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WIND, WHALES AND WHISKY. A Cape Breton Voyage

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Book by Cameron, Silver Donald

Paperback

Published January 1, 1991

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About the author

Silver Donald Cameron

22 books25 followers
One 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.

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5 stars
7 (35%)
4 stars
9 (45%)
3 stars
3 (15%)
2 stars
1 (5%)
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
5 reviews
January 26, 2020
This was my first Silver Donald Cameron book, but it won't be my last (I just started Sailing Away from Winter). Although I'm only a wannabe sailor and didn't understand the sailing techniques, it's about so much more. The author himself, at the end of the voyage, describes the book he's about to write, and I think it says it all: "It's not a travel book.... It's partly a treatise on values in the guise of a seaborne tour of Cape Breton. It's partly a portrait of a community. It has elements of a book about nature. There's a lot of history in it. It's an encounter with many different people and viewpoints." I was sad to finish the book because it was so well written, entertaining and informative. It's a keeper for me, even with my limited space.
202 reviews3 followers
December 6, 2024
A very interesting book, but a little heavy on the history of Cape Breton and the histories of the people, and heavy on the science of sailing.
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83 reviews16 followers
November 29, 2010
Contains possibly the most hilarious chapter on the making of moonshine ever written.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews