By Dalton Campbell
In 2008, broadcaster and author Silver Donald Cameron and videographer Chris Beckett started The Green Interview. They would go on to record a series of more than a hundred interviews and create six documentaries on sustainability, climate change and other environmental issues.
Silver Donald Cameron died in June 2020, and the recordings and research files of The Green Interview were donated to Library and Archives Canada in 2023. The transcripts have been digitized and will be available to the public through the LAC catalogue.
Interviewees included Jane Goodall, Chris Turner, Robert Bateman, David Suzuki, Margaret Atwood, Sarika Cullis-Suzuki, James Lovelock, and Indigenous leaders such as Edmund Metatawabin, Todd Labrador, Albert Marshall and John Borrows, among others.
Robert Bateman (pictured here in 1979) spoke to The Green Interview in 2010. National Postal Museum fonds. Library and Archives Canada/Post Office Department fonds/e001217390. Credit: Norm Lightfoot.
The final interview was with Silver Donald Cameron. Although it is the last interview, it is an excellent introduction to the series: Cameron discusses their thinking behind the series, how they made the interviews and what they learned throughout the series itself.
He said that they wanted the interviews to show how one person with an idea can make a difference and the wide range of solutions to environmental problems. He also said that most interviewees welcomed the chance to sit for a long-form interview, because when someone has dedicated years to a project, they are happy to discuss it at length.
Cameron stated that one of the most important things he learned through doing The Green Interview was how people were using the legal system and the courts to solve environmental problems. In 2012, he spoke with David Boyd, “who literally wrote the book on environmental rights.” Cameron said that he realized that this was “the key. […] If we had the right as individual Canadians to go to court and challenge anybody who was infringing on our environmental rights […] [then someone] can say, ‘I can prove this is infringing on my right to healthy environment and therefore you’ve got to stop it.’”
Citing Tony Oposa, Cameron said that with the courts, you tell a story using legal procedure and evidence. If you are unhappy with the decision, you can often appeal and tell the story again. In one sense, Donald Cameron says that even if you lose, you have won because you have been able to tell the story in a formal setting; the story is part of the public record and someone else can build on that.
Cameron said he realized that the law is “the tool that could apply to almost any environmental issue.” Many of the interviews discuss using the legal system to stop pollution in Aamjiwnaang First Nation (near Sarnia, Ontario) and in Buenos Aires, Argentina; to protect the Amazon; to enforce policies to fight climate change; to provide legal defence for environmentalists; to add environmental rights to the constitution; to explore the legal consequences of rising sea levels for island nations that may disappear; and so on. Cameron said that they used these interviews as inspiration and raw material for the book “Warrior Lawyers” and their documentary “Green Rights.”
First-day cover of a 12-cent Canadian stamp (1978) featuring a painting of the peregrine falcon. The painting is by Robert Bateman, who spoke with The Green Interview in 2010. Canada Post Corporation philatelic collection. Library and Archives Canada/Post Office Department fonds/e002071274.
The law and legal system are not the only themes explored in The Green Interview. In a brief blog post, it is not possible to discuss all of the themes: climate change and climate change denial; sustainable business; clearcutting of forests; scientists who study birds and migration patterns, fish populations and the health of oceans; Indigenous leaders who teach traditional knowledge; writers who stress hope and artists who try to capture the beauty of natural world; among many other subjects.
In the introduction to the final interview, Chris Beckett said that their interviewees made them “think about environmental solutions in new and innovative ways.” He also said, “Don and I both hoped that The Green Interview would still be a useful resource and educational tool long after we’re gone.” The recordings, transcripts and research files are now part of the LAC permanent collection. The recordings are being processed and will be made available to the public. In the meantime, the videos are available through The Green Interview website and YouTube channel. The transcripts are available through LAC collection search.
Further research:
The Green Interview fonds (MIKAN 5811850)
- Interviews (MIKAN 5811851)
Archival fonds with environmental focus
- Rosalie Bertell fonds (MIKAN 107192)
- James P. Bruce fonds (MIKAN 5665879)
- James MacNeill fonds (MIKAN 5673182)
- Greenpeace Canada fonds (MIKAN 163472)
- Sierra Club of Canada fonds (MIKAN 185222)
- Department of Environment fonds (MIKAN 358)
- National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (MIKAN 3634450)
Books by Silver Donald Cameron
- The living beach: life, death and politics where the land meets the sea (OCLC 957581431)
- The education of Everett Richardson: the Nova Scotia fishermen’s strike, 1970-71 (OCLC 855272616)
- Getting wisdom: the transformative power of community service-learning (OCLC 662578649)
- Ideas, energy, ambition, dreams: stories of community-driven economic initiatives from across Canada (OCLC 50022657)
- Wind, whales, and whiskey: a Cape Breton voyage (OCLC 28799807)
Dalton Campbell is an archivist in the Science, Environment and Economy section of the Private Archives Division at Library and Archives Canada.
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