1913 Sturgeon Falls Election François Castilloux

West Nipissing

will soon hold

elections. Into this

light, we should

explore the history

of municipal

elections in our

area. We will

explore the

Sturgeon Falls

1913 elections and more precisely a document

written for the event. This document has about

20 pages and is a little booklet containing the list

of registered voters for the 1913 elections. The

booklet is called "Voters’ List of the Municipality

of Sturgeon Falls of Sturgeon Falls, District of

Nipissing, for the year 1913".

This booklet is 101 years old and has been well

preserved. It was prepared in 1913 by the poll

clerk J.D. Cockburn. The latter is an unavoidable

character of Sturgeon Falls pioneer history and

we will return to him further. The booklet was

printed in 1913 by a local printer: the Sturgeon

Falls Advertiser. The pages are fine papers

interlaced by a red cardboard making the front

and back cover. The number of copies is

unknown. The only copy that I have seen belongs

to the Nipissing District Branch collection which

I thank dearly.

At the time, the poll clerk had a very important

role to set up an election and was responsible to

make the voters’ list. This list contains all citizens

who are registered to vote. Sturgeon Falls

citizens who paid municipal taxes in 1913 were

automatically registered on the voters’ list. These

names came from the Assessment Roll of the

town. The remaining citizens eligible to vote

could subscribe to the voters’ list by going to a

post office of Canada Post and fill out the

registrations. After, the post office sent the

registrations to the poll clerk in question who

added the remaining citizens on the voters’ list.

J.D. Cockburn made the voters’ list in a format

stipulated by the laws. Before the voters’ list, the

document had to present a Schedule of Post

Offices. This section enumerates the post offices

that sent registrations to J.D. Cockburn and in the

order received by him. We will look at this

section first because it shows what kind of

mobility Sturgeon Falls citizens had in 1913 and

it indicates the locations where they operated.

Obviously, the Sturgeon Falls Post Office is the

first one on the list, Smoky Falls (today Crystal

Falls) is third, Sudbury ninth, North Bay tenth,

Cache Bay sixteenth, Verner twenty first and

River Valley twenty fourth. The schedule also

contain faraway post offices such as Sault Ste

Marie, Ottawa, Toronto, Quebec and even New

York, Vermont and London, England. The

schedule contains a total of 39 post offices.

After this section we have the much awaited

voters’ list. This list is organized by wards and

extends on more than 20 pages. It contains a

total of 762 names and each name is presented

on one line with the occupation of the voter and

the address of his or her property. At the time,

Sturgeon Falls had three wards i.e. Michaud

Ward, Holditch Ward and Cockburn Ward.

Holditch Ward contains 270 voters, Michaud

Ward 193, Cockburn Ward 189. For each ward,

the names of voters are presented in two parts.

The first part is always the longest and contains

the majority of voters i.e. men. The second part is

always the shortest and contains widows and a

few other exceptions. In 1913, only men 21 years

of age or older were eligible to vote. The only

women eligible to vote were widows because a

widow obtained the voting right of her deceased

husband. The 1913 Sturgeon Falls election was

the last of this kind. In 1917, women gained the

right to vote in provincial and municipal

elections.

This voters’ list contains names that represent

our ancestors and some pioneer families of

Sturgeon Falls. The majority of names have a

British or French origin except for a few of

Ojibwa, German or Scandinavian descent. We

find many well-known citizens and their address

like J.D. Cockburn himself, H.R. McEvoy who

surveyed Field Township, the retailers Joseph

Michaud and Georges Lévesque, the

manufacturer John Parker, the politician Zotique

Mageau, the First Nation Chief Alexandre Dokis,

Rev. Charles Langlois, the foreman John Fraser

(from which the ship of the same name

shipwrecked on Lake Nipissing), the millwright

James McNeil, the engineer John O'Hara and

many more.

J.D. Cockburn and the Cockburn family is one of

the great pioneer families of Sturgeon Falls. The

Cockburns participated in colonizing the Near

North of Ontario and some held important

position in Sturgeon Falls. During colonization

J.D. Cockburn was the Crown Land agent for our

region and was therefore the person who dealt

with settlers. He was also the postmaster of the

Sturgeon Falls Post Office a few years after James

Holditch. He held this position from 1884 up to

his death in 1927. He was the postmaster in

1913 during the Sturgeon Falls election to which

he was appointed poll clerk. He made the voters’

list for the 1913 elections. The last page of the

document contains legal details and the poll

clerk’s signature. Dated the 28th of August 1913,

he signed with the humble signature of “J.D.

Cockburn. Clerk of the Town of Sturgeon Falls”.