Anne Cameron Receives George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award
VPL Photo
Acclaimed BC author Anne Cameron is the sixteenth recipient of the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award.
On July 29, Mayor Gregor Robertson will officially proclaim Author Appreciation Day at the same time that Ms. Cameron receives the award at Vancouver Public Library. The award is presented annually to an author who has achieved an outstanding literary career in British Columbia.
In addition to the award presentation and a public reading at the Central Library, Ms. Cameron's name will be added to Writer's Walk on the Library Square north plaza.
"The Writer's Walk of Fame is a popular destination for Library users and visitors to Vancouver," said City Librarian Paul Whitney. "Receiving the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award is a great honour for BC writers who we are delighted to celebrate."
Anne Cameron was born in Nanaimo in 1938 and raised halfway between Chinatown and the First Nations reserve. She has said the only place she found order as a child was in books or in her imagination.
Ms. Cameron began writing theatre scripts and screenplays under the name Cam Hubert. In 1974, she adapted a documentary poem and developed it into a play about racism, Windigo, which was the first presentation of Tillicum Theatre, the first First Nations-based theatre group in Canada.
Her 1979 scripted film Dreamspeaker, directed by Claude Jutra, won seven Canadian Film Awards, including best script. Later published as a novel, Dreamspeaker won the Gibson Award for Literature.
Ms. Cameron remains most-widely known for the first of her two feminist renderings of Coast Salish and Nuu-chah-nulth legends, Daughters of Copper Woman. This was followed by more than 25 books, mainly novels, about so-called working-class life in coastal communities such as Powell River and Nanaimo.
Vancouver Public Library and BC BookWorld initiated a Lifetime Achievement Award for BC authors in 1995 when Library Square was officially opened. Previous recipients include Alice Munro, P.K. Page, Jane Rule and Eric Nicol. For more information and a complete list of Lifetime Achievement Award winners visit the George Woodcock website.
This year's award (2010) presentation and reading will be held July 29 at the Central Library, Alma VanDusen & Peter Kaye rooms at 7 p.m. Admission is free. Seating is limited.
check it out the eNewsletter of the Vancouver Public Library
Anne Cameron
Recipient of 16th George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award
For Immediate Release, July 20, 2010
(Vancouver, B.C.) – Anne Cameron, whose work has primarily portrayed the lives of women in so-called working-class coastal communities and who has created feminist renderings of Coast Salish and Nuu-chah-nulth legends, is the 16th recipient of the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for an outstanding literary career in British Columbia.
“Given that the stories of British Columbia’s people and history are the subject of much of Anne Cameron’s writing, it is very fitting that she is awarded this prestigious award for her outstanding literary career in BC,” said Deputy Mayor Ellen Woodsworth who will proclaim July 29 Author Appreciation Day during the Woodcock Award event.
“Ms. Cameron has published more than 30 books, including novels, stories, poems and legends for adults and children. Her 1981 novel Daughters of Copper Woman has become an underground classic selling over 200,000 copies and in 1979 her film Dreamspeaker, directed by the acclaimed Claude Jutra, won seven Canadian Film Awards including best script. She truly deserves her plaque on the Writer’s Walk among some of BC’s most-accomplished and best-loved writers.”
In 1974, she adapted a documentary poem and developed it into a play about racism, Windigo, the first presentation of Tillicum Theatre, the first First Nations theatre group in Canada.
The City of Vancouver, Vancouver Public Library and the non-profit Pacific BookWorld News Society sponsor the annual George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award.
“The Library is honoured to be a partner in awarding this important literary prize and that the Writers Walk is located at Library Square,” said City Librarian Paul Whitney.
Previous recipients include Alice Munro, P.K. Page, Jane Rule and W.P. Kinsella. For more information and a complete list of Lifetime Achievement Award winners, visit www.georgewoodcock.com.
Vancouver Public Library and BC BookWorld initiated a Lifetime Award for B.C. authors in 1995 at the official opening of the new Library Square complex.
