Growing Flowers, You Say? A Likely Story

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VANCOUVER -- The village of Likely is a remote community of about 250 people on the edge of the Quesnel Highlands in the foothills of the Cariboo mountain range, more than an hour away from the closest police detachment.

A city-slicker unfamiliar with the ways of a small town might assume that it was possible to move into an abandoned house on one of the village's isolated two-acre lots and no one would be the wiser.

Of course, folks in small towns across Canada know that's not true. They know just how easy it is to find out just about everything about their neighbours.

Residents of Likely, about 550 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, said yesterday most people were well aware of the massive indoor marijuana growing operations in their community long before police announced this week that nine Vancouver-area residents will appear in court on Sept. 10 to face charges related to production of marijuana on eight properties in the village.

The criminal charges stem from raids in late 2007 in which police found 33,319 marijuana plants in Likely. Last month, six people were arrested after a police raid of a property in Bridge Lake, B.C., about three hours north of Likely. Police in that raid discovered 15,000 plants in 23 greenhouses, enough to make up to five million marijuana cigarettes.

Likely residents were divided on whether the police raids had made their community a better place to live. Likely Chamber of Commerce spokesman Robin Hood said yesterday the grow ops fed an underground economy and boosted property values in a town hit hard by a slowdown in logging and mining. "It did not bother me," he said in an interview.

But High Country Inn owner Darlene Biggs, who has three of her eight grandchildren living in the village, said she was pleased to see the grow ops closed down. "A lot of us have been complaining for a while and calling the police," she said.

The village of Likely, named after a prospector called John Likely, dates back to the Gold Rush days of the 1850s. Almost 700 ounces of gold were recovered in one week at the peak of production at the nearby Bullion Pit gold mine, which operated from 1892 to 1942. Logging replaced mining as the area's main source of employment in the 1950s, but the forestry work disappeared about 15 years ago.

Those who stayed have tried to reinvent the area as a tourist destination, although the tiny village does not have police, a fire department, a hospital, a department store or even a bank.

About five years ago, those who were still in Likely watched as people from Vancouver paid top dollar for abandoned properties. The newcomers said they were in the business of growing flowers. But after they hired local residents as carpenters and electricians to renovate the homes, it quickly became apparent what they really had in mind.

Likely residents readily admit they knew what their new neighbours were doing. The residents joked about the brownouts in their own homes at 6:10 p.m. every night, as the lights went on in the grow ops, Mr. Hood said.

They talked about their new gated communities: The grow ops were the only properties with gates on their driveways, Ms. Biggs said, adding that many people in the area never even lock their doors.

During the winter, the grow ops were the only homes in the community with no snow on their roofs, Ms. Biggs said.

Despite the talk in the community, the grow ops carried on for some years. RCMP Corporal Marc Menard of the Williams Lake detachment rejected a suggestion that police should have moved more quickly to shut them down.

Police searched the marijuana grow ops in Likely in the fall and early winter of 2007, a few years after residents said they first knew about the illegal business. The nine men appearing in court in Williams Lake next week were charged earlier this week.

"A lot of people think, because they call and say there is a grow op at that location, that that afternoon it will be dismantled. It does not work that way," Cpl. Menard said in an interview. Information must be verified and presented in court to obtain a search warrant. Police also have to compile evidence that persuades a federal prosecutor of the likelihood of conviction, he said. "It does not happen overnight and it involves an incredible amount of manpower," he added.

Cpl. Menard said electricians, carpenters and others in the underground economy who earned some money as a result of the grow ops may be investigated by Revenue Canada.

"There is a reason we have a system of laws in this country," he said. "The ones that choose not to follow the laws, they will eventually be held accountable."


News Hawk: User: http://www.420magazine.com/
Source: The Globe and Mail
Author: ROBERT MATAS
Copyright: 2008 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc.
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