Getting Started                     
By Bill Murphy                      

We set out from St John's in June 1975 to do a pilot of nine shows, all shot in Nfld. to see if we could do a Network series.  The head of Network Programs, Jack McAndrew, a PEI boy, believed in us but he had to convince the blockheads in Toronto.

We left St John's right in the midst of a strike at the Nfld Liquor Commission. To go on the road in Nfld without a few bottles of rum was unheard of, Land & Sea had set a tradition right from its first show in 1964, take along a bottle.

All was not lost, the Ryan's boys were doing beer commercials for Molson's so we had lots of free beer.  After our first show on the Newfie Bullet on the Bonavista branch line we headed for Gander to overnight. In Gander a kind soul, I suspect Harry Steele, managed to find us a half dozen bottles of rum.

Then we headed off to Baie D'espoir to do a program on Rum-Running, not realizing until afterwards, that our show guest had been caught rum-running for the very first time by the RCMP just days before.

We ended up our trip in Placentia Bay where we did a program on Pius Power with a very moving scene of about a dozen old fishermen holding hands and dancing around in a circle. 

We crossed Placentia Bay the next day with the entire deck covered with "empties" while I played Celtic music to the whales!