[Illustration: MAJOR-GEN. SIR. ARTHUR WILLIAM CURRIE Victoria, B.C.]
=Cockshutt, William Foster, M.P.=, and Financial Agent (Brantford, Ont.), is the son of I. Cockshutt, merchant of Brantford, and E. Foster Cockshutt, was born in Brantford, October, 1855, and educated at the Brantford and Galt Collegiate Institutes. Mr. Cockshutt’s chief public efforts have been exercised in the direction of Imperial Unity and Empire Trade development. He has been associated largely with Boards of Trade and has attended several Congresses of the Associated Boards in London, England, Montreal and Sydney, Australia, and in this direction has been able to exercise considerable influence in Empire trade co-operation. In the year 1909 he visited in this connection the Commonwealth of Australia, making a very extensive tour of that great country, and delivering addresses at all the important centres on the theme of Empire Trade and Defence, and received much credit for the work accomplished there. He also made an extensive tour of India, visiting most of the cities of that great member of the Empire, and studying the conditions of the country as well as trade matters and has taken part in two extended campaigns in Great Britain, addressing many large meetings at the important centres, including London, Manchester, Newcastle, Portsmouth, Bournemouth, Torquay and many other towns and cities, for which he was honored by letter from the then leader of the opposition, the Honorable Arthur Balfour. Mr. Cockshutt was a member of the first Hydro-Electric Commission of Ontario, appointed by the Municipalities and labored in that work for nearly three years. The report of the Commission has been a standard reference for development in this line ever since, and was really the basis of the development that has taken place more recently at Niagara Falls. He has travelled in most of the great countries of Europe, made many tours in the United States and the West Indies and Mexico, as well as having visited all the principal cities of the Dominion and has addressed meetings in a great number of them. He was first elected to the House of Commons in 1904, where he served until 1908, being defeated in that year and re-elected in 1911, and is at present serving throughout the present long Parliament. He is ex-President of the Cockshutt Plow Co.; has been six times a delegate to Chambers of Commerce of the Empire and is connected with a large number of industrial enterprises, particularly in Brantford and also in other centres, and has served on many industrial boards. In 1891, married M. T. Ashton, daughter of Rev. Robert Ashton of Brantford, Principal of the Mohawk Institute and has six children, Ashton, George, Eric, Maude, Clarence and Phyllis. In politics he is an Independent Conservative and is a member of the Anglican Church; has been a representative of the Church of England at many important gatherings and a member of the Huron Synod for close on to twenty-five years, been elected and re-elected to the Provincial General Synod on many occasions and is still an active member of all these Church organizations; is also Chairman of the Orphanage situated on the outskirts of Brantford, known as the Jane Laycock School; has taken considerable interest in local hospital work. Mr. Cockshutt had the honor of being the official representative of Brantford at the funeral of King Edward the Seventh; is Hon. Colonel of the 125th Battalion, C.E.F., and is a remote relative of the late Florence Nightingale, the distinguished woman who did such great work for the British Army during the Crimean War and was one of the first women to relieve soldiers of their sufferings on the battlefield. Mr. Cockshutt took great interest in the recruiting of the 125th Battalion at present overseas and has the honor of being the father of three sons, all of whom are serving in the army at present and have all reached the front at least once. His son, Major Ashton Cockshutt, now of the 125th but formerly of the 10th Battalion, 1st Contingent, was a fully qualified Lieutenant in the 103rd Calgary Rifles when the war broke out and immediately enlisted and went overseas with the first Contingent, training during the winter at Salisbury Plain, crossing to France in the early spring, saw heavy fighting at St. Julien, Festubert, and Givenchy, was wounded on June 6, 1915, and after convalescing at various military hospitals was given furlough back to Canada and after a long hard struggle regained his health and immediately re-enlisted with the 125th Battalion and is now serving at Bramshott Camp. Another son, Lieut.