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Silver Donald Cameron        

Award-winning Writer, Environmentalist, Sailor, Journalist and Author

Sailing away to tropic islands - in his own sailboat. Broadcasting to audiences of millions on radio and TV. Joining a management team to transform a university. Singing his way through Mao's China with a choir of coal miners. Writing hundreds of articles, dozens of plays and scripts, and 16 best-selling books - including The Living Beach, his award-winning book on shorelines.

"A beach isn't a place, it's a process," explains Silver Donald Cameron. "A beach is geological change, happening second-by-second, right before your eyes. And constant change within a stable process - that's what life is.

"So if you're truly alive, if you're paying attention to the way the world continuously changes, then you've got to be constantly re-inventing yourself. We spend our lives dancing with change."

Producing and narrating scores of documentaries in audio and video. Leading the redevelopment of a community flattened by the codfish collapse. Writing columns for major national and regional newspapers. Starting a unique community television station from scratch. Picking up his hammer and saw to restore a series of elegant heritage homes. Receiving all kinds of awards and honours, including two honorary doctorates. And recently, devoting his passionate and eloquent voice increasingly to the environmental crisis.

"I've been writing about the environment since 1968," says Cameron. "I've written column after column on environmental issues. I was with Greenpeace on the ice floes at the seal hunt in 1976. In 1980, I was questioning atomic scientists in Chalk River about the sustainability of nuclear power. I've been writing about the East Coast fishery for as long as I can remember. And the issues have become steadily more urgent.

"Environmental responsibility isn't optional any more. We have to transform the way we live in the world - or we'll perish.

"Well, before we can transform the way we live, we have to transform the way we think, the way we see, the way we understand. And that's what interests me most these days - the brilliant minds, the dazzling ideas involved in greening our minds, so that we can move forward with greening our lives."

Silver Donald Cameron today writes a weekly column for the Halifax Sunday Herald, undertakes projects for corporate and government clients, sails the waters of Nova Scotia in a boat he built himself, and is working on a new book.

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