Anne Cameron will receive the award at the Central Library on July 29 at 7 pm in the Alma VanDusen
and Peter Kaye rooms.
Photo Gerry Cameron
Anne Cameron
16th Recipient of the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award
Cameron is one of British Columbia's most original and important writers. She was born in Nanaimo, B.C. on August 20, 1938. She grew up in Nanaimo as the daughter of a coal miner—-until the mines closed. Living halfway between Chinatown and the Indian reserve, she says she found the only place there was real order was in books, or her imagination. As a youngster she kept scribbling notes on toilet paper until she received the gift of a typewriter from her mother at age 14.
In 1979, her scripted film Dreamspeaker, directed by Claude Jutra, won seven Canadian Film Awards, including best script. It's the story of an emotionally disturbed boy who runs away from the hospital and finds refuge with a kindly old Indian (portrayed by George Clutesi) and his mute companion. Subsequently published as a novel, Dreamspeaker won the Gibson Award for Literature.
Cameron's other film credits as a screenwriter include Ticket to Heaven, Bomb Squad, The Tin Flute, A Matter of Choice, Homecoming and Drying Up The Streets. Many of her radio plays have been aired on CBC Radio. Her works for the stage include Cantata: The Story of Sylvia Stark, about a black, Saltspring Island pioneer. It was produced by the Black Actors Workshop in Montreal in 1989. Cameron’s varied output also includes one of Canada’s best-selling books of poetry, Earth Witch, reprinted five times.
Anne Cameron is most widely known for the first of her two feminist renderings of Coast Salish and Nuu-chah-nulth legends, Daughters of Copper Woman, reprinted 13 times. It was followed by Dzelarhons: Mythology of the Northwest Coast. Newly expanded, Daughters of Copper Woman could be the best-selling work of fiction to be published about British Columbia, from within the province, by someone born here.
For almost a decade, Cameron published fiction at almost a novel-per-year pace. Most of her work is published by Harbour Publishing. In the 1970s and 1980s, Cameron angrily identified the patriarchal system of North America as blameworthy for much despair and poverty. Since the 1990s she has concentrated on portraying the so-called working class lives of people in coastal communities such as Powell River or Nanaimo; her perspective is equally passionate but she is less accusatory in her approach.
Most of her stories involve transformation and healing; some of her subject matter has been audacious. In Selkie, she writes, "Selkies or Sealkies or Silkies are capable of leaving their seal skins behind and walking on earth as women or men. They often live with or marry humans, and have children who are both human and not. The women are beautiful, the men have enormous organs, and both female and male have almost insatiable sexual appetites."
Primarily Cameron is concerned with the lives of women who keep the godforsaken world turning, looking after 'gomers and lugans and dock-whallopers', or who assert their independence with non-conformist behaviour; or sometimes both. South of an Unnamed Creek is the story of six women who operate a Klondike gold rush hotel while caring for two children and one another. Three of the women are entertainers who meet in New Westminster, a fourth comrade joins the group in the Chilkoot Pass, and another is a 'celestial' -- a Chinese woman sold into North American prostitution.
Stubby Amberchuk and the Holy Grail is about baseball, poker, women's wrestling and magic. A little logging town becomes a mythical kingdom and a tiny lizard turns into a dragon. Comfortable in the realm of mythology, Cameron followed her two collections of stories based on coastal Indian stories with Tales of the Cairds, a reworking of Celtic legends in her inimitable West Coast style.
Sexual abuse, mistreatment of children, foster families and poverty are prevalent in many of her novels and stories, such as Deejay and Betty, which reviewer Angela Hryniuk commended as 'piercingly blunt', and a short story collection entitled Bright's Crossing in which eleven women provide various perspectives of the same Vancouver Island town. In the novel Sarah’s Children, after Sarah Carson suffers a stroke, her children and grandchildren end up examining the nature of family while Sarah slowly recovers. Similarly, in Hardscratch Row six grown-up siblings grapple with the meaning of family, but Cameron adds a character known as the 'squeyanx'; part-trickster, part-ghost, part-Greek chorus, it's visible only to those who want to see.
