:William Henry Cushing

Cushing was born August 21, 1852, in Kenilworth, Ontario, to William Cushing and Sarah Thomson.{{cite book|last=Cushing|first=James Stevenson|title=The Genealogy of the Cushing Family, an Account of the Ancestors and Descendants of Matthew Cushing|publisher=BiblioBazaar|year=2009|pages=584–5|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=C1CffK-HqPgC&pg=PA584 |isbn=978-1-115-53694-3}} His father was a farmer who had immigrated from Norwich, England in 1840.{{cite book |last=Morgan|first= Henry J |author-link=Henry James Morgan |title=The Canadian Men and Women of the Time: A Handbook of Canadian Biography of Living Characters |publisher=BiblioBazaar |year=1999 |page=290 |isbn=978-1-113-14384-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-gKKovF0UO4C&pg=PA290}} In 1879, Cushing indentured as a carpenter. He moved to Calgary in 1883, where in partnership with Stephen Jarett, he engaged in carpentry, building houses and stores. In 1877 Cushing married Elizabeth Rinn, who died three years later. In 1883 he married Mary Jane Waters, with whom he had two children.{{cite book|last=Parker|first=Charles Whately |author2=Barnet M. Greene |title=Who's who in Canada: an illustrated biographical record of men and women of the time|publisher=International Press|year=1912|volume=15|page=468|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ekIzAAAAMAAJ&q=elizabeth+rinn}}{{cite web|url=http://www.pioneersalberta.org/profiles/c.html|title=Pioneer Profiles (page C)|work=The Southern Alberta Pioneers And Their Descendants|access-date=April 3, 2010}} In 1885 he opened a sash and door factory, which made him wealthy. His business flourished and expanded; by 1900, it occupied 42 city lots and employed more than one hundred workers;Bright 28–29Thomas 21 by 1911, this number had reached two hundred.{{cite book|last=Jennings|first=A. Owen|title=Merchants and manufacturers record of Calgary|year=1911|publisher=Jennings Publishing Company|location=Calgary|page=33|url=http://www.ourfutureourpast.ca/loc_hist/page.aspx?id=858960}} He was also active in the local Methodist church and the Bowness golf club,{{cite web |url=http://www.calgarymayor.ca/files/events/mayors_gallery_chronological.pdf |title=Mayors' Gallery |publisher=City of Calgary |access-date=October 24, 2009}} and served eight years as a school trustee with the Calgary Board of Education. He was a supporter of the Temperance Movement.

File:W H Cushing and staff.jpgCushing was elected Calgary town councillor for a term beginning on January 20, 1890. He remained in that capacity until January 16, 1893. Two years later he became an alderman on the council of Calgary, which was now a city. He served as alderman from January 7, 1895, until January 4, 1897, and again from May 1899 until January 2, 1900. During his last term he was elected the thirteenth mayor of Calgary, a position he held from January 2, 1900, until January 7, 1901. He subsequently served another term as alderman from January 6, 1902, until January 2, 1905.

He also served as the president of Calgary's Board of TradeThomas 22 in 1906.{{cite book|last=Calgary Board of Trade|title=The famous Calgary district : the land of golden wheat, fat steers, industrial opportunities and unequalled climate|year=1906|url=http://www.ourfutureourpast.ca/loc_hist/page.aspx?id=856883}}

After Alexander Cameron Rutherford was asked to form Alberta's first government in 1905, he appointed Cushing as his Minister of Public Works. Historian L. G. Thomas notes that this was an important portfolio, given the rapid development of infrastructure expected in the new province. In keeping with custom for cabinet ministers in Westminster parliamentary systems, Cushing ran for the first Legislative Assembly of Alberta in the district of Calgary in the 1905 election. Cushing, a Liberal, was opposed by Conservative leader R. B. Bennett. The campaign was acrimonious; at one meeting, Bennett accused Cushing of giving his fellow Liberal candidates road-building money with which they could bribe their districts.Thomas 27 On election day, Cushing defeated Bennett, who attributed his defeat to "Roman Catholic influence".Thomas 28–29

