5 Toronto Cannabis Creators and Trailblazers Worth Knowing

Legal cannabis didn’t appear out of nowhere in 2018. Toronto had a cannabis culture for decades before the law caught up, built by people who ran lounges through legal grey zones, cooked with the plant before anyone printed dosing on a label, and made cannabis look like art when most media still played it for laughs. Here are five Toronto figures whose work we keep coming back to. Handles and projects evolve, so treat this as a starting point and follow the trail from there.

Abi Roach

The godmother of Toronto cannabis retail. Abi opened the Roach-O-Rama headshop in 2000 and then made Canadian history with HotBox, the Kensington Market lounge where Torontonians could legally-ish smoke together two decades before legalization. She fought the legal battles, kept the doors open, and later took her expertise into the legal industry itself. The Hotbox Cafe still stands in Kensington, and any cannabis tour of the city that skips it is incomplete.

Vee (@fallforvee)

A visual artist and creative director whose earth-toned, meticulously composed feed helped define what “cannabis aesthetic” means in the legal era: warm, calm, and a world away from pot-leaf clip art. She’s also been an open, articulate voice about using cannabis while living with disability, which gave a lot of people language for their own experience.

Chef Pat Newton

Fifteen-plus years of cannabis cooking, channelled into Munchy Brothers, his line of infused ingredients that turn regular recipes into edibles. His feed is equal parts cooking show and dosing education, and if our cannabis oil guide got you interested in infused cooking, his work is the deep end of that pool.

DJ G Rex

The self-described turnt-tablist: DJ sets on one side of the feed, “Chronnoisseur Review” glassware breakdowns on the other. His reviews of bongs, pipes, and accessories from Toronto headshops are genuinely useful buying research wrapped in entertainment, especially if you have a weakness for designer glass.

Candace Cosentino

A Toronto photographer whose still-life and portrait work treats cannabis as a legitimate subject for fine art. Her Canna-Queens series, women smoking shot in a glamorous, honey-lit style, did real work in replacing the dorm-room visual stereotype with something elegant. Through Cos Studios she’s shot for brands across the industry.

The culture is local

What these five share is Toronto: the city’s cannabis story is being written by people you can actually run into. The retail chapter of that story is the one we contribute to at High Park and King West, where the budtender recommending your pre-roll has probably been to the Hotbox and definitely has opinions about glassware. Come be part of the scene. 19+ only.