Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Aikins, James Cox
AIKINS, The Hon. James Cox, Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Manitoba, in the Dominion of Canada, was born in the township of Toronto, county Peel, Ontario, March 30, 1823. He was educated at Victoria College, Cobourg, and entered public life in 1854, by representing his native county in the Canadian Assembly, which he continued to do until 1861. In the following year he was elected a member of the Legislative Council for the "Home" Division, comprising the counties of Peel and Halton. He continued to sit in the Council until it was abolished by Confederation, after which he was raised to the Senate. In December, 1869, he became a member of the Privy Council, and entered the Macdonald Government as Secretary of State, remaining in that office until the fall of the Government in 1873. In 1872 he framed and carried through Parliament the Public Lands Act of that year, and subsequently organized the Dominion Lands Bureau, a department of government entrusted with the management of the lands acquired in the North-West, chiefly from the Hudson's Bay Company, a department which is now controlled by the Canadian Minister of the Interior. On the return of the Macdonald Government to power, in 1878, Senator Aikins resumed the portfolio of Secretary of State, exchanging it two years later for the office of Minister of Inland Revenue. In 1882 he accepted the Lieutenant-Governorship of the province of Manitoba.