Once elected, he was Calgary's primary supporter in the legislature's debate over Alberta's capital city, claiming that it was the new province's economic centre, that Alberta's status as a province was the result of a political movement that had begun in Calgary, and that it would be cheaper to build a legislature there than in Edmonton, site of the interim capital. His motion to name Calgary as the capital was defeated 16 votes to eight, and permanent capital was located at Edmonton.Thomas 38 Though it was not to be at his preferred location, as Public Works Minister, Cushing chose the design for the new Alberta Legislature Building, which was based on the Minnesota State Capitol.Babcock 44

As Calgary's representative, Cushing was further dismayed when Rutherford elected to locate the University of Alberta in his own hometown of Strathcona, immediately across the North Saskatchewan River from Edmonton. Calgarians felt that, having been denied the capital, they should be first in line for the university.Babcock 36, 58

As Public Works Minister, Cushing was a primary advocate of government intervention in the labour disputes plaguing Alberta's coal industry in 1907; Rutherford eventually appointed a commission to examine the problem.Thomas 46–47 Cushing also presided over the government's entry into the telephone business: in 1906, most telephone lines in Alberta were privately owned, and the largest of these private owners was the Bell Telephone Company. Bell controlled all telephone service in Calgary, and refused to extend its operations into less densely populated, and therefore less profitable, regions of the province. In response, Cushing attacked Bell as "the most pernicious and iniquitous monopoly that had ever been foisted upon a people claiming to be free"Thomas 51 and sponsored legislation creating Alberta Government Telephones to service areas that Bell would not. This new company later purchased Bell's lines and financed the venture by issuing debentures, in contrast to the government's usual policy of "pay as you go".Thomas 52–53 Cushing's zeal for government involvement was such that member of the House of Commons of Canada Peter Talbot in 1908 warned Rutherford that his Public Works Minister was "going crazy" with public ownership and that Rutherford would "someday find a lot of trouble through him".Babcock 39 Thomas argued that it was strange for a successful businessman like Cushing to be so aggressive rhetorically against a successful corporation, but Mount Royal College historian Patricia Roome has suggested that Cushing was soured by his own experience as a Calgarian living under the monopoly, was hostile to what he saw as a symbol of "eastern capitalism," and hoped that bringing telephone service to rural areas would guarantee continued Liberal success.Roome 10

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By the 1909 Alberta general election, Calgary's growth had earned it a second seat in the legislature. Cushing finished first in a five-candidate field, and was elected to fill one of these seats; Bennett, finishing second, was elected to the other.

Though Cushing, as Minister of Public Works, was initially responsible for railway policy, on November 1, 1909, Rutherford created a new ministry of Railways, which he appointed himself to head.Babcock 57 In February 1910, Cushing resigned as Minister of Public Works, expressing disagreement with Rutherford's policy of offering loan guarantees to private railway builders, including the Alberta and Great Waterways (A&GW) Railway. He stated in his letter of resignation that this policy had been adopted without his knowledge or consent. Rutherford accepted the resignation with regret, but publicly disagreed with Cushing's claim that he had been kept unaware of government railway policy.Thomas 72 On February 25, Cushing gave his account of the events leading to his resignation In the legislature: after responsibility for railways was removed from his department, Rutherford had offered the A&GW guarantees of $20,000 per mile of railway constructed. In making this guarantee, Rutherford had not consulted government engineers in the department of Public Works about construction costs, relying instead on the A&GW's engineer. Cushing felt that guaranteeing $20,000 per mile, regardless of actual construction costs, was unwise, and further believed that the government's reliance on the A&GW's engineer could let the company get away with building a sub-standard railway.Thomas 73

