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Following his conscience

Freed from formats and corporate rules, Silver Donald Cameron can pursue his passion: making a difference.

The medium has changed but Silver Donald Cameron’s message has been the same since he began in journalism four decades ago. “[It] really goes back to the new journalism of the 1960s and the sense that the pretense of objectivity is a sham,” he says. “Nobody is truly objective. The decision to print one story and not another is the result of somebody’s personal choice… It’s important for people to know where you’re coming from, to know what decisions you’re making and why you’re making them.”

For Cameron, that’s meant a commitment to two intertwined causes: the environment and social justice. “I’ve been writing about the environment off and on since the 1960s but it’s become more and more of a focus as the years have gone by,” he says. “We’ve all learned to look a little differently about what we’re doing to nature… We’re not doing well by the next generation. That’s what concerns me about it—the equity between generations. I have no right to be using up what my grandchildren are entitled to enjoy as well.”

Stephen Kimber, an author and journalism professor at the University of King’s College in Halifax, was a student at the start of his writing career when he first encountered Cameron, then editor of a magazine called The Mysterious East. Looking back, he’s struck by the unswerving focus Cameron has demonstrated through 16 books, hundreds of newspaper columns and magazine articles and his new web project, the Green Interview. “He’s not a left-winger,” Kimber says. “He’s a progressive. His views aren’t radical but they’re honest and consistent. Silver Donald Cameron is that kind of person.”

Beginning with his first book, The Education of Everett Richardson (1977), about striking fishermen, and continuing to The Living Beach in 1998, a landmark environmental book, Cameron has championed the causes that are dear to him. Recently, however, he found himself in the unusual position of being at the centre of the story, rather than being the guy telling it.

Cameron had written a column in the Herald from 1998 onward, but earlier this year, it abruptly ended when management required freelance writers to sign a new agreement giving the publisher wider control over their work for no additional compensation. “Don really became the face of that,” Kimber recalls. “The writers were on the side of the angels but they were bound to lose.”

After a very public debate with some of its longest-serving columnists, the Herald fired the refuseniks, replacing them with people who would sign the agreement. “Every gig comes to an end but that’s not the way I would have chosen to end it,” Cameron says. “And there’s a certain amount of lightning that I drew down on myself as a result of that. But it seemed like I was the guy wired up in the position to do that.”

It was a long, tiring dispute, with a “sour and inconsequential ending” for Cameron. Yet there is one major benefit: he’s now free to devote himself solely to the Green Interview. The subscription website features Cameron in long thoughtful interviews (“intense, searching conversations of an hour or more”) about the environment and the challenges facing earth today. Interviewees include authors Farley Mowat and Jeff Rubin, Gaia theory founder James Lovelock, politician Elizabeth May, scientist Jane Goodall and Jigme Yoser Thinley, prime minister of Bhutan.

It’s an innovative new form of journalism from a Halifax master of the craft. “He’s a role model even for contemporary stuff,” says Kimber. “With The Green Interview, he’s found a niche that makes sense. He’s been through a lot of change, and is finding a practical way do this.”

In the following interview, Cameron discusses his new project, his split with the Herald and Halifax’s government.

Why have you thrown so much of your energy into the Green Interview?
I’ve been writing about the environment off and on since the 1960s but it’s become more and more of a focus as the years have gone by, partly because it’s become more and more of a focus in our culture. We’ve all learned to look a little differently about what we’re doing to nature. I’ve been really noticing this downward curve in the quality of the environment… But you look around and say ‘What can I do?’ I’m not a politician, I’m not a scientist… But what I am is a good broker of ideas. And the Green Interview is the perfect vehicle for that. People have these great ideas but never have the opportunity to bring them forward. But we can get them to speak informally, but at length. It’s something I’m qualified to do and maybe that’s the best contribution I can make.

Has the medium been much of an adjustment?
It’s actually been a liberation. I did a lot of television work years back… Television and interviewing are familiar territory. Making sense of complex subjects is the sort of thing I’ve done a lot of. The liberation is that I can talk to them for as long as it makes sense. If I go 55 minutes, that’s terrific. If I go an hour and a half, that’s great. There are no constraints like that. And the audience can get it any time, day or night, in any place. Now the piece can be what it wants to be. It doesn’t have to be what the medium says it must be.

Who is on your Green Interview wish list?
I’ve got a seven-page list. In two columns [laughs] … The only person who has said no thus far is Prince Charles and I didn’t take that as final.

