As of Tuesday, 27 cannabis stores were authorized to be open in Ottawa, compared to seven last May. Another 58 entrepreneurs have secured locations for stores and are going through the application process to obtain a licence.

The stores are spread across Ottawa-Carleton, from downtown to the suburbs. When the province first announced that cannabis stores would be operated as private businesses, critics worried the shops would be clustered in low-income neighbourhoods such as along Montreal Road, where a number of illegal shops had operated before recreational marijuana was legalized.

That has not happened. Currently two shops are proposed for Montreal Road, one of them authorized to open.

The ByWard Market, a mecca for tourists and nightlife, has three cannabis stores operating and two more proposed.

The Glebe neighbourhood is another popular location, with four shops planned within a five-block span. One store is open and three are waiting for licences.

There is also a concentration on the north end of Bank Street. In the 10-block span between Albert and James streets, two stores are open and three more are going through the application process.

Orleans has four stores open and eight proposed, while in Nepean five stores are authorized to open and seven are in the licence queue.

How many shops Ottawa and the province can sustain remains to be seen.

Across Ontario there are nearly 1,200 cannabis stores either open or in the process of applying for a licence, according to the AGCO.

Rose-Brown said she and her husband started researching the possibility of owning a cannabis store after Justin Trudeau was elected prime minister in 2015 with a promise to legalize recreational marijuana.

“We were very interested in opening a store for a number of reasons. No. 1: I grew up in the 70s, and there was always the whole stigma around cannabis and the back-alley, dingy kind of environment. People kind of thought that was what it was.

“I always kind of wanted to get rid of that, open up a new business where you could see how amazing stores could be. They are not your dive-ey stores, they are gorgeous stores. They are beautiful and bright and we have such amazing, educated staff. They are like cannabis geniuses. You can walk in the store and learn anything you want about cannabis, you know?”

Their son, Mitch Brown, works at the store with them, along with a dozen or so staff, most of them in their 20s.

“My husband and I are the oldsters,” she laughed.

Rose-Brown said the cannabis industry reminds her of moving to Ottawa 24 years ago to take a job with a high-tech company.

“It was such an exciting new industry and an exciting world to be in, and we knew cannabis would be that same kind of energy because it was so new in the world. We were pioneers in this new industry going live in Canada. We wanted to be part of that.”

The couple wanted to operate a franchise and was impressed by Spiritleaf, a Calgary-based company that has dozens of stores across Canada, she said.

They had experience with franchises after spending two decades running a quick oil-change outlet in Gloucester, which they gave up last year, said Rose-Brown. They still own an oil-change outlet in St. Catharines.

Spiritleaf offers them back-end support for everything from marketing to finance and legal advice, she said.

“You get everything you need. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.”

Ottawa has three other Spiritleaf franchises open.

Many of the stores in Ottawa carry the name of a chain, including Dutch Love (formerly Hobo Cannabis Co.), Superette, Tokyo Smoke, One Plant and Fire & Flower.

Rural areas surrounding Ottawa are also seeing stores pop up. Five stores have been authorized to open in Pembroke, with another one proposed. Three stores are in the works in Renfrew and two are proposed in Petawawa.

Canopy Growth Corp. has applied to operate a store at its Tweed marijuana plant in Smiths Falls, but it will have competition in town. One cannabis store is already open in Smiths Falls and two more have applied for a licence.