FP: What’s your take on why marijuana was made illegal in the first place?
Larry: It was a control mechanism, but it was mainly industrial. It was a way that they could inflict petrochemicals on third world countries. The first thing they did was go into these countries and destroy the hemp industries, which were mainly local, and artisan, which produced rope and fishnet and basketware and paper and some textiles. They came into the government and said “This is a drug,” brought in their operatives to spray and kill the crops, and sold a chemical processing plant to an uncle or cousin of the president. And then now you have countries full of plastic garbage bags and junk spewing out on every corner. The worst thing that ever happened to our society was petrochemicals.
FP: How would you account for the fact that, despite all we’ve learned about these things since the 60’s, so much more of the world has been “developed” into the wasteful Western model? Just since 1989, whole large, smoggy cities have been created all over Asia. Sure, getting more and more politically aware, but the damage get worse faster than we can learn about it…
Larry: Well, Germany is moving quickly, and probably is the leader, but we will, you will in your lifetime, I don’t know if I will, but in the next 30 to 40 years I suspect that petrochemicals will be made illegal, and they will be used for specific reasons, and they will be understood to be non-biodegradable, toxic to make and toxic to put in landfills, and they will have raised the production ability of carbon-based products. You may be aware that Henry Ford was one of the great proponents of carboplastics, hemp plastics. They have footage of car executives hitting these bumpers with sledgehammers with no effect.
That disappeared. We didn’t know that until we took it out of the archive. Carboplastics are vegetable-based plastics, they made them from many different plants and hemp was one of them, if not the most important. They are biodegradable over long periods of time, and it takes less toxins to produce them.
There was a fairly vociferous discussion at the end of the 30’s which was, where do we go with plastics? What are they, what’s good, what’s not good? And then the war came, and expedience came, and petrochemicals won out. And we went crazy over nylon and polyester and plastics in general. And of course the chemicals which were used by Dow were largely derived from pulpwood. They figured out how to take the lictins out of that, which was by using a massive chlorine bleaching process which, if you’ve ever been close to a pulp and paper mill, you know it stinks to high heaven. What’s poured into the rivers is just unbelievable. This was not necessary, we could’ve made all our plastics with such things as hemp, and we would have not poisoned like we did. We would’ve had to have seen the future to avoid this. We see the future now, but we still can’t change it. Third world countries are rushing for it, petrochemicals are getting cheaper instead of more expensive… we don’t seem to have learned our lesson at all.
FP: Well, of course, the chain of command for this doesn’t go from us to the government to the companies, it goes from the companies to the government and that’s it.
Larry: Well in fifty to seventy-five years, all these what are now fledgling hemp companies will have to have helped replace almost all of these petrochemicals with vegetable-based plastics. They’ll look back at this age as a curse, they will curse the people who inflicted this on them and caused all this damage. And we know this already, but if I hand you a ticket right now and say “Here, here’s a round-trip ticket to Bali,” you’re not gonna say “No, you know, I don’t want to pour that shit out the back of the plane,” you’re gonna get on that plane and say “Tomorrow’s another day.” I drive my car everyday, I mean, I live in NDG, I have to come here every day. You know, we’re all culprits.
I’m involved in over-consumption in my own way here in the store, by creating knick-knacks and stuff here for people to buy, I make my living on somebody’s intent to consume.
FP: I’ve been thinking that the problem isn’t so much consumption, since people have always consumed things. That’s just life. It’s the consuming of things that have to travel thousands of miles, or are made of ingredients that travel thousands of miles, all by truck, plane, or boat, all stuff that sucks up gas.
Larry: That’s the beauty of hemp, is that it can easily be produced locally. I think that from the get-go “Industry” recognized that hemp was a real difficult one to enslave. Maybe that’s why there’s been so much hatred for it in the past fifty years—it’s the one plant they can’t master. They can’t monopolize it.
FP: That’s true. On a different note, I was wondering, are you a Montrealer?
Larry: Well, I originated in Manitoba, but I’ve been here for thirty years.
FP: I’m assuming that when you had the shop on Prince Arthur, you lived right nearby?
Larry: We lived within a hundred yards of the store, in an old rooming house we turned into a house.
FP: Was there as much traffic in the area?
Larry: Oh, it was much less congested. St. Lawrence was just sort of an ethnic street, there was none of the clubs, none of the attention at all. They were really all just funky little Greek and European restaurants and grocery stores, and lots of clothing, garments, textiles.
