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Sjt. James Sym Lindsay, Royal Artillery
January 1828, Fyfe, Scotland-1890
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Born in 1828 in Fife, Scotland, Lindsay joined the Royal
Artillery at age 18. From 1846 - 1858 he served on Gibraltar, rising to Company Serjeant.
Then in 1858 he volunteered to join the small force of Royal Engineers being assembled for
duty in the boisterous gold rush colony of British Columbia. Lindsay’s duties in the new colony included supervising work on the Cariboo Waggon Road and other projects. In 1861 he led a military force guarding the Gold Escort from Barkerville to the coast. On one occasion he transported a prisoner from the gold fields to Yale, a distance of 380 miles by horseback and steamboat, in only 30 hours. Like most of the Detachment’s enlisted men, Lindsay chose to stay in B.C. after leaving the army. Upon completing his military service in England, he returned to the Colony in 1866. He was discharged with the rank of Quartermaster Serjeant and the Good Conduct Medal and took up his 150-acre military land grant in Pitt Meadows on the lower Fraser River, where he soon found work as a policeman. Lindsay spent the rest of his days in the rowdy mining towns of the interior, eventually becoming Chief Constable of the Cariboo. He was well liked and known as a fine athlete, once pursuing a “large Bear” armed only with an axe. He was also a hard drinker and a gossip, earning him the nickname “Whispering Jimmy”. He died in 1890, age 62, and is buried at Barkerville."
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