THE DAY THAT PARADISE WENT TO POT

Lasqueti Island Residents Get Their Apology From The RCMP After A
Marijuana Crackdown

LASQUETI ISLAND -- It was another day in paradise for the folks living in
"Disability Acres" until an RCMP helicopter on a marijuana mission turned
it into a scene out of Apocalypse Now.

Jay Rainey was returning to her ramshackle home after collecting two
buckets of seaweed to make dirt for her garden when she spotted the chopper
hovering just metres from her roof.

And when the pot-busters saw Rainey, the chase was on.

"They followed me through the woods," said Rainey, 38, who's been coming to
Lasqueti for a dozen years. "I was breaking branches trying to get through
and then I got lost because I was looking up so much and then I got caught
in some terrible underbrush.

"When I finally got out to the road and they saw what I had they just flew
off."

Like many in this quirky island of 400 souls living in the Strait of
Georgia, Rainey -- Lasqueti's self-proclaimed Chicken Lady -- recalls the
Mounties' annual cannabis crackdown with a mixture of resignation and
outrage -- feelings she shared with her fellow Lasquetians at last
Wednesday's community meeting with police to address concerns about the
island's off-shore force.

"I'm just a stupid little twit who raises birds and I don't need to be
chased through the bush by coppers," Rainey told the raucous meeting. "Now
I can't trust the police because I have been harassed."

Residents contend police violated their rights by hovering too close to
homes, breaking solar panels and scaring livestock, entering homes without
search warrants and damaging property like water lines during the
crackdown, which netted 2,100 plants.

The RCMP eventually apologized for calling Lasqueti B.C.'s "Marijuana
Mecca" but the cops are sticking to their belief that organized crime runs
the island's grow-ops and that residents use pot as a form of currency --
two ideas the islanders claim are ludicrous.

Pot is indeed present on Lasqueti but it's hardly a community of stoned
hippies paying for chocolate zucchini loaf at the local bakery with a
couple of joints. Rather it's populated by people looking for an
alternative lifestyle, like Laurence Fisher, who's been on Lasqueti for
four decades and a pot user the entire time.

"I don't like the negative publicity, but in some ways it's good because it
keeps the riff-raff off the island," said Fisher, who started the 850-acre
Magic Mountain Land Co-op in the 1970s. "I don't grow myself -- I'm too
busy. And you can't make loads of money here doing it -- it's too hard
here. You don't come here for that -- you come here for the alternative
lifestyle."

Fisher, 55, made that point -- rather humorously -- at the community
meeting attended by one-quarter of the population.

"I've been smoking pot for over 40 years," Fisher began before his voice
trailed off, "Ah . . . now what was my point again?"

Life on Lasqueti isn't easy.

There's no car ferry, no hydro, cellphone coverage is spotty, jobs are few
and far between, and secrets are even more scarce. There's one hotel/pub,
one taxi, a bakery, a post office and a fire station on the
21-kilometre-by-five-kilometre island.

Residents seem to subsist on meagre incomes and gardens and get power from
solar panels, generators, water wheels and propane. Many people work
several part-time jobs to make ends meet. Others work as little as
possible, existing on trust funds and inheritances.

Homes are modest but comfortable and there are even a few multi-million
dollar houses, such as the $4-million one used two weeks a year by a San
Francisco executive.

"I've been here 24 years and things have really changed," said Rose Willow,
one of two Islands Trust trustees along with Bronwyn Preece. "There was a
time when I knew every person and every person's dog. But you still have
that level of personal autonomy. If your car breaks you have to deal with
it -- you can't call BCAA."

Staff-Sgt. Bill Van Otterloo of the Oceanside RCMP detachment has pledged
to investigate the residents' concerns but he added as long as marijuana
remains illegal, it's his job to keep it off the streets. He suggested the
force may have to begin looking at new ways to police the pot on Lasqueti.

"I'm thinking that we have to address some of these issues in a different
way and I'm hoping that we can do that in a collaborative way by listening
to the needs of the community and addressing what they feel is important to
them," Van Otterloo said after a visit to some of the homes damaged during
the raids. "Lasqueti is no different than any other part of my policing
jurisdiction."

Rainey welcomed the RCMP apology but added Lasqueti's reputation has
already been sullied.

"It really worries me when our rights are eroded like that," said Rainey,
chuckling at the fact that in the end the Mounties failed to find three pot
plants she grows for personal use.

"This is a quirky little place but we are all old friends. It's a really
cool place and the people here are good at taking care of each other."

LASQUETI ISLAND FACTS

- - Number of types of rolling papers available in the local store: Six

- - Price of gas on Lasqueti: $1.18/litre

- - Number of marijuana plants seized from Vancouver Island and the Gulf
Islands by RCMP in the last 10 days: 18,300 plants. Number of arrests: Three.

- - Locals' description of the Strait of Georgia (which can be rough during
the winter months): "A nine-mile moat with no drawbridge."

- - Number of dangerous animals on Lasqueti: None.

- - While the island has a population of just under 400, there was a
traditional school and an alternative school until a few years ago due to
in-fighting. Now there is only one.

- - Favourite saying about the dirt-caked cars on Lasqueti: "The beater, the
better."

- - While awaiting a special order of bread from the mainland, locals could
only laugh wildly when told the loaf had already made two of the
thrice-daily 55-minute crossings without being picked up from the dock next
door. "The sea air is good for the dough," quipped one local.

- - How to tell a true local? Plastic gardening clogs or sandals held
together by duct tape.

- - Major topic of conversation at the local store (aside from the police pot
busts): Canning.