There followed a dramatic series of legislative debates and votes, in which many Liberals, including Cushing, frequently voted against their own government, even on motions of non-confidence. In March, Rutherford invited Cushing to rejoin the cabinet; according to Cushing, he was assured that if he did so his rival, Attorney General Charles Wilson Cross, would resign. He declined Rutherford's offer, both because he considered that he was no longer able to work with the premier and because his allies among the anti-Rutherford Liberals urged him to fight on.Thomas 82–83 Rumours began to circulate that Rutherford would resign, to be replaced by Cushing.Thomas 83 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta George Bulyea was indeed convinced that Rutherford would have to resign in order to save the Liberals, but he and other powerful Liberals did not view Cushing as capable of leading the government.Thomas 89 Bulyea instead invited provincial Chief Justice Arthur Sifton to form a government, though Cushing was reputed to have been "sitting in his hotel room, his ear glued to the telephone, waiting for the summons from the Lieutenant-Governor to assume the robes of Rutherford".Thomas 90

File:Unveiling of Morley cairn.jpg at Morley, 1927]]Sifton left Cushing, along with all other major figures of the A&GW dispute, out of his first cabinet;Thomas 91 Ezra Riley, a staunch Cushing ally, resigned his seat in protest.Thomas 91–92 Cushing did not do the same but did not seek re-election in the 1913 election.Thomas 144

Cushing was the first chairman of the Mount Royal College board of governors, holding the post from 1910 until 1926, when he was designated honorary chairman. He died in Calgary January 25, 1934, of a heart attack.{{cite web |url=http://www.abheritage.ca/telephone/era/cushing.html |title=W. H. Cushing |publisher=Alberta Online Encyclopedia |access-date=2009-10-26}} Calgary's W. H. Cushing Workplace School is named in his honour.{{cite web |url=http://www.cbe.ab.ca/schools/view.asp?id=106 |title=Calgary Board of Education – School profiles: W. H. Cushing Workplace School |access-date=2009-10-26 |publisher=Calgary Board of Education}}

Cushing is primarily remembered for his role in the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway Scandal. In assessing his role in that episode, Thomas has suggested that his actions were motivated by something other than "revulsion against what appeared to be an unwise contract with a railway company". Instead, he believes that Cushing had concluded that he, rather than Rutherford, should be premier, and began to conduct himself publicly in such a way as to undermine Rutherford's authority. Whatever his motivations, Cushing's resignation precipitated a scandal that ended Alexander Rutherford's political career, and in so doing had a profound effect on Alberta's political history.Thomas 130 In evaluating his legacy, Roome also considers his role in establishing the government telephone system, which in her opinion "produced serious financial difficulties" for the province in the years ahead.

• {{cite book|last=Babcock|first=D. R.|title=A Gentleman of Strathcona: Alexander Cameron Rutherford|year=1989|publisher=University of Calgary Press|location=Calgary, Alberta|isbn=0-919813-57-7|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/alexandercameron0000unse}}
• {{cite book|last=Bright|first=David |title=Limits of Labour: Class Formation and the Labour Movement in Calgary, 1883–1929|publisher=UBC Press|year=1999|isbn=978-0-7748-0697-8|url=https://archive.org/details/limitsoflabourcl0000brig|url-access=registration|page=[https://archive.org/details/limitsoflabourcl0000brig/page/28 28]}}
• {{cite book |last=Roome |first=Patricia |editor=Bradford J. Rennie |title=Alberta Premiers of the Twentieth Century |year=2004 |publisher=Canadian Plains Research Center, University of Regina |location=Regina, Saskatchewan |isbn=0-88977-151-0 |chapter=Alexander C. Rutherford }}
• {{cite book |first=Lewis Gwynne |last=Thomas |title=The Liberal Party in Alberta |url=https://archive.org/details/liberalpartyinal0000thom |url-access=registration |year=1959 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |location=Toronto, Ontario|isbn=9780802050830 }}

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