Family members and local scientists gathered at the Great Lakes Forestry Centre on Monday to remember James MacBain Cameron.
Cameron spearheaded the Centre’s growth from modest roots to its modern day status as a large, respected scientific facility.
An entomologist, Cameron was born in Scotch Hill, Nova Scotia in 1910. He moved to the Sault in 1945 and was the original director of the Insect Pathology Research Institute, dedicated to protecting forests in the ongoing fight against threats posed by insects.
The Insect Pathology Research Institute eventually became known as the Great Lakes Forestry Centre in 1976, one year after Cameron’s death in 1975.
Cameron is remembered in a professional sense for making the Centre grow through his ability to recruit scientists to work at the Queen Street East lab.
“He has a legacy of attracting world-class scientists to the Great Lakes Forestry Centre. The Centre continues to bring in those kinds of people and they're not just civil servants working in a federal government lab. They're part of the community,” said Taylor Scarr, Great Lakes Forestry Centre Entomology Research Program director, at Monday’s event.
The gathering took place in the centre’s Cameron Room, a meeting space dedicated to his memory.
“We had so many scientists come from different parts of the world. It became one of the top research centres in the world. Dr. Cameron brought those scientists in,” said Basil Arif, a now retired Great Lakes Forestry Centre scientist recruited by Cameron.
The entomologist was remembered for his passion to retain scientists he recruited in the face of federal government restructurings.
“In the early 60s Ottawa said we needed to reduce the number of scientists we had. Dr. Cameron wrote back and said ‘no, you are not. You can lay me off but don’t lay the scientists off.’ He would not let any of his scientists get laid off,” Arif recalled.
Cameron’s influence in the community extended beyond the Great Lakes Forestry Centre.
He was the first Sault Ste. Marie Region Conservation Authority board chair and, at the time of his death in 1975, the Algoma University College board of governors chair.
Cameron was a key player in the creation of Algoma University College, affiliated with Sudbury’s Laurentian University, in 1965.
AUC grew over the decades and became the independent Algoma University in 2008.
The university officially named its faculty of science as the Cameron Faculty of Science in a ceremony held Friday, June 13.
Cameron’s four sons and one daughter travelled to the Sault from Pennsylvania, British Columbia and southern Ontario for that occasion as well as Monday’s gathering at the GLFC.
“He would have been thrilled that Algoma University named it the Cameron Faculty of Science but he always deflected credit to his colleagues. He knew about the work they were doing and he gave them credit for their work.
"Dad certainly played a big role in this community,” his son, Alan Cameron, told SooToday.