Pot activist Emery says he’s unchanged

B.C. marijuana activist Marc Emery returns to Canada on Tuesday morning after a four-and-a-half-year stint in U.S. prisons for selling marijuana seeds to a U.S. buyer. Nick Eagland of Postmedia News phoned him at a Louisiana detention centre to learn more about his return.

Q What’s the plan for today?

A I get put on a plane at probably about 10 or 11 (EST) in the morning and arrive in Detroit around three. At that point, U.S. marshals deliver me under the tunnel to the Canadian border point and [wife] Jodie and some friends of mine should meet me there. If it’s nice weather, we’ll have [a few] hours in Centennial Park by city hall. Hopefully by nine or 10 o’clock, Jodie and I will retire and go get something to eat. Then we’ve got to get on a plane at six in the morning and fly to Toronto for a whole variety of things, not the least of which is to buy some stuff like new glasses and a cellphone. I’ve never texted in my life so people have to show me how these things all work.

Q How does it feel to be coming home?

A People ask me if I’m excited and I’m not really excited because I’ve been here so long, I really don’t know any other life other than being behind bars in these dirtbag prison cells and dormitories. If I look outside there’s always razor wire. If I get taken anywhere outside of prison I’m shackled up ... handcuffed and leg-ironed and a waist belt of chains around me. When they finally deliver me to Windsor and I see a sunset without razor wire and I don’t have any shackles on me, then I guess I’ll kind of believe it.

Q How do you think prison has changed you?

A I don’t think it’s changed me at all, but the one thing you do learn is that you can adapt to anything. I’ve been in six different kinds of prisons in my time in the U.S. and some are horrible and some are all right, but you adapt to all of them. Once you’re in a place like this ... you kind of make that your home and the rest of the world kind of slowly recedes from memory and from experience. I stayed the same and that served me

well in prison. I don’t remember getting upset very often and I certainly didn’t have any confrontations with any inmates or guards or anything like that.

I really don’t know any other life than being behind bars

Q Have any interesting prison stories?

A I did see violence, but noth- ing ever came close to me. Prisoners, in my experience, were very atypical to what you see on TV. I was amazed how many people who were serving 10, 12 years in prison, their first instinct when they got out was to sell drugs or grow marijuana or do something against the law again which could put them behind bars for another 15, 20 years — it was just nutty that they had not planned on any kind of legitimate lifestyle when they got out.

Q What are your expectations for when you return to B.C.?

A They tell me that they’ve got 35 dispensaries in Vancouver — I find that phenomenal. That’s almost like it’s legal without being legal and that’s a very peculiar kind of Twilight Zone to find myself in. The way technology has influenced people — my wife says, ‘People look at their screens everywhere they go, Marc.’ She said no one makes eye contact in lineups any more, everybody’s always looking at their screens on the bus or on the SkyTrain.

Q What do you think of Jodie’s political plans? A My deep-seated feeling is that Liberals are so nervous about me, they’ll probably do anything to derail her successfully getting the nomination in Vancouver East because otherwise, if she gets the nomination, the brain trust of the Liberals will be worried about what I might say over the next year. She’s a terrific speaker, she’s a terrific mind, she’s got amazing compassion and she’s a terrific Canadian who would make a great representative, but she’s saddled with me and I don’t have the same reverence for the process that she’s showing.