(10 June 1892-4 Dec. 1983), high school principal. (Wellington J.C. Barrett, W.J.C. Barrett, “Wellie”) Born Summerstown Station, GC. Parents: William J. Barrett and his wife Bella Cameron. He graduated from Queen’s University (B.A., 1912), was a high school teacher at Wiarton, and trained as an officer in the Flying Corps in World War I. He was principal of Williamstown High School for the remarkably long period 1919 to 1954. As principal, he may fairly be described as distinguished, successful and much-liked. His period as principal ended with the closing of the old Williamstown High School, but he continued to teach at the new Char-Lan High School to 1960. He was interested in sports, and was in his younger days a hockey player. It has been said (in conversation) by Ewan Ross, who otherwise shared the usual high opinion of him, that with the sense of limits of the Glengarrians of his generation, W.J.C. Barrett followed a “replacement” policy of encouraging just enough students to go on to higher education to fill the local need for doctors, clergymen, and other university-trained professionals. W.J.C. Barrett died at Hotel Dieu Hospital, Cornwall. He was not married. R. W. Anglin, in his well known article on “Glengarrians at Queen’s,” in the Queen’s Alumni Review of March 1958, thanked Barrett as “my chief source of information.”

     W.J.C. Barrett’s mother, Bella Cameron, was a great-niece of John Cameron, the MLA for GC, and she was a relative of John Sandfield Macdonald and was the sister of the lawyer J.A.C. Cameron. W.J.C. Barrett was the great-nephew of Fr Walter Barrett, a young priest who died in 1868 after just 1 1/2 years in the priesthood and is buried in St. Mary’s Church, Williamstown; he was secretary to the bishop of Kingston.

Two articles by Angus H. McDonell with much biog. detail, portrait, Glengarry News 27 June 1979 (GC athletes series) & 14 Dec. 1983 (obituary tribute)* Ross & Cameron * Memories of Students and Staff Williamstown High School 1900 to 1954 (1994) * MacGillivray & Ross 254 (portrait) * Fraser, Cameron, 37, 108 * retires as principal, teacher, GN 18 March 1954, 23 June 1960 * obituary of his mother, Standard Freeholder 9 June 1937 * Williamstown 200, 141ff (article by) * R. G. Gosse, I Remember Glengarry (1978) 29-34, 39 * Fr Walter Barrett: death, funeral, True Witness 18 Dec. 1868, 1 Jan. 1869; Cornwall Standard 24 Sept. 1925; Sinnsearchd (1990) 205; Villeneuve 187