Sterling Silver: Rants, Raves and Revelations

David E. Kemp is chair of the Drama Department at Queen’s University
and the author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

Sterling Silver is a selection from more than 25 years of Silver Donald
Cameron’s writing. Editor Ronald Caplan was given access to some 75
boxes of Cameron’s work, which was stored in basements and attics.
Readers couldn’t have asked for a better collection. Cameron’s work
has a remarkably friendly quality about it. He speaks directly to his
reader (without the intrusion of artifice) about the experiences of his
life and the whole range of characters he has encountered. He also talks
about suicide, death, love, and fear, as well as about the sense of
community and craftsmanship to which he is obviously deeply committed.
Cameron celebrates lovers and rebels, scavengers and survivors, artists
and volunteers, vividly bringing them to life. On a first reading one is
struck by the fact the Cameron talks a lot about death/suicide,
funerals, and corpses, but on reflection one realizes that he speaks too
of love—the love of a man and a woman, the love of a parent and a
child, and the love of place.

What Caplan has managed to do is give the book an autobiographical
slant, so that we learn as much about Silver Donald Cameron as we do
about the incidents and characters he describes. These intensely
personal and revealing tales are those of a survivor, who writes with a
survivor’s instinct about a Canada that was, is, and could be.