When we look back at local history, it’s always fun to read or hear some names from the past. The front page of the Cochrane Northland Post on January 28th, 1971 featured the official opening of the town’s first-ever Northern Affairs office.
Public library archivist Ardis Proulx-Chedore reads that the northern affairs officer was Cochrane native George Rhodes.
“His first job was delivering telegrams by bicycle for the Ontario Northland Railway. Now he communicates with a sophisticated telex machine to other Northern Affairs offices across the north and to Toronto.”
Rhodes spoke of the time he used that telex machine to get a man an almost instant response to an issue he had. The profusely appreciative man tried to pay for it. When Rhodes told him it was a free service, he stormed out of the office muttering about a waste of taxpayers’ money.
Proulx-Chedore reads from the same front page of the Northland Post, about another local man.
(Cochrane Public Library Archives)
“Walter Gibson, well known in Cochrane for his skill with the bagpipes, and his devotion to Robbie Burns, has been appointed supervisor of rehabilitation and therapeutic services at Northeastern Mental Health Centre, South Porcupine.”
Gibson had been working for the Department of Highways up until that point.
Names, dates and places all the way back through Cochrane history are in the archives at the public library.