OPP MISS THE BOSS, BUT NAB 'GARDENER'

POLICE GOT the "gardener" a few days back, raiding a sprawling acreage of
farmland north of Bancroft near the village of Maynooth, home of the
Arlington Hotel's Shot &Bottle Lounge as well as an annual Black Fly Festival.

But they never got the "boss."

"Very rarely do you get him," said Staff-Sgt. Ray Westgarth, head of the
Bancroft OPP detachment, indicating that there are often too many layers
between the "gardener" who takes the fall and the "boss" who takes the
(occasional) loss.

"But the boss will be there to front another operation somewhere else,"
said Westgarth. "That's the problem we are facing up here, and the sudden
increase in Asian marijuana grows in our area is becoming a concern."

This year alone, there have been seven in these highlands 150 km due north
of Belleville -- not all Asian, but enough of a spike in Asian grow-ops not
to go unnoticed.

There wasn't much left at the old farmhouse to indicate the early-morning
police raid. Bolt cutters had lopped off the chained lock on the gate along
East Lake Road, therefore providing easy access to the kilometre-long dirt
road that leads to the now-abandoned farm house, its empty barns, and the
fields where hundreds of thousands of marijuana plants were growing before
they were hauled off by the drug cops assigned to Project Longarm.

"They were ready for harvest," said Westgarth. "Never saw anything quite
like them before. The plants were squat, only two or three feet high, but
they were wide, and loaded with bud from top to bottom."

Today, that seizure lies buried, its estimated street value of $8 million
rotting away at a secret location which was only described as being "very,
very deep in the bush."

There is a ramshackle screened-in porch at the back of the ramshackle farm
house, its floor found littered with Chinese-language newspapers, all which
would go a long way to explain why the "gardener" asked for a lawyer who
could speak Cantonese.

He was asleep on a mattress in the farmhouse living room when the police
quietly rolled up that 1 km stretch of road before sunrise -- 12 cops in
all, and one of them driving the large U-Haul truck that would leave a few
hours later with some 8,000 marijuana plants in its cargo bay.

The "gardener" had no car. He had only food and drink, and he was there
alone,-- 24/7 -- until the crop he was cultivating for the "boss" was ready
for market on the streets.

According to police, the only book at his bedside was an English-Chinese
dictionary, all of which goes nowhere towards explaining how he could be
attending York University when his proficiency in English was described by
police as being almost non-existent.

According to one of the undercover officers who helped orchestrate the
raid, the 26-year-old "gardener" wasn't in jail very long before bail was
posted -- $10,000 cash, and two sureties totalling $15,000.

"But you won't find the boss's name anywhere near (that transaction)," said
Westgarth.

Same with the farm house.

Same with the land.

Word is that the property was purchased by a numbered company a year ago
for $230,000, bought from an American who had bought it from a mechanic who
had bought it from the original farmer and who had then put in a dirt
airstrip to service small planes, a business that never took off.

There is a corner store not far from that land, directly across the street
from the Arlington Hotel's Shot & Bottle Lounge in fact, that sells gas,
groceries and live bait.

The owner of that store said his wife used to ride her horses through that
farmland where the cops had woken up the "gardener" and had left a few
hours later with $8 million in marijuana stuffed into the back of a U-Haul
truck.

But then the barbed wire went up, and the front gate got locked. Then No
Trespassing warnings were posted on land where there was once a free rein
to reign.

"And that's when we began thinking something was up," he said.

"And it turns out we were right."