Date Published:
March 2005

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Francis Cochrane

Cochrane, Francis (1852-1919), minister of railways and canals for Canada (1911-17), was born at Clarenceville, Lower Canada, on November 18, 1852, the son of Robert Cochrane and Mary Anne Hunter. He was educated at the Clarenceville Academy, and ultimately became a merchant at Sudbury, Ontario. In 1905 he was elected as a Conservative to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario for East Nipissing, and became minister of lands and mines in the Whitney administration. In 1911 he left provincial politics to become minister of railways and canals in the Dominion government of Sir Robert Borden. He resigned this portfolio in 1917, on the reconstruction of the government, but continued as a minister without portfolio in the Union government. He died at Ottawa on September 22, 1919. In 1882 he married Alice Levina Dunlap; and by her he had two sons and one daughter.

Source : W. Stewart WALLACE, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. II, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 411p., p. 94.