Preserving an iconic Canadian television series brought the divisive BC legislative assembly spring session to a lighthearted close on May 31.
With some momentary levity that underpinned a serious cultural message, Powell River-Sunshine Coast MLA Nicholas Simons brought back The Beachcombers.
Amid back and forth squabbling and bipartisanship between John Horgan’s NDP government and the Liberal opposition during the spring sitting, Simons supported coastal character with cultural preservation. He said he had spoken to actor Jackson Davies, who played RCMP constable John Constable in the long-running CBC series filmed in Gibsons.
“He was telling me about the CBC destroying the film versions of all the shows and digitizing everything because of storage issues,” said Simons.
Only 60 episodes of the 18-year series have been broadcast since it was cancelled in 1990, he added, and all 387 episodes should be available through CBC online.
The Beachcombers is not a relic, according to Simons, and remains relevant today with its depiction of Canadian multinationalism, storylines dealing with land claims and other first nations issues, references to BC Ferries, the protection of the coastline and, ironically, one episode that centred around a proposed pipeline from Alberta through BC.
It brought some levity to both sides of the house.
“I'd never been interrupted in a two-minute statement twice because of bipartisan agreement but everybody enjoyed my little two-minute statement,” said Simons. “It might have had some cheeky politics in it.”
The two-minute member statements, by rule of the house, are not meant to be political.
Simons has been taken to task on social media for what some see has a frivolous waste of time when there are more pressing and serious issues the government should be addressing.
“People have to realize that the reason we fight for important issues is so we can have a quality of life where we produce art and we produce positive social interaction and feeling,” he said. “Maybe it's time for a couple of minutes of happiness, a couple of minutes of joy, a couple of minutes of feeling good because of all those issues we've been taking seriously and have been dealing with in the legislature.”
The veteran MLA said he thinks the government’s record has been a remarkable achievement.
“We have made massive changes in our education system, in our child-care system,” he said. “We've eliminated the MSP. We've gotten big money out of politics. We're reducing wait lists in our medical systems. We're creating primary care centres. Every single ministry I can think of has had a remarkable improvement.”
Now, if he can just get the CBC to open up the vaults of The Beachcombers so everyone can hear the opening, jaunty maritime sea shanty again and relive the adventures of Nick Adonidas.
