Meeting Mila: The Hash Queen’s Unstoppable Spirit

Mila and I are seated at the back of a large room, the soft murmur of voices surrounding us. Even though we’re actively recording an interview, people interrupt to request a photo and a chat. She happily obliges, giving hugs and kisses on the cheek and smiling for the camera. She’s comfortable being the center of attention and welcomes each interaction with warmth.

Mila has accomplished more in her years than most people, doing it as a single mother of four children. Despite all of her achievements, she continues to dream up new ways to reach out to the community she has built and to invite new individuals into the fold. As we’re chatting she tells me of her ambition to build a house made of hemp. Mila operates a small hemp museum in Amsterdam and once ran a boutique hotel featuring hemp decor and linens, so this admission is achievable rather than far-fetched. We talk about hempcrete (hemp-derived concrete) and the many things that can be made using hemp. What strikes me is that she’s nearing 80 years old and still imagining what she can do. When most people her age would be relaxing in front of the TV, Mila is traveling, attending workshops, hosting competitions, signing books, and smoking hash, proving that age is only a number.

We’re at the Lost Art Workshop in Toronto, hosted by Madame Cannoli and Other People’s Pot. Frenchy’s apprentice, Belle, shows the eager attendees how to turn weed into beautiful pressed hash. While she makes it look easy, during a break, she is peppered with questions from students who recognize they’re learning from the best.

At lunch, attention turns to Mila, and she shares stories from her years of traveling in the Middle East and the 14 years she spent in India. She lived a nomadic existence, continuously reinventing herself in order to support herself, her children, and whatever man was present at the time. She, accompanied by her children, trekked mountain ranges with a guide and pack animals, venturing to remote places for entire summers. She says of the beauty of the places she’s been, “In the first place, there’s no light pollution for hundreds of miles around, and in the second place, you’re already so much closer to the stars. How much brighter they are without all that thick air in between!”

I asked about her favorite memory of Frenchy. She recounts how she and Frenchy met at a dinner for the Emerald Cup. They figured out that there was a high probability that they attended the same beach parties in Goa, only crossing paths years later. She mentions that the two had great laughs when they were together, Frenchy once remarking, “Could you ever have imagined that we’d be sitting here?“ We just cracked up laughing, says Mila.

She told me that she plans to return to the Himalayas with 2 of her children this summer. She’ll visit the monasteries she lived in decades ago while her children will continue to the higher altitudes and difficult mountain passes, the only evidence from Mila that she might be slowing down. I asked her what surprised people about her, and without hesitation, she said her age, and we both smiled because she clearly does not act her age. She’s often mistaken for being younger, as everything she does is remarkable.

To prove this point, later this year, she has a Dab-A-Doo tour planned for South America, with a birthday celebration culminating in Columbia at the end of the tour in November. She tells me that her birthday is in December, but she’ll celebrate that special day with her family. She then describes the Dab-A-Doo events that she started at the age of 70. She has attended many cannabis competitions, judging classes of pressed hash, which is the only thing she smokes. She wanted to create an event where everyone in attendance would have the opportunity to cast their vote on the samples. Participants may have dozens of samples to try during the competition, which brings a room full of concentrates lovers together, fostering the community that cannabis is known for. She says she’s never had to ask anyone to host a Dab-A-Do event; people volunteer, which is remarkable considering the work involved in hosting such a popular event. But it’s no wonder, as Mila is well loved, a matriarch of cannabis, The Hash Queen.

As we continued the interview, people approached her to sign copies of her book. The book is a tome of over 500 pages that took her 11 years to write, taking the reader through the journey of her fascinating life. When asked about how long it took to finish, she says that some days she didn’t feel like writing and I surmise that Mila only does what she wants when she’s fully engaged. A read of her book testifies how much Mila has learned and how she can adapt to the world around her. Despite being a quietly powerful woman in a man’s world, she says that because she wasn’t selling nutrients, men didn’t see her as a threat. The pages of her book depict a multitude of experiences that we would now consider misogyny, but it has never slowed her down. Instead, she rose above and developed a strength of spirit and a defiance of the world. 

It is fitting that she invented the Pollinator, a machine that would revolutionize hash-making forever and the first true technological advance in millennia. Considering the world of hash, from its production to its consumption, has traditionally been male-dominated, this is notable. The Pollinator was a frequent target of uncredited imitation, indicating that this woman of humble excellence was far more powerful in the male-centered industry she found herself. She tells me that she wanted an easier way to make the hash that she consumed daily and it turns out that everyone else found it useful too. Only in the 1990s could a woman have found herself standing by the dryer and experiencing a “what if“ moment of clarity. Mila’s “what if“ changed the future of hash, and the rest is history. “I think when you’re a single mom of four, you become very good at thinking outside the box,” she tells me. She was 50 years old when she developed the first Pollinator prototype. Mila had been involved in many businesses over time, but this one would become the business that would define her as the Hash Queen. Mila has been and continues to be good at asking questions throughout her life. She has never been afraid to try something new, demonstrating an enviable mental flexibility.

As she accepts a Lifetime Achievement Award at the GrowOp conference in Toronto, accolades from peers, admiration from fans, she is living a rich and varied life full of adventure. Her warmth and spirit compel us to keep dreaming and to keep asking questions, just like Mila The Hash Queen.