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Sterling Silver: Rants, Raves & Revelations
From 25 years of terrific writing comes this unique blend of intelligence, gumption compassion, and good humour.
217 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
9 people want to read
About the author
Silver Donald Cameron
22 books25 followersOne of Canada's most accomplished authors, Silver Donald Cameron currently devotes most of his time to his work as host and executive producer of TheGreenInterview.com, an environmental website devoted to intense, in-depth conversations with the brilliant thinkers and activists who are leading the way to a green, sustainable future. He is the author of Warrior Lawyers: From Manila to Manhattan, Attorneys for the Earth, the first Green Interview Book. Dr. Cameron also wrote and narrated The Green Interview's five documentary films: Bhutan: The Pursuit of Gross National Happiness (2010), The Celtic Mass for the Sea (2012), Salmon Wars: Salmon Farms, Wild Fish and the Future of Communities (2012), Defenders of the Dawn: Green Rights in the Maritimes (broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2015) and Green Rights: The Human Right to a Healthy World (2016).
“Since TheGreenInterview.com was launched in 2010, we've amassed more than 100 interviews with green giants from 18 countries,” he says. “I've climbed to the Tiger's Nest, a Buddhist monastery that clings to a Himalayan cliff-side in Bhutan, and with my buddy Chris Beckett – our master videographer – I've lived on a houseboat in an Amsterdam canal and stayed in a mediaeval inn in Sussex and at the ultra-posh University Club in New York. We've bounced around in an inflatable speedboat in a Pacific gale off Tofino, BC, to welcome the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior. We've travelled a filthy urban river in Buenos Aires on a garbage barge, crossed the Andes in a taxi from Quito to reach the Ecuadorian oil town of Lago Agrio, and interviewed a wounded Andean aboriginal leader in a rectory in Lima, Peru. We've had a wonderful time. It's been an education, a privilege and an inspiration.”
Silver Donald's literary work includes plays, films, radio and TV scripts, an extensive body of corporate and governmental writing, hundreds of magazine articles and 18 books, including two novels. He has won awards in all these forms of writing. His non-fiction subjects include history, travel, literature, politics, nature and the environment, ships and the sea, and community development as well as education and public affairs. He has been a columnist for The Globe and Mail, and from 1998 to 2011 he wrote an influential weekly column for the Halifax Sunday Herald. His classic book on shorelines, The Living Beach (1998), was re-released in 2014, and Warrior Lawyers appeared in 2016. The Education of Everett Richardson, his 1977 book on the 1970-71 Nova Scotia fishermen's strike, was re-issued in 2019, and his true crime book, Blood in the Water, will be published in August, 2020.
Silver Donald Cameron has built his own cruising sailboat, cruised extensively on the east coast of Canada and as far south as the Bahamas, and restored four heritage homes in rural Nova Scotia. He has also been a professor or writer-in-residence at seven universities and Dean of Community Studies at Cape Breton University. He holds two honorary doctorates as well as a Ph.D., and in 2012 he was appointed to both the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia.
Dr. Cameron is married to Marjorie Simmins, also an award-winning writer. They divide their time between Nova Scotia and British Columbia.
“Since TheGreenInterview.com was launched in 2010, we've amassed more than 100 interviews with green giants from 18 countries,” he says. “I've climbed to the Tiger's Nest, a Buddhist monastery that clings to a Himalayan cliff-side in Bhutan, and with my buddy Chris Beckett – our master videographer – I've lived on a houseboat in an Amsterdam canal and stayed in a mediaeval inn in Sussex and at the ultra-posh University Club in New York. We've bounced around in an inflatable speedboat in a Pacific gale off Tofino, BC, to welcome the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior. We've travelled a filthy urban river in Buenos Aires on a garbage barge, crossed the Andes in a taxi from Quito to reach the Ecuadorian oil town of Lago Agrio, and interviewed a wounded Andean aboriginal leader in a rectory in Lima, Peru. We've had a wonderful time. It's been an education, a privilege and an inspiration.”
Silver Donald's literary work includes plays, films, radio and TV scripts, an extensive body of corporate and governmental writing, hundreds of magazine articles and 18 books, including two novels. He has won awards in all these forms of writing. His non-fiction subjects include history, travel, literature, politics, nature and the environment, ships and the sea, and community development as well as education and public affairs. He has been a columnist for The Globe and Mail, and from 1998 to 2011 he wrote an influential weekly column for the Halifax Sunday Herald. His classic book on shorelines, The Living Beach (1998), was re-released in 2014, and Warrior Lawyers appeared in 2016. The Education of Everett Richardson, his 1977 book on the 1970-71 Nova Scotia fishermen's strike, was re-issued in 2019, and his true crime book, Blood in the Water, will be published in August, 2020.
