Greetings Clan Cameron. As you know some Cameron's run, others travel by bike or by
car. As per below is an email from "Silver" Donald Cameron pertaining to
Everett Cameron's Horseless Carriages. I have a copy of the book that Don writes of
that was sent to me a few years ago from Peg. I have not heard from Peg for quite some
time, so I do not know if the address for Peg listed below is correct. Perhaps Peg's
daughter Josephine Cameron
http://www.josephinecameron.com/ can update on such. Cheers,
thanks Don. Scott
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----- Original Message -----
From: Silver Donald Cameron
To: Scott Cameron
Sent: Friday, April 06, 2007 3:07 PM
Subject: Re: Aye fellow Clan Cameron members ...
Scott, with your interest in things Cameron, you may be interested in this column of mine,
written in 2000.
Cheers, Don
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SUNDAY HERALD COLUMN -- July 12, 2000 [HH0028]
EVERETT CAMERON= S HORSELESS CARRIAGES
by Silver Donald Cameron
Ford, Chevrolet, Dodge, Chrysler C and Cameron. It sounds a little odd, even to a Cameron.
But there were Cameron cars on the road before there were Fords. Several thousand were
built, mainly in New England C by Nova Scotians.
Everett Cameron was born in Shubenacadie in 1877, the son of a shoemaker named Donald
Cameron. (Numerous male Camerons are named Donald, including about 50% of the clan's
chieftains; that's why we need nicknames like "Silver.") Bicycle racing was
the rage in the 1880s, and when 11-year-old Everett was given a second-hand bicycle he
tore it apart and rebuilt it. At 14 he built his own racing bike. By 17 he had graduated
from technical school in Halifax, and couldn't find a job.
He and his brother Forrest emigrated to Brockton, Massachusetts, then the alleged shoe
capital of the world, in 1894. They found jobs in a shoe factory, but soon realized that
almost everyone in town rode bicycles which always needed service. "Cameron Brothers,
Bicycles and Repairing" opened for business in late 1894. Both proprietors were still
in their teens.
The Duryea brothers had tested their horseless carriage in September, 1893, and the world
was a-buzz with the possibilities of automobiles. In 1899, the Cameron brothers built
their first car, an "Eclipse Steam Buggy" driven by an innovative fast-acting
boiler of Everett's design. A year later the US postal service was using their steam
cars to collect mail in the Boston area, and Everett had become superintendent of a
factory which manufactured steam engines for boats, as well as the first 25 cars to bear
the Cameron name. He was 22.
But he was losing interest in steam, and soon moved to another factory owned by a
machining company in Pawtucket, RI, where he produced his first gasoline-powered,
air-cooled cars. In 1904, he and Forrest built and sold 500 Cameron cars. By 1906 the
brothers had their own factory in Beverley, Mass., and a second factory in Attica, Ohio.
During their glory days, between 1908 and 1910, they were producing ten or more cars a
week and promoting them at races and "hill-climbs" all over the country. In
July, 1908, they competed with Henry Ford's Model S -- the predecessor of the famous
Model T -- in fuel economy tests and hill-climbs, and won both.
The early days of the auto industry were a spirited free-for-all involving hundreds of
small companies, but only a handful survived. Everett Cameron struggled through endless
financial problems and several bankruptcies. The last complete Cameron cars were sporty
six-cylinder touring models built in 1917, though Cameron engines were used in other cars
into the mid-1920s. But by then the American auto industry had become consolidated among
the well-financed companies who have dominated it ever since -- Ford, Chrysler, General
Motors. In our own day, a similar winnowing has occurred among computer manufacturers.
Remember the Osborne, Kaypro, Commodore, and Atari?
Everett Cameron was a brilliant inventor who built trucks, boats and tractors as well as
automobiles. Things were simpler then; if an engine was unsatisfactory, Everett would go
to his shop and build another. Always a great believer in lightweight air-cooled engines,
he did not produce a water-cooled car engine until 1913, and noted with satisfaction that
a number of his air-cooled auto engines eventually found their way into aircraft. In 1928
he designed and built an air-cooled radial aircraft engine, and he spent most of the rest
of his working life in aviation. He died in 1965.
One of the surviving Cameron cars is a 1908 Model 9, lovingly renewed by the late William
T. Cameron of Minocqua, Wisconsin. (He found the chassis in Florida, the body in
Connecticut). William Cameron C who was not related to Everett C also wrote *The Cameron
Story* (1990), a history of the company and its founder, including the story of his own
restoration project. (Copies are available through Peg Vodicka, herself a Cameron by
birth, at mjcpv(a)newnorth.net).
Bill Cameron's book makes me wonder about families and genetics and culture, about the
resemblances between Camerons unrelated for two centuries or more. Why do so many Camerons
choose to be engineers? Why does Everett Cameron, wearing a suit and dress hat and seated
on a tractor, resemble my own grandfather, wearing a suit and dress hat as he fishes off
an Ontario wharf? Why does Donald Cameron, the former premier of Nova Scotia, look so much
like Donald Cameron, my cousin in Edmonton?
Living in families, says R.D. Laing, "we are acting parts in a play, that we have
never read and never seen, whose plot we don't know, whose existence we can glimpse,
but whose ending I do not dare to presume to imagine."
Really, why should I be more interested in a Cameron car than a Stutz or a Stanley? But I
am.
C 30 C
Silver Donald Cameron
24 Armshore Drive
Halifax, NS B3N 1M5
(902)446-5577 fax (902)446-6099
www.silverdonaldcameron.ca
http://sailingawayfromwinter.blogspot.com/
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