Ron Strider
Well-Known Member
Howard Fraleigh was a man ahead of his time.
Born in the late 1800s, he served as a Conservative MPP in the early 1930s and was a successful farmer and flax mill owner in Forest known for embracing innovative ideas, including experimenting with the growing of hemp, a plant that produces fibers used to make binder twine, rope and other products.
Although he was encouraged by the government of the day to explore growing the crop, the enterprise was scuttled when hemp was caught up in a federal decision to make marijuana illegal.
Both are forms of the cannabis plant but the hemp Fraleigh was growing on a few acres of farmland contained little of the psychoactive chemical that set the government's alarm bells ringing.
"You have to smoke a bail of it to get any kind of a lift off it," said Sid Fraleigh, a Forest-area resident and former federal politician who is the late Howard Fraleigh's grandson.
Laurie Webb, supervisor-curator of museums for Lambton County, said Fraleigh was well known during that earlier era for growing and milling flax, a plant used to make linen.
"During the First World War he was actually overseeing all of the flax seed from Canada that was being sent to Europe, so they could grow flax to use the linen thread in their war efforts," Webb said.
After Fraleigh got wind of hemp farming happening in Kentucky, he travelled there to check it out and had hemp seeds sent back to Forest.
He began planting a few acres of hemp each year, and experimenting to find the best conditions to grow it in Canada, with encouragement from government agriculture officials, Webb said.
"They were working with him to determine how they could use hemp fiber for different applications in Canada."
Webb said Fraleigh even figured out with a better way to process hemp fibers after harvest.
There was talk of using the fiber in clothing and paper, as well as twine and rope, but Ottawa moved to outlaw the growing of all cannabis, including hemp, she said.
Mark Bourrie, an Ottawa author, has written about the role in that decision played by Emily Murphy, a leader of the Famous Five group of western feminists who went to the British Privy Council and won Canadian women the legal status of "persons" and the right to serve in the Senate.
Murphy was a police magistrate who in the early 1920s wrote The Black Candle, an anti-immigrant book based on her conspiracy theory that foreigners were using drugs to corrupt the "purity" of the white race.
She's credited with Canada's decision to ban cannabis before most other governments considered it a threat.
While the law banning cannabis was passed in the 1920s, it wasn't until the 1930s when Fraleigh was well into his government-encourage experiments with growing hemp that Ottawa decided to include it in the ban.
Sid Fraleigh said he remembers his father talking about hearings held at the time into the status of hemp. One story that has stuck in his mind was about an older religious couple who testified that when they drove by the hemp field in Forest on their way to church, "the horses just went crazy."
Fraleigh said the ban disappointed his grandfather.
"If it had been based on any fact, that's one thing," he said.
There were stories at the time that the effort to end hemp farming was being pushed by industries it would have competed against, Fraleigh said.
Fraleigh said his grandfather loved farming and added, "He was really, really ahead of his time in all aspects of agriculture."
But, his experiments with hemp were just a sideline of his large flax business.
"Amazingly enough, we don't grow hardly any flax in the area now, but it was a going concern in the 1930s and 40s," Fraleigh said.
Webb said Howard Fraleigh attempted to convince the Canadian government to buy and store his hemp harvesting equipment after the ban was imposed.
Rumblings of war were already being heard and he anticipated the supply of hemp from Southeast Asia might be cut off.
Ottawa didn't listen and Fraleigh sold the equipment off into the U.S. where hemp growing continued.
A few years later, Fraleigh was proven right and the British Empire faced a shortage of the hemp fibers needed for the war effort.
"I imagine he was a little disillusioned, because he tried to warn them," Webb said.
Canada's ban remained in place until 1998 when Health Canada began issuing licenses to grow industrial hemp.
In 2016, the federal government issued licenses for more than 33,000 hectares of hemp, including 820 hectares in Ontario. Alberta had the largest acreage, followed by Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Canada's Industrial Hemp Regulations define hemp as cannabis containing no more than 0.3 per cent of the psychoactive compound THC responsible for marijuana's high.
Fiber from hemp stalks can be used in making paper, textiles, rope or twine, and construction materials, according to Health Canada.
Grain from industrial hemp can be used in food products, cosmetics, plastics and fuel.
And, some nine decades after outlawing marijuana, Canada is moving to allow its recreational use, beginning in 2018.
British Columbia-based Tilray Canada Ltd., said in August it plans to begin growing medical marijuana at the site of a greenhouse operation that had been growing peppers just outside of Petrolia, a short drive from Forest.
