Billy Campbell is dreaming of being at sea, with the Atlantic winds filling the sails of his Lunenburg-built schooner the Martha Seabury, named after his late grandmother.
But at the moment, the Virginia-born actor is sequestered with his wife Ollie on her family’s farm in Norway, and the only things crossing the ocean are his phone calls to discuss the upcoming fourth and final season of CTV’s acclaimed crime drama Cardinal.
“This is where her family has been congregating for 450 years, believe it or not,” says Campbell, whose world-weary detective John Cardinal takes on his final case of the series starting on Monday night at 8 p.m.
“And we’re in self-isolation, but self-isolation on the farm is pretty much like any other weekend, except it’s indefinite.”
With Cardinal about to air its final six episodes, and no major assignments on the horizon, Campbell was planning to bring the Martha Seabury from Nova Scotia over to Norway later this year. No stranger to the Maritimes, Campbell had previously visited the region to appear in Shandi Mitchell’s 2012 lost-at-sea drama The Disappeared, the 2013 New Brunswick-shot Civil War-era film Copperhead and 2014’s Lizzie Borden Took an Axe with Christina Ricci.
He got the idea to build the boat while taking part in a round-the-world voyage on the Lunenburg-based tall ship Picton Castle, from Captain Daniel Moreland. One day, Moreland asked him,
“I wanna build some schooners, do you wanna be a customer?” and Campbell’s love of the sea inspired him to say yes.
Built at the Dory Shop in Lunenburg and launched in 2012, the Martha Seabury is currently docked not far from the Bluenose II, and Campbell hopes he can take the helm again once the COVID-19 crisis has run its course and ports are open again.
“I didn’t build it with my own two hands, but I caused it to be built,” says Campbell, who adds that a second schooner was built at the same time and is still up for sale, if anyone’s interested.
“It’s built like a brick s***house,” he says with a wry chuckle.
“I meant to apprentice with the boatbuilder, but then I got busy working and I decided it’d be good to be able to pay for the boat.
“The last couple of summers I’ve been over to Nova Scotia, and we’ve put the boat in the water and done some sailing around the coast. But I’ve been trying for the last few years to get it over here to Scandinavia. The virus has thrown a wrench into things, so it probably won’t happen this summer, but it might be next if the world is back to normal by then.”
Until then, Campbell and his family remain safely isolated in the still-wintry countryside of southern Norway, which likely provides the occasional flashback to the setting of Cardinal. Like the novels, the show takes place in the fictional community of Algonquin Bay and is filmed on the snowy streets of North Bay and Sudbury, and the icy expanses and forests around Lake Nipissing.
Cardinal's tackles his last case
Based on the series of novels by North Bay author Giles Blunt, Cardinal has provided Campbell with one of the best roles of his nearly 40-year career, taking him from burnt-out investigator under a cloud of scandal to grieving husband to demonstrative dad. The detective’s daily life is spent keeping his demons at bay while chasing the human monsters who prey on his community, and despite all the challenges the show presents, it’s been hard for Campbell to bid farewell to John Cardinal.
“I have intensely mixed emotions,” says the actor who once soared as the Rocketeer and delved into the dark side playing serial killer Ted Bundy. “In many ways, it’s been the best job of my career, working with some of my very favourite people in my career. On the other hand, I live across the ocean, so coming to Canada to do Cardinal meant a lot of time away from my family.
“As you can imagine, mixed emotions, but it kind of kills me inside to think that I won’t be back to North Bay again for another go-round. But who knows, anything could happen.”
Of course, not every case Cardinal tackled took place in the depths of the bleak midwinter. But there’s a full-circle feeling about season four as Cardinal and his dogged partner Insp. Lise Delorme (Karine Vanasse) are on the trail of a methodical, determined psychopath who’s targeting specific families.
Having only watched the first two installments of the six-episode arc, it’s not yet clear what the inspiration is for this elaborate plan of revenge, but it’s certain that Cardinal and Delorme will be put through the emotional wringer, with occasional moments of black humour, in order to stop it.
“Honestly, they did a really terrific job, Patrick Tarr and the whole writers’ room, of taking those disparate parts of the books and putting them together. It’s a really, really strong season, I think it might be as strong as the first,” says Campbell, who has yet to see the full finished season, but laughs when he avows, “but I was there when we shot it!
“It felt really, really strong, it played out really well. When you boil it down, it’s really about the relationship between Cardinal and Delorme, and I think people who like that relationship and if they love the show and the tone and flavour of it, then they will be highly appreciative of the way the whole thing is handled and wraps up.”
