When Cold Squad coproducer Julia Keatley ramped up Vancouver’s first primetime national drama in 1997, part of her excitement was for the local production personnel itching for a chance to do something substantial and homegrown.

In 98 episodes, Cold Squad has employed about 400 people – everyone from caterers to drivers to technical crew and nearly every working actor in Vancouver. Only four, besides series star Julie Stewart, have been with the show since day one, including: construction coordinator Ken Frost; transportation coordinator Richard Chilton; and Grant Pearse, who started as a key set designer and ended as production designer.

And then there is sainted Vancouver native Gigi Boyd, who was recruited from Telefilm Canada, where she was director of the broadcast unit, to be Cold Squad’s first production accountant.

Boyd was steadily promoted to eventually run the day-to-day production of Cold Squad by season five. And she took her experience to new places – winning a 2001 Gemini Award as executive producer for the performing arts special Sola, acting as a consultant to film agencies and producers, and developing new programs with business partner Jana Ververka.

Today, Boyd is the production manager and producer for Keatley’s newest venture, Godiva’s, the six-part one-hour drama series about a Vancouver restaurant for CHUM.

Keatley is the second generation of the B.C. television dynasty started by her father Philip Keatley, who produced among other things The Beachcombers at CBC.

It was Keatley’s faith in Cold Squad that sold the concept to the people with the money – a process she began in early 1994, three years before production actually started on the series.

On Sept. 30, Keatley began the first day of principal photography on Godiva’s, which she cocreated.

Toronto-based Anne Marie La Traverse was executive producer for the first six seasons, while serving as senior VP, television production at Alliance Atlantis before the big production purge of 2003. The former lawyer has since moved on to launch prodco Pink Sky Entertainment and is producing three MOWs for CTV.

Cold Squad coproducer and writer Matt MacLeod, meanwhile, successfully traded in his dangerous undercover police work with the RCMP for the relative insanity of a television soundstage. Having lived many of the stories depicted in the episodes of Cold Squad, MacLeod (who uses a pseudonym because of his earlier career) brought credibility to the storylines.

MacLeod had caught the screenwriting bug in 1985 while on the job with the Drug Enforcement Administration in L.A. He pursued his new passion, eventually writing the MOW Trust in Me, which put him in touch with the Keatleys, who ended up producing it. He created Cold Squad in 1994 and quit the RCMP on the first day of principal photography on July 2, 1997.

Today, he’s living a different passion, calling his sailboat home, along with his wife and two dogs.