THE HON. JOHN HILLYARD CAMERON.
On the 20th day of April, 1844, I was standing outside the railing of
St. James's churchyard, Toronto, on the occasion of a very sad funeral.
The chief mourner was a slightly built, delicate-looking young man of
prepossessing appearance. His youthful wife, the daughter of the late
Hon. H. J. Boulton, at one time Chief Justice of Newfoundland, had died,
and it was at her burial he was assisting. When the coffin had been
committed to the earth, the widowed husband's feelings utterly overcame
him, and he fell insensible beside the still open grave.
This was my first knowledge of John Hillyard Cameron. From that day,
until his death in November, 1876, I knew him more or less intimately,
enjoyed his confidence personally and politically, and felt a very
sincere regard for him in return. I used at one time to oppose his views
in the City Council, but always good-naturedly on both sides. I was
chairman of the Market Committee, and it was my duty to resist his
efforts to establish a second market near the corner of Queen and Yonge
Streets, in the rear of the buildings now known as the Page Block. He
was a prosperous lawyer, highly in repute, gaining a considerable
revenue from his profession, and being of a lively, sanguine
temperament, launched out into heavy speculations in exchange operations
and in real estate.
As an eloquent pleader in the courts, he excelled all his
contemporaries, and it was a common saying among solicitors, that
Cameron ruled the Bench by force of argument, and the jury by power of
persuasion. In the Legislature he was no less influential. His speeches
on the Clergy Reserve question, on the Duval case, and many others,
excited the House of Assembly to such a degree, that on one occasion an
adjournment was carried on the motion of the ministerial leader, to give
time for sober reflection. So it was in religious assemblies. At
meetings of the Synod of the Church of England, at missionary meetings,
and others, his fervid zeal and flowing sentences carried all before
them, and left little for others to say.
In 1849, Mr. Cameron married again, this time a daughter of General
Mallett, of Baltimore, who survives him, and still resides in Toronto.
After that date, and for years until 1857, everything appeared to
prosper with him. A comfortable residence, well stored with valuable
paintings, books and rarities of all kinds. The choicest of society and
hosts of friends. An amiable growing family of sons and daughters.
Affluence and elegance, popular favour, and the full sunshine of
prosperity. Honours were showered upon him from all sides.
Solicitor-General in 1846, member of Parliament for several
constituencies in turn, Treasurer of the Law Society, and Grand Master
of the Orange Association. Judgeships and Chief-Justiceships were known
to be at his disposal, but declined for personal reasons.
My political connection with Mr. Cameron commenced in 1854, when, having
purchased from the widow of the late Hugh Scobie the _Colonist_
newspaper, I thought it prudent to strengthen myself by party alliances.
He entered into the project with an energy and disinterestedness that
surprised me. It had been a semi-weekly paper; he offered to furnish
five thousand dollars a year to make it a daily journal, independent of
party control; stipulated for no personal influence over its editorial
views, leaving them entirely in my discretion, and undertaking that he
would never reclaim the money so advanced, as long as his means should
last. I was then comparatively young, enterprising, and unembarrassed in
circumstances, popular amongst my fellow-citizens, and mixed up in
nearly every public enterprise and literary association then in
existence in Toronto. Quite ready, in fact, for any kind of newspaper
enterprise.
My arrangement with Mr. Cameron continued, with complete success, until
1857. The paper was acknowledged as a power in the state; my relations
with contemporary journals were friendly, and all seemed well.
In the summer of 1857 occurred the great business panic, which spread
ruin and calamity throughout Canada West, caused by the cessation of the
vast railway expenditure of preceding years, and by the simultaneous
occurrence of a business pressure in the United States. The great house
of Duncan Sherman & Co., of New York, through which Mr. Cameron was in
the habit of transacting a large exchange business with England, broke
down suddenly and unexpectedly. Drafts on London were dishonoured, and
Mr. Cameron's bankers there, to protect themselves, sold without notice
the securities he had placed in their hands, at a loss to him personally
of over a hundred thousand pounds sterling.
Mr. Cameron was for a time prostrated by this reverse, but soon rallied
his energies. Friends advised him to offer a compromise to his
creditors, which would have been gladly accepted; but he refused to do
so, saying, he would either pay twenty shillings in the pound or die in
the effort. He made the most extraordinary exertions, refusing the
highest seats on the judicial bench to work the harder at his
profession; toiling day and night to retrieve his fortunes; insuring his
life for heavy sums by way of security to his creditors; and felt
confident of final success, when in October, 1876, while attending the
assize at Orillia, he imprudently refreshed himself after a night's
labour in court, by bathing in the cold waters of the Narrows of Lake
Couchiching, and contracted a severe cold which laid him on a sick bed,
which he never quitted alive.
I saw him a day or two before his death, when he spoke of a heavy draft
becoming due, for which he had made provision. In this he was
disappointed. He tried to leave his bed to rectify the error, but fell
back from exhaustion, and died in the struggle--as his friends
think--from a broken heart.