RISING FROM THE ASHES

It's hard not to notice the piece of jewellery on the ring finger of
Brian O'Dea. It looks like a big bug.

With striking indigo wings set in an ornate and heavy setting of
gold, the ring has a vaguely mystical and Egyptian look. Reminds you
of a scarab. Or at least one particular type of scarab -- a dung beetle.

There's a long and involved story behind that ring. The short version
is that it was a gift from two people very close to him. But it's an
apt metaphor both for their relationship and for O'Dea himself.

"The scarab is something that pushes around a pile of shit its whole
life," he says from his comfortable home in the Beach. "And in that
little pile of shit, it plants its eggs. And from that pile of shit,
life emerges."

He pauses. Beams.

"Isn't that great?" he asks.

It's perfect. Because Brian O'Dea has known his share of pushing
dung. Of smuggling dope -- ranging from the finest Thai stick and
most fragrant hashish through to the purest Colombian cocaine. His
career reached its apex, and its subsequent downfall, with a
mind-blowing shipment of pot from Southeast Asia in the fall of 1987.

"He was part of one of the largest smuggling operations in the world
at that time," says U.S. Attorney Mark Bartlett, who helped send
O'Dea to jail in 1991. "They were sophisticated and very successful."

Canadians got a small hint of O'Dea's past in 2001, when he placed a
memorable ad in the National Post. The goal was to find a decent job,
using a most unconventional resume to highlight his considerable skills.

"Former Marijuana Smuggler" read the top of the large classified.

"Having successfully completed a 10-year sentence, incident-free, for
importing 75 tons of marijuana into the United States, I am now
seeking a legal and legitimate means to support myself and my family."

Citing his experience, he stated he "Owned and operated a successful
fishing business -- multi-vessel, one airplane, one island and
processing facility ... I also co-owned and participated in the
executive level management of 120 people worldwide in a successful
pot smuggling venture with revenues in excess of US$100 million
annually." References included U.S. Attorney Bartlett.

O'Dea was swamped with some 600 responses, including queries from
advertising firms and just about every law enforcement agency in
North America that goes after drug smugglers. Helping send other
smugglers to jail wasn't an appealing prospect, but the ad did
eventually (and with a touch of synchronicity) lead to a job as a TV
producer of Creepy Canada, a wildly popular show about spectral
sightings and haunted houses.

Now O'Dea is baring his own ghosts. His HIGH: Confessions of a Pot
Smuggler is on the stands in Canada and to be released shortly in the
U.K. He has struck a movie deal with CTV, to be filmed next summer.
Plus, there's a documentary in the works. After all that
dung-pushing, new life has emerged. With new family here in T.O. A
new life he says would have been impossible without the old one.

"Gifts come in the most inexplicable packages," he says with a slight smile.

It's hard to imagine how some of what O'Dea has known could be
characterized as a "gift." As a young boy going to school in his
native Newfoundland, a teacher from the Christian Brothers sexually
abused him. Brian shouldered that shameful experience solo.

"More important than what happened that first day (of abuse) is what
did not happen that day," he says. "I didn't tell anybody. There's a
saying in various programs that I go to from time to time that says:
'We are as sick as our secrets.' That was the first big secret for me."

For the son of the late John O'Dea, a prominent and respected man in
Newfoundland's political and business circles (former leader of the
United Newfoundland Party and owner of the Newfoundland Brewery), the
secrets would only get bigger: Smoking pot and dropping acid. Selling
dope on a Halifax campus. Importing hash from the U.K., including a
trip where he walked through customs with 5 kilos that smelled like
manure strapped to his body.

Despite being busted and doing a brief stint of time in Newfoundland,
he was soon back in the trade, setting his sights considerably
higher. It wasn't long before O'Dea was jetting back and forth to
Colombia, Jamaica, working on deals that would make (or sometimes
lose) ever-increasing amounts of money.

On one memorable and adrenaline-packed run, he and a gangly pilot
attempt to fly a rickety DC-6 from the southern U.S. to an airstrip
in the Colombian jungle. A mechanical problem forces them back,
culminating in a harrowing landing that would have caused most people
to swear off flying for good.

But a few days later, there's O'Dea, climbing aboard the same plane
and flying to Colombia -- where it overshoots a clandestine runway
and sustains damage. En route back to the U.S., with three tons of
high-grade pot in the fuselage, there's another failure and the pilot
ditches the plane in shark-infested waters. O'Dea and the pilot swim,
barely, to the safety of distant fishing boats.

As the deals grow larger than life, so too does O'Dea's appetite for
cocaine. His prodigious binges, some lasting a week or more,
eventually lead him to a heart attack, treatment, sobriety. But not
before they cost him his marriage.

"I hurt my family enormously," he says, his voice showing none of the
enthusiasm that has characterized much of the interview. "I caused a
tremendous amount of anxiety and pain in my young kids and my wife --
that was so undeserved by them ... all for this, a little bag of
white f--king dust. Imagine that, and imagine chasing that for years.
They don't call it dope for nothing, buddy."

O'Dea stays clean, meets a new love, helps others in rehab. Starts on
a spiritual quest. Then, one morning in 1990, there's a forceful
knock at the door of his Santa Barbara apartment. Agents from the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency want to talk to him about, oh, some 75
tons of pot he'd helped slip under their noses a few years back.

"Unlike most cases where we catch dope and arrest people, in this
case, all the dope had been received and distributed. Our case was a
historical conspiracy," says Bartlett.

O'Dea told Bartlett he would not offer information that would
incriminate others, even if it meant a deal. He would take
responsibility for his actions.

"Although I obviously would have liked his co-operation on a personal
level, it's a stance, of course, everyone admired," says Bartlett.

The following year, scared to death, he walked through the gates of
the correctional centre at Terminal Island in Los Angeles. There,
starting with a notebook and pencil he found, he began to write the
bones of his memoir -- originally sent in chunks as a newsletter to friends.

"My main purpose when I was doing this was I wanted to stay alive and
not let my head kill me," he explains. "The story is ultimately one
of redemption, one of overcoming, and the story lays out what had to
be overcome."

O'Dea is acutely aware of the controversy over the James Frey memoir
A Million Little Pieces, parts of which were fabricated. But he says
he's confident that what he's written reflects a true account of his
extraordinary life.

"Why would I lie about being so stupid and uncaring? I wouldn't make
that up and I didn't make that up."

The Frey affair did make one American publisher back away from
distributing O'Dea's book in the U.S. But that doesn't bother the 57-year-old.

"I'm glad it happened, because it was a little deal." He smiles, eyes
sparkling. In that instant you see the smuggler that remains -- the
guy looking for the next big score. "When they come back, buddy, it's
gonna be a much bigger deal. And they will be back."