Matthew Henry Cochrane

Matthew Henry Cochrane

Matthew Henry Cochrane, cattle breeder, businessman (b at Compton, Lower Canada 11 Nov 1823; d there 12 Aug 1903). Born of Irish immigrants, Cochrane went to Boston as a young man and prospered in the leather and shoe business, an enterprise he continued in Montréal after his return to Canada in 1864. Though his success brought a senatorship in 1872, his first interest was cattle breeding and by the 1870s his pedigreed Shorthorn herd was internationally renowned. Cochrane was largely responsible for the federal grazing-land policy upon which the western cattle-export industry was built (seeDOMINION LANDS POLICY). The arrival in 1881 of the great Cochrane herd from Montana at the senator's vast grazing lease west of Calgary marked the beginning of the cattle company era in the Canadian West.

See alsoCOCHRANE RANCHE.