Cameron, Bill 1943–

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Cameron, Bill 1943–

PERSONAL: Born January 23, 1943, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; son of William Maxwell and Lorna Isobel (Bingham) Cameron; married Cheryl Hawkes, December 20, 1980; children: Patrick, Rachel, Nicholas.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Random House Canada, One Toronto St., Unit 300, Toronto, Ontario M5C 2V6 Canada.

CAREER: Journalist, broadcaster, and filmmaker. Toronto Star, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, columnist, 1968–72; Maclean's Toronto, associate editor, 1972–74; Global TV News, Toronto, anchor, 1974–79; City-TV, Toronto, anchor, writer, commentator, 1979–82; Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Toronto, journalist and interviewer for The Journal, 1982–93, anchor for CBC Evening News, 1993–95, and CBC Morning News, 1995–98. Ryerson Polytechnic Institute, instructor in journalism.

AWARDS, HONORS: Gemini award.

WRITINGS:

Cat's Crossing (novel), Random House Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2003.

Author of The Real Poverty Report 1970, and Kim Campbell through the Looking Glass, National Film Board, 2000. Contributor to periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS: Bill Cameron is a well-known Canadian broadcaster and journalist whose debut novel, Cat's Crossing, is a postmodern tale about a black cat. Cameron said in an article for Read that he "was delighted at first with the great liberty of fiction: you can simply make the stuff up. Then I discovered the old laws protected my characters. I had to treat them fairly, not try to force them into some box canyon for my own purposes."

In the novel, a cat named Jones escapes from the suburban home of his wealthy owner, François Will, and heads for the city. In order to appease his grief-stricken trophy wife, the businessman offers a reward of two million dollars for the return of their pet. This huge reward attracts a large cast of characters, including Sergeant Judd, a troubled cop, Judd's informant, a former stripper who is fooling around with a dentistry professor, and Judd's senile aunt, who is wasting the money—which Judd sees as his children's disappearing inheritance—on a house full of stray cats. Keeping track of the cat hunt is Ivan Teuti, a self-centered television reporter.

In reviewing Cat's Crossing for Eye online, Alex Bozikovic wrote that Cameron "paints on a thin layer of mythic vagueness, so that Toronto is 'a city built on a lake at the convergence of two rivers.' It's a place of hapless pickpockets and drunken pick-ups, surrounded by a suburban paradise of sterile wealth."

Globe & Mail reviewer Alex Pugsley wrote that "before the book is over, the wife of the millionaire is AWOL, a dirty cop is torching his aunt, bacterial water has turned dogs into packs of insatiable killers, overflowing sewage is staining the sides of office buildings, not to mention the angry mobs, labor troubles, riots, car crashes and a mad dentist bent on animal liberation. Then there is a love story. The fantasia becomes a nightmare."