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S o a p b o x £ Productions 6jf Heather Kitthincf I his holiday season, when you were curled up in front of the TV / I watching A Beachcombers Christmas, know that the show that put Gibsons on the map has a significant North Shore connection. The connection is Nick Orchard, a one-time production manager for the original series and the co-founder of Soapbox Productions, the independent production company behind two recent movies in which Molly's Reach becomes home to a new generation of characters. Orchard has lived on the North Shore since 1979. He's been working in television for over 30 years. His father was involved in broadcasting and theatre, and he inspired Orchard to start acting while still in school. Orchard went on to study theatre at UBC, produce commercials for CFUN and make documentaries for CBC Radio before moving to television. Prior to launching Soapbox in 1990, he did stints at the CBC, CTV and BBC in London. Today, Orchard maintains relationships with all the Canadian networks and cable companies, looking for and coming up with show ideas to meet their needs. From modest headquarters in a surprisingly "un-showbiz" location above a strip mall on Lynn Valley Road, Soapbox has produced a steady stream of memorable Canadian programs including Bob Robertson and Linda Cullen's Double Exposure, CHUM Television's On Screen, and the recently-broadcast series on Second City. The Beachcombers, though, is a project particularly near and dear to Orchard's heart. "I became good friends with Jackson Davies [who played Constable John Constable] and we'd keep in touch and work together off and on, and that was how the new Beachcombers came along.... I'd often toyed with the thought that the basic premise of the series was good. Gibsons itself was a character, and even though the main characters were no longer alive - Nick and Relic and Molly - you could still rebuild characters in that setting and it would be a fun series." "We hired Dave Thomas to be the new Molly - h e ' s . . . a bit of a scoundrel - and Graham Greene's the local newspaper reporter." Davies reprised his roll as the now Staff Sergeant John Constable. A Beachcombers Christmas sees Thomas' character trying to repair his reputation by staging a fundraising celebrity hockey game against a team of hockey legends. Constable is charged with trying to coach the ill-prepared Gibsons team to take on the stars, while Dave finds himself, for the first time, on the receiving end of a scam. Despite winning several awards, the Christmas movie appears to be the final chapter of the Beachcombers saga, and Orchard laments that he never managed to convince the CBC to build a series around the new characters. "We still get emails daily. Jackson gets them from the old fans and I get them from the new fans saying 'why don't they make that a series?" Heads Up is a show Orchard has scored more success with, on the Knowledge Network. The kids astronomy program was recently nominated for the prestigious Shaw Rocket Prize for the best children's show in Canada and earned two Gemini nominations. Hosted by CBC science correspondent Bob McDonald, Heads Up literally travels the world to be "wherever the astronomy is," says Orchard. "We go to the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California; we go to Houston, Texas where they train the astronauts; we go to Florida where they launch them." If you watch carefully this season, you might also notice some familiar sights from closer to home www.arts-alive.ca J a n u a r y j F e b r u a r y C reative Art R ehabilitative E xpression Aita Therapy 209 Lonsdale Centre Avenue www.AitaCentre.com 604 - 987 - 7212 - like the North Shore Recycling DropOff Depot and a stretch of road just off Pemberton Avenue." What's next for Soapbox? As they say on television, "stay tuned." Projects on the horizon include a comedy about Canada's young urban Native population and a biography of legendary bluesman, Long John Baldry. Dave Thomas (left) with Nick Orchard We provide therapeutic and rehabilitative programs and services to older adults with physical and/or cognitive frailty and their caregivers.