More Big Hill Country page 494
I was born June 2, 1957 at the Holy Cross Hospital in Calgary. My parents are Neil and Robin (Williams) Harvie. I have three sisters, Pauli (1955), Carol (1959), and Katie (1962). We were raised in the Glendale area on Glenbow Ranch and attended school in Cochrane. My Dad began ranching in 1948, raising commercial Angus based cattle and later, Beefbooster Ml cattle in conjunction with the company that he helped found.
I attended grades I to 4 at the Elementary school which became Andrew Sibbald and is now Holy Spirit. Grades 5 and 6 were in the Old Brick School next door and then grades 7-12 were at Cochrane High School (except for Grade 10 when I attended Brentwood College on Vancouver Island).
I played minor hockey in Cochrane from the age of six where I learned the game from coaches Lorne Woods, Bob Beynon, Ken Raymond and Percy Alexander. I also was a member of the 1st Cochrane Cubs for six years, led by Den Mother Pat Woods. Because we lived out of town, I would leave my hockey equipment in the basement of Mrs. Neilson’s house (the old McNamee brick house). After school, I would pick up my gear, walk up to the outdoor rink and attend practice. On Monday nights, I would eat dinner with the Neilsons and then walk down to Cubs at the Community Hall.
At the High School, I played all the sports I could including football, volleyball, basketball, badminton, field hockey, and track. In my grade 12 year (197475), our school named the sports teams the “Cobras”. We also started playing tackle football that year in the new Rocky View School Division league and won the first title in a thrilling final at Foothills Park, defeating Airdrie 14-12.
Cochrane High was a perennial powerhouse in Badminton thanks to the coaching of teachers Mel Sly and Ron Bryant. Several players went all the way to Provincials during my years there. The Cobras would routinely win every title at Divisionals and Zones. Hal Henderson and I played Men’s Doubles and finished 5th in the province in 1975.
After High School, I went to New Zealand on an agriculture exchange program and worked on a sheep and cattle farm on the South Island for six months. When I returned, I went to the University of Alberta and completed a degree in Agriculture in 1980. Summers were spent on the ranch haying, fencing, riding and working cattle. In 1981, I returned to the ranch and decided that I wanted to be a grain farmer. I moved to the south side of the river in the north Springbank area where the ranch had a land base that was used for summer pasture. I started breaking land in the spring of 1981 and grew 100 acres of barley that year while continuing to break more land. By 1983, I had 1000 acres broken and was cropping barley, oats, rye and canola.
While at Unjversity, I learned to fly at the Edmonton Flying Club and obtained a private and commercial pilot’s licence. Once home, I began flying my Dad’s Super Cub that he purchased in 1961 to fly around the ranch to check on the cattle. I later took ownership of the Cub and still fly it today, hangaring it at the Springbank airport.
I bought a 50′ mobile home in 1982 and began building the farm shed, shop and granaries. In 1983, I married Jeanne (Harrison), whom I had met in Edmonton while at University. We were married at All Saints Anglican Church where I had attended Sunday School. We started building a house in 1984 and moved in on my birthday in 1985 with our first daughter, Jordan (1985) in tow. Our second daughter, Kelly was born in 1986 and son Ian in 1990.
My Dad, Neil, transferred the management of the Ranch to my sister, Katie and me in the early 1990s. He and Mom moved to Glen Eagles in Cochrane in 1997. He passed away in 1999 and Katie and I continue to manage the ranch and still grain farm. In 2006, our family sold a portion (3300 acres) of the ranch in the Bow River valley to the Provincial Government to create the “Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park”, fulfilling my father’s dream of protecting the native grasslands from development.
