Harvison was a key player in the RCMP's activities against communist subversives.  He was the lead interrogator for the RCMP during the espionage commission's hearings and was later demonized by Gordon Lunan in two books. Harvison would later become the commissioner of the RCMP. Both men later wrote autobiographies.

"RCMP criminal investigators Harvison and Anthony, who had by now spent close to three months gathering evidence in the case, handled the interrogations. Harvison, described by one of the accused spies as 'a tall, thin almost cadaverous man with a long bony face,' whose 'eyebrows and unshaven tufts on his cheekbones gave him somewhat the appearance of a racoon,' rose to the occasion. He was tough and ruthless in the face of what he saw unambiguously as communist enemies." [Source: Amy Knight, How the Cold War Began: The Gouzenko Affair and the Hunt for Soviet Spies ( Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2005), 116-8.]