Activist and Journalist Silver Donald Cameron awarded Order of Canada

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

Canada: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…It could only in happen in Nova Scotia – on PEI activists are not allowed to be journalists says Press Gallery of the PEI Legislature

The Halifax Chronicle Herald reports that 75-year-old Silver Donald Cameron has been awarded the Order of Canada.

While young journalism students with activism in their hearts may take comfort in the award to Cameron, they should take heed that on Prince Edward Island their careers are at risk. The PEI press corp take activism as a sign of treason to their club. Activists are unworthy of the journalism profession on Prince Edward Island.

“Silver Donald Cameron, 75, a Halifax writer and environmentalist, is being inducted “for his contributions as a journalist, writer, educator, consultant and dedicated community activist,” writes the Halifax Herald. 

“There’s something extremely gratifying, if you have this kind of mixed bag of a career that I’ve had, to get to the latter part of your life and to feel that your fellow citizens don’t think that your life was entirely wasted,” he told the Chronicle Herald.

To Silver Donald, I say congratulations and walk softly in Lilliput.

Journalist and Activist

I began my journalism career 49 years ago, working at the same newspaper as Silver Donald and prided myself on taking an activist stand on many issues including music, technology and disability rights. My editors approved as well and I learned that controversial writing that pushes the boundaries got readers.

“Cameron began in journalism over four decades ago and has written 16 books. Along the way, he gradually became more and more interested in environmental causes. He often took up this charge in columns for The Chronicle Herald.”

“It seemed to me there was a need for some real intellectual recasting of the discussion,” Cameron told the Herald. “If we don’t do something like that, we’re going to go down making the same damn mistakes that have brought us to the difficulties in which we find ourselves now.”

The President of the Press Gallery of PEI Legislature conducted a show trial in 2009 attempting to humiliate me for pretty much the same form of journalism. “Mr. Pate is not a journalist”, said the President who works at the Charlottetown Guardian.

On PEI journalists take liberties with the English language by mixing the words lobbyist and activist. “I may also point out Mr. Pate is an active lobbyist,” said the Press Gallery  President at the Pate show-trial. “He is a lobbyist he lobbies regularly on behalf of disability alert and other groups.”

It is true that I am an activist for disability rights and a volunteer founder of Disability Alert but I am not a lobbyist, which means someone paid to lobby on the behalf of someone else. Mere semantics to the PEI Press Gallery where words take on new meanings during their one and only purge of a member.

In the interests of full disclosure, I am an activist for better music, the blues, singer songwriters, opera and I will admit a thirty year love affair with computers. None of these would cast me as a lobbyist except in the minds of the PEI Press Gallery.

Silver Donald Cameron is a blogger too

“Cameron now runs a website called the Green Interview, where he conducts long interviews with prominent voices in the environmental movement around the world,”

Using the word “website” is a polite way they have in Nova Scotia for describing filthy bloggers on PEI.

The Press Gallery reach back to the Bible for their repudiation of bloggers “The executive does believe there is a place for bloggers in the press gallery because there is no room in the inn,” the Press Gallery President told the Press Gallery at the show trial.

“Bloggers, Off with their heads” wrote the Managing Editor of the Guardian in an October 24th, 2009 Editorial as a follow-up the show trial.

So let this be a warning to Silver Donald Cameron and other journalists who actively blog or blog as activists, do not come to Prince Edward Island unless it is just for beach and lobsters. Practicing any form of modern journalism can be dangerous to your career.

By Stephen Pate, NJN Network

See Media Wrong in Pate-Gate

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