VANCOUVER -- A small group of enterprising vendors set up an open air market in Vancouver's Sunset Beach on Tuesday to mark April 20, which is a traditional day of protest in the cannabis community.
In a typical year, Vancouver’s 4/20 festival draws 10s of thousands to the sand and grass near the mouth of False Creek, but organizers of that large event did not hold it in 2020 or 2021 due to the pandemic.
That didn’t stop several people from hawking their cannabis products and performing live amplified music – drawing a couple of hundred others to the area where they sang, cheered and shared joints at 4:20 p.m.
There was little physical distancing and few in the crowd wore masks.
None of the people who spoke to CTV News said who had organized the event.
At times during the afternoon, different pairs of Vancouver police officers made the rounds, keeping an eye on the crowd from a distance.
“As with all protests that have been going on in the city, our officers are on scene should anything criminal arise,” Const. Tania Visintin told CTV News in a statement.
Neither the City of Vancouver or the park board provided responses to CTV News questions about the scaled down 4/20 celebration and the apparent lack of enforcement around it.
For most of the pandemic, the Sunset Beach parking lot has been locked, but on Tuesday it was open and full.
