"QUEEN CITY."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 268, 12 November 1935, Page 13

"QUEEN CITY."

AUTHOR OF THE PHRASE. MR. A. E. GLOVER CELEBRATES. Having outlived, so he believes, all his shipmates, Mr. Albert Edward Glover will probably be the only "oldtimer" in New Zealand who to-day celebrates the anniversary of the arrival at Auckland on November 12, 1862, of the ship William Miles from London, after a passage of 100 days from land to land. When he landed at Auckland, Mr. Glover was 13; now ho is 80, and is spending the- evening of his life with his sons and daughters in the houso at Cheltenham that he has occupied for the past 31 years. "Looking back on 73 years in New Zealand, I can say this much at least — that even if I fill no great place in our history, I coined during my period of public life one phrase that will live long after I am gone, though few will know who the author was," remarked Mr. Glover. "I was the first to call Auckland 'the Queen City of the North.' I was then member for Auckland Central. The debate on a local bill had dragged wearily on until about one o'cock in the morning, when a facetious member rose and asked, 'Where and what is this Auckland, anyhow?' For the honourable member's information, I replied, 'Auckland is the Queen City of the North, and she is sitting there this morning, proud and beautiful, on the shores of the sparkling, placid waters of the Waitemata.' Auckland has been 'the Queen City of the North' ever since, and I gave it that name. It is not such a bad memorial to an oldtimer, is it?" With his parents, when they first landed in New Zealand, Mr. Glover went to Coromandel and, growing up there, learned Maori so thoroughly that he was for some time engaged as interpreter to the Court. Later he ran a 'bus service between the upper and lower townships of Coromandel. In 1867 he went to the Thames goldfields, where he was working when many of the richest claims were opened, but returned to Coromandel to marry in 1809 Miss Nancy Maguire. The couple came to Auckland, where Mr. Glover bought the Waverley Hotel, which then stood opposite the present New Zealand Insurance building. During subsequent years Mr. Glover was proprietor successively of several of the leading hotels in Auckland and at the same time a member of the Auckland School Committee, the City Council. Harbour Board and Hospital and Charitable Aid Board. When, in the 1908 election, he stood for the Auckland Central seat, he was returned with the biggest majority that any candidate- in the election throughout New Zealand could show. In the next election in 1914 he again held pride of place, but in the 1919 election he was defeated by the Labour nominee, Mr. W. E. Parry, who is the present member.