Escape to Beulah concerns the combined efforts of women to escape from a merciless plantation boss in the pre-Civil War American South. Long before the movie Thelma and Louise became popular, Anne Cameron wrote her cowgirl buddy western The Journey in which 14-year-old Anne, abused by her uncle, sets off on her own and teams up with Sarah, a prostitute who has been tarred and feathered by a vigilante killer and his supporters. The pair ride off into the sunset in the late 1800s, defending themselves as necessary.
The heroine of Anne Cameron’s Dahlia Cassidy hasn’t been lucky in picking the fathers of her kids. “For years she clung to the hope that she’d just been fishing in the wrong bay and if she moved around often enough, sooner or later, with or without the help of God and the angels, she’d happen upon a man who had more in mind than some friction.” As a follow-up to Family Resemblances, this satire on relationship is another stirring and funny portrait of a female survivor who earns her independence in a small town on Vancouver Island.
In terms of her coastal subject matter, Cameron has often expressed some affinity for Vancouver Island novelist Jack Hodgins, whose earlier work incorporates fantastical elements and humour, but their manners are worlds apart. Cameron's closest equivalents in Canadian fiction are Lynn Coady for Cape Breton Island and David Adams Richards for New Brunswick, but Cameron remains far less fashionable in Ontario literary circles. One suspects there lingers a mystified and intimidated prejudice against any woman who swears like a trooper.
Her readership is international, her work remains uncompromising. For many years Anne Cameron and her partner lived near Powell River, B.C. on a 30-acre farm (with beef cattle, 153 rabbits, 103 chickens, 2 cats, 2 turtles, a horse, a donkey, a dog and various combinations of children). She now lives as a very active grandmother in Tahsis.
Photo ABC Bookworld
Queer writer wins George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award
‘Being queer colours every minute of every day’
Queer writer Anne Cameron became the 16th recipient of the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her outstanding contribution to Canadian literature.
"I feel totally intimidated," Cameron, 71, told Xtra before receiving her award on July 29. "I feel as though now what I have to do is start writing at top speed, working overtime, just to deserve this award," Cameron said as she joined the list of Woodcock award-winning BC writers, including Alice Munro, WP Kinsella, Jack Hodgins and Jane Rule.
Cameron admits to being an avid reader from an early age. "It [reading] was a safe place to go," she says. "[Then] when I started writing it was to change the endings of the books," she continues, adding that common fairy-tale endings just weren't realistic for a working class, self-professed "salmon belly" who grew up on Vancouver Island, where she still lives.
During her professional 40-year writing career, Cameron has published more than 30 books, including novels, children's stories, poems, legends and screenplays.
Her first publicly acknowledged work, Windigo (1974), was originally a poem, which she adapted into a screenplay. Later she would write the film Dreamspeaker (1979), which won more than 200,000 copies.
Cameron's works are characteristically British Columbian and ingrained with First Nations culture, feminism, queer sexuality and the everyday working class.
"I didn't expect I would ever get any kind of award because my work is so political," Cameron says. "It is political in the sense that the personal is political. There are queers all through my books, and why not?" she asks. "Their being queer is not why they are in my stories. It's just part of who they are," she explains "There are queers throughout every neighbourhood; being queer colours every minute of every day. That's who I am," she asserts.
"Anne Cameron is a very powerful character in her own right," says lesbian Vancouver city councillor Ellen Woodsworth, who presented the Woodcock award to Cameron as she declared July 29 Author
Appreciation Day.
"Her books are cutting edge," adds Alan Twigg, founder of BC BookWorld magazine and founder of the Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award.
