NIPPING THE POT HARVEST IN THE BUD

Armed with machetes and driving police vehicles that smell like an
Amsterdam cafe, an SQ squad's mission is to help eradicate Quebec's
most valuable crop - marijuana

It's harvest time in the Eastern Townships, but for many here who farm
Quebec's most valuable crop - marijuana - there is no pot of gold in
their field of dreams. Their plantations are being nipped in the bud
by Brome-Missisquoi's cannabis cops.

Last week, a squad of provincial police went out on a day-long
operation to eradicate a portion of the region's illegal crop. This
would be only one day of many to follow, as the time for harvesting
nears.

Before heading into the fields and hillsides, Charles Beaulieu, an
agent with the Dunham detachment of the Surete du Quebec explained:
"Every year, we find more and more plants. So far this year - and we
are just getting started - we have found and destroyed 4,000 plants,
which at around $1,000 a plant is a fair amount of money for the growers."

Now, with peak harvest time just a few weeks away, the seven-man team
is going out every day.

By 9 a.m., the small convoy of a half-dozen vehicles pulls out of the
station onto Highway 202 E., toward West Brome. Fifteen minutes later,
the entourage parks beside a small river where the agents mount ATVs
and head along the banks to a site where a tip-off has reported a
number of pot plants are flourishing.

Working like skilled pedicurists, but with pruning shears, the agents
make fast work of the 60 plants that are hidden among the tall grasses
on the banks of the river, a stone's throw from the beautiful town of
Sutton. Most pot farms are very close to water.

Cutting the budding plants at their base, they tie them with baling
twine and load them onto the vehicles, while a herd of dairy cattle
chew their cud and watch from a neighbouring field. The confiscated
harvest is loaded into a truck, and the ATVs are put back on their
trailer.

"A small-time operation," Beaulieu says. As quickly as they showed up,
the pot cops are on the road, this time to Brigham.

The convoy heads west along Highway 104 and turns off at a dirt road
flanked by corn fields and thick forest. They stop in front of a car
that has travelled ahead of to pinpoint the location. This had been
relayed via the radio of a small airplane that was circling overhead,
using a GPS to close in on the site.

"Most of the sites we find are the result of citizens calling our
Crime-Info Line. They could be birdwatchers, hunters, hikers or
farmers who don't want the pot on their property," the agent says.

The team is joined by three RCMP officers from the Lacolle detachment
who have their own ATVs.

They openly eye the SQ's flashier vehicles and comment that they
wished they had flashing lights and police decals on their ATVs.

Jumping a culvert at the side of the road, the agents head through a
thick wall of alder and black spruce on what is no more than a narrow
deer trail. Forty-five metres from the roadside, they reach a small
opening in the tangle where dozens of healthy pot plants stand tall
and bulbous, with numerous buds.

These plants are much better endowed than the first group they had cut
in West Brome, perhaps because they are in a plot protected by the
thick underbrush.

The weeds are decapitated with machetes and shears by one group of
agents; another group, wearing safety goggles to protect their eyes
from being gouged by branches as they drive their ATVs, fan out to
look for more plots.

And they find them - a plot of 30 plants and another of
20.

Laying the cut plants in groups of 10, they tie the weed into bundles,
then hoist the bundles onto their shoulders. They tote them out of the
underbrush to the truck, where another agent is stacking them like
cordwood. In the field the atmosphere is businesslike and direct.
There is little small talk, as they concentrate on the contraband crop.

All that is left at the scene of the crime are a few pathetic leaves
and a bunch of stumps sticking out of the dirt. In a final coup de
grace, Beaulieu ties a wide strand of police-scene tape across the
narrow pathway leading to the naked patches of earth. Is this a taunt,
a final insult? No.

"This is to let the grower know that the SQ took their plants and it
wasn't a rival or a ripoff, which is often the case. It's sort of like
a calling card," he chuckles.

In the pickup truck on the way to the next location, the apple-growing
region of Frelighsburg, the driver says: "We move fast and get the job
done. That last group of plants was easy, even though we had to carry
them out. Sometimes we have to go into areas with imposing hills that
the ATVs cannot manoeuvre on or get into, so we have to hike in and
drag all the plants out over difficult terrain and at great distances.
It can get quite physical."

Perhaps this is the reason the agents don't look a day over 25 and all
of them are very fit.

By now, the hot cab smells like an Amsterdam cafe. The concentrated
marijuana resin absolutely reeks, like a mixture of skunk, pine
needles and sickly honey. It's a glue; it's in their hair; it's
running off with their sweat, its clogging everyone's noses. Clumps of
leaves grip their muddy army-style boots. The khaki overalls are
grimy. Everyone wears gloves. The agents relax and eat apples and chat
as the radio crackles in the background, but the smell is like an
invisible fog.

