“What do you do for a living?” Whether you’re meeting someone for the first time or making small talk with your barber, this is a question we spend most of our lives answering. For most of us, the answer is straightforward. For others, their job is more than a title; it’s a story. Over the next few weeks, The Citizen will introduce you to locals whose careers break the mould—jobs that are rare and remarkable. Let’s meet them together.
Mark and Justine Douglas operate Highland Greenhouses Inc. on Sood Road. On their multiacre property, they raise their three kids, some chickens, and 120 cannabis plants inside their 2,400-square-foot grow facility.
In 2025, growing cannabis may no longer be all that unique in Canada. What makes this couple’s operation unusual is that they are a two-person show, handling every part of the process themselves from propagation to harvest, packing, and distribution.
More than anything, their idea to invest in cannabis was stimulated by the desire to be self-employed stay-at-home parents.
In 2012, they started a small operation in their garage. At the time, Justine managed her own landscape maintenance business and Mark worked as a scuba diver for a company that installed and maintained offshore oil and gas extraction facilities.
Although cannabis wasn’t yet fully legalized in Canada, the law offered provisions for medicinal cannabis users to grow plants for their own use.
By word of mouth, the Douglases became authorized growers for three such medical cannabis users. They could grow up to 300 plants, most for a gentleman diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour.
The rules for becoming an authorized grower were relaxed at the time. According to the Douglases, it required filling out a form akin to a passport application. It was so easy, Mark says, that the black market was flooded with product from licensed cannabis growers.
By 2015, the couple had quit their other jobs to grow cannabis full-time. As well, they were about to be parents for the first time.
Fast-forward to October 2018 and the cannabis landscape in Canada had changed. The plant was now legal for recreational use.
The Douglases wasted no time in applying for their license. Still, the hard part was finding a bank willing to finance the expansion of their greenhouse beyond their garage.
“When cannabis was first legalized, all the huge companies thought, ‘We’re just going to own this [industry],’” says Mark. “So what they did is they borrowed all this money from the bank and built massive facilities. What ended up happening is that they grew a ton of really terrible cannabis and charged an arm and a leg for it.”
The result? Initially, the cannabis black market continued to thrive despite the product’s legal availability. Through the underground market, users had become accustomed to finding higher quality merchandise for more reasonable prices.
Within a short period of time, Mark says many of these big legal producers claimed bankruptcy.
By the time the Douglases received their production license from Health Canada, they couldn’t find a single bank willing to finance them. So they dug deep into their own resources to build the greenhouse and purchase equipment without outside help.
The couple opened with 23 strains of cannabis, each providing a different flavour or psychoactive effect.
In 2024, they applied for and received their processing license, allowing them to package and label their own products. Justine creates the designs for their labels and advertising materials.
Today, they supply product to approximately 40 retailers across the province. At the same time, they are licensed to sell directly to buyers.
With so many of the bigger producers out of the picture, the market has flourished for micro-producers. According to Mark, this has done a lot to improve quality in the local market.
“The [new] consumers are getting better at recognizing quality,” Mark says. “But they’re also cheap because nobody has money.”
There’s a common misconception, they say, that modern cannabis growers are rolling in cash, like the illegal dealers once did. Because of this, everything seems to cost more. This includes rent or lease rates on buildings, which are oftentimes much higher for cannabis companies than other types of business.
The same is true for insurance, which the couple says is exponentially higher for them than it would be if they were growing any other plant. Mark says an identical non-cannabis operation would cost one-third as much.
This has not deterred the Douglases, who are driven to produce a great product that’s as close to organic as it can be without being certified as such.
“In the end it’s about pride,” Mark says. “We want to put out a good product and our livelihood relies on people buying our stuff again. Most Manitobans, we find, are very keen to support local.”
They are so confident in their product, in fact, that every label includes Justine’s personal phone number and email address for customer feedback.
Being small-scale producers affords them the luxury of attending to small details. Every plant is hand-watered daily and inspected for quality of colour and foliage. They don’t use chemicals. All nutrients are derived from natural sources, such as seaweed.
The process begins with grouping genetic mother plants, from which they cut clones. These are planted under terrarium domes until their roots are well established. The cuttings are then transplanted and continue to sprout under grow lights for another four weeks.
Then they move to the flower room, where the small plants experience a typical grow season, although it’s shortened by manipulating the number of hours that the grow lights turn on. The plants begin with 20 hours of simulated daylight per day, which is gradually reduced to 12 hours. This mimics the end of a summer grow season, encouraging the plants to flower.
It could be another eight to ten weeks before the flowers are ready for harvest.
The harvested flower is cured in glass jars instead of plastic totes, as is common in other companies. The Douglases believe that this method produces a better bud.
“It’s like aging wine,” says Mark. “Your flavours and aromas really start to pop when you cure it properly.”
Finally, a sample from every harvest is submitted to a lab accredited by Health Canada to test for potency and other criteria before it goes to market.
For the couple, starting their business has been fulfilling. It’s a huge change of pace for a guy like Mark who quit his demanding day job for something more laidback.
Mark also took a substantial pay cut, although he believes their income will grow along with the rest of the industry. Right now, they are awaiting two more licenses to expand their business model, one for oil extraction and the other for making snack products, or edibles.
“One of our next adventures might be making our own whiskey,” Justine says. “We already make whiskey on a small scale.”
