Taking a trip down ‘Hash Lane’
Ernie Small was the man behind the Central Experimental Farm’s other crop — marijuana by the tonne. TOM SPEARS reports.
Meet Ernie Small, the man behind the Central Experimental
Farm’s secret crop — marijuana by the tonne.
He was secretly one of Canada’s first large- scale marijuana growers, an Agriculture Canada scientist so soft-spoken that listeners at his seminar Friday kept asking him to speak up.
Ernie Small started growing marijuana at the Central Experimental Farm 42 years ago, and has kept up his research since then.
Finally it’s over, freeing him to talk about it without breaking security rules.
And talk he did, lifting the lid on the secret federal grow-op that teenagers in the 1970s all talked about, but which some thought was just a tall tale. That’s the right word.
“I’ve grown plants that were 20 feet tall,” Small said.
He has grown and analyzed more than 500 different types of cannabis from around the world.
Old photos show his plantation towering over him like a Christmas tree farm on steroids.
“Health Canada wanted samples of marijuana and I grew tonnes of it,” he said at a lecture for (mostly) Agriculture Canada staffers Friday morning. He added later that he no longer has the full records, “but it was in the tonnes.”
The plantation was on Ash Lane. Insiders called it Hash Lane. Surrounded by an ordinary farm fence, it was also patrolled by private guards with dogs until someone realized there would be big trouble if the dogs bit a teenager. After that “the guards were too chicken to patrol. They were there but they wouldn’t go around the perimeter.
“We were robbed on occasion.”
‘You couldn’t find anyone back then to say anything good about the marijuana plant. ... I’m saying that cannabis has enormous medical potential.’ ERNIE SMALL Taxonomist
His experiments over the years included both the hemp type and marijuana, but in those early days Health Canada was only interested in the drug. And it didn’t consider any medical use of marijuana; Small said the only goal was to suppress all use.
“You couldn’t find anyone back then to say anything good about the marijuana plant.”
Small is a taxonomist — someone skilled at classifying different species — and specializes in studying economically important plants. He has recently published a book on the world’s 100 most important food plants, and co-wrote another on the official trees and flowers of Canada.
Though retired, he keeps pumping out research articles and books.
His chief specialty is alfalfa. But the political winds of the early 1970s were blowing toward marijuana research and they carried him along.
Small worked out the official dividing line that separates hemp plants from marijuana plants everywhere; they are defined by high or low THC content, the psychoactive chemical.
His work continued into the new century, as a company in Flin Flon with a licence to grow medical marijuana needed his help to make plants grow underground. It operates in a deep mine to keep out intruders, and Small developed a strain that would grow short and bushy under the low ceilings.
But Small said the commercial future for cannabis is big, and the medical use of basic marijuana probably isn’t the main way forward.
“I’m saying that cannabis has enormous medical potential,” he said.
With about 100 natural cannabinoids — chemicals which interact with the human body — the plant shows potential for fighting arthritis, preventing blood clots and much more, he believes.
As well, it produces an oil from its seeds that has omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids in just the right blend.
“Canada is currently the world’s leading producer of oil-hemp. We’re the champions,” he said. As a plus, few insects eat cannabis and the plant shades out weeds, making it grow well without pesticides.