The smell of pot was in the air as thousands assembled on the lawn of the Vancouver Art Gallery for a collective toke.
It was a grass-roots celebration of the freedom to smoke marijuana on April 20 -- known as '420' among pot users as the time to get high.
Amid the tents, the music and, barely seen through the smoke -- were messages on signposts by organizers about legalization of marijuana.
"2008 was the biggest 420 event in Vancouver with nearly 10,000 people taking part over the course of the day," said organizer Jodie Joanna Emery, the wife of "Prince of Pot" Marc Emery.
There are many myths behind the origins of the phrase '420' as slang for a time to smoke up.
The event shares a date with the birthday of Adolf Hitler, and the high school shootings in Columbine, Colorado.
But according to High Times Magazine, 420 originated in a San Francisco high school in the early 1970s as the time detention ended.
One group of kids -- known as the "Waldos" -- coined the term because they could use it to talk about smoking weed after school without the teachers knowing what it meant.
The term caught on when it circulated among Grateful Dead fans in the 1980s, and by 1997, about 50 marijuana activists set up on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery to show the world they could smoke pot.
Since then the event has grown to hundreds of pot smokers milling about on the Vancouver Art Gallery lawn each year.