Approaching the rolling hills, a sign indicates the municipality of
Frelighsburg. They turn onto a laneway leading past a well-kept barn
and farmhouse where the convoy stops and unloads the SQ and RCMP ATVs.

A pair of farm dogs come out of the house, wagging their tails and
sniffing at the police, then veer onto an old trail furrowed by
tractor wheels. One side is lined by an ocean of three-metre-tall
corn. The other is a forested hillside. It is magnificent country,
with leaves already showing tints of autumn colouration, and the gold
and green corn shimmering like a landscape painting.

After 15 minutes of following a machete-brandishing agent, the ATVs
have threaded their way through the gauntlet of ditches and other
natural hazards to reach another small trail leading directly into the
forest, where a large open patch of goldenrod and hawthorne covers the
hillside, below which a beaver pond can be seen. Large patches of
marijuana plants rise above the vegetation like bushy two-metre tall
Christmas trees - a pothead's dream.

Some of the agents set to work slashing away at the hefty stalks,
felling the bud-heavy giants, while others quarter the area looking
for other plots. Three more groupings are found and the cutting party
moves through them, dropping the plants to the ground. Heaving bundles
onto the front and back of the ATVs, they bungee cable the sheaves
securely for the rough ride back to the truck.

They have a difficult time negotiating the terrain of furrows, downed
trees and fence wire and have to be pushed and cajoled over the
quagmire. The agents' overalls are soaked with dew and
perspiration.

The spotter plane turns in tight circles overhead with its engine
whining like some giant hornet.

Three men are sitting on the porch of the farmhouse with cold drinks
in their hands, watching the marijuana being transferred to the truck.
One of the policemen chats with them.

"It doesn't bother us," one of the men says. "As long as we're
reimbursed for the corn that was run over." None of them offer their
names.

Next is a short break, and the agents fuel up on plastic-wrapped
submarine sandwiches and candy bars. Only one of them smokes, a cigar.
Then a message comes over the radio. The spotter plane has just
stumbled upon 500 plants near Eccles Hill, just 10 minutes away.

Approaching their discovery, there's more corn, a large soybean field,
and a 31/2-metre-wide creek. Then a grove of pine trees, then a
thicket of goldenrods interspersed with stinging nettles and low,
thick brush, proliferating along the banks of the creek.

"Watch out for the nettles," one agent calls out.

But it is too late, and everyone's arms are stinging. But that is soon
forgotten. In this business, the nose tunes up quickly and you can
smell it before you see it. Large groups of plants are scattered over
an area half the size of a soccer field. They are large, mature plants
brimming with eight-inch buds.

The agents break up into groups of two or three and get to work
hacking away at the deep green marijuana trees. It is picturesque,
like a postcard view of farm workers in a sugarcane field in Cuba.

Three plastic buckets of fertilizer lay stashed under a thicket of
hawthorne. The hacking and slashing sounds and the ripening smell
fills the forest. The cut-a-thon and bundling go on for a good hour.
Perhaps a dozen trips are made from the plantation back to the truck
to drop off their loads.

There is a vibrant, upbeat pace among the agents. This find was a big
bonus: No one expected it.

"This is at least a quarter-million-dollar crop, though possibly much
more," explains Beaulieu, as he wipes his brow of sweat and dust.

"In the next three weeks to a month, after the first couple of frosts,
the plant's energy is concentrated to the buds and their THC content
skyrockets. (THC is the chemical found in marijuana that produces the
high.) Two people can run a plantation like this.

"It's not organized crime, just some locals. Someone else will buy it
and transport it across the border, less than 10 minutes away from
here."

Everyone begins saddling up for the next bust. And so the day
goes.

At the end of it, they have raided seven plantations and confiscated
1,400 plants, a typical haul.

Value: well over $1 million. The pot will be buried in a landfill at
an undisclosed
site, leaving no carbon footprint. Only the worms will be getting
high on this stash.

To a man (and woman - there is one female agent on this team), they
love their work. There isn't any griping and there are no complaints.
And there are many more harvest days to come.

But inevitably, the larger reality must set in, and as autumn bites
they will return to their more routine and mundane policing tasks,
which are not without their own rewards. On the drive home, the
six-car convoy is interrupted as the point car makes a traffic stop.
They arrest a drunk driver. At 5:30 in the afternoon.

The convoy moves ahead. That is it. No one says much about it. No one
says much of anything. There is just an air of satisfaction.