"When we started the award 15 years ago, it was for people like Anne Cameron who are highly original and deeply British Columbian," he elaborates. Anne is a "strong voice for the emancipation of women, regardless of their sexual preference."
The city of Vancouver, the Vancouver Public Library and the non-profit Pacific BookWorld News Society sponsored the award ceremony.
Along with a cash prize of $3,000, Cameron's name will be inscribed on a plaque and forever immortalized on the Writers Walk at Vancouver's Library Square.
Shauna Lewis / Vancouver / Friday, August 27, 2010
Anne Cameron (1938-)
"Back in Toronto they make jokes like, 'The continent slopes to the west and all the nuts roll to the West Coast'. That's a crock. We know the nuts roll as far as the Rocky Mountains. That's why we put them there. Only the crafty ones make it through to the other side." -- Anne Cameron
QUICK REFERENCE ENTRY:
If there’s one work of identifiably British Columbian fiction that will outlast all others for a century, it could well be Anne Cameron’s audacious Daughters of Copper Woman (1981), reprinted thirteen times. It has long been the bestselling work of fiction to be written and published in B.C. In recent decades, most fiction from B.C. writers is published in the Prairie provinces or Ontario.
In 1979, her film Dreamspeaker, directed by Claude Jutra, won seven Canadian Film Awards, including best script. It is the story of an emotionally disturbed boy who runs away from hospital and finds refuge with a First Nations elder, portrayed by George Clutesi, and his mute companion. Published as a novel that same year, Dreamspeaker won the Gibson Award for Literature.
Cameron’s other credits as a screenwriter include Ticket to Heaven, The Tin Flute and Drying up the Streets, but she remains most widely known for the first of her two feminist renderings of Coast Salish and Nuu-chah-nulth legends, Daughters of Copper Woman. More than 20 books have followed, mainly novels about so-called working- class life in coastal communities such as Powell River or Nanaimo. Most of her stories involve transformation and healing.
Cameron has been primarily concerned with the lives of women who keep the world turning, or dare to assert their independence with non-conformist behaviour. Long before the movie Thelma and Louise, Cameron wrote her cowgirl buddy western The Journey in which 14-year-old Anne, abused by her uncle, sets off on her own and teams up with Sarah, a prostitute who has been tarred and feathered by a vigilante killer and his supporters. The pair ride off into the sunset in the late nineteeth century, defending themselves as necessary.
For many years Anne Cameron and her partner lived near Powell River on a 30-acre farm. An exceedingly funny social critic, she now lives alone in Tahsis, minding her grandchildren, estranged from, and overlooked by, literary tastemakers. One suspects there lingers a mystified prejudice against any woman who swears openly. Her readership is international, her work remains uncompromising.
In 2010, Cameron received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for B.C. literature.
Photo Gerry Cameron
Anne Cameron is set to receive the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award on July 29.
B.C. fiction writer and poet Anne Cameron is the recipient of this year’s George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award.
Cameron, 71, is set to receive the $3,000 literary prize during a ceremony at the Vancouver Public Library central branch on July 29 at 7 p.m.
“Given that the stories of British Columbia’s people and history are the subject of much of Anne Cameron’s writing, it is very fitting that she is awarded this prestigious award for her outstanding literary career in B.C.,” deputy mayor Ellen Woodsworth says in a news release.
Born in Nanaimo, Cameron has more than 30 published books to her name. Her acclaimed novel Daughters of Copper Woman has sold more than 200,000 copies since publication in 1981.
Cameron’s achievements will also be recognized with a commemorative plaque to be included in the Writers Walk at the library building on Georgia Street.
Since 1995, the award has been handed out to 15 B.C. authors. Past winners include Joy Kogawa, W.P. Kinsella, Alice Munro, and Jane Rule.
The award is sponsored by the City of Vancouver, the Vancouver Public Library, and the Pacific BookWorld News Society.
By Stephen Thomson, July 21, 2010
Peter A Robson photo, Harbour Publishing
