The first public meeting called Hempology occurred at Simon Fraser University in July 1993.  It was organized by Dana Larson, Ian Hunter and others, with headline speaker criminology professor Neil Boyd.  Danna Rosek, manager of Hemp BC at the time, began hosting weekly Tues night Hempology 101 meetings in her studio/apartment, Terrapin Station, in Nov 1994.  After she left for Nelson, B.C., the meetings continued in a café on Commercial Drive until sometime in 1997.  Ted Smith attended his first Hempology 101 meeting in Jan 1995.  Inspired by the idea that his family in Ontario could be growing hemp and with a love of the herb, he soon decided to expand Hempology 101 to Victoria and write a textbook for the organization. 

The first Hempology 101 meeting in Victoria was held the first Weds night in Sept 1995, at a park by the Johnson St Bridge known as the Whale Wall.  The meetings have occurred every Weds night since in various locations throughout downtown Victoria.  A Hempology 101 Club was also started at the University of Victoria in Sept 1995.  The Victoria (now International) Hempology 101 Society was incorporated in Feb 1996, soon after the formation of the Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club. The UVic Hempology 101 Club organized an information booth a couple of times a year until the 1st Annual Cannabis Convention was held in 1999, the same year that weekly 420 meetings were held at the fountain near the library. 

The 5th Anniversary meeting in Sept 2000 was perhaps the most memorable yet, starting with a 420 in Beacon Hill, then a visit to the Parliament Buildings where we met Betty Krawchuck, then a march to City Hall. We stayed there until we were ready to crash the 21st annual meeting of the International Crime-stoppers Association at the BC Museum where Ted called Crime-stoppers scum in front of a CH news camera, receiving headline news attention.  Ted was first arrested on Nov 8, 2000 after a 420 meeting of the UVSS Hempology 101 Club and charged with trafficking for passing out a small number of joints. 

After successfully giving out 101 cookies in full view of uniformed police officers on International Medical Marijuana Day, Nov 15, 1999, Ted was arrested one year later trying to hand out 420 cookies (only 383 showed up as evidence) on Nov 15, 2000, and was banned from campus until the conclusion of his trial.  Delays for constitutional reasons meant the trials did not occur until Jan and Oct 2005 when he was found guilty of trafficking at UVic and given a $500 fine and guilty of trafficking THC by a jury a given and one day jail sentence.   He represented himself before the BC Court of Appeal to challenge the first conviction, though he failed, and ran out of money to pay for transcripts in the second appeal.  While he was banned from UVic, Ted organized a Hempology 101 Club at Camosun College and held the conventions there until he was allowed back at the university. 

The club has now become one of the largest at UVic, with over 420 members this year.  Ted started teaching a free lecture series in Sept 2006, with 22 classes featuring many guest speakers each semester.  Most classes were shown live on the net and have been recorded and are becoming available on youtube.  Three editions of the textbook were printed in 1996, 1998 and 2001, with 100 copies made on tree-free hemp paper each time. Available at hempology.ca, Ted is now working on a new edition that will hopefully be published in the next year.  At the Weds night meetings the group now plays the only cannabis game-show in the world called REACH FOR THE POT.