Another change of pace this week for our look back at Cochrane history.
The public library has just released a video on its YouTube channel… looking way back.
“Cochrane is located at 49.6 degrees North and 81 degrees west and 807 feet above main sea level,” archivist Ardis Proulx-Chedore narrates in the video.
It eventually pops in on 1904.
“About 30 indigenous people under Chief Commanda frequented the area that became known as Lake Commando for hunting and fishing.”
Until the Great Fire of 1911, the group inhabited three cabins on the east side of the lake, known as Little Lake Camping Grounds.
(Cochrane Public Library Archives)
FINDING A SITE FOR THE TOWN
The first train got to Matheson in 1907. Joseph E. Burke canoed via the Black and Abitibi Rivers to find a place where the T&NO and Continental Railways should intersect. As Proulx-Chedore reads from Burke’s journal, he settled on a spot midway been the Abitibi and Frederickhouse Rivers.
“I was impressed by the placement of the lakes midway between the rivers and decided that it would be an ideal site for a town.”
The name Cochrane had already been set, regardless of where it would end up being.
You can see the entire video on the library’s YouTube channel and Facebook page.