About Us | Our Story
Legal cannabis. Who would have thought? Well maybe not thought exactly but certainly hoped and dreamed. And worked. Hard.
With many other passionate, like minded individuals we worked to legalize cannabis the better part of 25 years. We got our start working with the likes of Hempline and Chris Clay back in ’94, launched Pure Hemp rolling papers a couple of year later, grew our first legal hemp crop in ’98 and were hired to create the Ontario Hemp Alliance (which later rolled into the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance.)
We collaborated with Dr. Ernest Small (who received the Order of Canada for his lifetime work researching cannabis) at Agriculture Canada on a hemp genetics trial from 1999-2001 and started a hemp breeding program in 2000 with partner PhytoGene Resources Inc. (we currently have 5 varieties on Health Canada’s List of Approved Cultivars).
Throughout we have continued to advocate and yes, abide. There’s that time back in 2003 when Yo and Hemphry got stopped at the U.S. border and were charged with importing 20lbs of marijuana when all they had were roasted, salted hemp seed. It turned out that Dave Bronner and the HIA were suing the DEA to keep hemp seeds legal and the convergence of these events lead to hemp food getting legalized in the US.
Prior to the legalization of cannabis in Canada we worked with the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance to successfully lobby for hemp farmers to be able to harvest the whole plant for hemp-based CBD. We deeply believe in the importance of growing cannabis outdoors and lobbied successfully for this as well.
In 2001 we got our Health Canada processing licence and launched WholeHemp, the first cannabis brand in Canada to focus solely on full spectrum hemp CBD products. We also got an outdoor cultivation licence for our organically certified farm in the Trent Hills and grew our first crop of legal high THC cannabis.
Today Abide’s WholeHemp CBD product line is flourishing as is the Abide line of sungrowncannabis products. Our focus, as always, is to deliver the highest quality full spectrum products, produced in the most sustainable manner.
We value the process that goes into perfecting a craft. All Abide products are artisanal and made exclusively with natural, botanical ingredients that you recognize when reading the labels. They are hand produced in small batches locally by us to ensure the highest standards are met. It's not about maximizing efficiencies and economies of scale, it's all about bringing the highest quality cannabis products directly to you.