Silver Donald Cameron
Award-Winning Writer & Host of TheGreenInterview.com
Silver Donald Cameron is well-known as one of Canada's most versatile and experienced professional authors. While his non-fiction subjects range from history to travel, literature to politics, nature and the environment to community development and education to public affairs, Cameron has become one of Canada’s leaders in grassroots sustainability education. He is the host of TheGreenInterview.com, a subscription website that offers extended interviews between various thinkers, writers, and observers whose ideas and perceptions are leading the way to a new era of sustainability. Cameron presents on topics relating to the environment, employment, adventure, sailing, Canadian maritime history, and sustainability.
Silver Donald Cameron is well-known as one of Canada's most versatile and experienced professional authors. While his non-fiction subjects range from history to travel, literature to politics, nature and the environment to community development and education to public affairs, Cameron has become one of Canada’s leaders in grassroots sustainability education. He is the host of TheGreenInterview.com, a subscription website that offers extended interviews between various the thinkers, writers, and observers whose ideas and perceptions are leading the way to a new era of sustainability.
Hailing from Cape Breton, Cameron’s unique adventures at sea are often the subjects of his work. His work includes plays, films, radio, and TV scripts, an extensive body of corporate and governmental writing, hundreds of magazine articles and more than a dozen books.
An award-winning writer, Cameron’s books have received numerous awards including the Evelyn Richardson Award, the Atlantic Provinces Booksellers Award, and the City of Dartmouth Book Award. He has also won a Mercury Award and a Wilmer Shields Award for corporate writing, and his magazine articles have received four National Magazine Awards. Cameron’s TV drama, Peggy, was named Best Short Film at the Canadian Film Celebration and the Moon Snail Awards, in addition to being nominated for a Gemini Award. Four of his radio dramas have been ACTRA Award finalists; The Sisters was nominated for the international Prix Italia.
Cameron was the founding Chairman of Telile, Isle Madame's community television station, and was also a founding director of Development Isle Madame. He has served as Vice Chairman of the Writers Union of Canada, a director of North Isle Madame Credit Union and the first Executive Director of Centre Bras d'Or in Baddeck, N.S. He owns and operates two companies, Paper Tiger Enterprises Ltd. and Arichat Apartment Rentals Ltd.
Cameron has been a Writer-in-Residence at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, the University of Prince Edward Island, and the University College of Cape Breton. He has been a member of numerous Canada Council juries, and has served as a consultant to many corporate, government, and non-profit clients, including four federal departments, five provincial departments, Maritime Life, Maritime Tel and Tel, the Canadian Conference of the Arts, and the J. W. McConnell Family Foundation.
A distinguished educator, Cameron served as the first Dean of the School of Community Studies at the University College of Cape Breton (now Cape Breton University). He has taught at Dalhousie University, the University of British Columbia and the University of New Brunswick. He holds a B.A. from U.B.C., an M.A. from the University of California, and a Ph.D. from the University of London, England. In 2004, Cameron received an honourary Doctor of Civil Law degree from the University of Kings College and Cape Breton University awarded him an honorary D.Litt in 2007.
As a speaker, Cameron presents on topics relating to the environment, employment, adventure, sailing, Canadian maritime history, and sustainability.
Silver Donald's Blog Posts:
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1. Greening Our Minds
“It isn't pollution that's harming the environment,” said Dan Quayle. “It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.”
Sorry, Dan. The main environmental problems are between our ears. And so are the solutions.
We've all experienced the obvious problems first-hand – the smoggy air, the littered landscape, the fetid water, the overflowing garbage dumps. We all know that the processes of industrial society now endanger the survival of hundreds of species, including our own. Yet practical solutions are available, and many of them are neither difficult nor expensive. So why does the environmental crisis become steadily more threatening?
Silver Donald Cameron shows that we are looking through the wrong end of the telescope, measuring the wrong things, making our problems worse by attacking them with the same mind-set that created them. The good news is that better tools and ideas already exist, and that millions of people are already using them. -
2. You, Inc.
Ten Top Tips for Successful Self-Employment ( And Why ALL Employment is Self-Employment)
"Silver Donald Cameron, 1967, starting his career"
Stephen Leacock put it perfectly.
You know, said Leacock, many a man realizes late in life that if when he was a boy he had known what he knows now, instead of being what he is he would be what he won't; but how few boys stop to think that if they knew what they don't know instead of being what they will be, they wouldn't be?
Okay. As we take our places in the work force, what should we know that we don't know?
We should know that we're working for ourselves, no matter who writes our pay cheque.
People today change jobs and careers the way they change their motor oil. So, despite the illusion of permanent employment, nobody actually has an employer. We just have serial clients. The main difference between employment and self-employment is that the self-employed professional usually knows when the job will end. And s/he knows how to get another, and another, and another.
Shouldn't everyone know that? -
3. Minding Our Own Businesses: Commerce, Community and Renewal
"AFL Tank Manufacturing in Arichat, Nova Scotia"
On January 5, 1914, Henry Ford shocked the business world by more than doubling his employees' wages, from $2.34 a day to $5.00. On that day, he said later, “we really started our business, for on that day we first created a lot of customers.”
