Duncan Cameron

This article is about fur dealer and politician Duncan Cameron; for the painter of the same name, see Duncan Cameron (painter) .

Duncan Cameron (* approx. 1764 in Glen Moriston , Scotland ; † May 15, 1848 in Williamstown , Upper Canada , today part of South Glengarry , Ontario , Canada ) was a fur trader and politician in the former British colony of Upper Canada.

Born in Scotland , Cameron emigrated with his parents to Tryon County in the then North American province of New York in 1773 . During the American Revolution , his father fought on the side of the royalists and after their defeat the family moved to Québec in 1785 . In the same year Cameron took up a job as a secretary to a freelance fur trader on Lake Nipigon , where he competed with the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), which dominated the fur trade , and soon expanded its activities towards Lake Winnipeg .

After the fur trading company in which he was employed collapsed, he joined the North West Company (NWC) as a partner in 1795 and managed its activities on Nippigon until 1807, always in stiff competition with the HBC dealers. Then he led together with Alexander MacKay the grounds at Winnipegsee from Fort Bas-de-la-Rivière , where he also married an Ojibwa ; however, overhunting and competition made the area increasingly unprofitable. Between 1811 and 1814 he was in charge of trading on Lac La Pluie .

From 1814 Cameron worked on the Red River together with Alexander Macdonell , where he was involved in the pemmican war against the HBC and their settlers of the Red River Colony . In 1815 he drove out 140 new settlers with the help of the long-established Cree and Métis and took the HBC administrator, Miles Macdonell , prisoner. In the same year, however, he and his people were overpowered and captured by Colin Robertson of the HBC. He was taken to England, where he was charged for what happened on the Red River, but was acquitted and given compensation for imprisonment. In 1820 he returned to Canada and settled in Glengarry County . He married Margaret McLeod, with whom he had a daughter and three sons. From 1825 to 1828 he sat for Glengarry in the Canadian House of Commons . He died in Williamstown in 1848.

Web links

• Duncan Cameron . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).