The Green Chain Goes Beachcombing With Jackson Davies

The Beachcombers is so iconic, that even if you never saw CBC’s long-running made-in-BC family drama you probably remember it anyway.

In 1990 I was lucky enough to interview actor Robert Clothier (aka the ever cranky Relic) about the final season of The Beachcombers – which wasn’t just Canada’s longest running series, but was challenging Bonanza for the title of longest running drama series ever. And even though I’d never been a fan of the show, his passion for it was so genuine that I found myself missing it desperately and furious at the Torontonians at CBC head office who’d taken a chainsaw to part of BC’s culture.

Jackson Davies (who played RCMP officer Constable Constable on The Beachcombers) has fought to revive the series ever since it left the airwaves and he helped produce two highly rated TV movies that reunited the surviving cast members – and introduced a new generation of stars, and viewers, to one of Canada's most mythic meeting places, Molly’s Reach and the not so mythical land of Gibsons, B.C.

When we launched The Green Chain podcast the idea was to get different perspectives on BC’s forests and it hit me that for a lot of people around the world, the image they have of our forests, our loggers and our trees comes from watching Nick, Relic, Jessie and Constable Constable fight their weekly battles over those drifting logs.

These days Jackson is teaching film at Capilano College and starring in The Producers at the Arts Club’s Stanley Theatre. I met Jackson at Listel O’Douls in downtown Vancouver to talk about the death of The Beachcombers, the death of real-life beachcombing and how the whole world came to Molly’s Reach.

Click here to check out the latest Green Chain podcast. Coming up on future episodes I'll be talking trees, faith and getting scared sacred with Velcrow Ripper.

- MLY