FROM RURAL ALBERTA TO VICTORIA, BC Renee, like many of us, was introduced to cannabis at a young age—thir teen. The ‘70s in rural Alberta were a time of incredible racism. “ This was the normal culture. There were signs in liquor stores saying ‘We don’t ser ve Indians,’” Renee states matter-of-factly. Born in 1966, amidst the Equal and Civil Rights movement, Renee had only ever met one black person before the age of 13, when her family picked up and moved West to Victoria, BC. Renee learned early on that she had zero interest in being a dairy or pig farmer—the fate of many Alberta youth. In ‘79, Victoria was a logging community in the middle of nowhere, where “everyone grew marijuana. Everybody. Eeeeverybody.” Renee describes marijuana in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s in Victoria as “… currency, people paid for things with it. It was simply part of the scenery. That’s the mentality that I grew up with from that point forward.” The sale and trade of cannabis in Victoria is what kept the lights on for many families: “[It]’s what paid the grocery bills, bought the used family car and paid the hydro bill. I can barely remember my life without weed in it,” Renee thoughtfully reflects. “In 1982 our school got an Apple computer, and we founded a computer club. It was then that I started thinking about automated grow systems to grow marijuana. That was a splinter that got stuck in my brain back then,” Renee reflects. Renee found herself in some hot water in high school, after getting into trouble for “slingin’” pot. She chuckles as she ruminates on the claims that she’d never amount to anything. A short time ago, Renee watched her business’ stock “break the two dollar mark, suddenly it’s a 50M dollar company… built by a kid from Alberta who got flung into weed culture in BC. A transgender woman who came out at the age of 48 built that thing!” During our interview, Renee laughs a lot. It feels like holy shit, this is my life laughter—built from the realization that this is, indeed, her remarkable life.
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