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Don Gibbs has long been haunted by the 1970s and early ’80s. Those were the years he was the top financial executive at Mitel, a maker of telecom gear that hired by the thousands, built factories around the world and doubled in size every year for a decade.

The company did it all with managers who were barely out of their twenties, Gibbs included. Gibbs is now in his mid-60s, and he remembers it as an experience that was both the best and the worst thing that ever happened to him.

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“When the growth stops,” he says, recollecting, “you’re always looking for the next ride — and they don’t come along very often.”

Gibbs is saying this from the floor of a Smiths Falls plant that used to manufacture Hershey chocolate bars. A sizable piece of the facility is being transformed into a commercial marijuana farm.

Behind him, in a bright white room, workers tend to row upon row of marijuana plants in various stages of growth.