A pitchman perched at the Pass

Dave Hadden is baking in the sun at Logan Pass, his skin swathed in sunscreen, sitting at a table and making his pitch to passing hikers.

There’s something wrong with Waterton-Glacier National Peace Park and he’d like to see that fixed in the coming years. Ask him and he’ll gladly show you.

“It’s missing a piece,” he explains to a hiker who has stopped to chat.

Hadden holds up a map and shows the person a chunk of land in British Columbia that runs from the Continental Divide to the Canadian Flathead River.

The land, which is more than 100,000 acres of nearly pristine and uninhabited wildlands, should be part of the Park, Hadden maintains.

To spread the message, he’s asking people to sign postcards in support of the Park’s expansion. The cards are then mailed to President Obama if the person is from the U.S. or to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper if they’re from Canada.

Hadden has been coming to Logan Pass to spread the word for the past three years. He said the hope is to get 3,000 people to sign postcards of support this summer at Logan Pass alone.

Most people are more than happy to sign the postcards, Hadden noted, but every once in a while someone declines. Their stance is usually against any sort of government expansion, he said.

Currently, the land in question is managed for timber and recreation, including hunting. The call for expansion is a labor of love for Hadden — he’s lobbied for it for more than 10 years.

The province last year passed a bill that banned coal mining and energy development in the Canadian Flathead drainage, which is a continuation of the North Fork of the Flathead River. That was viewed as a major accomplishment, considering that both U.S. and Canadian interests had opposed mining in the region for more than 40 years.

Not just anyone can set up a table at Logan Pass and begin a lobbying effort. Hadden noted he had to get a permit from the National Park Service in order to set up there.