CANMORE – A handful of people braved frigid weather to be the first customers in line to buy recreational cannabis from Fire & Flower, the first retail store to open its doors in the Bow Valley.
Located at 1120 Railway Ave. in Canmore, the brightly lit store officially opened its doors to the public at 10 a.m. on Dec. 7.
Douglas Katarey was the first customer to get in and out of the store spending $52.50 for 3.5 grams of sour tangie, one of 40 strains of cannabis available at the store.
“It’s pretty cool be able to buy weed legally now,” said Katarey. “It’s always nice to have a selection of strains to pick from.”
He said it felt great to be the store's first customer and said he hopes it will help end the stigma around the drug, which was legalized across the country on Oct. 17.
"We're very excited that Canmore is one of our stores and we're excited to bring cannabis to the Bow Valley," said Nathan Mison, vice-president of government and stakeholder relations for the company.
"We've taken a very different approach as an organization and the fact that we haven't just focused on the big cities. We wanted to make sure that we're in local communities and making a difference in the communities that we are in, not only as a cannabis retailer but as a good neighbour."
In order to enter the store customers must be 18 years of age or older and show a piece of ID before they enter the retail area.
From there, customers can learn about the various strains of marijuana from an information board, which includes details such as the strength of the cannabis and how it will make you feel. It also includes information about fragrance, cannabinoids and pricing.
Several customer service employees were also on hand to answer any questions customers might have. Once customers were ready to make a purchase they could take a hexagonal card from the information board and go to the front counter to make their purchase, where they were ID again.
Currently, there are six potential retail locations in Canmore that have development permits from the municipality, however, only one store is currently open.
In Banff, Town officials have so far received seven cannabis retail applications, but the municipal planning commission won't make any decisions until early February at the earliest.
In November the Alberta Gaming Liqour and Cannabis Commission (AGLC) announced it was temporarily suspending accepting new cannabis-retail applications, or issuing any additional licenses because of a nationwide cannabis shortage.
The AGLC said its priority is to ensure private retailers are supported and it continues to allocate the majority of its scarce inventory to private retailers. It has also maintained some online product to allow consumers in communities where there aren’t any retail stores to purchase cannabis online.
Mison said his company has taken measures to make sure all nine of its stores will remain open, including reducing their operating hours for the time being.
"We have never closed our doors to the public and we will make that commitment to the best of our ability," said Mison.
He said his company was well aware that there might be a shortage of cannabis before it became legalized and built it into its plans.
"One of the things that we worked really hard and judicially on as we were setting up this organization is understanding as an organization where we could learn lessons and because of the nine states that have legal cannabis in the United States we saw that this is the ebb and flow of legalization."
He said in the first eight to 12 months in those nine states there was a chronic shortage of recreation cannabis followed by a chronic oversupply.
Currently, the company has seven stores open in Alberta and two in Saskatchewan. He said the company has plans to open 37 in Alberta and has applied to open eight more stores in B.C. The company would also like to open up 18 stores in Manitoba and 75 in Ontario.
"Our goal is to be one of the preemptive cannabis retails in Canada and have the opportunity to define and curate a Canadian cannabis sector," said Mison.
