26th Montreal Mayor. He served in that position from 1902 to 1904. Born in Kincardine, Scotland, to Robert Cochrane and his wife Elizabeth McFarlane, he immigrated to Canada and settled in Montreal at a young age. He was educated at local schools and at the British Canadian School and Collegiate College in Montreal, Quebec. He initially found work as a telegraphist at the Montreal Telegraph Company in Montreal, Quebec, but later entered the construction field and took a job as a general contractor working on several important railroad projects across Canada including the building of the first telegraph line of Lake Superior's northern area and the construction of the Intercolonial Railway. In 1885, at the outbreak of the North-West Rebellion (a brief and unsuccessful uprising by the Métis people under Louis Riel and an associated uprising by First Nations Cree and Assiniboine of the District of Saskatchewan against the Government of Canada) he became a soldier with the Militia and was among the many troops that was deployed to help fight in the cause. After the uprising ended he returned to Montreal, Quebec, and founded the Sicily Asphalt Paving Company and the Laprairie Pressed Brick Company. He decided to enter politics and he entered the federal election of 1891 but lost. He ran for a seat in the House of Commons as a municipal politician (or MP) in 1900 and won. He was named a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Quebec for Montréal of the division no. 4 riding and served in that position from 1900 to 1905. He entered the mayoral race in February of 1902 and won the election by beating out Richard Wilson-Smith. He served as the 26th Mayor of the city of Montreal, Quebec, from 1902 to 1904. As Mayor, he had to face a devastating public service strike in February 1903 in which tramway employees stopped working. They demanded more wage increases and recognition of their union. However, the strike ended sometime later in favour of the workers and because of this disaster, he did not seek another term. He left the office of Mayor in 1904 after the election voted in Sir Hormidas Laporte as the city's 27th Mayor. He was also Director of the Hudson's Bay and Pacific Railway and Steamship Company, the Northern Insurance Company, Member of the Montreal Turnpike Trust, and Director of the Canadian Workman Newspaper, Director of the Hochelaga Agricultural Society, Vice President of the Trade and Labor Council. Lifetime Governor of Montreal General Hospital and Notre-Dame Hospital, Director of Royal Victoria Hospital, Protestant Insane Asylum of Verdun and Western General Hospital, President of the St. Lawrence Liberal Club, Vice-President of the Montreal Reform Club, Member of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society, and Member of the Chamber of Commerce and the Montreal Harbor Commission. He died in Montreal at the age of 52.