Beau Sears, a Vancouver cannactivist has recently passed away during the COVID pandemic. May she rest in peace. This is us, during a much better time, protesting downtown at City Hall in 2015.
A lot of people like to claim to be the sole founders or creators of the Vancouver 420 Farmers' Market, but it was a grassroots event that began with the idea among some people in the community of 3/20, a prelude to 4/20 to help us get in the season again. If successful we thought we could do one every month: 5/20, 6/20, as a way to say once a year isn't enough, we need more cannactivism in Vancouver.
As cool as 6/20 and 7/20 sounds, they dates were complicated, so we did the first Saturday of every month. In the height of the summer in 2017, it increased to every Saturday, which worked. But eventually every day, almost 24/7, there were people just vending and living there and making a terrible mess of Robson Square.
Beau Sears and Marc Boyer (RIP) were some of the few original vendors at 3/20 and the beginning of the 420 Farmers Market...back when we all huddled under one tent, and vending was one of many activities not a focus because the Markets helped facilitate protesting and vice versa. Before the Market got soured with excessive greed and narcissism, there was Beau, selling Hayley's Comet oil and Marc selling his remarcable cookies.