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The day Linton, Rifici and other private investors purchased the old Hershey facility, they employed just three other people. They were contemplating an operation that would eventually employ 100. For once, these entrepreneurs vastly underestimated the speed of the train they were about to board.

Photo by Julie Oliver / Postmedia

If you haven’t visited the gritty, industrial town of Smiths Fall since 2017, you will be stunned by the changes taking place — nearly all of them stimulated by the activity of a single business.

Mario Castillo has seen it all first hand. He joined Canopy Growth in the summer of 2017, when there were just 200 employees at the Smiths Falls headquarters.

Today there are 750, representing nearly half the company’s total head count — this, in a town that two years ago had a total workforce of 3,600.

Castillo is intimately familiar with what it took to put the new workers in place because he is the firm’s regional general manager — responsible for ensuring the rapid expansion goes smoothly. And he knows the job is not done.

“The challenge here is to scale rapidly,” he says, “to put in place the structure and people to make this work.”

Photo by Julie Oliver / Postmedia

Canopy Growth is expanding all facets of its operation in advance of next month’s legalization of recreational marijuana in Canada. The company is already supplying medical marijuana to customers overseas, and hopes next year to sell foods and drinks spiked with active ingredients from marijuana.

The latter thrust was the impetus for a $5-billion investment in Canopy Growth by Constellation Brands, a U.S. liquor and beer company. Canopy Growth shareholders will gather in Smiths Falls on Sept. 26 to approve the landmark deal.