====== Cameron, Graceline ====== 
 (5 March 1901-3 Jan. 1994), postmaster. (Grace Cameron) Born in Alexandria, GC. Parents: Duncan Cameron, a long-time Alexandria resident who worked for the Schell industries, and his wife Catherine McDougall, who was from St. Raphael’s. Grace Cameron attended primary and secondary school in Alexandria, and on 1 July 1918, at the age of 17, as a clerk, she began a lifetime’s work in the Alexandria post office, the postmaster at the time being Duncan A. Macdonald. Grace Cameron was acting postmaster of Alexandria from Nov. 1957, then was postmaster in her own right from Feb. 1958 till her retirement aged 65 in March 1966. She succeeded Procule Poirier, who had retired, and she was succeeded in turn by J. C. Jacques Joly. She was the first woman postmaster of Alexandria. There had been women postmasters in small local post offices of the GC-area, where the post offices were usually a department of a country store, but the Alexandria post office, a much more impressive matter, was a business in its own right, and a hive of activity, and the hard-working postmaster was a highly responsible and reasonably well paid public official in a town badly short of well paid jobs. There are probably no reliable recollections on the matter, one way or another, but it may be guessed that more than a few hard-shell old-timers of the area thought the job should not have gone to a woman, and to an unmarried woman at that. In 1953 Grace Cameron received the Post Office’s long service award for 25 years service (//Glengarry News// 19 Nov. 1953) She never married. A tiny woman, reserved and rather reclusive in her retirement years, which she spent in Alexandria, Grace Cameron was always polite and amiable, but she was also markedly and uncompromisingly territorial; and at least in the years when she lived alone after the death of her sister Kay she did not willingly allow visitors into her cigarette smoke-filled apartment. She spent her final years in an Alexandria nursing home. She was a Roman Catholic. The burial was in St. Finnan’s cemetery. Her brother A.L. Cameron (1892-1960) was a priest of the diocese of Alexandria. Their sister, Miss Catherine M. (Kay) Cameron, was for more than 30 years housekeeper to her brother Fr Cameron, and died in 1973 from an Alexandria traffic accident, having spent about the last 20 years of her life living with her sister Grace Cameron in Alexandria. (//GN// 11 Oct. 1973 )Their sister Mary Cameron (Mrs E. F. Nessmith), a nurse who lived in the United States, achieved the rank of major in the American Army.


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<fs small>NAC, RG 32 vol. 667, file 3-5-1901 (selections from personnel file), & RG 3 D 3 (post office history cards: Alexandria) * personal knowledge * appointed postmaster, retires, //Glengarry News// 21 Nov. 1957, 17 Feb. 1966, 28 May 2003 (fine group picture from 1966 retirement party) * //GN// 30 March 1994 (legal notice re settlement of estate; perhaps no //GN// obituary published) * Ostrom 287-288 (valuable insider note on Alexandria Post Office and 1957 CPR strike) * obituary of her father, //GN// & //Standard Freeholder//, both 16 June 1944 * Fr Cameron: Villeneuve 62 and //Sinnsearchd// 135 * Mary Cameron: //GN// 14 April 1944, 3 Aug. 1945, 27 April 1951 (marriage) * women postmasters: Fraser (1959) 285
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