*Excerpt from Reuban Butchart's "The Disciples of Christ in Canada Since 1830", Chapter 10*
This notable Maritime leader who labored for over forty years, reached his vocation by an unusual route, that of the high seas. He was born in Halifax in 1856, raised in Guysboro County, which had given so many men to the traditions of a former day when the Maritime provinces meant supremacy in water transportation. It was the day of wooden ships and iron men; and Cooke was a fine example. As a sixteen year old cabin boy he began to study navigation, and by correspondence and attendance at a nautical school, he attained the rank of mate at eighteen, and of captain at nineteen, but could not command until age twenty-one. His sailing life led him mainly around the western hemisphere and mostly to the West Indian trade. In off spells he would go to "School, and one winter (when frozen in at Charlottetown) he attended Prince of Wales college there, and later, Johnson Bible College, Kentucky. But, he told the writer (Canadian Disciple, July, 1929) his secret ingatherings were the Bible, as many a great man has confessed. He was reared Anglican, but at sixteen his inquiring mind saw differences from Bible truth in current ways of thinking and acting in religious matters. He kept on making enquiries, one of them in the celebrated Fulton Street prayer meeting, New York city. He must have been a disconcerting person to the religious 'standpatters' of his day, if all were told. He claimed a Baptist preacher named Weeks gave him light, and that a Mr. McKinlay, school inspector, "led him into the truth". As a young people's worker in a Baptist church at Charlottetown he required scope and it was given him. The young people soon crowded out the auditorium. "The Baptists found it agreeable", he remarked, lapsing into the nautical, "for it was low-tide with them". Alexander Campbell's writings helped to form his views. He was told of a young man, a carpenter, named W. H. Harding, whom "he had better go and see." But he must have known nearly all the Maritime leaders.
Howard Cooke played a leading part in the defeat of an Ontario infidel named Charles Watts, in the eighteen-eighties, who in Halifax had, in a Goliath sort of way, defied the leaders of Halifax religion. Watts received no answer from the clerical high-ups, but there was amazement when Howard Cooke offered to produce a champion to debate. Who was it, were anxious inquirers? But it was not for nothing that Captain Cooke, of Guysboro waters had navigated shoals and dodged past rocky headlands into safe waters. The upshot was that a telegram to Clark Braden at Paris, Ky. brought him to Halifax. But, too late, for Watts had fled, declaring that he would not meet Braden a second time. However, Braden secured entrance into a tremendous audience at Truro, N.S., where Watts was once more to defy God. On his becoming aware of Braden's presence he picked his hat and left for parts unknown. Braden then, as a heaven-sent champion, mightily defended the cause of revealed religion, as his generation of Disciple brethren could expect him to do.
Howard Cooke served seven months at Kempt, seven years at Westport, three years at Summerside, at Southville, two years; and his Burtt's Corner, N.B., church received him in 1901, where 28 years later, and still pastor for some later time (a total of more than 40) he gave the writer the substance of the foregoing, after strict questioning. He probably bears the palm for occupying the longest continuous pastorate in Canada. It is recorded of him roundly that he "made it so plain" that all could understand. That would be a true salt water spiritual captain's way.