ARCHIBALD, Peter Suther , b. 21 Mar. 1848, Truro, N.S.; d. 16 Mar. 1913, Moncton, N.B. Educated at the Truro Model and Normal Schools, he joined the Intercolonial Railway as a rodman in 1867 and rose to replace Sandford Fleming as chief engineer in 1879. He resigned in 1898 and went into private practice. He was consulting engineer of the St. John Cantilever Bridge and Extension Company, and in 1894 was a member of the Royal Commission on freight rates in Manitoba and the North-West Territories. In 1902, he was appointed chairman of a Newfoundland arbitration tribunal, and was chairman of the arbitration board for Newfoundland Telegraph lines. The same year, he made a preliminary survey for the Strait of Canso Bridge. In 1905, he was the engineering contractor for construction of the Northern Maine Seaport Railway (later the Bangor and Aroostock Railroad), and, in 1907 was a member of the conciliation board for the Cumberland Coal and Railway Company under the Industrial Disputes Act. In 1908, the New Brunswick government appointed him commissioner of railways to manage the New Brunswick Central Railway. An original member of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers (renamed, Engineering Institute of Canada, 1918), he was a councillor for various years between 1894 and 1912. He was elected a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1885. A Presbyterian, he married Clara G. Lindsay in 1874 and they had two sons and two daughters.

Lauren Waters