ST. JOHN’S, N.L.—More than a hundred people stood jammed together, waiting for, but also dreading the words they were about to hear.

“Cut. And that’s a wrap. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the Republic of Doyle.”

First there came a giant sigh, like a hundred balloons deflating all at once. Then came clapping, loud and rhythmic. And above it all were whistles and cheers with, indeed, an undercurrent of barely repressed sobbing.

“Somebody pinch me before I laugh or cry or both,” said Allan Hawco, the creator and star of the CBC TV series. And then he gave a heartfelt speech of gratitude to everyone who’d shared his vision over the years.

Everyone who knows the usual Hawco bravado was surprised to hear him so subdued, but they understood why.

On the call sheet it said, “Republic of Doyle: Day 681,” but it should simply have read “The End.”

After six seasons of satisfying audiences, the creators of the series, together with CBC management, decided that the time had come to say goodbye to the somewhat fantastical world of Jake Doyle, Newfoundland private eye extraordinaire, with his GTO and his battered leather jacket.

The final shows begin airing Wednesday, Oct. 15 at 9 p.m. on CBC. The two-hour series finale is to air Dec. 10.

Hawco, who’s now 37, had just slid into his 30s when he got the idea of creating a family-style actions series and setting it in his native Newfoundland.

“My dad and I used to watch The Rockford Files and I’d wonder why we couldn’t do a series like that here in Canada,” he told the Star in 2010 just before the first season went on the air.

The logistics of the final night’s shoot, although dictated by weather, proved to have a nice symbolic touch to them.

The scene took place in a car, but because of unexpected blindingly bright sunshine, it had to be dummied up in a small space in a corner of the studio, surrounded by “green screens” that would later take projections of the exteriors needed.

The tightly packed unit was jammed right next to the permanent set of the Doyle family home, with its kitschy props and colourful decor.

While everyone waited for the last scene to be shot, they sat around the parlour, dressed in their Sunday best as if they were at a wake, which in a sense they were.

Hawco had come back to his hometown on The Rock, a place where unemployment was endemic, and created work for hundreds of people in the arts and crafts industries.

“Ninety-five per cent of the people who work on this show are from here,” Hawco said proudly, “and they’re all highly skilled, the hardest workers, the best in the business.”

That’s why some of them brought their wives and children to watch the last scene being shot.

There were plates of homemade cookies, platters of veggies and dip and, off in the corner, a giant frosted cake with “Republic of Doyle” written on it in multicoloured icing.

If it all seemed a bit retro, so be it. Because there was always something retro about the show itself, inspired by Hawco and his Rockford Files vision.

The person who seemed the most deeply moved on the last night was Sean McGinley, the distinguished Irish stage and screen actor who played Malachy Doyle, Jake’s father, with a brittle exterior and soft centre.

“I’ve never known an experience like this,” said McGinley. “I didn’t know what Newfoundlanders were like; I didn’t know what episodic TV could be like; I didn’t know I could become so bleeding fond of everyone I worked with.”

As the evening wore on, there were more and more quiet conversations in corners that ended with muffled tears and tight embraces.

Hawco stood leaning against a door frame, totally drained.

“One of the crew reached out and grabbed my arm just now and said, ‘I wanted to tell you how much this has all meant to me,’ and I wanted to thank him, but I had to get away quickly, because I started to bawl and I couldn’t let him see that. I couldn’t let anyone see that.”

The night before, Hawco sat in the bar of a nearby hotel, sipping at a Perrier and bracing himself for the ordeal he knew waited. “I’ve got to have my wits about me tomorrow,” he said wryly. “That’s all I know.

“I don’t think I’m fully prepared for what I’m about to go into tomorrow. The end of something that I never even really thought was going to happen.”

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Hawco smiled and told the story of how Republic of Doyle came to be.

“Sally Catto at CBC wanted me to play Don Cherry in that miniseries about his life they were preparing (Wrath of Grapes: The Don Cherry Story). I felt I wasn’t right for it and the guy they wound up giving it to (Jared Keeso) did a great job.

“I was afraid that if I did it, I would be branded as the person who ruined the Don Cherry story. There were more meetings at the CBC and I had just done a half-hour pilot for Doyle and told them that’s what I really wanted to do.”

The action shifts to the Giller Prize gala, where Hawco was presenting with CTV honcho Susanne Boyce, who was making noises about bringing Hawco over to her network.

“Then I looked up,” laughs Hawco, “and Kirstine Stewart (then head of CBC English-language programming) had this look in her eyes like, ‘Oh no you don’t, he’s ours!’

“The day after, I had lunch with Kirstine, she told me they were going ahead with Doyle as a series, only it was going to be a full hour. And that’s how it started.”

The most important thing to Hawco wasn’t that he had his own series but that he was shooting it back home.

“I went out with a girl from Toronto once and I told her that I’d always love Newfoundland more than her,” laughs Hawco. “Well, that relationship didn’t last long.”

He jumped into the fray “with really good people I knew I could trust: John Vatcher, Rob Blackie, Perry Chafe. I was still scared because I knew this was my big shot.

“We did our own bridge financing on the show. That’s $17 million the four of us were on the hook for going into the first season.”

And then things started going wrong, really wrong.

“I had to fire all of the writers except one in the first three months. Because it just wasn’t working. You don’t fantasize about having a TV show all your life and then just let it fall apart.

“So I fired the writers and then I got swine flu and we had to go into forced hiatus until I got better. Rumours started spreading in Toronto and somebody even started sending out email reports calling us ‘Republic of Disasters,’ but I knew in every cell of my body I was doing what we had to do.”

The first show broadcast on Jan. 6, 2010 to a very healthy 1.1 million viewers. It was pulling in just under 700,000 viewers in Season 5, although it hit a high of 953,000 for a Jan. 29 episode and the ratings grew once PVR viewings were factored in.

What waits for the compulsively energetic Hawco? Two days after wrapping Doyle, he joined Paul Gross on the set of his film Hyena Road; and it was announced Thursday that he would produce and star in another CBC series, Caught, based on the bestselling novel by Newfoundland writer Lisa Moore. And yes, “I think we’re going to make a feature film of Republic of Doyle. That’s the plan, actually.”

Still, there’s one thing that gives Hawco pause.

“I’m most afraid of January coming around when I won’t be getting ready to write another season of Doyle. I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself.

“I think I’m going to need a really good therapist.”