LAKEPORT, ONT.—On a slate-grey Friday afternoon, the snow drifting through the Lakeport Cemetery is the liveliest thing in sight around this Northumberland County hamlet.Then a glance in the rear-view mirror reveals a yellow school bus swinging north onto Townline Rd. with its final load of the week. Just before turning off County Rd. 31, however, the bus and its scholars would have passed right by a tin-and-cinderblock factory, which sits on the border between Cramahe and Alnwick/Haldimand townships and is the only visible place of business in this town east of Cobourg, near Lake Ontario.And the business that’s emerging in the former canning plant has many in Lakeport angry that it will change the nature of the hamlet.“They’re going to put a cannabis growing operation in there,” says Femma Norton, a leader of the Defend Lakeport residents association that has sprung up in opposition to the facility. “When you see the history of Lakeport, it changes the whole dynamics of the quaint little hamlet that we have here.”As the legalization of recreational pot takes hold in Canada, plants like this planned Sharpshooter Industries Inc. operation are opening across the country, prompting several bouts of citizen concern, including recently in Hamilton and Pelham, Ont.The 31,000-square-foot plant — which will produce cannabis flower, extracts and oils — would be Sharpshooter’s first.“Ultimately, the question to ask is: would there even be an issue if the operation was to grow and process roses and rose oil, versus cannabis and cannabis oil?” says Sharpshooter CEO Omar Fattah, in an emailed response to questions from the Star.The company’s origin story tells of founder Scott Hamilton helping to cure a pseudonymous Canadian veteran of the war in Afghanistan — named as John Smith on the company website — of post-traumatic stress disorder with his cannabis extract formula. The story goes ...
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