Canada's Got A Guy

Bruce Linton is having a great time running Canopy, the biggest pot company in the world. (No, he doesn’t use his product—and he’d prefer you call it cannabis).

- Susan Berfield and Kristine Owram

Bruce Linton doesn’t spend much time in his office at an old Hershey’s factory in the small Canadian town of Smiths Falls. But when he does, he turns off the overhead fluorescent lights. Natural light is less stressful. He doesn’t have a couch in his office, but if he did, it would have two cushions. Not three. Because when he does sit on a couch with three cushions, the middle one can slip out. That’s annoying. Linton seems to have thought about all kinds of very specific issues. But, as in the case of the couch, he has his limits. “I have zero interest in a fabric discussion,” he tells us. We hadn’t asked.

This is Linton’s brain not on drugs. Let’s get that out of the way. He’s the founder and co-chief executive officer of Canopy Growth Corp., the biggest pot company in the world. Linton doesn’t sleep very well, but he doesn’t use medical marijuana to help. He says he doesn’t smoke pot recreationally, either. He doesn’t vape. He doesn’t eat pot brownies.

After all, Linton has a reputation to protect. He’s running a company with a market value of about $15 billion. He regularly crosses national borders, and he doesn’t want to embarrass himself or the industry or the countries where he’s allowed to do business. And he doesn’t want to get the munchies. “I’m trying to starve myself so I get cheekbones again,” he says, “because I’m getting f---ing fat.”

Linton is 52, with floppy blond hair and a slight gap between his front teeth. He usually wears faded black jeans, a black Canopy Growth T-shirt, and a jacket with a “Hi” lapel pin. At parties he sometimes wears pink velvet slippers with a marijuana leaf embroidered on each. He used to wear Hawaiian shirts on television. Now in his official corporate portrait he’s in a suit and tie.