page_title: Alexander Cameron Rutherford
section_title: Move west
hierarchical_section_title: Alexander Cameron Rutherford / Early life / Move west
caption_attribution_description: English: Alexander Cameron Rutherford
context_page_description: Alexander Cameron Rutherford KC was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the first premier of Alberta from 1905 to 1910. Born in Ormond, Canada West, he studied and practised law in Ottawa before he moved with his family to the North-West Territories in 1895. There, he began his political career, winning in his third attempt a seat in the North-West Legislative Assembly. In keeping with the territorial custom, Rutherford ran as an independent but generally supported the territorial administration of Premier Frederick W. A. G. Haultain. At the federal level, however, Rutherford was a Liberal.
  In 1905, Alberta Lieutenant Governor George Bulyea asked Rutherford to form the new province's first government. As premier, Rutherford's first task was to win a workable majority in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, which he did in the 1905 provincial election. His second was to provide the apparatus of provincial government, and his government established everything from speed limits to a provincial court system. The legislature also controversially, and with Rutherford's support, selected Edmonton over rival Calgary as the provincial capital.
context_section_description: In November 1886 Rutherford visited the Canadian West for the first time, when he travelled to British Columbia to investigate the disappearance of his cousin. The Rocky Mountains left a great impression on him, as did the coastal climate, which he found "very agreeable". He visited again in the summer of 1894, when he took the Canadian Pacific Railway across the prairies. Upon arriving in South Edmonton, he was excited by its growth potential and pleased to find that the dry air relieved his bronchitis. He resolved to settle there and did so one year later, bringing his reluctant wife and his children, who arrived by train June 10, 1895. Within ten days of their arrival, Rutherford had opened a law office, purchased four lots of land, and contracted local builder Hugh McCurdy to build him a house. In July, the family moved into their new four-room house, built on a single storey. In 1896 Rutherford became the town's only lawyer, as his competition, Mervyn Mackenzie, had moved to Toronto.
  Rutherford quickly became deeply involved in the community. Among the roles he acquired during his first three years in the District of Alberta were president of the newly formed South Edmonton Football Club, secretary-treasurer of the South Edmonton School Board, president of the South Edmonton Athletic Association, vice president of the South Edmonton Literary Institute, auditor of the South Edmonton Agricultural Society, and worthy master of the Acacia Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. He also became secretary of the Edmonton District Butter and Cheese Manufacturing Association. He was an early advocate for the incorporation of South Edmonton, hitherto an unincorporated community. When incorporation came in 1899, as the Town of Strathcona, Rutherford became the new town's secretary-treasurer after he had acted as returning officer in its first election.
  Throughout that period, he practised law, from 1899 with Frederick C. Jamieson, who later was elected as a Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. He employed single women as secretaries in an era that.erical workers were predominantly male, and he defended a First Nations person accused of murder when most lawyers refused such cases. As their practice grew, he and Jamieson also engaged in moneylending. Besides his law practice, Rutherford was a successful real estate investor, and he also owned an interest in gold mining equipment situated on the North Saskatchewan River.
caption: Rutherford around the time of his move West
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