Happy 35th birthday, Harvey the Hound

Grant Kelba was 23 years old. He had already spent four years dressing up as Ralph the Dog for the Calgary Stampeders when he was introduced to the Flames, who were moving into a new arena called the Saddledome.

They were thinking about creating a team mascot, and had reached out to the mascot consultant community to come up with something memorable.

"They put a bunch of proposals in front of me, about six to eight inches high, and they said, so how does yours differ?" Kelba said in an interview Wednesday with David Gray on the Calgary Eyeopener.

Kelba told them, "I tell you what. Let me build it and just show up. I'll take all the risk. I'll take all of the issues, and if it doesn't work, you can just let me go and you're not stuck with a $4,000 costume."

The costume he built was for a new character Kelba called Harvey the Hound.

Unenthusiastic

Thirty-five years ago, in 1984, fans were not quick to embrace a mascot named Harvey — particularly old-school, Western Canadians who populated the Saddledome.

"Right from Day 1, I was not really welcomed by the Flames fan," Kelba said.

"Within the first 10 to 15 seconds of me showing up in my first game, some guy told me where to go," he said.

"It was a very different time back then."

Eventually, Harvey caught on with Flames fans.

"I started to have a few props, but everything evolved over time," Kelba said.

'What I really loved about being Harvey was the spontaneous stuff that I did," he added. "I focused not on hockey, not on the game, but on the fringe fans."

That was Kelba's way of saying he discovered the way a mascot wins over a stubborn, traditional, old-school hockey fan.

"If you win their kids, then you win the parents," he said.

It got to the point where, during some of the darker years of the 1990s, that Harvey provided greater entertainment value than the team.

"I found that Harvey's popularity was inversely proportional to the way the Flames were going," he said, "and the worse the Flames got, the higher my profile became — until the Flames allowed me to create a monster to the point where they made me an offer [in 1996] I couldn't refuse and I sold the trademark."

Daredevil dog

Before that, however, Harvey developed a routine that included a number of physically demanding stunts.

Did he ever seriously injure himself?

"Not seriously, but I damaged both my knees, bruised kidneys [and] separated shoulders at times, but no one could see my face so they didn't realize the pain that I was going through.

"All they wanted to see was effort, and people appreciated the effort that I was putting in."

After 15 years, Kelba knew it was time to find a new Harvey.

"I'm on the eve of turning 40," he said. "I looked in the mirror and I said, 'Grant, you spent 15 years as Harvey the Hound and four years as Ralph the Dog — your entire adult life you've been a dog. It's time to do something else.'"

Kelba left Harvey behind 20 years ago, meaning he missed the moment in January 2003 when Oilers coach Craig MacTavish ripped out Harvey's red tongue after the mascot pestered the Edmonton bench a little too fervently.

Kelba has since moved on to other things, but Harvey the Hound stayed in the family in a way: his nephew now plays Harvey.

"A few years after I retired, I came back for one football season and got my two nephews involved because they were too young when I initially retired. And one of them still carries on," he said.

"Isn't that great?"

With files from the Calgary Eyeopener.