I couldn’t find a babysitter for the Canadian Cannabis Awards back in 2016 and nearly skipped the event, but I was walking home from a meeting and talking to my mom, a drug counsellor, and she suggested this might be important for me to attend. I’ve been a reporter since 1998 and specialize in things exactly opposite of the resignation of Justin Trudeau. I work well with outsider news and weird happenings.
Weed awards? Just my cup of tea.
I took mom’s advice, as always, and, walking into the extravaganza — a black tie event where I couldn’t find a drink but walked into a vaping den — I felt at home. The event was, at once, lofty and lawless and celebratory and free. There was big money in the room, many of the companies up for awards had valuations over a billion dollars, but no press. Also: the big companies were being run like startups. One company I connected with had a gmail account for investor relations. Their valuation was north of nine-billion-dollars.
Cannabis was wild and, I’ve learned, lots of fun. Money isn’t really my end goal, experiences are. And the weed companies were run by, as the host of the event put it, “risk takers having the time of their lives.” That was me. And, what’s more, the assignment came as I headed towards the end of my marriage so I wanted something rich to sink my teeth into as I transitioned out of my old life. Pot had energy, characters with no media training and, let’s face it, lots of weed. I’d smoked weed in my teens and was familiar with the culture, but I’d never pictured that as a positive thing for my resume.
At the Canadian Cannabis Awards, it was.
The time I spent in the culture, the people I met and the bylines I accrued, added up to not only this book, but my new life chapter. Today, eight years after that awards show, I’m a different person with a different life and leave, I hope, some of that experience behind in Catch a Fire: The Blaze and Bust of the Canadian Cannabis Industry, my book.
The stories are true, bold and, I think, first of their kind to be reported from the inside, including how $131 billion disappeared. I hope people enjoy Catch a Fire.
Let me tell you, living it was a buzz.
Ben Kaplan is a writer and editor who worked at GQ, New York Magazine, and the National Post. Originally from Brooklyn, Kaplan is a founder and editor of KIND Magazine, distributed in Canada’s legal weed shops, and the owner of iRun, the country’s largest running magazine. His writing has been published in the New York Times and Spin, and he is a frequent television commentator. He lives in Toronto. His new book, Catch a Fire: The Blaze and Bust of the Canadian Cannabis Industry, is now available in bookstores.