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Maxine Cochran

Canadian politician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ17331559
Source-derived summary

Maxine Cochran (August 5, 1926 – July 8, 2014) was a Canadian politician. She represented the electoral district of Lunenburg Centre in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly from 1984 to 1988. She is best known as the first female cabinet minister in Nova Scotia when she was appointed the Minister of Transportation on November 26, 1985.

Political career

Cochran was first elected in Lunenburg Centre in a byelection in 1984 after the death of her husband, Bruce, who previously held the seat. She was then re-elected a few months later in a general election and went on to hold a number of portfolios.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Maxine Cochran” is canadian politician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Maxine, Cochran and Canadian, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1926, 2014, 1984, 1988—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1926-07-01. For this dossier, Maxine, Cochran and Canadian is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “canadian politician” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17331559. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1926, 2014, 1984 and 1988.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Maxine Cochran”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Maxine Cochran primary sources, Maxine Cochran archive and Maxine research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Maxine Cochran”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Maxine Cochran” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.