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1884 - 1956

Leroy Cokely was born in Independence, Iowa, to American-Irish parents on November 23, 1884. His education was completed in the United States after attending Knox College at Galesburg, Illinois.

In 1904 Cokely moved to Canada where he took out Dominion Land Surveyors articles under A.W. McVittie and worked on Dominion surveys in Alberta. He married Gertude Hills Heighes and in 1910 he moved to British Columbia with his family of girls and in March of that year received his Dominion Land Surveyors Commission and then next month his Alberta Land Surveyors and British Columbia Land Surveyors Commissions.

During the years 1912 to 1928 he was in private practice while living in Courtenay on Vancouver Island and carried out considerable work for the Provincial Government some of which involved surveying the mountains in and around Strathcona Park where he made ascents of Alexandra Peak, Mount Albert Edward and Mount McBride in 1926. In 1929, while surveying in the Peace River District, Cokely received word that his youngest daughter, Betty, had died while staying with friends when a sand bank at Kye Bay collapsed suffocating her. The next year he worked with Frank Swannell in the Cassiar District of British Columbia.

In 1933 he took the position of Assistant General Manager of Consolidated Gold Alluvials' mine at Wingdam east of Quesnel where he stayed for five years. In 1941 he was made the Chief Surveyor of West Coast Shipyards, holding this position until 1945 when he joined the British Columbia Power Commission and was in charge of surveys until his death.

Leroy Cokely died in West Vancouver on September 7, 1956, at the age of seventy-one and ten years later Gertude. Both at buried at the Masonic Cemetary in Burnaby. Mount Cokely, a peak to the east of Mount Arrowsmith which in the 1920's was called "The Hump," was renamed in 1973 in his honour. Cokely had set a triangulation station on the summit for the Geodetic Survey of Canada in 1926/27.

Sources:
"Mountaineering." Comox Argus [Courtenay, B.C.] (August 14, 1930)

"Girl is Buried Under Sand Bank." Comox Argus [Courtenay, B.C.] (July 4, 1929) p. 1.

Stewart, N. C. "Topographical Surveys, Vancouver Island." Annual Report of the Lands and Surveys Branches of the Department of Lands. B.C. 1936. p. EE 29-EE 31.

Swannell, Frank. "Triangulation Survey, Cassiar District." Annual Report of the Lands and Surveys Branches of the Department of Lands. B.C. 1939. p. V30-V33.

Obituary. Corporation of Land Surveyors of the Province of British Columbia. Report of Proceedings of the Fifty-Second Annual General Meeting. 1957. Victoria, B.C. p. 59.

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