1913 Sturgeon Falls Election

Franois 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 Lvesque, 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
clerks signature. Dated the 28th of August 1913,
he signed with the humble signature of J.D.
Cockburn. Clerk of the Town of Sturgeon Falls.