Episode Transcript
Trevor: Kirk, we're back.
Kirk: Hey Trevor, how's it going?
Trevor: Uh, really good. Kirk, this might be redundant. I met a really interesting person on LinkedIn and talked to her about cannabis.
Kirk: Yeah, yeah imagine that. Now you met an interesting person Reverend Kelly.
Trevor: Yes,.
Kirk: And and she's out of Ontario
Trevor: yes um yeah uh we could have had four or five different interviews about anything from cannabis spirituality to cannabis tourism to she has had and continues to have something called Kelly's Green Lounge. All really interesting but I gotta admit the thing that just sort of hooked me was cannabis weddings i didn't know that was a thing. I never occurred to me and now i can't stop talking talking about cannabis weddings
Kirk: Yeah, no, there was a, I know of a cannabis wedding that happened in Winnipeg, a relative of mine had, my cousin's daughter had a wedding on private property and at the wedding they had a cannabis stall where you could go get cannabis products as part of the wedding. So that was kind of cool. We're going to talk a little bit about jurisdictions, but she lives in Ontario and her webpage suggests that she's got her fingers into a lot of cannabis stuff, apothecary, she's tourism mentor program, she's spirituality. She’s got a television program and a network. A very interesting lady.
Trevor: Oh, very interesting. And she'll do a bit more justice. But, you know, like many people liked cannabis as a teenager, but then was in the music industry where cannabis was everywhere. But then it was a teacher. But she was the teacher that all the moms went to to ask cannabis questions and a bunch of research into the endocannabinoid system and Kelly's Green Lounge and the Covid. You know, I am not doing this justice, she has had an very interesting way of getting into cannabis before we can get to cannabis weddings. Why don't we let Reverend Kelly introduce herself and tell us about how she got into cannabis and how that led into cannabis weddings?
Kirk: Right on.
Reverend Kelly: Hello, my name is Reverend Kelly and I'm in Canada. I'm from the KGL network and the CCTA and many other things, but I'll tell you about that after.
Trevor: Excellent, excellent, can't wait. So it might be going back a little bit, but tell us how you sort of first got involved, introduced, interested in cannabis.
Reverend Kelly: Oh my gosh. Trevor, you told me I only have 30 minutes. This is quite a long story.
Trevor: I know. We'll go the short version.
Reverend Kelly: The short version. I was a teacher for a long time when my son was small. He's 18 now and I had always had cannabis in my life. I came before that career I was in the music industry I was on tour with famous DJs and stages and everything so when you're in the music industry you have cannabis around a lot and I'm a hippie and I started consuming it when I was 14 in the 90s and all that right. And so it was always in my life but I never really knew that it was medicine or anything like that until we were getting closer to 2018. So in Canada in 2018 we legalized cannabis for adult use. And so around 2017, we were having conversations about it. There were little shops popping up that were not legal and there were medical cards and medical cannabis. And so everybody was like cannabis, cannabis, cannabis, right? So all these mums, like I said, I was a teacher, all these moms were coming up to me going, Kelly, what's cannabis? Like, can you get it? What is it? Can you tell us about it? And I didn't know. I only knew that it was something that I put in, like when people would bring bottles of wine to picnics and stuff, I would bring a... Brownies, like weed brownies or potcorn, right? So I only knew that that was what you did, right? Like you had weed and you smoked weed and everything. So then I thought, I better understand this. If you were asking me questions. So I took a deep dive, like a rabbit hole, like we were talking about, down that rabbit hole into cannabis and started taking all these courses. And I went, what? We have a, oh, what an endocannabinoid system. I had to learn how to pronounce it. And this, this medicine was stolen from us and it's all racially involved and it was all, and I got so mad Trevor, I got mad and then I started to do more and more research and I've taken dozens and dozens of courses. At this point in time. So we're talking almost like 10 years later, and I had just discovered that this was something that had been stolen and taken. And lied to us about and it was all racially involved in greed and anger and all of this and I just went, oh no no no. And so I started an online platform called Kelly's Green Lounge and that got really popular really fast and I thought, oh let's bring it to real life. So I started doing all these little pop-ups and those got bigger. And so, I opened up a cannabis lounge in a tiny little village of 1600 people where people had never even knew that there were grinders before, they were still using scissors for their cannabis and didn't really know that you could make edibles and you could use it for medicine and so I just started teaching and doing podcasts both audio and video. And then it just blew up from there. People came to the lounge from all over North America, literally just to be there and be part of Kelly's Green Lounge. And then you know what happened, Trevor? COVID, COVID happened. And we weren't allowed to do anything anymore. So we had to close our doors and only like put things out on patios or the front steps for people to purchase. And it couldn't be weed, it couldn't be cannabis. So anyway, I had to figure out how to pivot it. And so I created KGL