Pot booster turns over new leaf - Tokers' haven failed, opens museum, cafe
By: Carolin Vesely, Winnipeg Free Press, 10/31/03

CHRIS Dalman's dream of running a "sanctuary for true believers of cannabis" in Osborne Village last April turned to ashes when his Cannabis Devout Mission Cafe opened and closed in the same month.

Eighteen months later, the pot advocate is back in the high life again -- sort of -- after opening the Canadian Cannabis/Hemp Museum and 420 Lounge Cafe in downtown Winnipeg.

But unlike the Osborne venture, the only pot that'll be passed around inside the newly renovated walls at 304 Notre Dame Ave. will be filled with hemp tea or coffee.

To celebrate his new digs, Dalman is throwing a party tonight at 6 p.m. for the reefer-madness movie Potluck, which is opening across the street at Towne 8 Cinema, at 301 Notre Dame Ave. The movie showings tonight are at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.

"We're the official movie party headquarters," Dalman said yesterday. "People are going to come down, see the movie and come to the party."

Dalman, 33, still worships cannabis sativa as the "No. 1 most significant, valuable plant on the planet," but he says his earlier attempt to spread the ganja gospel taught him some hard lessons -- namely that the grass isn't greener on the other side of the law. (His Osborne landlord, not the cops, shut him down.) "We learned the radical approach definitely doesn't work anywhere, especially in conservative Winnipeg," he says inside the funky little 420 Cafe, which serves hemp-based drinks and snacks.

"Rather than forcing Winnipeg, or any laws, to change, we're going to wait for that change to happen by itself."

Papered with clippings

(The name 420, a 1970s toker code, is said to refer to the police code for marijuana use, the time of reggae legend Bob Marley's death or simply the best time of day for lighting up.)

The walls of the cafe and adjoining museum are papered with news clippings, dating back to the late '60s, that track the evolution of Canada's cannabis laws.

Those laws, Dalman says, are the only thing holding him back from providing the service people really want -- a place to gather and smoke. "We're not going to lie to people," he says. "We do appreciate cannabis and we do smoke it privately. But we're here to focus on the hemp foods and coffees and to reach the public who need to be educated that it (cannabis) is not something to be feared."

The museum, run by Dalman's mother, is "basically a Canadian monument to advance cannabis awareness and pay homage to its history," he says.

It offers a global glimpse into both the hallucinogenic and utilitarian properties of the cannabis plant with hemp artifacts and pot propaganda from around the world.

The former section includes Chinese hemp sandals, 1940s hemp-shore thread from Ireland, one of Canada's largest hemp-ship ropes and letters from Manitoba farmers singing the fibre's praises to Ottawa back in 1882. The latter includes the first Canadian edition of High Times magazine, out-of-print posters and an entire showcase devoted to Amsterdam's heady history as the world's pot-smoking mecca.

Dalman's mom, who declined to be named, knits the hemp tuques and slippers sold in the gift shop, along with other hemp clothing, snacks and beauty aids and her son's homemade hemp-stalk pipes. (Apparently mom's OK with hawking hemp, but is hesitant to endorse the head-shop wares.)

The Canadian Cannabis/Hemp Museum -- the first in the country, Dalman says -- is open daily at 11 a.m.

Hemp-pancake breakfasts are held Sundays from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. to raise money for local charities. For more information, call 942-HEMP.