Conrad Bain, actor, best known for his roles as Phillip Drummond on Diff’rent Strokes and Dr. Arthur Harmon on Maude, was born here in Lethbridge on 4 February 1923.

His parents were Stafford Harrison and Jean Agnes Bain. Stafford Bain was a wholesaler and store manager. When Conrad was a youth, the family moved to Weyburn for a time, then returned to Lethbridge for a few years and then to Champion (for about 10 months), then to Regina and back to Lethbridge (or at least those are the places we’ve found so far).

Conrad Bain attended the Banff School of Fine Arts on a drama scholarship in 1942 and afterwards served in the Canadian military during the Second World War. A 23 November 1972 Lethbridge Herald article reported that ‘Con,’ then with the Dental Corps, was Dr. B. Wayne Malkins’ assistant at the prisoner–of-war camp here.”

Following the war, Bain moved to New York and the 18 March 1948 Herald shared that he had graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Bain’s activities were routinely reported in the local newspaper such as he and his wife’s June 1949 visit to Lethbridge to visit his parents as well as the time in July 1951 when he was here for his brother Gordon’s wedding at Southminster United Church.

The community took pride in Bain when he took on a starring role in Maude in 1973, inviting him to be part of the Canada Winter Games in Lethbridge in February 1975. Bain (as well as his twin brother Bonar) took to the stage at the Yates Theatre where Bain was the master of ceremonies at the second Western Canada Lottery Foundation draw. Jo-Anne Russ of Fort Erie, Ontario, won $250,000.

Having a Lethbridge born television personality in the city, meant a Herald interview and Bain shared that for a very short time he had tried farming in the Lethbridge area. “actually did wage such an ill-fated battle with agriculture thirty-odd years ago. Right here in Lethbridge, on a miserable plot of soil in the vicinity where the Sportsplex now stands.” (17 February 1975 Lethbridge Herald)

Bain described the experience: ‘It was a disaster, an unmitigated disaster,’ he says, throwing up his hands in remembered horror. ‘A miserable experience. I was stuck with a thistle patch, it was a terrible growing year and I had no equipment – just a rake, hoe and a pick.

‘I did a terrible job of irrigating the potatoes and flooded the whole patch. Then, the earth dried and the sun baked it hard as rock. So there I was, chipping away with my pick…’

So this must have been right around the end of the war and before he headed off to New York. If he had succeeded at farming, who knows how differently his life might have turned out?

Conrad Bain passed away on 14 January 2013.