T
BADASS
Babushka
PLANTS NOT PILLS CO-FOUNDER GABRIEL SHPILT ON HOW, AT 17, HE WAS ABLE TO ALTER THE
PERCEPTIONS ON CANNABIS HELD BY HIS 80-YEAR-OLD GRANDMOTHER FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE.
Klavdiya Goryacheva was no stranger to hard work. After a
tough life in extreme climates, the 80-year-old found relief
in a plant she never thought she’d try.
Her Canadian-born grandson Gabriel says, “My Babushka
was a badass,” surviving a childhood of hunger, war and
Gulag-run labour camps during the Stalinist era.
Without speaking a word of English, she relocated to
Toronto to live out the rest of her days with her family
where Gabriel was born.
From the 1990s on, suffering from severe back pain and
aching arthritis as a result of years of hardship in the Soviet
Union, Gabriel’s beloved Babushka was taking what he
describes as ‘tons of medication’ to little avail.
“It wasn’t just the amount of medication she was taking.
It was her pain and suffering, the signs of old age after a
lifetime of heavy lifting and harsh climates, it was all taking
WHAT A WOMAN
FULL NAME: KLAVDIYA GORYACHEVA.
DOB: NOVEMBER 28, 1918 – ONE YEAR AFTER
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION ENDED.
GRANDSON: GABRIEL SHPILT, CO-FOUNDER
OF PLANTS NOT PILLS.
“My only regret is that she never got
to experience what so much of the
older generation have now – access to
medical cannabis and CBD.”
its toll – and it was hard to watch.”
In Klavdiya’s time, communist Soviet culture had
presented cannabis on a parallel with heroin. Imagine
Gabriel’s surprise then, when he managed to convince her
to try natural methods, and together they tried cannabis.
“I could tell she was relaxed. We talked for ages. It was
remarkable how well it had worked. When I spoke to
her the next day, she said, ‘I slept better than I have
in years, can you bring me some more?’ I have never
regretted introducing her to cannabis, I could see that it
considerably helped her. I managed to change the mind
of someone who was brought up to demonise it, to accept
it – and embrace it.”
This first experience started a pattern. Three times a week
Gabriel would visit his Babushka in her tiny apartment, and
later at her nursing home, bringing edibles she could try.
“Towards the end I remember her once walking towards
me using her walker, and she said to me, ‘Isn’t it funny that
we end the same way we begin? Crawling along’. I just
dissolved.”
Klavdiya passed away in 2006, almost ten years before the
legalisation of medical cannabis in Canada. The journey
with his Babushka inspired Gabriel, who was already
working in the medical field, to launch a medical cannabis
company, Plants Not Pills, together with his brother.
“My only regret is that she never got to experience what
so much of the older generation have now – access to
medical cannabis and CBD.”