Land & Sea marks 60 years on the air

The year was 1964. Ford unveiled its first Mustang at the New York World's Fair, the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, Canadians were issued Social Insurance Cards for the first time and Joey Smallwood was premier of Newfoundland.

It was also the year the CBC decided to launch a brand new show in Newfoundland and Labrador.

They'd focus their lens on people making a living in the great outdoors with a program called Land & Sea.

Sixty years later, the show still boasts a devoted and enthusiastic audience. 

Dave Quinton, now 89 years old, was one of the program's earliest hosts and was there from the beginning. In the first episode of this year's season, Quinton remembers the thrill of being part of a new venture in television.

"Well, it was a pretty blank canvas in front of us. Nobody really said exactly what kind of a show it was. We were just told 'We want you to put together a half-hour a week show about farming and fishing in Newfoundland and that was it," Quinton said. 

"We were greenhorns. We knew a little bit about agriculture and I knew a little bit about fishing. I mean you know how to jig squid. But we weren't experts."

Television was fairly new to many rural communities that the Land & Sea crew visited in the mid-to-late 1960s. Quinton recalls people not quite knowing what to make of the camera, sound recording equipment and journalists poking around their towns. 

"I think at the very beginning there was a bit of suspicion. Who were you guys coming in here and what do you want to do? But that didn't last very long because once the show went to air and people saw, 'Hey this is how they live in the next cove and look at so and so, he told the story pretty well and we should do the same,'" said Quinton. 

Gaining trust in rural communities proved to be easy but reaching them was more than challenging at times. In 1964, the Trans-Canada Highway hadn't been finished.

"You couldn't really drive across the island," said Quinton. "There were places that had gravel roads and dusty roads and watery roads."

Once the crew had captured the story in small towns, there were technical hurdles to navigate.

In the earliest years of Land & Sea, the crew was recording those outport stories on black and white film. The film had to be sent to Halifax to be processed before anyone in the St. John's television studio saw the material.

"You were on pins and needles waiting to see if the plane got in and whether the film worked or not, whether you made a mistake, then what do you do? Call a few people in the studio and have a dull studio conversation? Because, really we wanted film, we wanted outports. That's where the stories were," said Quinton.

In the 60s, Land & Sea captured images of men launching huge, newly built fishing boats from beaches by hand and women and children spreading salt fish on flakes to be dried by the sun. There were no quads or side-by-sides in the woods, some were still hauling their wood using horse and sleigh. Whale hunts provided meat for many communities and large sealing vessels like the Chesley A. Crosbie, still carried dozens of men out to sea to take part in the annual seal hunt. Land & Sea crews documented it all. 

"People were just hungry for information and visual images, of outports especially, and a way of life that was already starting to disappear," Quinton said. "We'll be delighted years from now to see some of these captured on film because once they're gone, they're gone."

The same year Land & Sea began, the department of wildlife attempted to introduce buffalo to Newfoundland. They took bison from Alberta and brought them to Brunette Island to see how they'd fare. The landscape proved to be too rocky and the cliffs too sheer.

Gradually the buffalo disappeared. 

Quinton made three shows about the buffalo over his career and says those programs generated a lot of interest from viewers.

He says when Land & Sea aired shows about their adventures in Labrador, the audience was captivated.

"Seems like you couldn't miss with Labrador if you went there. Whatever shows you did, they seemed to really interest people and they were new and revealing. Of course this was new territory for television then and that made it all the more interesting to us," said Quinton. 

That's still true today. Back in the early days of Land & Sea, people featured in episodes were eager for the rest of the province to understand their communities and their industries.

And as is also still true today, the fishery had no shortage of challenging issues.

"The draggers are coming from all over the world. Fourteen or 15 countries, I think, were fishing the Grand Banks and the Northern Sea," Quinton said. "Meanwhile, the fish were starting to get smaller and there weren't as many on the grounds. So yes, they were angry and frustrated that the fish was being taken away from them."

"It was frustrating. What could we do? We could only air their views on TV and hopefully the politicians, the leaders, would respond to it. But yes, we saw a lot of angry fishermen."

Land & Sea was a place for tough talk and serious issues, but it was also a place for cultural celebration. Back in 1986, Land & Sea produced the festive classic A Fortune Bay Christmas. That show became affectionately known as The Mummers Show.

The story focused on the tradition of mummering and featured The Mummer's Song by the musical duo Sim Savoury and Bud Davidge of Fortune Bay.

The Mummer's episode has aired annually on CBC television almost every Christmas since it first went to air. 

"We tried to take it off several times because it was worn out. But no, it wasn't worn out. People still love it today and it was done, really, by the people of that community," said Quinton. "Bud Davidge and his friends say they organized things. All we had to do was walk in with the cameras, turn them on and the show happened."

Land & Sea has always enjoyed a loyal following. So, Quinton recalls, what a shock it was in 1990 when the show was cut. It was the year of the biggest layoffs at the CBC in Newfoundland and Labrador. Staff learned that all local current affairs programs, including Land & Sea, would be axed. Bill Kelly was co-hosting the program at that time, and Quinton credits his partner and the public with saving the show.

"Well, the public outcry just brought it back. Bill stuck in there and helped organize the protests and the protest was effective. There were people clamouring all over the place to reinstate Land & Sea. Don't let it go. I'm proud of that," said Quinton.

The CBC did reinstate the show and Land & Sea sailed on.

And this season, the weekly program marks six decades on the air, continuing to share the stories of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

"Simply I hope it continues forever," said Quinton. "Wherever you go, every community has not just a story, it has stories and they need to be told."

Quinton recalls more of his memories from the early days of Land & Sea in an episode called Dave Quinton Remembers. Click on the video above to watch the full episode.

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