Cecilia Smith, a feisty outdoorswoman from Hawke's Bay on the Northern Peninsula who was immortalized in two Land and Sea episodes, died early Friday morning. She was 96.

"She was one of the pioneers in our community," said Mayor Lloyd Bennett. "She will be missed."

Celie, as she was known, skyrocketed to fame in 2008 when she was first featured on Land and Sea.

The image that people remember about Celie Smith. She killed the bear that she suspected was coming around her cabin. (Courtesy of Cecilia Smith)

A legend in her hometown, the bear-hunting, rabbit-snaring, beaver-trapping great-great-grandmother captured imaginations — and not just in Newfoundland and Labrador.

She set tongues wagging when she snared a 200-kilogram black bear she felt was menacing her cabin. It was the second bear she had bagged during her long life.

"After Land and Sea, when people would come that had seen the program, she eventually had to put a sign up by her door so people could find her," said Bennett.

The show was so popular, Smith was featured in a follow up episide in 2012.

'She did a man's job'

Never shy of speaking her mind, Celie Smith prided herself on being tough.

There will never be another Celie. - Pauline Thonrhill

"She did a man's job and she did it very well," said Bennett, who met Smith when he moved to Hawke's Bay in 1982.

"When I first encountered Celie, she worked for Maynard's [Motor Inn.] She was the carpenter. She would come in to buy building supplies, in her red checkered shirt and hard boots. When she retired, she stepped it up a notch."

Smith also worked as a fisher and logger, and maintained a large garden. Bennett said when he drove by her house recently, she had the garden cut up, sods removed and vegetables in for this year.

Celie's husband Rollie died several years ago. She continued to live in her own house, with the help of home care workers, until Wednesday when she was taken to the Rufus Guinchard Health Centre in Port Saunders, where she died early Friday.

She enjoyed the outdoors until the end. Bennett said he ran into her in the woods in the fall of 2015. She was on a side-by-side with her son, hunting for their moose.

The flag at the town hall in Hawke's Bay has been lowered to half mast, something Bennett said the town does whenever a resident dies.

The community will have to find someone else to light its annual Christmas tree in 2016, said Bennett, a job Celie Smith has done for the last five years.

"This year, we'll do it in her memory."

Funeral arrangements for Celie Smith were still being worked out on Friday.

Celie Smith loved the outdoors, where she hunted and trapped. She continued to set her gardens up until her death. (CBC/Land and Sea)

'She was an incredible character'

"I was always convinced that woman would live to be 100," said Land and Sea host Pauline Thornhill, after learning of Celie's death.

"I figured she'd make it on pure stubbornness and tenacity."

When the show travels the province to videotape new episodes, Thornhill said people tell her "nine times out of 10, their favourite Land and Sea show or the show they remembered most — it was always Celie's."

Smith made an impact on people, said Thornhill.

"She was an incredible character … I can honestly say I have never met anyone like Celie and there will never be another Celie."