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Patrick Pagé Named 2024 Top Grower in Standard LP Category

For Patrick Pagé, the measure of success in the cannabis industry isn’t the trophies or awards for best flower, it’s the tremendous impact of mentorship. Guiding others to run successful facilities, as he himself was guided, Pagé believes is the most meaningful recognition he could receive. 

He likens this process to his previous experience working in high-end kitchens. Aside from the obvious similarities between the restaurant industry and regulated cannabis such as strict SOPs, cleanliness and a fast-paced environment, it’s the legacy of the star chefs he sees as the strongest parallel.  

“It’s ‘who am I going to train to run the next successful cultivation team, and maintain the high-quality standards that follow?’ If you want more from the industry, go get mentored by the top dogs, and carry on the tradition.” 

Early on

Hailing from Huntingdon, Quebec, Pagé moved to the city at age 17 where he was introduced to some of the finer flavours in the legacy game. He recalls trying “EXO’S” for the first time, upstaging the M39 and outdoor grown he was used to. When he would return home, his friends knew he had the best cannabis: “always super flavourful, super potent,” he says. “It just sort of stuck; I wanted more.”  

The weed coming out of Montreal at the time was a real influence for Pagé. “I can’t put a name, or any one person or grower per se because it was all very black market. But there was a lot of really flavourful, really nice cannabis going around Montreal, and I wanted to be a part of it.” 

Cannabis was already a permanent fixture in his life, mainly recreationally, as well as for sports recovery and for unwinding. Pagé found the plant beneficial and he self-medicated for focus, for slowing down a busy mind. “It helped me dial in,” he says. 

There was a discrepancy between his passion for cannabis and only growing a few plants in the backyard. So in 2017, with a baby on the way, Pagé had just bought a house with his then wife and decided to transition from working in the kitchen to a trimming position at Aurora Cannabis in Pointe Claire, QC. “Cooking was amazing, and I loved the lifestyle that came with. There’s a certain beauty to the chaos that I really enjoy,” says Pagé. “But cooking didn’t seem like something that was going to pay the bills or take me to where I wanted to go.” 

He started at Aurora in the spring of 2018 and worked for a year until he met best friend, Alexandre Gauthier. First impressions of the industry took a more political standpoint, which was the pivotal moment in Pagé’s career where his desire to grow a craft product became the forefront of his focus. He wanted to grow better than what was available. “It was a motivating factor to be more than just a 9-5 trimmer,” he says. Gauthier moved to New Brunswick to work at Tidal Health Solutions, “and I followed him out there,” says Pagé. He was the irrigation specialist for about eight months, at which point he moved back to Montreal to be closer to his daughter.

November 2019, Pagé went to work for Mitch and Rich Clément at MTL Cannabis and came on as the alternate master grower working beneath Denis Clément, the youngest of the three brothers. “Eight months into working there I became the master grower.” 

Pagé stayed on until November 2022, helping grow the canopy at MTL from 3,600 square-feet to 30,000, speaking to his skill in scaling premium cannabis production. 

At Great White North Growers, the second Phase 2 flower room is now complete. Here their prized Amnesia Haze sativa-dominant flower is nearing harvest.
Photo: Patrick Page

Montreal mentorship

Pagé credits his progress to the “people who took the time to mentor me and support my career.” Alexandre Gauthier, the Clément brothers, Mick, Vincent Gagné and many others. During his time at MTL he learned how “running an LP isn’t that different from running a kitchen. You need a strong team,” says Pagé. 

Like running a Michelin-starred kitchen, growing quality weed requires precision, the right people in your corner and a continuous focus on the fundamentals. “Alex and I always used to joke about the rugby team analogy,” he says. “It needs to be the same with a cannabis company. Either you’re going with this genetic, or we’re going into Phase 2 – whatever it is – you need to know that they’ve got your back and that they can run with you.”    

By that time, he had taken on more of a desk job at MTL. “I had trained multiple successors (partner Mehgan Race Widdison, Michel Goulet & others) to run the day-to-day. To run the grow,” says Pagé. “It was at a point where it wasn’t really necessary for me to be there anymore; I’d done my job and it was time to go look for a new challenge,” he says, leaving behind something meaningful: “Not just the weed but the people who know how to grow it right.” 

GWNG 

The new challenge came in the form of Great White North Growers (GWNG). Pagé had an impromptu meeting with them and learned that their latest project saw them reviving cultivation dreams with single-tier bench-style growing and hopes of a second phase. “I met co-owners Peter Schissler and George Goulakos at an Origine Nature industry party,” says Pagé, “and we just hit it off.” 

Patrick Pagé has been the master grower at GWNG for two years, helping bring cultivation back online and launch their Phase 2.
Photo: Mehgan race widdison

When the Montreal Island-based LP started in 2019, they’d been sold on the idea of aeroponic towers. Then they implemented a bench style but eventually slowed growing and switched focus to processing until they met Pagé who brought their cultivation back online. “They had 25 partners that they were packaging for when I came on board,” he says.

After coming on near the end of 2022, Pagé helped grow a roster of rooms under double-ended HPS and some LEDs, and establish a core team of three trained growers, using a logical, data-driven approach to business and cultivation. Fueled by CANNA products. “I love the CANNA Coco Flex; I love the CANNA A&B,” says Pagé.

The result was the sativa-dominant Amnesia Haze flower with six per cent terpenes, incapable of meeting the growing market demand therefore instigating their Phase 2 expansion. 

“Out of the 15-20 seeds we popped, we found the right genetic and that ended up being the Amnesia Haze we’re putting on the market now,” says Pagé. “We opened up about 2,000 square-feet of canopy all in Phase 1. We were also planning to open Phase 2 so we started building the rooms, we got the license, and we have the first room up and running now, with a second coming soon. We’ll build three more, in a perfect world, by the end of next year… I can’t grow enough of the Amnesia. I’d love to phenohunt, but we cannot spare the flowering space at the moment.”

GWNG also works with some local micros: Microcannabi has a 1:1 called Molten Core, and another called Grease Monkey. XOPRO is an LP out of Montreal suburb, Châteauguay, growing a nice Time Wreck. “And the Clém+Co. guys are the people making aeroponic towers work, they have one called Apricot Cream and Cheese that I swear tastes like apricot and cheese,” he says. 

“At the end of the day, legacy isn’t just what you grow – it’s who you grow with,” says Pagé. “The goal isn’t just to grow good weed, it’s to build this industry into something we can all be proud of.”        

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