TV, which is my media brand. And I just started doing podcasts and having live sessions. When we were in the lounge, we were doing things like yoga talk and. Cannabis and comedy nights and all of these interactive things. So I just put them online so people could still feel that connection. I mean, we were supporting, we were doing addictions anonymous, not to that, like the AA places, but we would have people that were addicted to substances that wanted to learn harm reduction through cannabis that were coming. And we couldn't just not support them anymore. And we can't support stop supporting medical patients. And we had elderly and had just so many people. And so it just became more and more and at the same time I was building the Canadian Cannabis Tourism Alliance with my other founders who are incredible cannabis tourism pioneers and then that blew up and we will have our Fifth AGM this November so we are a federal not-for-profit that have been going for five years solid and literally pioneering cannabis tourism here in Canada and throughout the world globally actually. Last year we created World Cannabis Tourism Day on September 27th. We'll do our second annual this year and it was recognized by our government. And it's recognized we have political support and from the municipal to the provincial to the federal level. And so we created that, the CCTA and KGL is going strong. And at the same time, I felt a spiritual call. Also, I was already a Rakey master and doing herbalism and reading the tarot. And then so I was delving into the metaphysics, but I felt even more of a spiritual pull. So I became an ordained minister and created cannabis spirituality. And that's one of my registered trademarks that is cannabis spirituality because I believe in the spiritual connection from the plant and the humans and consciousness and so I could go on and on Trevor the things that I've developed but so far that's about it.
Trevor: I have so many questions and I want to go down so many rabbit holes, but we're going to at least start the focus on one of the things that really grabbed my attention of a cannabis wedding.
Reverend Kelly: Yeah.
Trevor: So you do ceremonies and you said, in particular, cannabis weddings and so many questions. So how about I'll just, before I ask a bazillion, how about, I'll let you, how did this start? What does it look like? What's kind of involved in a cannabis wedding?
Reverend Kelly: Yeah, yeah. Well, we're about to do Win Your Dream Cannabis Spirituality Wedding in Jamaica. And so what that means, right? And so a lucky couple will get to come into Negril, Jamaica, to Coral Cove and win their dream cannabis, spirituality wedding. So I fully believe in the spiritual properties. I believe that cannabis opens us up to connection and whatever you believe in, whether it's Jesus or Buddha or Allah or for me, it's Krishna, It's all the same story, anyway, from book to book to religion to religion. But whatever you believe that you need to connect to, that's what cannabis allows for us. It's our real true self. So in that sense, when you're getting married, if you're not getting married within cannabis and cannabis spirituality, it's my belief that that's not really truly connecting you to your partner. I also told you that I am a Reiki master, so I'm able to transfer energy from one human to the next. So that's all part of it. And it doesn't necessarily mean consumption by THC or any of that. It can just mean being having having cannabis there as part of what you're doing to connect you and open yourself up and be connected with each other and with whatever it is that you believe in. Maybe it is just the universe. Maybe you just believe in nature or maybe you're a Wiccan, maybe you whatever you believe in having that as part. It, but allowing the plant to use her properties to open yourself up to who you truly are. And so when you're getting married to your partner, non-denominational, I'll marry anybody unless it's illegal, of course, right? But that's what it is. It's having that. And of course we have the bouquets that are not traditional flowers. They're made from cannabis bouquet and cannabis flowers. And then it's just all that when we have, the food that you would be dining on, it's infused. However, the couple would like that we pair cannabis strains to the different foods So let's say we're having a mocktail not a cocktail. No, no, no alcohol is bad for us. It hurts our body But when we're using mocktails with cannabis infusions, maybe we're Flavoring finding a cannabis cultivar strain that would be pairing with whatever the flavor of this is of that drink or dessert or whatever it is that you have for that so it's all infused as part of the wedding. Even the music is themed with cannabis
Trevor: Fantastic. And so many things. Let's start with boring legal stuff. So, and I know it's different province to province, but in Manitoba, Kirk and I have looked into this a few times. As far as we can tell, and we're not lawyers, but as far as we can tell. In Manitoba, you can basically consume in your house, in your private residence. And so if I have a big house or big garage or big property, I could have a party there, but I can't go to the local hall and I can have a cannabis social. I can do a big gathering of people where cannabis is involved because I can get a liquor license for a wedding. How does that work for, and again, maybe we're completely, maybe Manitoba is weird, Maybe we're missing something, but let's start with the space. So in one of the spaces you use, how does the legal stuff work for cannabis to be allowed to be there? Maybe it's just a private residence. How does that work?
