1999: Michael Poole, Romancing Mary Jane

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Description

After many years as a successful documentary film producer and director, Michael Poole found himself suffering from serious bumout. Retreating from the demands of the city to a waterfront acreage on British Columbia's idyllic Sunshine Coast, he threw himself into wholesome toil: the cultivation of marijuana. Romancing Mary Jane is an intimate, funny and eye-opening depiction of ten months in the life of a neophyte marijuana grower. It is also an entertaining examination of cannabis culture. As he plants and cultivates his crop in the company of hummingbirds, woodpeckers, eagles, biting flies and a bear who shows signs of reefer madness, Poole ruminates on many things: the age-old use of mind-altering drugs; the wrong-headedness of drug laws; the medical use of pot; the genetic diversity of the lovely marijuana plant. Poole embarked on this life of crime with the idea that he'd make a bundle, live like a lord and loll away the winters on tropical beaches. Things didn't work out quite that way. But what he discovers instead, on a mountaintop overlooking the deep blue water of the Strait of Georgia, is a reconnection to landscape, weather and the turning of the seasonsónot to mention some of the best pot he has ever smoked.

Judges' Comments

The judges enjoyed the sheer competence of this book, its lyrical prose, its sense of pacing and the narrator's often wry commentary on himself.

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• Publisher: Greystone Books

Explore the works of our previous Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction winners.