Talk:Cariboo Country (TV series)

Script origin

First off, thank you for creating this, it's been a redlink on various articles quite a while. I realized something when I read the following bit:

Cariboo Country was about Smith (Hughes),whose first name was unknown, his wife Norah (Carlson) and their son, Sherwood (Davies,Cherrier). A family from the fictional town of Namko, British Columbia, struggling to operate a small ranch in central British Columbia.

What it reminds me is that - I'm reasonably certain but cant' cite it, unless it's in imdb.com with info on the script, is that it's based on Paul St. Pierre's Breaking Smith's Quarter Horse, and maybe some of his other novellas given Boss of the Namko Drive - Smith's place in the novel is nowhere near there, more like Chilanko as i recall. Dan George's laconic character, Ol' Antoine, is well-established already in the novel, which is hard to read without seeing him as that particualr character. I think the series used material from other Paul St. Pierre writings, there must be details out there somewhere. I know of one episode my Mom and her pals had thought was funny, where at a country dance, the kind where you leave your babies in a common nursery off the cloakroom and leave someone to watch them, Ol' Antoine swithced all the babies around etc. Doesn't sound like any Paul St. Pierre I remember reading, but y'never know. Anyway I'd add, if I could cite it:

"Cariboo Country was about Smith ....from the fictional town of Namko, British Columbia, struggling to operate a small ranch in central British Columbia. Smith and other characters in the series, including Dan George's "Ol' Antoine", are based on the novella Breaking Smith's Quarter Horse by journalist and politician Paul St. Pierre.

Probably easier to find than I think, given all the script/film/tv databases on line nowadays. It would be intereseting to find the scripts; I'm curious as to whether any Chinook Jargon was used in them (as it was in The Oregon Trail.Skookum1 (talk) 03:06, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Yup, it's in imdb.com as also is Smith! starring Glenn Ford, also based on the same book; I never saw it, but the word is the film has little to do with the movie. I'll amend my proposed addition to mention Smith properly and add the imdb cites; one is the full episode list so maybe those can be listed on this page. Also will mention that Dan George reprised his role in the Glenn Ford film.Skookum1 (talk) 03:15, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Revision notes

Hi there: I've now addressed most of these issues in my April 2024 revision/expansion of the original article. Numerous sources (including St. Pierre's introductions to Breaking Smith's Quarter Horse and Smith and Other Events) confirm that the television scripts came first, and that St. Pierre later adapted his books from the teleplays. The babies in the cloakroom (in the episode "Morton and the Slicks") were actually switched by rancher Morton Dillonbeigh, rather than Ol' Antoine. Filmhunter (talk) 03:42, 23 April 2024 (UTC)