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John Cameron is buried in the cemetery up on the hill. History knows him as "Cariboo Cameron". He is in many ways more interesting than Billy Barker of BARKERVILLE. Cariboo's wife Sophia died of mountain fever. Very unfortunate timing as within days his company hit it big. With the help of his partner Bill Stevenson the long hall down to New Westminster and then Victoria was undertaken in the dead of winter. Sophia made the trip no worse for ware, frozen solid on the back of a toboggan.
She was temporarily interred in the same graveyard as their young daughter who past away not long after the Cameron's landed. Cameron and his partner went back too the Cariboo. He would return to live up to his death bed promise too her. He would get her back to her Ontario home for her almost final resting place. This he eventually did and had a very nice large carved marble sarcophagus made for her. He became very wealthy and later went back to Ontario to live himself.
A new younger wife, some bad loans and investments left him broke and back at square one.
Now a much older man, did the only thing that he had ever had any real success at.
He didn't realize that he had just been lucky on Williams Creek those many years ago. John really must have thought he could just strike another great mine. Alas after the much easier trip back to Cameron town, now Barkerville. His health failing he died one morning while serving a miner a meal while waiting tables in the restaurant. He is laid to rest in the graveyard he himself started when he buried an employee from his Cameron claim.
Just a quick note. The Barkerville parking lot is the old site of Cameron town and the world famous Barkerville grave yard is in fact the Cameron town graveyard.
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From "The North West Passage by land" by Viscount Milton and Dr. Cheadle's seventh edition published in 1865.
While traveling on the Cariboo wagon road they wrote of what they saw and experienced.
On the road we met a small bullock-wagon, escorted by about twenty armed miners on foot. This proved to contain 630 pounds weight of gold, the profits of Mr. Cameron, the principal shareholder in noted Cameron claim.
This gold, worth about 30,000, pounds, (then and today's value would be $9,072,000. Cdn.) had been amassed in the short space of three months, and represented probably less than one-half the actual produce of the mine during that time.
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