FP: There’s still remainders of that here.
Larry: Just the last dregs, they’re hurting…
FP: I guess the rents go up once the clubs move in, and the taxes go up…
Larry: It sort of changed the whole area. I was part of… when I started my company I moved into a warehouse on St. Lawrence which is now a big bistro-bar, right at the head of Milton. I was 21 years in that building. And I became a member of the executive of the Merchants Association. So along with four or five other people, our major occupation was putting on two street sales a year. We started that in 1980. And that was the sum total of our efforts, with the association.
FP: Do you think there’s anything else you could’ve done, in hindsight?
Larry: Well, you couldn’t really keep the growth, we watched Prince Arthur destroy itself, and we started to see that it was the same thing starting on St. Lawrence. We managed to get the city to put a moratorium on bar licenses, liquor licenses, but we knew that that was only a matter of time. And for quite a few landlords, they wanted to see this thing open up because they were gonna get more money. But the lesson learned with Prince Arthur, again in a free enterprise system it’s very difficult to control it. But in Prince Arthur, they rushed in a greedy headlong fervor, and they just destroyed any other commerce that was there. So when you go down to Prince Arthur, it’s very quétaine, you know (meaning ‘cutesy’). In the summer it’s just piles of people sitting outside, there’s just no other reason to be there aside from having a meal or a drink. You don’t have the galleries, you don’t have the clothing stores, you don’t have anything else. You’ve gotta have a mix to make it worth it for people.
FP: That’s what’s great about St. Laurent, but…
Larry: It’s starting, the same thing.
FP: Hofner’s just closed.
Larry: Yup, they went out of business. So you’re losing that mix which draws the daytime traffic, which gives, you know… There are still some nice boutiques, and hopefully that will last. The clubs have so much money, and the big restaurants, they come down and just eat up the area. Now what they did between Prince Arthur and Sherbrooke is OK, that was a pretty dead area, there wasn’t really a lot they bashed up there. Now they’re starting to work their way up. But you know, you go past Pine you get empty stores. So there’s no great success happening, but then there’s no great success happening in the city. We get very poor administration, very very poor.
FP: Development by demolition, basically.
Larry: No foresight, absolutely no idea. I mean, this is a tourist city. Tourists love Montreal, Americans love Montreal. So when you have that happening, find out what they want and give it to them. Kids flow up here because bud is available, they don’t get hassled by the police, they can find it, and buy it and enjoy themselves. Make it easy. Get some coffee shops, make this like Amsterdam. Don’t wait around and pull some kind of moral trip. 20 years ago they were saying this about gambling. “Oh no no, never.” Now they couldn’t wait to stick another casino in here. You’ve got to give them what they want.
I had to go to see somebody in the east end a couple days ago, I drove down Ontario. And there were hookers lined up for four blocks, and they were all ugly. I mean, get them an area, and let ‘em control it, and for god’s sake get some classy looking things happening. It’s a market, it’s a business. Don’t stick your head up your ass and say that ‘we’re not gonna do that, or we’re not gonna do this’ because you already are. You’ve just forced them out in some kind of area. Get with it.
The worst thing that ever happened to this city was Drapeau. He came along and cleaned up the city, a very exciting city. And he brought us two things that we’re still paying for. One put us on the map (Expo 67), and the other one sunk us (the Olympics). I’m sorry, but when you’re still paying for a stadium that’s a piece of shit…
FP: And your only solution is to build a second one…
Larry: You’re making a big mistake, that’s not too much intelligence.
FP: It’s really hard to grasp how badly the city is managed right now. I’m constantly hearing of landmark old buildings getting pulled down for some new, shiny and bigger building.
Larry: Unbelievable stupidity, unbelievable. Take away the charm of the city, and stick up what. And for whose benefit? For the construction industry? Not tourists, not us…

Well, we kept talking for a little while more but the tape ran out. Chanvre en Ville is just one of the many hemp shops in Montreal. They’re sprouting up like weed in a cornfield. Another long-established shop is Je L’Ai on Duluth near deBullion. Prices for most hemp merchandise is coming down every year. What’s more, a shirt or pair of jeans made of hemp will last at least twice as long as your usual material, so any extra investment will more than pay off in the long run. As Larry told me after the interview, Hemp is not going to save the world, but it’ll surely be part of the solution.

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