TEN MILE POINT'S SMUGGLERS COVE, WHICH IS STILL USED BY CROOKS, HAS A
HISTORY OF NEFARIOUS ACTIVITY

In light of the huge drug bust that occurred last week in the waters
just north of Oak Bay (see story on Page 3), we offer this look at the
colourful history of smuggling in the area.

Authorities have a hunch where a kayak stuffed with $120,000 worth of
B.C. Bud was headed, before it turned up mysteriously in the rocks off
Ten Mile Point last week.

The speculation is that the kayak (which had been outfitted with a
small, battery-powered electric outboard motor) and its cargo were
meant for an unknown destination south of the border.

If so, it wouldn't be the first time that such illicit activity has
gone on at Ten Mile Point.

According to Saanich News history columnist Valerie Green, the area is
notorious for smuggling.

The waters off quiet, sleepy, respectable Saanich (and a quick paddle
from Oak Bay) once were (and apparently still may be) a hotbed of
activity for dealers of contraband.

Historically, the small bay off Ten Mile Point has been such a popular
place for smugglers that it is commonly known as Smuggler's Cove.

As far as Green can gather, smugglers have been casting off from
Saanich since the 1860s, when whisky was peddled to American troops
stationed on San Juan Island. After the San Juan Islands officially
became part of the United States, smugglers used them to stash opium
bound for Puget Sound.

The opium originated from China and was processed in Victoria in
licensed factories, before the drug was made illegal in Canada.

In the late 1800s, human cargo was the contraband of choice - as
Chinese immigrants were hauled across the Haro Strait by the boatload.

There was a bit of a lull in the cross-border flow of contraband
following Canada's ban on opium in 1908, but prohibition in the U.S.
in the 1930s and 1930s ushered in a whole new era of smuggling for the
rumrunners.

One of the region's most infamous and elusive rumrunners, Johnny
Schnarr, not only lived long enough to tell about his escapades, but
also to boast about them in his memoirs, which he wrote when he was
95.

Schnarr, who was born in Washington State, claimed he made over 400
trips from Canada to the U.S. in speedboats (powered by aircraft
engines) between 1921 and 1933.

Not only was he an accomplished rumrunner, it seems he also had the
foresight to quit the illicit business while he was ahead. He managed
to buy a comfortable home and bank $12,000 before he concluded his
career of crime, in favour of logging. He died at the ripe old age of
98 in Esquimalt.

While researching her book Legends, Liars & Lawbreakers, (which is due
out early in the new year), Green stumbled across a couple of other
notorious, U.S.-born smugglers who weren't as adept as Schnarr at
evading the clutches of the law.

Harry Ferguson earned the alias "The Flying Dutchman" because for
years he always kept a couple of steps ahead of the
authorities.

He was a crafty crook who managed to give the police the slip by
painting his boat a different colour immediately after he'd delivered
the goods.

San Juan Island residents turned a blind eye to most of the smugglers
who lived among them, but they weren't so laid-back about The Flying
Dutchman. He was a menacing man who ran with Butch Cassidy's Hole in
the Wall gang in the 1880s before moving to the Pacific Northwest in
1898. He struck fear in the hearts of many of his neighbours.

But The Flying Dutchman's incorrigible ways eventually caught up with
him. After he made the mistake of killing a cop in Nanaimo during an
armed robbery, he was hung.

Life behind bars was enough to reform Roy Olmstead, a
policeman-turned-bootlegger-turned-do gooder. He spent four years in
the slammer after he was caught smuggling. Olmstead turned to religion
in the joint and embraced his faith so wholeheartedly that he began
converting his fellow convicts. When he was released, he opened a
halfway house for wayward souls and counselled those who were down on
their luck.

Today, a California man (who was nabbed, aptly enough, near Smuggler's
Cove), sits in jail for allegedly attempting to smuggle pot across the
strait into the U.S.

Given Saanich's notorious past, why wouldn't he?

"It was easy back then - so why wouldn't it be easy now?" asks Green.