Interview with Arthur Harwood (Transcript)

Pop served as Waterton’s postmaster from 1920 to 1949 and delivered and ran the mail for many of those early years when dog team or horse in winter was the mode of transportation. An early settler to Twin Butte, originally from England, he was a very good friend with John George “Kootenai” Brown – Waterton’s first park official. In 1932 Pop was a part of the local committee who erected a cairn in the Waterton Park townsite dedicated to Kootenai Brown. Pop’s son Stephen also worked in Waterton. For more information, see grandson Marvin Harwood’s 2016 interview as well as “Waterton Chronicles – People and their National Park” by Chris Morrison (2008). ; AN INTERVIEW wrm .~R.THU.R H1<~NH.Y Il!.iRWOOD RE KOOTENAI BROWN INTERVIEWER UNIDENTIFIED TAPED ON V c1.NCGUVER ISLAND 1960 Tape Accession No: RCT-9-1 Audiotape 600ft. in l} mil. Plastic Base Type 651 - Speed 3 3/4 Interviewer: We Canadians are gradually beginning to realize that our 011m western frontier is every bit as rich in flamboyant adventure and colorful ch:iracters as that of our neighbours to the south and among them the name of Kootenai Brown ranks high. Soldier and gentleman; gambler and trader; buffalo hunter and frontier gunman; his was a st.range story which might have been forgotten had it not been f'or the effort of his friends in southern Alberta to keep alive the memory of this swashbuckling figure who would politely offer in a cultured Oxford accent to make a lead mine out of an opponent's guts. One of these friends, a man who has always tried to S("'parate fact from fiction in the growing legend of Kootenai Brown, is Arthur Henry Harwood who now lives in retiremsnt at Brentwood Bay on Vancouver Island. Mr. Harwood, who was Kootenai Brown? A.H. T:la:n-iood: Well he was an old character that was living out 011 a homestead in the neighbourhood that is now Waterton Lakes National Park. He homesteaded 2 different homesteads there. One at the present tirne is right inside idaterton Lakes National Park and when the p8.rk was first being developed ...