How is the Green Interview’s reception comparing to what you expected?
Libraries have been subscribing a lot, which has been a nice surprise, but I’m also surprised at the slower rate of individual subscriptions. They’re coming along but not at the rate I would like. It seems to be a fruitful idea—it has ideas of its own. New opportunities seem to be springing up all the time. It’s a process of discovery that started with a very simple idea. There are all kinds of ramifications I hadn’t imagined.

What else are you focusing on these days?
I’ve put other projects more or less on hold for the time being because most of the other things I’m working on are at least tangentially related to the Green Interview. We’ve been doing this in a very opportunistic kind of way. Jane Goodall comes to Halifax, we interview Jane Goodall. Had she not come to Halifax, we wouldn’t have been able to interview her. I’d like to have it to a point where we can make more choices.

Do you miss your Herald column?
The downside is, I keep thinking to myself ‘Oh, there’s a good column. Here’s somebody I should write about. Here’s something it would be nice to feature.’ I’ve been on the alert for those things for a lot of years. So I was sort of accustomed to that and then I realize that I can’t do anything for this cause or person. I miss it in that way. I don’t miss it in terms of every Wednesday having a deadline…

That was a long relationship you had with the newspaper and its readers. It still seems like people are missing you and your column.
That’s nice to hear but I suspect it will fade away fairly quickly. Peter Gzowski said after he gave up his television show that people on the street would say ‘Didn’t you used to be Peter Gzowski?’ [Laughs] But yeah, that relationship with readers—that’s the thing I really do miss.

No matter where you’re writing, there are these themes that keep emerging in your work—the environment and the natural world. Is that by deliberate design?
A big piece of it is it really is who I am. It’s related to character. The first trade book I did was The Education of Everett Richardson, which I’m very proud of, about the Canso Strait fishermen’s strike [in 1970–71]. It was a social-justice battle and obviously a political battle. If you have that sense that you’re not willing to stand by and see unfairness, then that’s obviously going to continue. Another theme in that, which comes out really strongly in the Green Interview, is that we can’t do these things alone. You cannot be sustainable by yourself. You need others… You need infrastructure that allows you to be free. You can’t do it by yourself. And that really is the same lesson that’s way back there in Everett Richardson: you cannot achieve a fair deal by yourself. It was the same with the Herald in a curious way, only the Herald used me as Everett Richardson.

You’ve always been open with readers about how you feel on these things, so at the risk of sounding like I’m baiting you: how do you feel about the political direction Canada has taken?
I’ve been very concerned about this government because its party is a take-no-prisoners party that treats politics almost as a war. Its objective seems to be the extermination of its political opponents. There is no sense that its opponents represent a legitimate point of view, that times change and governments change. I think the Conservative hope now is that there will never be a change in government. They’re transforming the country, in a way in which 65 per cent of Canadians do not approve, but in a way that Conservatives believe to be right and proper. That alarms me, that absolutist approach to politics. It disturbed me in the ’60s and ’70s when it was coming from the left and it disturbs me now coming from the right.

Municipal politics touch on a lot of the issues that matter to you. What do you think of Halifax’s performance in that regard?
I get the sense that there’s kind of a sleepiness about this Council, a gridlock between various parts of the municipality. The city has problems and those are city problems… I have a sense that most of the city’s councillors see these issues in a rather parochial kind of way. If you’re a rural councillor, you’re interested in protecting yourself against the big, bad city. If you’re a city councillor, you really don’t think that the problems of Musquodoboit Harbour matter. There’s no overall sense of the city. I don’t know what can be done about that, with the way our city is now set up… I can see a strong case for saying Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford should be amalgamated for some distance out around the Harbour, like a horseshoe, with a separate municipality for the other areas.

Do you feel Halifax is taking enough of a broad look at the future?
I’m asking myself whether I want to say what I really think [Laughs] … What the hell—I’m not sure HRM as a structure lends itself very readily to vision. That would be one of the kind things to say. One of the unkind things to say would be that I have never seen a government as bumbling, aimless and unfocused as this one [the current HRM Council]… Something came across my desk the other day about the free-trade agreement with the European Union, which will apparently make it impossible for municipalities to have local preferences in purchasing. So you could have the city sourcing a contract and they have to open it up to contractors from the Czech Republic or wherever. Is Council concerned about this? Does Council know about this? Other councils do. Councils across the country are calling up the federal government and saying ‘Look! Pay attention to this! This is going to gut municipal and provincial governments and take a huge amount of power away.’ And our Council is talking about cats.

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