Anne Cameron


Anne Cameron is a Canadian novelist, poet, screenwriter, short story and children's book writer.
She legally changed her name from her birth name, Barbara Cameron, to Cam Hubert and later changed her name from Cam Hubert to Anne Cameron. She has written under these names.
Much of her work is inspired by Northwest Coast First Nations' mythology and culture and centered women as characters asserting non-conformist independence. Cameron is a feminist and has been influential in bringing the injustices of patriarchal and colonial systems under scrutiny in her body of work.

Personal

Anne Cameron is the daughter of Annie Cameron and Matthew Angus Cameron. Cameron has described her family as "hard-working, dirt poor," and highlights the peace and order she found in reading books as a child. She began writing at a young age, "scribbling notes on toilet paper," and attended high school in Nanaimo, British Columbia. At fourteen her mother gifted her a typewriter "even though she could not afford it." Cameron did not complete high school, and resisted certain subjects like home economics, preferring instead to spend time in the library.
She has lived briefly in Ontario, and in the mainland Vancouver area, but has spent most of her life on Vancouver Island. She married and divorced, and parented 5 children, Alex Hubert, Erin Hubert, Pierre Hubert, Marianne Hubert Jones, and Tara Hubert Miller. Lacking the formal school credits to attend university, and later declined admission by Simon Fraser University as a mature student applicant, Cameron developed her writing through her own ingenuity and collaborative projects with friends. She especially credits time spent listening to storytellers; in particular she references Welsh coal-mining women and North English women storytellers, Chinese elder and Indigenous elder storytellers.

Writing

She includes details about the First Nations storytellers whose stories are reflected in her books in the foreword. She wrote for the Indian Voice in Vancouver and engaged her writing as a form of activism, winning a centennial play-writing contest for Windigo, a stage adaptation of a documentary poem about racism. One outcome of winning the contest was that the play toured the province and was performed by First Nations inmates in Matsqui Penitentiary, Abbortsford, British Columbia. This experience led her to co-found the Tillicurn Theatre in 1974, a First Nations theatre group formed locally that toured British Columbia and performed "dramatizations of legends and a theatre piece based on the death of Fred Quilt, a Chilcotin man who died of ruptured guts after an encounter with two RCMP on a back road at night." In an interview with Alan Twigg, referring to this work, she explains that "It started out political. It has become very personal."
Among other jobs, she worked as a student psychiatric nurse, as a medical assistant with the Royal Canadian Air Force, an Instructor in creative writing at Malaspina College, Powell River, and writer in residence at Simon Fraser University, the institution that had declined her admission as a mature university student years earlier on the basis of insufficient high school credits. Some screenplays were written under her name at the time, Cam Hubert; Cameron later added novels and children's books to her body of work.
Her bestselling Daughters of Copper Woman, first printed by the Vancouver feminist collective Press Gang Publishers, is regarded as "a groundbreaking bestseller and women's studies staple" has been reprinted thirteen times. Writing an academic article about Cameron's work, Christine St. Peter contacted Press Gang Publishers and was told that "women from all over the world write to describe how reading Daughters of Copper Woman has changed their lives".
Cameron's writing focuses on British Columbia First Nations lives, mainly in coastal communities such as Powell River and Nanaimo. Her characters explore spirituality, resilience, sexuality, resistance, and healing, and encounter violence, oppression, misogyny, and poverty. Many stories reflect specific Indigenous cultures and myths, and offer a critical feminist, anti-colonial narrative that cherishes creation stories and oral histories. The "destructive impact of white culture on the Indian population, particularly on the cultural position of women" is powerfully communicated in Daughters of Copper Woman, alongside "women's strength, courage, sisterhood, and transmission of knowledge for survival considered basic to the well-being of their society." In an interview with Alan Twigg, owner and publisher of the newspaper, B.C. BookWorld, Cameron explained "We identify with British Columbia much more than we identify as Canadians". The royalties from her book sales have supported causes that center Indigenous and First Nations' priorities.
Cameron published 'A Short Story' in the 1981 'Lesbiantics' issue of Fireweed, a quarterly feminist publication, and has been recognised for foregrounding "the pleasure of women living together and the humour, for example, of a lesbian couple nailing the sign 'Women' over their outhouse". Cameron has said of the characters in her stories, “Their being queer is not why they are in my stories. It's just part of who they are.” She is celebrated as a queer writer, identifies as lesbian, and currently lives in Tahsis, British Columbia with her partner.
In 2010 she was awarded the 16th annual George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award, commemorated by the installation of a plaque with her name in the Writers’ Walk at the Vancouver Public Library on Georgia Street in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Works

Film