HICKEY, WILLIAM PARKER (1878-1960)

HICKEY, WILLIAM PARKER, native son and benefactor; b. Newcastle, 12 Jan 1878, s/o Thomas Hickey and Jane Harriman; m. 1st, 1901, Anna Isabella Flanagan, d/o Roger Flanagan and Ellen Keating, and 2nd, 1920, Hazel Lillian Mavor, of Verdun, Que.; d. Montreal, 14 Aug 1960.

W. Parker Hickey's father studied at the Newcastle Grammar School for a time under John H. Sivewright and later became a lumber scaler, working throughout the later years of his life for D. & J. Ritchie & Co.

After he completed his own schooling Hickey was employed as a desk clerk at the Adams House in Chatham, while it was owned by Thomas Flanagan. He was on the job there in 1896 when Max Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook) boarded at the hotel. "There was, of course, a Back Room," Aitken stated, hidden from view. Drink was on sale and Parker Hickey, the clerk who allotted the rooms to visitors, was also sole and only keeper of the Secret Chamber."

Hickey remained at the Adams House until 1901. Immediately after his marriage that year he departed for Montreal, where his first job was at Place Viger, a Canadian Pacific Railway hotel. He stayed in the hotel business in Montreal for some time and then joined a stockbrokerage, McCuaig Bros & Co., of which he be-came a partner in 1920. Later he had his own stock trading company, which at the time of his death was named Hickey, Dow & Muir Ltd.

Hickey is remembered on the Miramichi for his endowing in 1948 of the Tom Hickey Scholarships (now known as the Tom & Parker Hickey Memorial Scholarships) at the University of New Brunswick, "in honor of the lumbermen of days gone by and for the benefit of their grandsons." The terms and conditions for these awards have been modified over the years, but they remain available exclusively to applicants from the northern counties of the province whose predecessors were connected with the lumber industry. A scholarship is payable in installments during each year of an undergraduate program provided the recipient maintains satisfactory academic standing.