The fent fold

[Vlad Drkulec]

I just learned something new today. There was a large crowd on the street bent over smoking some unknown substance from a glass pipe and exhaling large clouds of smoke while a crowd of zombies crowded around the person with the pipe. They would take a hit and then move around like something out of The Walking Dead. And then bend over on the verge of passing out but moving around bent over like that. It was not just one of them but a whole crowd of them.

[Tom O'Donnell]

When pot was first legalized in Canada, I thought there would be a lot of people trying pot a few times, the potheads would get safer drugs, and other than that the effects would be minor. As someone who has never done any kind of drug, not once, not ever, I figured most people were like me. I was very naive.

In my suburb, the smell is around, but not often. When I go to Windsor itself, it is hard to escape it. Particularly people toking up in cars. You can smell it as they drive by. When I go to play poker at the casino, it is rare that at least one person at the table doesn't smell of weed. I wonder what percentage of people are buzzed almost constantly.

My theory is that collectivists are trying to make everything mundane and depressing (see for example: art, architecture, and music) which is turning the population into zombies, but it is helped immensely by alcohol and drugs. Covid showed the government's priorities by keeping those distribution channels open while closing down rec centres and sports fields.

Fentanyl may be the bottom of the barrel, but the barrel is deep, and getting deeper.

[Vlad Drkulec]

My observation point was inside a fast food restaurant in Calgary. The zombie crowd was just outside the front window and entrance. I was there for the Sports Tourism Canada Congress and Speed Dating event which took place from March 17 to March 20. The highlight was the Speed Dating where I met with 22 communities or accommodation providers. 24 appointments were made but two cancelled. I did get to talk to a number of people who were not on my original dance card. We didn't attend last year because it took place in Winnipeg in the midst of the effort to save the FIDE Candidates tournaments in Toronto. Also they did not offer the usual incentives to rights holders which were a free airline ticket and hotel accommodations last year. If they had we might have sent someone.

We started participating in these sport tourism events in 2018 in Halifax. The original managers were replaced and started their own streamlined conference SPO HO X which I attended in Ottawa in 2023 and Fred McKim recently attended in PEI. Our participation in these events has raised awareness of the CFC among communities and the people that we met have been instrumental in providing many thousands of dollars to local organizers of our flagship events. Next year's Ottawa tournaments will receive $55,000 in sports tourism sponsorship. I have been talking to them since 2018 and met with them at almost every sports tourism conference. Laval 2024 was the end result of a meeting over pizza in 2018.

Getting Canadian Youth Chess Championships and Canadian Opens organized got much easier after we started tapping the sport tourism community.

[Vlad Drkulec]

I have not seen anything like the fent fold in Windsor though I don't get deep into downtown Windsor aside from the occasional visit to nurses and doctors or to use the tunnel to travel to chess tournaments in Michigan. I used to go to a nurse near the Downtown Mission but my impression was that the people there were alcohol abusers mostly with some cocaine and crystal meth people as well. My naive take is that they were a bit more dangerous than the fentanyl zombies who seem to have retreated into their own nirvana. My doctor's and nurse appointments tend to be early in the morning and the dangerous ones are probably still sleeping off the last night's festivities.

There is a lot of marijuana everywhere as I occasionally smell it on people at the grocery stores in Tecumseh. That is not surprising as there is a marijuana store on every other corner, though many of them have been going out of business recently.