Marc Emery’s career as a counterculture icon who made an impact on mainstream as well as underground politics began in 1975, when he left high school early to open a second-hand bookshop in his native Ontario, Canada. Re-naming it City Lights Bookshop, Emery established it as a base for like-minded people to connect, as well as obtain supressed or forbidden literature, including information about cannabis. He retained the shop until 1992, moving to Vancouver two years later to open another shop, Hemp BC, which specialized in cannabis paraphernalia, at the time illegal to sell in Canada.