Cam Kirby

Who was Cam Kirby?

William J. Cameron Kirby, Q.C. was an Alberta politician, leader of the Conservative Party, barrister, Queen's Counsel, and a Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench.

Born in Calgary. Kirby's great grandfather Charles Kirby came to Canada as a soldier in a regiment from Yorkshire, England at the time of the Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada and settled in Whitby. His son Joseph Kirby enlisted as mercenary in the 184th Regiment of New York State Infantry of the Union Army during the American Civil War and returned to Canada in 1865 and joined the Ashberminam Company of Volunteers during the Fenian Raids of 1866. In 1882 he applied for a homestead in the N.W.T. situated near what is now the town of Fleming. Kirby's father William John Kirby moved further west in 1885, initially as a lumberjack in Albert Canyon, worked as an agent for the Dominion Express in Vancouver, British Columbia, and later in Calgary where Cameron Kirby was born in 1909. In 1911 William Kirby set up as a merchant in Lochairn, later named at his instigation Rocky Mountain House, Alberta after the Hudson's Bay Fort built nearby on the North Saskatchewan River in 1799. There he opened a dry goods store and became postmaster and eventually the town's Reeve. In 1917 when Cameron Kirby was eight years old his mother died and he was sent by his father to live with relatives. Kirby graduated high school in Hanna, Alberta and then attended the University of British Columbia graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1930 before attending graduate school at the University of Alberta.