Alexander Cameron Rutherford
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The Honourable Alexander Cameron Rutherford (Osgoode February 2, 1857 - June 11, 1941 Edmonton), Canadian politician, was Premier of Alberta between 1905 and 1910.
Alexander Rutherford was born in 1857, on a farm in Carleton County, Ontario. In 1881 he graduated from McGill University with Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Civil Law degrees. In 1885 he was called to the Ontario Bar, practising at the law firm of Hodgkins, Kidd, and Rutherford. In 1895 he moved to the District of Alberta in western Canada (then still part of the Northwest Territories), where he continued to practise law by opening up his own office at the railhead of the Calgary and Edmonton Railway, then known as South Edmonton. Alexander Rutherford was the first lawyer south of the North Saskatchewan River, an area later to become known as Strathcona (amalgamating with Edmonton in 1912). After the amalgamation, the firm opened a branch office north of the river.
In 1902 he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories for Strathcona. With the creation of the province of Alberta on September 1, 1905, he was appointed the first premier. His Alberta Liberal Party won the new province's first election on November 9 of that year.
Rutherford took particular interest in the education system and rapidly expanded Alberta's public school system. In 1906, he initiated legislation founding the University of Alberta and personally selected the site in Strathcona for the University campus. The residence he built near the campus, now known as Rutherford House, has been restored and furnished as a historic house, museum and memorial.
Rutherford's government promoted railway and road expansion and the creation of a public telephone system. He was forced to resign as premier on May 26, 1910, over allegations of conflict of interest in the government's proposals to insure bonds issued by a railway company. Although cleared of wrongdoing, he lost his seat in the legislature in the 1913 election. He later joined the Conservatives, campaigning for them in the 1921 federal election.
On December 19, 1888, he married Mattie Birkett, with whom he had three children: Cecil Alexander, Hazel Elizabeth and Marjorie Cameron. Rutherford was joined in the practice of law by Stanley Harwood McCuaig, who articled with the firm and later married Rutherford's daughter Hazel. That firm, Rutherford McCuaig, continues to operate in Edmonton as one of Alberta's oldest law firms, McCuaig Desrochers.
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