Picture courtesy of the Canadian Dictionary of Biography
The plaque is immediately beside a pillar at the beginning of the driveway of an abandoned school building, possibly hidden by tree branches.
Commemoration
Born in this township, John Angus "Cariboo" Cameron married Margaret Sophia Groves in 1860. Accompanied by his wife and daughter, he went to British Columbia in 1862 to prospect in the Cariboo gold fields. That year at Williams Creek he struck a rich gold deposit. While there his wife died of typhoid fever and, in order to fulfil her dying wish to be buried at home, he transported her body in an alcohol-filled coffin some 8,600 miles by sea via the Isthmus of Panama to Cornwall. She is buried in the nearby Salem Church cemetery. Cameron built this house, "Fairfield", in 1865, and in 1886 returned to the B.C. gold fields. He is buried near Barkerville, B.C.
Background
Cameron was born on September 1, 1820. When Cameron returned from B. C., rumours circulated in the community about what had happened to his wife and what misdeeds, he had done to her. Cameron was forced to exhume his wife to prove that she was indeed buried here. Cameron died in 1898 and was buried in what was Camerontown, named after him but since deserted.
Here we see a descendant of the Loyalist refugees moving beyond Ontario to make his fortune at the time that the land became its own nation - Canada.