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It gives me great pleasure today to rise and
congratulate Mrs. Dinah Stewart Matthews Cossar on the
recent celebration of her one-hundred-and-third
birthday. I do believe that Mrs. Cossar is the oldest
living constituent in my District of Burgeo &
LaPoile.
Mrs. Cossar was born in Burgeo in 1905 and is the
only surviving member of the Stewart family of three
brothers and one sister. In 1923 she married Captain
Archibald Matthews and they had five daughters and one
son, of which her eldest daughter and only son are
deceased.
Captain Matthews was lost at sea during World War II.
She remarried in 1959 to Lott Cossar, a businessman,
also of Burgeo. Mr. and Mrs. Cossar moved to Corner
Brook where they resided until Mr. Cossar passed away in
1994. From there she moved to Silverwood Manor in
Stephenville, and in 2005 she moved to the long-term
care facility at the Dr. Charles L. LeGrow Health Centre
in Port aux Basques.
Mrs. Cossar continues to live in relatively good
health, and I am told she is a very strong and
opinionated lady. She has twenty-three grandchildren,
forty-one great-grandchildren and three
great-great-grandchildren. Her first grandchild, a
granddaughter, sits with us in the House of Assembly
today. I am referring, of course, to the hon. Minister
of Municipal Affairs and the Member for Conception Bay
East-Bell Island.
Mr. Speaker, the minister and I ask all members of
this House to join with us in extending a happy
one-hundred-and-third birthday to her grandmother and my
oldest constituent, Dinah Stewart Matthews Cossar. All
the best to Mrs. Cossar and her family. |
