Dane Taylor spent the 1970s as a reveling hippie strolling down Cumberland Street, dodging police with a cannabis joint tucked between his lips — decades later his Yorkville-based music shop could be neighbours with the city’s first legal cannabis store.

The first three cannabis stores in Ontario could be set up in Toronto, Brampton and St. Catharines, The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), has announced.

The AGCO says applications for pot shops have been made in those three cities and will now be subject to public feedback until Feb. 20, with the stores to open in April.

The Toronto shop would be located in the city’s Yorkville neighbourhood at 20 Cumberland St.

The Brampton store would be at 186 Main St., near a city mall, and the St. Catharines store would open at 33 Lakeshore Rd.

The 67-year-old businessman couldn’t have dreamed up such an image, when he had to discreetly toke up with friends, along the alleyways and in the back rooms of coffee shops and clubs — in the then hippie enclave and bohemian cultural centre of Yorkville.

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“We used to smoke, then go into the coffee houses and listen to Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot. They played the clubs here,” he said from behind the counter at Song and Script Music Store, inside Cumberland Terrace.

Taylor welcomes the cannabis store, with a few stipulations.

“It should be controlled like a LCBO is controlled,” he said. “Bring it on, just as long as it’s properly regulated.”

He credits the legal operations for helping to drive out the black market.

“There are so many illegal drugs that are dangerous,” he said. “When we were smoking pot there was no fentanyl.”

Now Yorkville is home to some of the most expensive real estate in the city.

Taylor has lived through a wave of gentrification and a cannabis store is just another piece of that narrative, he said.

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Looking out onto Cumberland, he points to a block of stores being demolished to make room for condos.

Derrick Brady, has been in Yorkville for 35 years, including 30 years working at The Pilot, a bar and lounge, at 22 Cumberland St.

A pot smoker himself, he welcomes the new business, but has some trepidation because of his experience dealing with clients of MMJ’s, an illegal dispensary that once operated out of 20 Cumberland.

“When we had the (illegal) pot shop next door, I had to deal with a lot of stoned people coming in,” he said, while serving a round of drinks to patrons. “People threw up in the bathroom and we had to deal with all this extra stuff.”

He questions the optics of putting the store so close to a bar.

“I’m not too sure about the benefits of a bar being located right next door,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me, but it can get little out of hand.”

If the establishment operated within the rules and their customers don’t become a nuisance to his clients, Brady, 54, doesn’t see it becoming an issue.

Potential owners of the proposed operation have hit the location jackpot, says Industry consultant, Nick Pateras, vice-president of strategies of Lift & Co., a Toronto cannabis information and resources firm.

“It’s a pretty great location,” he said. “It will be the envy of a number of other people.”

It’s a stones throw from business, subway stops, thousands of condo units, stores and entertainment facilities.

“They’ve got this one going very favourable to them,” Pateras said.

No details were provided about the potential operator. Reached for comment, Wednesday, the AGCO spokesperson stated, “the only information we are authorized to make publicly available is the information posted on the AGCO website.”

Ontario announced the first 25 entities that could apply for cannabis retail licences in the province last month.

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