Genuine good soul

The Music Takes Me Back explores Mark Hiscock’s life as a musician, teacher, seaman, friend and family man.

 

By Thomas Jordan
Kicker

In his cozy lodgings at Fort Amherst, lighthouse keeper Billy Ryan holds a cup of tea and sits beside a window overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

The smell of salt water fills the air.

Just steps from the lighthouse is the former home of Mark Hiscock, the accordion player Ryan knew for years. Hiscock died in 2025 at the age of 53.

Whenever Ryan passed through the Narrows aboard a Coast Guard ship, the two would take aim at each other. Not with guns, but with cameras.

“Hiscock would try to get a picture of me from shore, and I would try to get one of him from the ship,” said Ryan.

Along with those pictures, Ryan recalls his buddy through his music.

“Mark was, and still is, a big part of my musical experience,” he said.

Ryan is one of many interesting characters sharing memories of Mark Hiscock for The Music Takes Me Back, an NTV documentary produced by Pam Pardy Promotions.

“Mark was not only an amazing musician, he was a genuine good soul of a person, someone who everyone can take a little bit of advice from.”

Pardy spent 15 years as managing editor of the Newfoundland Herald. She knew Hiscock through her work before becoming close friends with him and his wife, Kelly.

The project is funded by PictureNL and private supporters. Filming began in mid-September and should wrap up by the end of October. Pardy, a first-time documentary maker, plans to release it in January with the film set to air on NTV.

The documentary will explore more than Hiscock’s music. It will look at his life as a teacher, seaman, captain, husband and friend.

Hiscock began playing accordion at age four before making his first television appearance on CBC’s Skipper and Company at age five. As an adult, he worked as a bosun and captain and played accordion for tourists aboard the tour boat, Scademia. He co-founded the province’s iconic Shanneyganock with Chris Andrews in 1996.

For Kelly Hiscock, her husband’s music was inseparable from his love of Newfoundland.

“Mark was so genuinely proud of the place he was from, the water, the landscape and the people of Newfoundland,” she said.

The documentary, says Pardy, is a chance to preserve more than Hiscock’s songs.

“Mark’s music takes me back to a time that seems far away and distant nowadays,” Pardy said.

As filming continues into October, Hiscock’s story is becoming about more than the music he left behind. It is also about the people he inspired throughout his life.

“Mark was not only an amazing musician, he was a genuine good soul of a person, someone who everyone can take a little bit of advice from,” Kelly said.