Reverend Kelly: I know that Manitoba has a little bit of different changes than they do here in Ontario. When we legalized, every province was allowed to make their own rules. Quebec is the scariest ones. Manitoba I think you were just allowed to grow your own plants.
Trevor: Yeah, like about a year ago. Right. We're a little behind.
Reverend Kelly: So I'm not exactly sure, I'm not up on what the legal requirements are for hosting events, but I'll talk about here and I'll tell you about Jamaica, where I'm going to. So when you here in Ontario, we have events all of the time you're allowed to have any cannabis events. You follow the smoking bylaws so you can't smoke inside, but you can have a smoking section designated outside. We never have them for cigarettes. We only use them for cannabis consumption. But of course, there's different ways to consume cannabis by beverages, by edibles, by, you know, different ways, right? But we don't necessarily need to smoke here. You can have a cannabis event anywhere and as long as you're not selling the cannabis there. So maybe that it is involved some other way. Maybe they're sampling them. If you're a budtender and you have your can sell, that's what you hear as the requirement, then you can get samples. But I think that when it comes to the event space, Put could be just each one of them. Maybe they're different. It's very strange to me that you can only smoke inside of your house. Like you can't go in anywhere outside. You can't to festivals or events or anything there in Manitoba where, that's so weird.
Trevor: Its very weird. So Kirk, sounds like having a cannabis event in Ontario is way easier than Manitoba, huh?
Kirk: Yeah, Manitoba is a little slow in the uptake. I mean, we just got our four. We're allowed to grow four like the rest of the country except Quebec. But we can only grow indoors. We can't grow our four outdoors. And we cannot consume cannabis unless you are on private property or within your own domicile. We know that a couple of years ago our CountryFest had the first mobile cannabis retail store.
Trevor: Yeah but the reason that worked is because it was on private property and my understanding and neither of us lawyers is the idea is well you bought it from the mobile pop-up shop but then you were only supposed to go back and smoke it at your campsite which is your domicile. You know you weren't supposed to take it up into the stands we will we will not rat anybody out about whether or not any of it went did go into the stand but yeah
Kirk: Well, but let's just want to focus a little bit on Manitoba law. And this goes back to when we interviewed the government. And the way the law is interpreting in Manitobas, you can consume cannabis in your private domicile. If you rent, you could consume cannabis if the renter allows you to, or outside within 30 feet or 60 feet of the buildings. So people that live in apartment buildings can go to the smoking area outside and consume cannabis if they're on their apartment site. Now the question about being on private property, that is true, but if you have public access to private property you still cannot have legal cannabis. For example, you know, private property could be a hall in town, but, if you are selling tickets, a social, you cannot serve, you can't get a cannabis license in a public event. So they could sell cannabis at CountryFest, but you could not consume cannabis anywhere on the CountryFest lot unless you were in your campsite. So that's the Manitoba law. Now provincial parks is no tolerance for cannabis unless you're in your domicile, which would be your campsites, so you can't go for a walk and consume cannabis unless you're at your site, and that's, I think, the federal law as well. You can only consume... Yeah. So no, we're a little behind. She's in Ontario and I got the impression she now can rent a hall in Ontario, and have a cannabis event.
Trevor: You know, I think that is a perfect cliffhanger for why don't we come back in part two and have Reverend Kelly tell us about how things are a little different in Ontario and more importantly, tell us more about Cannabis Weddings.
Kirk: Done