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In Canada he was a prominent member of Vancouver society, a church elder, Freemason and member of the Burns Club. The doctor's son from Kintore in Aberdeenshire had left his native land in the 1960s to pursue an engineering career in his new, adopted county. Yet to his dying day at the age of 77, Gavin Vernon would always be known as one of the gang of four Scots who 'recovered' the Stone of Destiny and brought it back to Scotland.
Mr Vernon, who died recently, always joked that he 'never had to buy a beer again' once his exploits became known in Canada.
In 1950, he was at the centre of one of the biggest manhunts in British history when, with three friends, he ' liberated' the stone from the clutches of the English, 654 years after it had been stolen by Edward Longshanks.
In the process, the four managed to bring Britain almost to a standstill.
What had begun as a student prank hatched over drinks in the union bar at Glasgow University became the ultimate symbolic act of defiance and stirred up a rise in nationalistic support in Scotland.
'It was a thrilling time it's sad one of us is now gone,' said his fellow conspirator Kay Matheson, 75, now a retired teacher living in a nursing home in Wester Ross.
'I kept in contact with Gavin all these years and we used to talk about the stone often. We used to laugh about the whole thing.
'Our recovery, not theft, of the stone informed our whole lives.
Gavin's death is the beginning of the end of an era.' It is eight years since Miss Matheson has seen the Stone of Destiny.
It sits in the Crown Room of Edinburgh Castle, displayed alongside the glittering honours of Scotland which share its case.
Also referred to as the Stone of Scone, it is said to have originated from the Middle East and Biblical myth has it that Jacob once used the stone as a pillow.
It is believed it arrived in Scotland around 850AD from the ancient Irish Kingdom of Dalriada, where it was used at sacred ceremonies as an enthroning stone.
When Kenneth I, 36th King...