Flagging small Canadian miners hope for a boost from medical pot

By Nicole Mordant VANCOUVER (Reuters) – Looking for ways to boost their flagging fortunes, a handful of tiny Canadian mining exploration companies are considering swapping their hard hats and shovels for bongs and baggies. In the past couple of months, nearly a dozen of these so-called junior miners, hard hit by a downturn in the mining industry, have announced they might branch out into Canada's budding medical marijuana industry. The announcements from Satori Resources Inc, which owns a moribund gold project in Manitoba, and Victory Ventures Inc, which has staked mineral claims in British Columbia, have propelled these rock-bottom penny stocks upward. Until now, the medical marijuana industry has consisted mostly of small-scale home-grown operations.