A HOME THAT WENT TO POT

It was a home with a lot of firsts. It was the first time living in Surrey
for Heidi and I. It was our first house together. Our first (and only) baby
took her first steps there.

We put heart and soul into that cream and brown B.C. box in North Surrey,
renovating almost every room. I retiled the fireplace. We had the wood
floors refinished. We painted. We decorated. We fixed, and we fussed.

We created nine years of wonderful, rich memories. And last spring, with no
small degree of sadness, we sold that first house, and moved south.

Last Sunday morning, I stood on my former neighbour's driveway, and the two
of us watched as Mounties in coveralls threw fans, dehumidifiers, power
transformers, and bulging green garbage bags into the back of a big panel
truck.

Our first home had become a marijuana grow op. Upstairs and down.

Snaking through the rooms was silver ducting, all vented up the chimney.
Hanging from the ceilings was a spider's web of wiring, where the grow
lights and hoods had hung. The dirty floors were littered with pots, now
holding only bare stubs of stalks.

Chunks of wall had been torn out to get at the main electric service, which
had been bypassed.

The caretakers were living in one bedroom and the living room, which
contained a couch and a stand-alone hammock.

The air was hot and heavy with humidity, reeking with the skunky odour of
marijuana.

The officers counted 450 plants. At $1,500 per pound per plant, in
three-month crop rotations, the police figured that the little house which
we sold for $210,900 had generated somewhere between $2 million and $4 million.

Since moving into our current home, we've often wondered about the
Vietnamese family that bought our first house. What kind of people were
they? Did they appreciate the place? Were they taking care of it?

We now know the answers to those questions.

Turns out we didn't sell a home as much as we sold a greenhouse. The people
it sheltered were there to put on a facade, and tend the pot crop. Now our
former home stands ruined and empty.

If it hadn't been for the noisy attempted rip-off by a couple of guys at
3:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, and the neighbour who called the police, the
house would still be churning out dope, creating obscene profits for some
gang lords somewhere.

As for the occupants who were busted, they'll probably be put back in
business in no time.

The RCMP are overwhelmed, overworked, and understaffed. They're outnumbered
and out-financed. Meanwhile, the courts are just plain out to lunch.

The pot growers know it.

And to make it all even more absurd, this city's council voted Monday night
to take $3.6 million of "saved" RCMP funding and gussy up city hall with it.

Grow ops - Surrey's newest, hottest industry. Coming soon to your
neighbourhood, if it isn't there already.