Jacob Redmond
Well-Known Member
The faded sign off a West Quebec road still points to an old garden centre.
But the greenhouses at the end of the peninsula in the Masson-Angers neighbourhood of Gatineau no longer grows the types of plants your average gardener buys in spring.
The former Botanix-Aux Jardins de La Pointe now houses the Hydropothecary, a small-but-growing medical marijuana production plant. It's the first of its kind in Quebec.
"We get at least two or three cars showing up a day, saying, where do we get our flowers?" said Adam Miron, who co-founded the company with his brother-in-law Sébastien St-Louis.
The Botanix's former owner, Louis Gagnon, still lives in the red brick house on the 80-acre site. He's now a partner and the master grower with the Hydropothecary.
With a team of 15 employees, they finished their first harvest last fall after receiving a Health Canada license to grow marijuana. The 100 kg of dried pot is now locked in a vault in the basement of a bunker on site that's protected by barbed wire fencing, motion-sensor cameras and a 24/7 security team.
The owners are awaiting another Health Canada approval before they pull the green out of the vault and ship it to their waiting list of patients across Canada.
"The unique thing about marijuana is there's been a demand for marijuana, even from a medical perspective, for quite sometime," Miron said. "There's already a very large active base that are seeking a medical alternative and want to get on board with this."
And they are planning to grow. A 35,000-square-foot greenhouse is being prepped for more pot plants. They will soon hold a job fair to hire more production staff and customer service representatives who will answer the 24/7-phone line.
The Hydropothecary has about 100 investors and Miron estimates their company is worth $20 million. One of the next steps is to go public.
It's a unique career change for the 31-year-old Miron, who co-founded the online political newspaper iPolitics.ca and was a Liberal campaign manager during the 2008 federal election. His brother-in-law has a different story. He holds an MBA from the Université du Québec à Montréal and previously worked for the Business Development Bank of Canada and the Export Development Corp.
Miron said the medical marijuana production plant started as a conversation around a campfire.
"Like any good Canadian company," he joked.
But they are trying to be different than the other pot production plants in the country - and that's clear from the product's more expensive $15-a-gram price tag. It covers the cost of the customer service line and shipping. The four different strains of pot also come packaged in a white and black box with a silk bow.
Wearing a suit, denim shirt and Bog's boots, Miron stands inside a nearly empty 15,000-square-foot greenhouse. An old sign hangs from the ceiling advertising a sale on plants. Eventually, it will house flowers again - another added touch for customers.
"This was a tropical paradise," said Miron. "Everything that Louis did, it was the epitome of artisan, French, hand-grown quality and that's exactly what we want to do with medical marijuana."
Medical Pot Facts
News Moderator: Jacob Redmond 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Gatineau?s Hydropothecary growing to meet medical marijuana demand | Metro
Author: Lucy Scholey
Contact: Contact | Metro
Photo Credit: None Found
Website: Metro News | Latest news from Canada's most read national daily newspaper | News Worth Sharing
But the greenhouses at the end of the peninsula in the Masson-Angers neighbourhood of Gatineau no longer grows the types of plants your average gardener buys in spring.
The former Botanix-Aux Jardins de La Pointe now houses the Hydropothecary, a small-but-growing medical marijuana production plant. It's the first of its kind in Quebec.
"We get at least two or three cars showing up a day, saying, where do we get our flowers?" said Adam Miron, who co-founded the company with his brother-in-law Sébastien St-Louis.
The Botanix's former owner, Louis Gagnon, still lives in the red brick house on the 80-acre site. He's now a partner and the master grower with the Hydropothecary.
With a team of 15 employees, they finished their first harvest last fall after receiving a Health Canada license to grow marijuana. The 100 kg of dried pot is now locked in a vault in the basement of a bunker on site that's protected by barbed wire fencing, motion-sensor cameras and a 24/7 security team.
The owners are awaiting another Health Canada approval before they pull the green out of the vault and ship it to their waiting list of patients across Canada.
"The unique thing about marijuana is there's been a demand for marijuana, even from a medical perspective, for quite sometime," Miron said. "There's already a very large active base that are seeking a medical alternative and want to get on board with this."
And they are planning to grow. A 35,000-square-foot greenhouse is being prepped for more pot plants. They will soon hold a job fair to hire more production staff and customer service representatives who will answer the 24/7-phone line.
The Hydropothecary has about 100 investors and Miron estimates their company is worth $20 million. One of the next steps is to go public.
It's a unique career change for the 31-year-old Miron, who co-founded the online political newspaper iPolitics.ca and was a Liberal campaign manager during the 2008 federal election. His brother-in-law has a different story. He holds an MBA from the Université du Québec à Montréal and previously worked for the Business Development Bank of Canada and the Export Development Corp.
Miron said the medical marijuana production plant started as a conversation around a campfire.
"Like any good Canadian company," he joked.
But they are trying to be different than the other pot production plants in the country - and that's clear from the product's more expensive $15-a-gram price tag. It covers the cost of the customer service line and shipping. The four different strains of pot also come packaged in a white and black box with a silk bow.
Wearing a suit, denim shirt and Bog's boots, Miron stands inside a nearly empty 15,000-square-foot greenhouse. An old sign hangs from the ceiling advertising a sale on plants. Eventually, it will house flowers again - another added touch for customers.
"This was a tropical paradise," said Miron. "Everything that Louis did, it was the epitome of artisan, French, hand-grown quality and that's exactly what we want to do with medical marijuana."
Medical Pot Facts
- 25 companies across Canada have licenses to grow medical marijuana.
- 17 have licenses to sell the pot
- 13 are in Ontario
- The Hydropothecary plans to serve 7,500 Canadians by 2017.
- The company has raised $5 million to date and plans to go public on the TSX venture.
News Moderator: Jacob Redmond 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Gatineau?s Hydropothecary growing to meet medical marijuana demand | Metro
Author: Lucy Scholey
Contact: Contact | Metro
Photo Credit: None Found
Website: Metro News | Latest news from Canada's most read national daily newspaper | News Worth Sharing