Silver Donald Cameron has built his own cruising sailboat, cruised extensively on the east coast of Canada and as far south as the Bahamas, and restored four heritage homes in rural Nova Scotia. He has also been a professor or writer-in-residence at seven universities and Dean of Community Studies at Cape Breton University. He holds two honorary doctorates as well as a Ph.D., and in 2012 he was appointed to both the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia.
Dr. Cameron is married to Marjorie Simmins, also an award-winning writer. They divide their time between Nova Scotia and British Columbia.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 1, 2021
This is a wonderful book filled with personal essays Silver Don Cameron wrote over many years. I read it several years ago while Silver Don Cameron was still alive and still publishing his work. He died of lung cancer at the age of eighty-two in 2020 but the legacy of this Cape Bretoner remains strong and his work still entertains many readers.
Cameron wrote almost every day of his life and saved everything, so when his publisher Ron Caplan approached him in 1994 about compiling some of his shorter works in a book, Cameron handed him seventy-five boxes filled with everything from radio dramas to commentaries and travel writing. From these, Caplan chose twenty-two pieces he believed reflected some of Cameron’s best writing to include in this book.
Initially Cameron did not like his editor’s choices, in particular the lead off essay about suicide. But Caplan was convinced the piece had something important to say and wanted it included, a decision later reinforced when Cameron received an anonymous letter from a grateful reader who said reading it had saved his life. Some of the other pieces Caplan chose were also not to Cameron’s liking, as he found them too personal, too depressing or too focused on himself. His perspective later changed and he could see how they represented a view of his life from someone looking back over time. They revealed a man who had spent years seeking his identity, had love dand been loved in return and had lived among good people. The book did well, although from the beginning was not the book Cameron thought it would be.
Reading these essays is like visiting with an old friend, someone who is intelligent, compassionate and sometimes a little off the wall. Cameron writes about a wide number of subjects, everything from the fear of downhill skiing to his Volvo which seems to hang on to life despite trying to die. It includes pieces on well-known friends Farley Mowat and Stan Rogers as well as the funny story of Ambrose Pottie, who built a raft with oil tanks, winched his house unto it and towed it across the bay to a new location. He shares the mysteries, secrets and delights of making Cape Breton moonshine, his experience traveling with the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra and his trip to China for a month-long tour with the well-known and much-loved choir The Men of the Deeps. There is a piece on working as a volunteer fireman and one in which he tackles the complex issues of labour unions. Of course no book from a Cape Bretoner would be complete without something on fiddling, so there is one on that too.
This book has both charm and flavor and looking back, Silver Don Cameron said he believed his editor made excellent choices in determining what to include. The pieces give readers a sense of the personal life of a writer and teacher many came to admire.
Cameron's work has been well recognized with numerous awards and he was also honored in 2012 with the Order of Canada.
A fun, entertaining read.
Cameron wrote almost every day of his life and saved everything, so when his publisher Ron Caplan approached him in 1994 about compiling some of his shorter works in a book, Cameron handed him seventy-five boxes filled with everything from radio dramas to commentaries and travel writing. From these, Caplan chose twenty-two pieces he believed reflected some of Cameron’s best writing to include in this book.
Initially Cameron did not like his editor’s choices, in particular the lead off essay about suicide. But Caplan was convinced the piece had something important to say and wanted it included, a decision later reinforced when Cameron received an anonymous letter from a grateful reader who said reading it had saved his life. Some of the other pieces Caplan chose were also not to Cameron’s liking, as he found them too personal, too depressing or too focused on himself. His perspective later changed and he could see how they represented a view of his life from someone looking back over time. They revealed a man who had spent years seeking his identity, had love dand been loved in return and had lived among good people. The book did well, although from the beginning was not the book Cameron thought it would be.
Reading these essays is like visiting with an old friend, someone who is intelligent, compassionate and sometimes a little off the wall. Cameron writes about a wide number of subjects, everything from the fear of downhill skiing to his Volvo which seems to hang on to life despite trying to die. It includes pieces on well-known friends Farley Mowat and Stan Rogers as well as the funny story of Ambrose Pottie, who built a raft with oil tanks, winched his house unto it and towed it across the bay to a new location. He shares the mysteries, secrets and delights of making Cape Breton moonshine, his experience traveling with the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra and his trip to China for a month-long tour with the well-known and much-loved choir The Men of the Deeps. There is a piece on working as a volunteer fireman and one in which he tackles the complex issues of labour unions. Of course no book from a Cape Bretoner would be complete without something on fiddling, so there is one on that too.
This book has both charm and flavor and looking back, Silver Don Cameron said he believed his editor made excellent choices in determining what to include. The pieces give readers a sense of the personal life of a writer and teacher many came to admire.
Cameron's work has been well recognized with numerous awards and he was also honored in 2012 with the Order of Canada.
A fun, entertaining read.
Displaying 1 of 1 review