In 1971, Allan Blakeney's government in Saskatchewan introduced Canada's highest minimum wage – and business profits went up. “Employees who get good wages spend their money,” says Blakeney, “ and – big surprise – employers do well.”
Business is an integral part of the larger community. It's the people of the community at work. It includes public-sector and non-profit businesses, like schools and hospitals and the Red Cross. Every business is a network of customers, employees, suppliers and professional practitioners. It relies on its community at every turn. And every community is equally reliant on its businesses.
In adversity, that deep integration is the greatest resource of both the community and its businesses. Ask the people of Isle Madame, Nova Scotia. What did they do when the codfish went away? -
4. Dream. Plan. Go!
Sailing Your Dreams to Success and Adventure
"Marjorie and Leo on a Bahamian beach"
In July, 2004, Silver Donald Cameron and his wife Marjorie Simmins set sail from Cape Breton Island, bound for the white sand beaches and palm trees of the nearest tropical islands. They were accompanied by their Brave and Faithful Dog, Leo. The skipper was an old age pensioner. His youthful mate was new to the cruising life. At 13, the BFD was antique and arthritic.
Six months later, after 3000 nautical miles, this improbable crew rowed ashore in Little Harbour, in the Bahamas. The BFD frisked like a puppy. The skipper and mate looked ten years younger. At Pete's Pub, a palm-thatched tiki bar on the beach, they would celebrate their seventh wedding anniversary by eating conch salad and lemon hogfish, and playing Cape Breton jigs with a muster of sun-browned vagabonds. The skipper -- in swim trunks -- raised a glass of cheap rum.
“To Marjorie's voyage with two old dogs,” he said. “And to absent friends, God help 'em, frozen stiff and buried in snow.”
Well, Silver Donald and Marjorie were lucky, right? That's the romantic life of an author.
Wrong, says Silver Donald. Hundreds of couples cruise south every autumn, and what they share is not luck or wealth, but discipline, imagination and and a lusty appetite for life – the very qualities that produce successful businesses, happy marriages and rewarding careers. -
5. The Ship on the Dime
The Life and Times of a Canadian Legend
"Silver Donald Cameron at the helm of Bluenose II"
Bluenose Grill. Bluenose Vending Machines. Bluenose Laundry. Bluenose Well Drilling. Bluenose Gifts. Bluenose Video. Bluenose everything, everywhere in Nova Scotia.
And out in the harbour, an elegant wooden ship, 143 feet long, looking like a vision from the past – Bluenose II, looking just like the ship on the Canadian dime. She's an exact replica of one of Canada's most cherished national symbols, the Grand Banks fishing schooner Bluenose – the ship that beat every Canadian and American challenger in a racing career that spanned nearly three decades.
As the author of a book, a radio play and several articles on the subject, Silver Donald Cameron knows the Bluenose story intimately. In this presentation, illustrated with dozens of period photographs by such notables as Wallace MacAskill and Frederick William Wallace, he traces the history of schooners and the schooner fishery as well as the races themselves, illuminating the shared sea-going culture of New England and New Scotland.
That culture, he says, should be an inspiration to Nova Scotians and New Englanders today.
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Silver Donald Cameron is very down to earth and related well to the audience. He used stories and examples that the group found stimulating and useful. He also gave us lots of laughs! Overall, our group really enjoyed his speech.
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Silver Donald Cameron was the perfect speaker for an evening celebrating Nova Scotia beaches. His unique insight about the complexity and beauty of our beach systems paired with his ability to describe coastal processes in clear and moving ways is rare. His wit and wisdom, his easy-going manner and his adventurous spirit really made the evening.
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I'm sure it was as clear to you as it was to me that the crowd thoroughly enjoyed your tales. (The story of the peddler from Canso was new to me and surely must count among your greatest hits.) I believe the underlying message hit home, too. Thanks again.
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Silver Donald Cameron has the ability to grasp his audience with stories that reflect his zest for life, his compassion for those less fortunate, the humorous characters that have crossed his path and especially his passion towards protecting our planet.
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I congratulate you on blowing them away!!
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We wanted someone who was witty, thoughtful, known to people, and who could lead the participants through an enjoyable, productive and stimulating day. Silver Donald Cameron was great to work with and did a superb job for us. Nice style, good quips, good anecdotes!
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Your poignant and thought-provoking remarks set the tone for the weekend and played an important part in the success of the whole event!
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A master at his craft intelligent, funny, poignant, thoughtful. Our conference was a great success and Silver made it gold.
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Stimulating, insightful and provocative.
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Sometimes hilarious and sometimes heart-rending. In the short term, his comments were entertaining. In the long term, his ideas were thought-provoking.
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He did such an excellent job and received such glowing remarks from attendees that I truly could not suggest improvement.
