JOHN COOK.
 
		 
	John Cook, proprietor of the Northwestern Iron Works, located at
No. 1419 Scarth street, Regina, has been engaged in the boilermaking
and machine shop business for forty-five years. The son of Robert and
Dorothy (Hill) Cook, John Cook was born in West Hartlepool, England,
on May 21, 1862, and was brought to Owen Sound, Canada, by his parents
when he was five years old.  His father and mother were both active
members of the Methodist church and the father supported the Conserva-
tive party in politics. He was a machinist by trade and worked at that
occupation all his life. In 1879 he moved to Minnesota, where he ran a
machine shop for some years and died in that state. John Cook was the
third in a family of seven children, two of whom are deceased. He was
educated in Owen Sound, but as he was thrown upon his own resources
financially at the age of nine, his schooling was necessarily curtailed. As
a lad he worked about machine shops and boiler works and learned the
boilermaker's trade in Detroit.  He also worked for a time in Chicago.
In 1904 he came to Regina, where he established a boiler shop, the first
in all Saskatchewan, and he has been in the business here ever since under
the name of the Northwestern Iron Works. His shop turns out boilers,
tanks, stacks and other such products, which it ships all over the province.
He made the first boiler ever made in the province.
	In 1891 Mr. Cook was married to Miss Bertha Van Alstine of Wind-
Bor, Ontario, and they have become the parents of five children, four of
whom are living.  The three sons, William John, George V. and Ralph
R.Cook, are all associated with their father in business, while the only
daughter and youngest child, Miss Alemith Cook, lives at home.  The
family attends the Westminster Presbyterian church, of which Miss Cook
is a member. Mr. Cook votes the Liberal ticket but takes little active
interest in political affairs. He is a Mason, his affiliations in that order
being with Banner Lodge, No.154, A. F. & A. M. He is a man to whom
success has come only as the result of long and persevering effort. Han-
dicapped by an inadequate education, he has had to make his own way in
the world since he was at an age when most boys are chiefly concerned
with their marbles and tops. But obstacles seem only to have spurred
him on to greater effort, with the result that he has progressed steadily
in his line of work until he is now the head of one of the leading boiler
works and machine shops in the province, an establishment that any
owner might well claim with pride.



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