Marc Emery referred to a personal friend as a “grandmother I’d like to f***” in an email that he sent her in 2004 after she told him that she had a new grandchild.
The revelation came one day after the marijuana activist denied allegations of grooming and inappropriate sexual behaviour.
WATCH: Jan. 17 — The ‘Prince of Pot’ Marc Emery defends himself against allegations of sexual harassment
The email was addressed to Judith Renaud, an educator and drug policy analyst who lives in Gibsons on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast, in 2004.
Renaud had known Emery since 1999 when she was living in China.
At that time, her husband, still living on the Sunshine Coast, phoned to tell her that the prominent pot activist had moved into a neighbour’s home.
WATCH: Jan. 17 — Toronto woman accuses pot activist Marc Emery of inappropriate behaviour
Emery and the Renauds became friends and, when Judith returned from China, she started to develop an interest in drug policy.
She would eventually move to Bella Coola, where she worked as a principal at an on-reserve school and started to focus on drug and alcohol issues.
Renaud and Emery continued talking while she was working there.
It was Dec. 16, 2004, when Renaud emailed Emery to notify him that they had become grandparents to a baby girl.
Emery responded as follows:
“Congratulations there! Jude, now you are a GMILF! (Grandmother I’d like to f***). I just wanted to be the first to tell you! Marc.”
“I thought it was off topic because I had sent him a letter wanting to let him know that I had just had the birth of my third grandchild,” she said.
Renaud dismissed the comment at the time, but she never forgot it in the intervening years.
“I’ve been sitting on that for all these years,” she said.
“I know, given these circumstances of what’s happening now in the larger context of women and men who really do want to use some kind of sexual proudness around themselves, it’s simply inappropriate.
“I’m a little older than he is, I would not want my daughters to have to deal with that kind of comment.”
Renaud felt compelled to speak up after Toronto journalist Deidre Olsen posted a series of allegations against Emery on Twitter, in which she accused him of grooming young women who had come from vulnerable backgrounds before they worked at Cannabis Culture, his pot shop in Vancouver.
In a Facebook statement on Thursday, Emery denied grooming young women.
Quoting Olsen’s tweets, she posted the following on Thursday night:
“If Deidre Olsen has got a problem with what happened in her past with him, then you’re not the only one as a young woman,” Renaud told Global News.
“This is something that touches all ages.”
Renaud and Emery later conversed on Twitter. She said Emery accused her of lying — she responded to one of his tweets saying, “lying is not one of my traits never has been never will be.”
The tweet she responded to, however, was deleted.
Emery then tweeted the email that Renaud had sent him in 2004, in which he called her a “GMILF.”
“I do apologize for not recognizing my one-line tongue-in-cheek joke I sent by email when you became a grandmother in 2004,” Emery tweeted.
“Sorry to not remember it. I didn’t mean I actually wanted to have sex with you, as you and your husband are friends and former neighbours. It was for fun!”
READ MORE: ‘Prince of Pot’ Marc Emery denies allegations of grooming, inappropriate sexual behaviour
Emery also sent Renaud the following direct messages on Twitter.
- “That’s one line sent to a very good friend.”
- “It’s a congratulatory joke!”
- “I’m do apologize and retract that you lied, but it’s not a letter, it’s a one line message.”
- “I apologized and reprinted it.”
“If he’s saying I lied 14 years ago, which I didn’t, what does that say about his comments now?” Renaud asked.
“Am I to look at all his statements to say, you know what, maybe what you’re saying is not truthful because you actually thought you could catch me on a lie and I didn’t lie.”
Renaud said Emery has used his personality as an excuse for his behaviour — and for her, that’s not good enough.
“He really has to take responsibility for his actions,” she said.
“That I could actually find something that he said that was so inappropriate then… and yet it hasn’t stopped with him, this is what concerns me.”
As for her future relationship with Emery — Renaud noted that more stories could come out about him, as he noted in his own Facebook statement.
“I really think he needs to face those, and I think he needs to come clean about maybe not just apologizing but actually seeing some change happening.
“And maybe good friends can do that with each other.”
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