News Moderator: Ron Strider 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Forest man was high on the future of hemp | Sarnia Observer
Author: Paul Morden
Contact: Contact-us | Sarnia Observer
Photo Credit: The Observer
Website: Sarnia Observer
Born in the late 1800s, he served as a Conservative MPP in the early 1930s and was a successful farmer and flax mill owner in Forest known for embracing innovative ideas, including experimenting with the growing of hemp, a plant that produces fibers used to make binder twine, rope and other products.
Although he was encouraged by the government of the day to explore growing the crop, the enterprise was scuttled when hemp was caught up in a federal decision to make marijuana illegal.
Both are forms of the cannabis plant but the hemp Fraleigh was growing on a few acres of farmland contained little of the psychoactive chemical that set the government's alarm bells ringing.
"You have to smoke a bail of it to get any kind of a lift off it," said Sid Fraleigh, a Forest-area resident and former federal politician who is the late Howard Fraleigh's grandson.
Laurie Webb, supervisor-curator of museums for Lambton County, said Fraleigh was well known during that earlier era for growing and milling flax, a plant used to make linen.
"During the First World War he was actually overseeing all of the flax seed from Canada that was being sent to Europe, so they could grow flax to use the linen thread in their war efforts," Webb said.
After Fraleigh got wind of hemp farming happening in Kentucky, he travelled there to check it out and had hemp seeds sent back to Forest.
He began planting a few acres of hemp each year, and experimenting to find the best conditions to grow it in Canada, with encouragement from government agriculture officials, Webb said.
"They were working with him to determine how they could use hemp fiber for different applications in Canada."
Webb said Fraleigh even figured out with a better way to process hemp fibers after harvest.
There was talk of using the fiber in clothing and paper, as well as twine and rope, but Ottawa moved to outlaw the growing of all cannabis, including hemp, she said.
Mark Bourrie, an Ottawa author, has written about the role in that decision played by Emily Murphy, a leader of the Famous Five group of western feminists who went to the British Privy Council and won Canadian women the legal status of "persons" and the right to serve in the Senate.
Murphy was a police magistrate who in the early 1920s wrote The Black Candle, an anti-immigrant book based on her conspiracy theory that foreigners were using drugs to corrupt the "purity" of the white race.
She's credited with Canada's decision to ban cannabis before most other governments considered it a threat.
While the law banning cannabis was passed in the 1920s, it wasn't until the 1930s when Fraleigh was well into his government-encourage experiments with growing hemp that Ottawa decided to include it in the ban.
Sid Fraleigh said he remembers his father talking about hearings held at the time into the status of hemp. One story that has stuck in his mind was about an older religious couple who testified that when they drove by the hemp field in Forest on their way to church, "the horses just went crazy."
Fraleigh said the ban disappointed his grandfather.
"If it had been based on any fact, that's one thing," he said.
There were stories at the time that the effort to end hemp farming was being pushed by industries it would have competed against, Fraleigh said.
Fraleigh said his grandfather loved farming and added, "He was really, really ahead of his time in all aspects of agriculture."
But, his experiments with hemp were just a sideline of his large flax business.
"Amazingly enough, we don't grow hardly any flax in the area now, but it was a going concern in the 1930s and 40s," Fraleigh said.
Webb said Howard Fraleigh attempted to convince the Canadian government to buy and store his hemp harvesting equipment after the ban was imposed.
Rumblings of war were already being heard and he anticipated the supply of hemp from Southeast Asia might be cut off.
Ottawa didn't listen and Fraleigh sold the equipment off into the U.S. where hemp growing continued.
A few years later, Fraleigh was proven right and the British Empire faced a shortage of the hemp fibers needed for the war effort.
"I imagine he was a little disillusioned, because he tried to warn them," Webb said.
Canada's ban remained in place until 1998 when Health Canada began issuing licenses to grow industrial hemp.
In 2016, the federal government issued licenses for more than 33,000 hectares of hemp, including 820 hectares in Ontario. Alberta had the largest acreage, followed by Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Canada's Industrial Hemp Regulations define hemp as cannabis containing no more than 0.3 per cent of the psychoactive compound THC responsible for marijuana's high.
Fiber from hemp stalks can be used in making paper, textiles, rope or twine, and construction materials, according to Health Canada.
Grain from industrial hemp can be used in food products, cosmetics, plastics and fuel.
And, some nine decades after outlawing marijuana, Canada is moving to allow its recreational use, beginning in 2018.
British Columbia-based Tilray Canada Ltd., said in August it plans to begin growing medical marijuana at the site of a greenhouse operation that had been growing peppers just outside of Petrolia, a short drive from Forest.
News Moderator: Ron Strider 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Forest man was high on the future of hemp | Sarnia Observer
Author: Paul Morden
Contact: Contact-us | Sarnia Observer
Photo Credit: The Observer
Website: Sarnia Observer
