East Vancouver business devastated after fire destroys building
Posted March 26, 2023 9:27 pm.
Last Updated March 27, 2023 9:39 am.
An East Vancouver business was left devastated after a fire destroyed the cannabis store Saturday morning.
John Olan, co-owner of Generation Cannabis in the area of East Broadway and Fraser Street, says their store has only been open since December.
“It’s a lot of heartbreak and devastation. We put almost two years in trying to open the store for it to just go down in fire three months after opening. It’s definitely heartbreaking,” he said.
“I got a call at 5:43 and within less than 10 minutes, the firefighters were here. I can only imagine that if we didn’t have that monitoring system in place that, you know, more of our neighbours could have been affected by this fire.”
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Olan says the fire has taken away his main source of income. He tells CityNews he has a family to support, including a young daughter with leukemia.
“There’s going to be a lot of difficulties in it. I mean, I’ve put everything I got into the store. During the start of COVID, I got laid off. I had a six-year-old daughter diagnosed with cancer. And then this project started and, you know, everything felt like it was looking up. Unfortunately, the series of unfortunate events continue,” Olan said.
The president of Generation Cannabis, Robert Howes, says the fire damaged the building and the business’ inventory.
“It’s pretty bad. Everything’s singed in there. It appears the neighbours had most of the damage, but it’s one building.”
According to Vancouver Fire Rescue Services, 45 firefighters were called to tackle the blaze. The cause is still unknown and is still under investigation.
“This was our income. This was our dream,” Howes said.
The shop owners say they’re hoping Vancouver’s Board of Variance will help them expedite the process of getting the store back up and running in the neighbourhood again.
Howes says obtaining a license for a legal cannabis store is a complicated process, adding it took two years to finally get theirs.
“It’s not such an easy thing to move a dispensary. You know, everything’s tied to the location and the license. And unfortunately, that can sometimes take a year or more to even do something as simple as just moving across the street in the cannabis industry,” Howes said.
“We had a really nice community of customers. The whole neighbourhood was so warm and welcoming and opening here saved a lot of people a bus ride, a long trek to the other shops, and we disabled customers that couldn’t get around easily that were really happy we were here.”
With the business at a loss, a friend set up a GoFundMe page to help Olan’s family as they deal with the rebuilding of the business. Despite the heartbreak, the owners are hopeful they’ll find a way to recover.
“We’re not going to give up here. We want to continue supporting the community that we have. I know our customers absolutely loved us here and we want to be back in this area,” Olan said.
