About Us

Welcome to Clandestiny, a Toronto based hemp boutique.

At Clandestiny you will be able to experience the hemp plant like no other place. We have built a showcase for everything this wondrous plant can do. Everything you need to know about hemp but were too afraid to ask!!! The boutique is full of hemp clothes, hemp food, jewellery, cosmetics, hats, bags, books, magazines, games, household goods,  glass bongs and pipes and a choice selection of rolling papers.

Hemp was illegal in Canada until the early 90’s and still is in much of the world, but with activists across the globe working together, the plant is finally emerging on it’s own as an important crop, and ironically research is proving it’s just the kind of plant we need to save the world! Until this time it has had to act in a clandestine manner, which is where we got the name of our store. We feel hemp is finally reaching it’s destiny.

Clandestiny is located at 670 Queen St East in Toronto, Ontario. We are open Sunday to Wednesday from noon until 5 pm and Thursday to Saturday from 11 am until 7 pm.

Why are we so obsessed with hemp?

Hemp is a miracle plant, it’s the honest truth - no gimmicks! We all know hemp as a powerful fibre, as a paper, and as a fuel, but did you know, that it is also highly nutritious? So nutritious in fact, you could survive on it alone? It is very high in protein, and has high levels of Omega 3 and 6. Plus it contains essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, fibre, minerals and nutrients. It is an excellent meat and nut replacement, has no know allergies to it, is easy to digest, and it tastes yummy!!!

Hemp is so easy to cook with and it requires little digestive effort to assimilate into the body. The oil is sort of like a cross between olive oil and walnut oil. It is best eaten in it’s raw state, as frying kills the nutrients and doesn’t taste as good. The seeds can be eaten toasted in the shell, or de-shelled. The heart of the seed is really yummy, light tasting, sort of nutty. The shell itself can be ground down into a protein powder and is about 50% protein! The seed can also be ground into a nut butter which is sort of a cross between tahini and peanut butter - great on toast with honey!

Did you know the human body has an endo-cannabinoid system? That means we have cannabinoid receptors in out bodies - a lot of them in fact - throughout the whole body, even in our brains, our bones and digestive system. This means we’re supposed to eat it, just like other foods. Hemp has been prevalent in many cultures as a food source. It was used by the Eastern Europeans as a porridge and butter. Orientals made milks and tofu from it. South Asians and Middle Easterns used it in their flat breads and curries. South Americans, Caribbeans and some aboriginal cultures ate it too. All of these cultures recognized the nutritional benefits, and put it in their most comforting foods. And when I look around me, and see the causes of illnesses, our health is a major issue. When eating foods like hemp will strengthen our bodies and only better our lives, I find it ironic that our culture can’t be bothered with this plant, despite the vast amount of information out there.

So why are we just finding this out now?? Well - pure politics. It goes like this … if you were a powerful plant, and you threatened a few major industries (paper, food, fibre, fuel, plastics, medicine), and several governments decide to ban your medicinal flowers, it would be quite easy to cripple you as a competitor. Now, we know better, and that even the flowers aren’t what those administrations claimed!

As a culture, we’re taking steps to make changes. But we’ve missed out on a hundred years of this plants uses! The industrial revolution started with research into these things, but as certain companies gained hold, information got shelved out of convenience to those particular companies. Very little research is done, most of the documentation has been recent or from ancient knowledge gained through anthropology. We are learning new things everyday, and way more research needs to be done to prove what a miracle plant it it! The only way is to create public demand, and you do that every time you choose a hemp product over another. We need to keep our dollars from the corporations that are killing the earth. We need to support more sustainable answers for our lifestyles. And in this day and age, when our planet is dying, and the top scientists bang their heads against the walls trying to find a solution, here is the perfect one, swimming in politics!

But truth can never be suppressed forever, and that’s why hemp is just coming to age now. We must put pressure on our government to grow more of it. Our prairies are huge, their soils have been raped by short root crops and chemicals. Hemp is a long root crop and requires no pesticides or grow chemicals. It can replace fossil fuels, synthetic fibres, toxic construction materials, paper, plastic, meat & nuts and certain medicines. It is a miracle crop, miracle food, miracle medicine, miracle fuel, miracle fibre! Now do you see why we are so obsessed?

If you’d like more info you can contact us here on the site or call directly 416-732-7761.

Thanks!