Features Opinion Extraction Opinion
From the Editor: East to West and back again

What a privilege it was composing this issue with a top-notch band of sources, contributors, and guest writers.

This is the fifth magazine I’ve sent to print as the editor of Grow Opportunity, and I’d say it’s my most distinguished yet. Maybe it’s due to the length, richness and breadth of issues covered, or perhaps it’s in relation to the rapport I’ve been busy building over the past year. The sincerity of those eager to share their life’s work with me while keeping an open line for queries, regardless of the size or restrictions on time, I can assure you, has not gone unnoticed. I thank each of you dearly.

While the facets of this industry in its current state make up these pages, there are nuggets of my own experience embedded within.

March 2022, I packed my car – rallying my grow gear, apothecary trunk, and my precious pup Isla – and left Vancouver Island traveling eastbound back to Georgian Bay, Ont. I’d been living on a rural property in Cedar, working on a nearby hemp farm and growing a sacred garden of my own. I’d heard of the cannabis farm around the corner, even drove by it a couple times, marveling at the location and size of the acreage. 

Fast forward to March 2023 when I made a reunion trip out west, this time as the editor of a cannabis magazine seeking a cover story.  

Cedar Organics checks the boxes for me – a West Coast operation grown under the sun, boldly exposed to the elements, rooted in living soil. It may not be the easiest way to grow bud, but it’s certainly the most romantic.

I recall my own excitement, lopping down those trees and bringing them in off the field, covered in aromatic resins and dew. I wanted to draw attention to that experience, be it in cannabis or in hemp, and the underlying joys of farming.

Bonus: when I arrived on site at the LP, I learned their crop is made entirely into extracts, which just so happened to be the theme of the issue.      

Beyond Cedar, thank you to all the producers who contributed to this edition, offering up their own tales of differentiation.

From the sustainable and highly effective aquaculture endeavours of Maritime LPs Stewart Farms and Aqualitas, to the extraction moguls at Organigram and Mera Cannabis – journalist and patient advocate Ashley Keenan captured the extraction landscape in this story, regulatory complications and all.

Shoutout to the crew at Pure Sunfarms for crafting the cultivation column during the peak of their high-yield season, and a big congratulations on entering the German market. 

On that note, this issue our scope reaches into the broader international market with a stat-heavy and visually descriptive business column on the importance of going global. Thanks to Steve Clark for sharing this vital data imperative to LP expansion. And to Jake Hribljan, renegade writer and new freelancer for the magazine, thank you for your synopsis on the Canadian financial side of things – a space in need of consistent and high-level coverage. As always, to the columnists who anchor our magazine, we are pillared by your expert remarks. 

With that, I will wrap up by drawing your attention to a new department in the magazine by request: a “Behind the Counter” budtender segment that shifts the lens from producer to retailer, divulging in-store occurrences that LPs might be curious to glean. 

With budding trees abound, it can be hard not to get carried away at this time of year. And while impossible to forget the entanglement of penalties, hurdles, and lawsuits, it’s important to recall that perhaps the most inspired and productive people are those who have successfully merged their titillating truths of work and of play. So, if you’re not having any fun, maybe ask yourself what might bring about more joy to each day.