in so many forms that I need not
travel hundreds of kilometres to hear about it.

And even though the sensational scandals appeal greatly to my, uh,
journalistic nature, I think I can just sit at home and picture various
genetic combinations of people I know and I'll have a rough idea of what
the next generation will look like.

But if I do go back to Flin Flon, darn it, it'll be for the mosquitoes -
they never disappoint.