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Henry Stevens
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Insurance agent, realtor, private banker.
Born at Oak Lake on 29 December 1898, son of English immigrants Henry Stevens (1856-1937) and Elizabeth Ann Campion (1859-1935), in 1916, while working as a clerk at Virden, he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and served in France as a signalman with the 43rd Cameron Highlanders. Discharged in February 1919, he returned to Canada and joined the Merchants Bank.
He worked at several bank branches before arriving at the Merchants Bank in Bowsman as a relief teller in 1921. He left the bank in 1923 to work as an accountant for the Burrows Lumber Company. In 1931, he left Burrows and, two years later, opened an insurance agency at Bowsman. When his former bank employer closed its Bowsman branch in 1936, he expanded his business to include private banking and purchased the former bank building. When he closed his “one-man bank” on 1 May 1965, it was believed to be the last privately owned bank in Canada. He continued to work in real estate and insurance, and arranged for the Toronto-Dominion Bank at Swan River to provide part-time banking services in Bowsman, two days a week.
In 1964, he hired Clifford “Cliff” Cook to help in his business and, three years later, he took Cook on as a partner in the firm of Stevens and Cook. After he retired in 1979, due to ill health, Cook bought him out and the business became Cook & Cooke when, in 1981, Cook took on Doug Cooke as a partner.
On 6 February 1924, he married Marion Margaret Hedderley (?-1987) at Winnipeg and they had four children: Patricia Marian “Pat” Stevens (1924-?, wife of Aubrey Weatherby and Leslie McTaggert), Margaret “Marg” Stevens (1926-?, wife of Irving “Bucky” Yeo), John Stevens (1931-1986), and Henry C. Stevens (1935-?). He was a member of the Masons and Anglican church, and the family had a summer cottage at Madge Lake. In recognition of his community service, he received a Manitoba Golden Boy Award (1963). In retirement, he lived at Port Coquitlam, British Columbia.
He died at New Westminster, British Columbia on 10 January 1981 and was buried in the Dauphin Riverside Cemetery.
See also:
Historic Sites of Manitoba: Merchants Bank Building / Bank of Montreal Building / Stevens Block (213 First Avenue, Bowsman, Municipality of Minitonas-Bowsman)
Marriage registration [Henry Stevens, Elizabeth Ann Campion], Manitoba Vital Statistics.
Birth registration [Henry Stevens], Manitoba Vital Statistics.
Attestation papers [Henry Stevens], Canadian Expeditionary Force, Library and Archives Canada.
Marriage registration [Henry J Stevens, Margaret Marion Hedderley], Manitoba Vital Statistics.
Birth registration [Margaret Marian Stevens], Manitoba Vital Statistics.
1931 Canada census, Ancestry.
Death registrations [Elizabeth Ann Stevens, Henry Stevens], Manitoba Vital Statistics.
“Henry Marshall named “Parade Marshall”,” Swan Valley Star and Times, 20 July 1972, page 1.
Death registration [Henry Stevens], British Columbia Vital Statistics.
“Henry Stevens passes away in Vancouver hospital,” Swan Valley Star and Times, 15 January 1981, pages 1, 4.
“A tribute to Henry Stevens,” Swan Valley Star and Times, 22 May 1986, page 21.
100 Years in the Swan River Valley by Centennial History Book Committee, 1999, pages 328-330.
Our History, Cook & Cooke Insurance Brokers.
Obituaries and burial transcriptions, Manitoba Genealogical Society.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 22 May 2025
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