It's not the best-known fact about 83-year-old Newfoundland acting legend Gordon Pinsent perhaps that he has something of a local connection. He spent some time up in Fort Churchill in the airborne parachute unit of the Royal Canadian Regiment, which he served in from 1948 to 1951.
When he was discharged Pinsent went to Winnipeg, where he worked numerous odd jobs, including patrolling parking meters and teaching ballroom dancing at Arthur Murray Studios. In 1954, he began acting with the Winnipeg Repertory Theatre and from there he went on to work with three repertory theatres - the Rainbow Stage, the Winnipeg Little Theatre and Theatre 77 - and was with the nucleus of actors which became the Manitoba Theatre Centre, run by John Hirsh.
Today, we might think of Pinsent for his more recent roles, including the 2006 film Away from Her, which marked the directorial debut of Canadian actress Sarah Polley.
Based on Alice Munro's 2001 short story The Bear Came over the Mountain, the film stars Pinsent and Julie Christie as a couple whose marriage is tested when Christie's character begins to suffer from Alzheimer's disease.
While Pinsent's big break came with the lead role in the CBC televisions series Quentin Durgens, M.P., which ran from 1966 to 1968, making him a star, it is the series he did immediately before that which I still enjoy most as one of life's truly guilty pleasures - The Forest Rangers - which totaled 104 half-hour episodes, produced by Maxine Samuels for Associated Screen Productions (ASP) Ltd., in association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) between 1963 and 1965.
The Forest Rangers aired originally on CBC every Saturday afternoon at 5 p.m. Pinsent played RCMP Sgt. Brian Scott, stationed at Indian River, supposedly in Ontario's cottage country on the southeast side of Algonquin Park, northeast of Barry's Bay. Pinsent's character always sounds a bit (OK, a lot) wooden with his lines, but he is playing a just-the-facts cop after all. Truth be told, one has to suspend their imagination in all kinds of ways. Pinsent's character is clearly on what would be Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) turf. No matter. The Mounties' red serge makes for better television and The Forest Rangers was shot in colour - the first Canadian-made television series in full colour - although I originally watched it on our black-and-white television as a kid.
The Junior Forest Rangers, including Ralph Endersby as Chub Stanley, Rex Hagon as Pete Keeley, Peter Tully as Mike Forbes, Syme Jago as Gaby LaRoche, Michael Tully as Johnny O'Reilly, George Allan as Ted Keeley and Mathew Ferguson as Danny Bailey, to name just some of them, live, work and play in a large Hudson's Bay fort. The junior rangers were the envy of kids the world over, with their fort, ham radios, walkie-talkies, canoes, horses, crested Junior Forest Ranger sweat shirts and Smokey the Bear flag. Can you spell adventure? The show has been syndicated in more than 40 countries. The Norwegians called it "Skogwokterkklubben."
The show was filmed mostly just north of the village of Kleinburg, not far from Toronto, actually, although location shooting included the Widdifield Fire Tower, just east of North Bay.
The theme music for The Forest Rangers was written and conducted by John Hubert Bath. You can catch a short clip, along with the opening credits, on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2ABUS4xPYw.
Or, if you're a true aficionado of the quintessential Canadian kids' adventure show from a more innocent television time, fans such as Clayton Self, from Courtice, Ontario, and Keith Andrews from Sherbrooke, Quebec, have done yeoman's work with trivia and memorabilia. Check out Self and other's contributions at: http://forestrangers.bravehost.com/, http://ctva.biz/Canada/ForestRangers.htm, or on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_2956585454 or Bill Brioux's "Going back in time with The Forest Rangers" from last June 18 at: http://www.brioux.tv/2013/06/going-back-in-time-with-forest-rangers.html
