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Concept
William Coaker
Résumé
Sir William Ford Coaker KBE (October 19, 1871 – October 26, 1938) was a Newfoundland union leader and politician and founder of the Fisherman's Protective Union, the Fishermen's Union Trading Co., and the town of Port Union. A polarizing figure in Newfoundland politics and society, he was described as "the outstanding social reformer produced by Britain's Oldest Colony" by eventual Premier Joey Smallwood.
Coaker is known for criticizing the truck system which dominated the fishery of Newfoundland in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.
Coaker was born in 1871 in St. John's, Newfoundland, and educated at Bishop Feild College. He had political leanings from an early age and spent his school days attending House of Assembly debates. At thirteen he organized a two-day strike against a local merchant firm, winning wage demands for himself and his young coworkers. At fourteen Coaker left school to work for the firm of McDougall and Templeton and two years later became manager of their branch store in Pike's Arm, Notre Dame Bay. During the bank crash of 1896, Coaker was bankrupted after having taken ownership of the store four years prior.
Coaker studied agriculture at Macdonald College, Quebec, and began farming operations at "Coakerville," an island at Dildo Run. By 1902, he would also serve as telegraph operator, customs worker, and postmaster. In 1903 he formed a telegraph operators' union, though a year later he quit the union and his three most recent professions. Retiring to Coakerville, be began contemplating an organization of fishermen and the first constitution for the union he would later found.
Coaker organized the first meeting of what would become the Fishermen's Protective Union in the Loyal Orange Lodge at Herring Neck, Newfoundland and Labrador in November 1908. He led the organization as it expanded into a multifaceted interest involved in trading, publishing, light and power, shipbuilding, shipping and cold storage.
In 1923, he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Source officielle
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