POLICE RAID A POT GROWER'S PARADISE

SEYMOUR ARM, B.C. - There are no signs of welcome on the road to Seymour
Arm. No mileage posts, not even a motel ad promising a good sleep or a cup
of coffee.

The drive here is intense: two hours off the Trans-Canada Highway, most of
it on a treacherous, twisting logging road that winds up and down the
lake's remote northern arm. Eight bridges, each one skinnier and more
slippery than the last.

This is off-the-grid wilderness, with no telephone wires or hydro lines to
clutter the view of long, meandering Shuswap Lake, about 400 kilometres
northeast of Vancouver. It's a paradise for back-to-the-earth types and
self-sufficient retirees.

It was also a dope grower's dream, until one morning last week, when 150
police officers wearing balaclavas and body armour stormed the place.

Officers said they wanted to make an impression. They arrived in an armada:
unmarked Chevy Suburbans, regular patrol cars, a helicopter and a large,
chartered houseboat, which served as a floating command centre.

They found large indoor marijuana growing operations, hundreds of thousands
of dollars worth of growing equipment and 20,000 marijuana plants. Police
also seized 50 weapons, ranging from shotguns to semi-automatic assault rifles.

Fifteen men, including a 68-year-old, were charged with cultivation of an
illegal substance. One woman was charged with marijuana possession. No one
offered any resistance.

Half the town's population is involved in the drug trade, police suggested.
"Organized crime" is involved in the grow-ops, added Marianne Ryan,
operations officer for B.C.'s Combined Special Forces Enforcement Unit, an
elite group of drug busters from RCMP ranks and municipal squads.

"It wasn't your typical type of organized crime," said Ms. Ryan, an RCMP
superintendent. "It works well below the traditional level of organized
crime, [but] it's very sophisticated and very professional." She also spoke
of "incidents of violence, threats, and intimidation."

This came as a surprise to Seymour Arms' 90 permanent residents, at least
half of whom are retirees, conservative-minded men and women in their 60s.

The lack of services, such as hydro power, helps keeps their community
small and untrammeled. They like it that way. The road in actually acts as
a barrier; it chews up the curious and swallows the unprepared. A crumpled
white sedan, rusting in a ditch halfway along the route, attests to that.

Like a lot of year-round residents, Wayne Grant has owned property in
Seymour Arm for decades. He knows the place inside out; as president of the
Seymour Arm Community Association, he's as close to a mayor as the
community has.

I found him puttering about his lakeside property this week. He paused and
spoke to me about the local residents. Most are good-natured folk, he says,
even "the dope growers."

The grow-ops were not a secret. "We knew the growers by name," reveals Mr.
Grant. Contrary to police reports, they caused few, if any, disturbances.
"The one issue people had was the noise from their generators," he told me.
"They had large generators, and they would run all night. But we didn't sit
around and talk about the growers. We certainly didn't live in fear. I
still left the keys in my truck."

People here assume that police references to violence stem from a
home-invasion incident two years ago, when a 16-year-old boy was held at
gunpoint while two older men looted his parents' home.

No charges were ever laid in connection to the incident. But Seymour Arm
was suddenly on the police radar. "There was a large-scale operation
producing a tremendous amount [of pot]," says RCMP Sergeant John Ward. "Our
investigation lasted two years."

Yet Mr. Grant discounts remarks that "organized crime" had infiltrated the
community. "Over time, that might have happened," he says. "But there were
no gangs here. The growers didn't appear to have a lot of money. They
weren't living in fancy houses and driving fancy cars."

Mr. Grant's closest neighbours are Chris and Wilma Dirks, both 29. I drove
up the road to see them. They have lived in Seymour Arm for six years, on a
boggy, bug-infested patch of land. They have three children. By all
accounts, they are helpful and polite. Mr. Dirks is treasurer of the
community association.

They enjoyed the laid-back, "pot friendly" atmosphere they found in Seymour
Arm. Both consume the drug; a glass bong -- a water pipe used for smoking
pot -- sits on their kitchen table.

"We don't lie about it or hide it from our children," shrugs Ms. Dirks. "I
would like to grow it legally and organically."

Mr. Dirks calls the area's pot growers "poor farmers just struggling to get
by." He estimates that Seymour Arm produced about $3.5-million worth of
marijuana each year, about a tenth of the value police placed on the
community's grow-ops. He would not say how the product was shipped and
sold, or to whom. Police are still investigating the retail end of the pot
pipeline.

Last week, the Dirks were sleeping inside their modest two-storey house
when five or six masked police officers burst inside. "They yelled,
'Police, search warrant,'" recalled Ms. Dirks. "The next thing I know, I'm
looking at my husband lying on the ground, with a cop stepping on his neck
and another one pointing a gun at his head."

Mr. Dirks was handcuffed. Police entered two long trailer homes sitting on
the Dirks' property and dismantled an alleged grow-op. They removed
hundreds of marijuana plants and confiscated a generator and firearms.

Later in the day, Mr. Dirks was placed in a police vehicle, along with
several other men. They remained handcuffed, and their legs were shackled.
They sat on metal benches inside small cages. The vehicle then joined a
convey headed for Kamloops, where all 15 men were charged and processed.
Ms. Dirks, charged with possession, was allowed to remain at home with her
bewildered children.

"The only violence and intimidation we ever encountered was the day last
week when the police raided our house and pointed guns at us," said Ms.
Dirks. "Why did they need so many people to arrest 16 of us? How much did
the whole operation cost?"

The police can't say. But the show of force was necessary, says RCMP Sgt.
Ward, both to make an impression and to protect their own from potentially
trigger-happy dope growers.

Mr. Grant is just happy the episode is over. "Despite everything, I was
actually glad to see the RCMP go after the grow-ops," he said. "But it has
created a bit of a rift in the community. People have been very emotional
since the raid. I've seen people crying."

He expects most of the growers to eventually leave Seymour Arm. That will
please some, but it's a gloomy prospect for Alf Daniels, the community's
only storekeeper.

"I'm going to lose a lot of business," he says.