B.C. man sentenced after police seize ‘arsenal of ruinously destructive potential’

The RCMP bomb disposal unit arrived Wednesday and detonated the homemade explosives at the Port Alberni, B.C., property, police said. (RCMP)

A 49-year-old Vancouver Island man will spend the next several years behind bars after he was caught with what a B.C. Supreme Court judge described as a “highly illegal arsenal of ruinously destructive potential.”

The arsenal, described by the judge at the man’s sentencing hearing last month, included 19 guns, a pipe bomb, detonation cord and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Joseph Michael Mark Walczak pleaded guilty to more than a dozen weapons offences after Mounties raided his Port Alberni apartment in March 2024.

The RCMP’s bomb disposal unit was called to conduct a controlled detonation at the Burde Street apartment after police discovered the explosive devices while executing a search warrant.

The search warrant was obtained after an RCMP officer was dispatched to the apartment the day before over a complaint that a woman was being assaulted inside the residence.

No victim was found, but the responding constable instead discovered “rather a large stockpile of firearms, ammunition, explosive substances and other things in plain view,” Justice Robin Baird wrote in his Jan. 13 sentencing decision.

Walczak warned police about handling the explosive devices, saying “they blow up if you look at them,” the judge recounted.

Among the guns seized, five were found to be prohibited, four were restricted, nine were privately manufactured and eight were without serial numbers, the court heard. Many of the firearms did not have functioning safety mechanisms, and three of them are considered automatic weapons, the judge wrote.

‘Potential for enormous harm’

Inside the residence, officers also discovered extendable batons, slingshots, bows and arrows, body armour, tactical vests, grenade shells, gunpowder, bomb-making manuals and a box containing “a large boa constrictor whose name, if I remember correctly, was Calypso,” Baird said.

Crown prosecutors asked the judge to impose a sentence of seven to nine years in prison, while Walczak’s defence lawyer argued that a total sentence of four years and four months was appropriate.

Walczak’s adult daughters provided letters to the court on his behalf, describing a loving father who had struggled with addiction after undergoing a series of surgeries following an automobile accident.

“I have been sitting on the bench for a pretty long time now and I have heard about a lot of people who got addicted to opioids after first having been prescribed them by medical doctors,” the judge wrote.

“You are a victim of the same pathology, but to your credit, you managed to get yourself clean of opioids,” the judge continued. “That is no mean feat, Mr. Walczak, and I respect it.”

Still, the judge ruled Walczak’s cache of weapons had “the potential to cause enormous harm,” and was therefore deserving of a lengthy sentence.

“I do not frankly know what Mr. Walczak was up to, but it was never going to lead to anything good,” Baird wrote, sentencing the man to seven years in prison, minus credit for time already served in custody since his arrest.

Walczak was also prohibited from owning or possessing weapons, ammunition and explosives for life.