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January 2010A Million Futures
It was a dazzling model of efficiency and political prowess. It overcame the steep obstacles facing federal programs in Canada. And, in its short life, the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation funded and empowered more than a million young Canadians. Created in 1998, the Foundation awarded scholarships and bursaries to create post-secondary opportunities for deserving students. Its innovative partnering with the provinces provided a stellar example of how to make a federal program work. Consummate storyteller Silver Donald Cameron takes us inside a unique and transformative institution. Inspiring, funny and deeply moving, A Million Futures interweaves the Foundation's remarkable history with the stories of the lives it touched.
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January 1998The Living Beach
How do beaches function? Where do the waves come from, and why are they always parallel to the shore, no matter which way the shore faces? Where does sand come from, and why are some beaches grey, some white, some beige? What plants and animals live there, and how do they deal with this harsh, plastic environment? Ultimately, the beach is not a place but a process, perhaps even literally a living process. Like other natural phenomena, the beach is indifferent to our wishes. The beaches were here long before we arrived, and they will be here long after we are gone. In the end, all we can do is cherish and respect them during our own brief dance upon the moving sands.
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January 1994Sterling Silver
Sterling Silver is a marvellous selection of short stories, essays and reports, drawn from over 25 years of Silver Donald Cameron's writing. Like visits with an entertaining and deeply committed friend, Sterling Silver takes on suicide and love, fear and community and craftsmanship - and a Canada in which a good life should still be possible.
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January 1993Sniffing the Coast
The summer of 1992 was foggy, cold and calm. As Silver Donald and his late wife Lulu made a 600-mile voyage in the Gulf of St. Lawrence aboard their engineless cutter Silversark, they used every trick they knew - including sniffing the coast. They learned about fox farming, potato cloning, newsletter publishing, sand sculpture, ferries and the prospects of a bridge to PEI - which the skipper believed would never be built. It was a time of wrenching change, and wherever they went, Silversark's crew found people deeply involved in The Urgent Conversation: what will the future bring, and how will the Maritimes fit into that future? What should we be doing right now, today, to secure that future? They found the rum tangy and the people surprisingly optimistic - and they ended a memorable cruise with a thrilling run homeward before a gale.
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January 1984Schooner: Bluenose I & Bluenose II
Schooner represents a unique approach to writing history. In 1983, Silver Donald Cameron signed up as an ordinary seaman and sailed on Bluenose II from Lunenburg to Atlantic City, NJ. The exciting history of the two schooners emerges from his experiences and conversations at sea during that voyage.
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January 1982The Baitchopper
The Baitchopper is a young adult novel set in fishing village during a bitter strike which, not coincidentally, much resembles the strike described in The Education of Everett Richardson. Andrew Gurney knows his father is involved in a fight for a fishermen's union, but such grown-up problems have little place in his 13-year-old world - until a street battle with kids from the other side makes him realize that his father's battle has also become his own. Andrew has no idea how dangerous the situation is - until someone deliberately cuts his father's boat adrift, and Andrew finds himself at sea in a snowstorm, struggling desperately to stay alive and to save the Dolly C, the boat his family depends on.
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January 1981Dragon Lady
Dragon Lady is a thriller, praised by Farley Mowat as "a stunning combination of a first-rate modern adventure yarn and damned good writing. Furthermore it has the authentic smell of the North Atlantic and the feel of a Nova Scotia too few of us know." A light plane disappears in the fog off the Nova Scotia coast, and the pilot's brother tries to learn what happened to it.A mesmerizing thriller, surging with action, intrigue and murder, Dragon Lady reveals a conspiracy of international corruption that permits a few evil men to profit hugely from death and destruction.
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January 1978Seasons in the Rain: An Expatriate's Notes on British Columbia
Silver Donald Cameron was raised and educated in British Columbia, but left the province permanently in 1964. Seasons in the Rain is a collection of essays and profiles he wrote during the 1970s, when he returned to write a profile of union leader Homer Stevens and discovered that he had "an interesting view of the West Coast. Seasons in the Rain is considered a BC classic, an unforgettable series of snapshots of a now-vanished era in "that enchanted land where the mountains of gold meet the sunshot sea."
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January 1977THE EDUCATION OF EVERETT RICHARDSON
In 1970, a band of 250 fishermen in the tiny ports of Canso, Mulgrave and Petit de Grat went on strike. They wanted a union. Incredible as it seems, Canadian fishermen were then considered "co-adventurers" with the multi-national food companies which owned the ships they worked on. They had no right to organize, no right to bargain over pay or working conditions, no benefits, no job security. Fighting on alone, they precipitated a crisis which split the province apart, brought it to the verge of a general strike - and changed its character forever. Stan Rogers called this book "a classic," and many readers have said that it reads like a novel.
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January 1967Faces of Leacock
Faces of Leacock was a pioneering work - the first full-length study of Stephen Leacock's writing. The book surveys the whole range of Leacock's literary work - not only the humour, but also the literary criticism, the essays and the travel writing. What emerges is a portrait of Leacock as a powerful writer who feared and fought his own talent, a scathing satirist who believed that humour should always be kindly, a shy and sensitive artist who hid behind his own humour. And yet, the author argues, in his finest work Leacock fuses his own contradictions into a unique - and deeply Canadian - vision of life and society, a vision suffused with humour.
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