HEWERS OF WOOD? NO, SMUGGLERS OF DRUGS

News item: Canada has become a primary world source of "party" drugs
such as methamphetamine and ecstasy, says the Vienna-based United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Many of the drugs manufactured by
organized-crime gangs here are exported to such places as the U.S.,
Australia and Japan.

"Finally," I said, brushing a tear from my eye. "Finally the world
recognizes our greatness."

Sure, we Canadians have long been aware of our status as global-class
narco-gangsters.

It's why Canada Post dumped the Queen from its stamps, and replaced
her with pictures of Timothy Leary and Pablo Escobar.

But the rest of the planet? They just think of us as Mounties, hockey
players, hewers of wood, drawers of water, growers of bud.

This is despite growing evidence that Canada pumps out more chemicals
than Union Carbide and Sammy Sosa combined. Forget the maple leaf;
our flag should be the periodic table of elements.

In 2006, I found myself in Port Angeles days after police there had
busted four Vancouver men who had attempted to smuggle close to a
million ecstasy pills into the U.S.

One of the smugglers had brought the drugs (packed in the traditional
hockey bags, just like Don Cherry would have wanted) by speedboat to
an isolated boat ramp west of town, where the other three waited with
a truck and trailer.

Alas, the boat, a 24-foot Maxum named Just Chillin', proved too big
for the truck, which began to slip into the water. (Apparently these
guys were better at chemistry than physics.)

This prompted the undercover cops who had been lurking around the
boat launch in a nonchalant don't-mind-me-I'm-just-a-fisherman kind
of way to race to the aid of the Keystone Krooks, who were happy for
the helping hands, but not so thrilled to discover they held badges.

The authorities could have busted the smugglers before they crossed
the border, but sentences in the U.S. (life in prison, that's the
maximum) tend to be harsher than in Canada (two hugs a day, that's
the minimum, plus complimentary cocktails at the William Head Men's
Nite Nine 'n' Dine).

Still, money makes plenty of people risk the trip south: A year after
the Port Angeles bust, Olympic Peninsula cops caught a Victoria man
beaching a boat carrying $2.5 million of ecstasy at 3 a.m.

Four weeks ago, a 30-year-old Vancouver woman got busted with $2
million worth of ecstasy in the gas tank of her Acura at the Peace
Arch crossing. Six days after that, a 69-year-old Surrey man was
caught at the border with $1.5 million worth in the gas tank of his
minivan. The next day, it was two guys pulled off a train at Blaine
with another $1.5 million in pills.

Anyhoo, it all kind of messes up Canada's image as the blandly
inoffensive nice guy. We've gone from being Homer Simpson's
hi-diddly-ho good neighbour Ned Flanders to the man from Breaking
Bad, the high school chemistry teacher who crosses to the dark side.

Andrew Cohen wrote a column in the Ottawa Citizen the other day in
which he lamented the lousy job Canada does at crafting an image of
itself abroad. Instead of celebrating the good bits -- tolerance,
diversity, moderation -- we come across as celery, bland and lacking
in flavour. Cohen recommended the message of Branding Canada, a new
book by diplomat and scholar Evan Potter: "We must present a more
compelling, coherent image of Canada to the world. We need to harness
the tools of public diplomacy -- culture, international education,
business promotion -- to present an image of a certain kind of
country, with a certain kind of values, which reflects the people we are."

But that could be a problem. What if the image we project --
international purveyor of party drugs, a feeble society unwilling to
take on the organized criminals in our midst -- really does reflect
who we are? Yup, a nation of Bob-and-Doug hockey players, that's us.
Just don't look in the hockey bag.