Police in northern Ontario charged a Toronto man after finding marijuana fields stretching three football fields in length near Iroquois Falls, east of Timmins, in what officers considered one of Canada’s largest outdoor cannabis busts.[1][2] Officers from the Ontario Provincial Police and North Bay police, with a K-9 unit, carried out a search warrant on Sunday 24 July 2005 and found more than 21,000 plants behind a home nestled in the woods.[1][2]
Detective-Sergeant Bill O’Shea, a unit commander with the OPP drug enforcement section, said the field ran about three football fields long by one wide, with plants in straight rows just like any other crop, and that no pains had been taken to conceal it.[1] O’Shea, a 15-year drug enforcement veteran, called it one of the largest outdoor grows he had ever seen.[1] Ji Zhu Chu, 39, was arrested at the farm and charged with producing a controlled substance; O’Shea said more people were likely involved.[1]
A move to remote land
O’Shea said the seizure reflected a trend of commercial growers leaving the suburbs of southern Ontario, where police were plagued by indoor grow-ops, for remote northern land where property was cheap and large open tracts made detection harder.[1] Police also seized a tractor, hoses and other farming equipment at the site.[1] The report noted the haul rivalled the Barrie brewery bust of the previous year, putting that indoor seizure at 25,000 plants.[1]
