when tv was black and white: the forest rangers

as a young boy new to canada, there was as much fantasy about my understanding of this country as there was misinformation from what i had heard about canada before i left my home country of england. canadian television at the time reinforced some of the fantasy which presented canada as a more-or-less untamed wilderness.

one of my favourite shows was “the forest rangers” which ran from 1963 to 1965 but was so immensley popular that it actually went into reruns for some time afterwards. i was certain when i saw it that it was filmed somewhere in northern ontario but it was - amazingly enough - filmed in kleinburg, a little community just west of toronto. in addition to being the first canadian series to be filmed in colour, it also marked the first major series debut of gordon pinsent.

here’s the whole scoop from the cbc itself: “the forest rangers, a highly successful adventure series for children, was developed by executive producer maxine samuels as an independent venture, with the cooperation of the cbc. by the time the show aired in canada, it had already been sold to networks in england, france, west germany, and australia, and by 1966, over forty countries could watch the adventures of a gang of resourceful canadian young people who lived in northern ontario.

the show took place in and around a village called indian river, but the real focus of the story was an abandoned fort that had been taken over by the junior rangers. the fort was their headquarters, where they set up their ham radio, and helped keep watch for forest fires and other conservational offences. they ran up against not only poachers, but a succession of thieves, escaped criminals, spies, and other wrongdoers. when discovered, one or more of the junior rangers might be tied up, locked in a cellar, or otherwise held captive until they found a way out or were rescued by the government ranger or the r.c.m.p. although the program's stories were principally adventures, they sometimes had an educational slant. for example, the story might have concerned poaching beaver pelts, but during the course of the show, viewers would see the part beavers play in the ecology of the region.

the leader of the junior rangers was peter Keeley, played by rex hagon, whose brother george keeley, played by graydon gould, was the chief forest ranger for the area. (hagon left the show after the first couple of seasons.) ralph endersby played chub stanley, a city boy who moves to indian river to live with foster parents, and is welcomed into the junior rangers. The other rangers included mike forbes, played by peter tully, and kathy, played by susan conway. early in the series, syme jago appeared as gaby laroche, and paul tully portrayed zeke. apart from george (the only adult relation to any of the young characters to appear in the show), other adult characters included uncle raoul laroche, played by rolland bedard, indian joe two rivers, a guide played by michael zenon, and r.c.m.p. sergeant brian scott, portrayed by gordon pinsent. the dog was named spike and the bear was carol.
the forest rangers was produced in colour, on film, and had quite high production values. samuels hired such producers as ted holliday and william davidson, and attracted such people as paul almond, george mccowan, ronald weyman, and george gorman to direct individual episodes. lindsay galloway wrote most of the scripts for the series. the program was shot at toronto international studios at kleinburg, ontario, where the crew built bridges and a town street to represent indian river, and also found the abandoned fort (left over from the hudson bay television series) which they turned into junior rangers headquarters.”

a really excellent fan site has lots more information and images . . .

here are some brief but memory-filled scenes from the forest rangers series.


if you would like to buy episodes one to twenty then go here. if you would like to buy episodes twenty one to fourty then go here.