Cart 0

THE HISTORY OF CANNABIS IN CANADA
Page 5: Early bounties and promotion of cannabis.

To encourage more cannabis farming in the New World, the French and British governments offered bounties and distributed cannabis hemp seed to settlers. Some taxes could be paid with hemp stalks, and farmers who didn't grow enough of it were punished.

The name of many towns and regions that still exist today were originally derived from this main crop, producing Hemphills, Hempsteads, Hemplands and Hempfields.

Cannabis was a valuable crop, but it took a lot of physical labour to prepare it for use. The long outer fibers of the cannabis stalk need to be physically separated from the inner pulpy hurds. This time-consuming process is called "retting" or "breaking" the hemp. Settlers usually preferred to grow food crops so they wouldn't starve.

 


FOOTNOTES

• governments offered bounties
Document: The third session of the sixteenth Parliament of Great Britain, Printed by C. Eyre, 1786
http://eco.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.9_01202/10?r=0&s=1

• governments offered bounties
Book: Acts of the General Assembly of Newfoundland, J.C. Withers, printer to the Queen, 1890
https://books.google.ca/books?id=gXsxAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA160

• governments offered bounties
Book: The Naval Chronicle: Volume 28, p.238, by James Stanier Clarke and John McArthur, 1812
http://books.google.ca/books?id=QWbjxv5O6ocC&pg=PA237

• governments offered bounties, distributed hemp seed
Book: The Journal of the Board of Arts and Manufactures for Upper Canada, Volume 3, p.226, 1863
http://books.google.ca/books?id=wUI2AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA226

• taxes could be paid
Documentary: Busted, Frontline, PBS, 2014
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/etc/cron.html

• taxes could be paid
Book: Cannabis: A History, by Martin Booth, p.57, Random House, 2011
https://books.google.ca/books?id=Mjn6sCiHoFIC&pg=PA57

• names of many towns
Article: No hemp in Hempstead?, by Dana Larsen, Cannabis Culture, 2000
http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/3300.html

• physically separated
Article: Retting, Encyclopedia Brittanica, 2016
https://www.britannica.com/technology/retting