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Of course, in a comment below the Nunatsiaq story, reader “Matt” noted the counter-intuitive economics of cutting off Nunavut’s richest drug pipeline.

“If the reduction were significant, the ‘street value’ of cannabis [will] go up, making cultivation and trafficking even more lucrative.”

Vancouver fails to assemble record-breaking peace sign

Meanwhile, in a region with no shortage of marijuana, on Saturday an attempt by Vancouverites to assemble the world’s largest peace sign failed miserably.

Massing in a field on the extreme western edge of Vancouver, the plan was to assemble 5,815 people and break a five-year-old New York record of 5,814.

From the Ubyssey:

As the day went on, however, it became increasingly evident there were not enough people to occupy the large peace sign outlined in chalk on the field.

By the time a helicopter finally appeared overheard to photograph the history-making event, the field only counted 734 people—about 5,100 short of the record.

“I would be lying to say that I’m not disappointed … but I’m so happy with the people who did come,” organizer Joyce Ross told the Ubyssey.

Canadian A-bomb survivor dies

Jack Ford, one of the last Canadians to have witnessed the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan, died Tuesday at the age of 94, according to The Telegram.

Mr. Ford was an aero mechanic with the RAF when, in 1942, he was captured by Japanese forces on the island of Java and sent to perform slave labour at a shipyard outside Nagasaki.

In 1985, he told the CBC about what he witnessed on August 9, 1945.

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and as I was about to go and get the bucket of green tea for the group, a blast struck us. And when I looked towards Nagasaki, the sky was just blackened and the mushroom was just gone up miles in the air. The next thing we felt, of course, was the intense heat. We had thought, perhaps, and many of us said, that it was the end of the world—it was just that bad.

Mr. Ford credited the bomb with ending the war before he succumbed to the brutal conditions of the camp, but at the same time, he expressed fervent hope that atomic bombs never again be turned on human targets.

In later years, Mr. Ford had become a vocal advocate for greater recognition of the anniversary of the Japanese surrender —and in 2010 rejected an apology by Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada directed at former inmates of Japanese P.O.W. camps.

“Apologies don’t mean a thing to me,” Mr. Ford told CBC Newfoundland at the time. “They refused to give us any money for the labour we performed in Japan.”