Fred Cameron was at Camosun College from 2017 to 2022, but it was a long road for him to get here. Cameron put his education to work quickly when COVID turned his part-time job at SOLID, intended to give him money for coffee at school, into a full-time career. And now he’s using his education and lived experience to help others, the way he once needed help himself.
Cameron—who was also the Nexus features writer and a contributing writer while at Camosun—is originally from Kamloops. Having separated parents, he went back and forth between Kamloops and Edmonton, where he mainly grew up, eventually landing in Victoria.
“I moved from Edmonton to Victoria to move into a recovery facility,” says Cameron. “I was 35, and I was 37 when I came to Camosun. So, I had just left, I spent nearly two years in a facility.”
When Cameron moved out of the recovery facility he began working in the facility as a weekend support worker. In addition, Cameron was volunteering and doing research work at UVic for the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research.
“I was a research assistant and doing volunteer work around the community,” he says. “When I started writing with the goal of getting back into school, I started to write at a drop-in journalling group in a homeless shelter; that was where that began. So, I was living in supportive housing, and I needed a change of scenery and direction. We’ve got to start somewhere… There was something called University 101 up at UVic. It’s a course for people with barriers to accessing education.”
University 101, Cameron explains, is a free program offered to people from the homeless community, people with physical or mental disabilities, or the elderly.
“It’s run by professors, and they choose their own material,” says Cameron. “They’re teaching university level, just short modules, about whatever they’re most passionate about. So, it’s a wonderful program. And for me, I realized doing that, that I argued too much, so I was not very teachable as I was not writing about the material, I would poke holes in or point out where I would see things differently. And I realized doing that, that had I gone to school, it probably wouldn’t have gone well. So that’s where I was in my recovery and then my life. I almost had to rebuild everything from the ground up.”
Cameron says that he wouldn’t have gone back to school if he didn’t have a push from others in the community (“I had a lot of help,” he says). His involvement in the community extended to helping on political campaigns for three years in a row as well as helping with the Victoria Film Festival.
“I pretty much treated the whole city as a gym and just developed a new life, I guess,” he says.
In the Pre-Social Work, associate of arts degree program he was in at Camosun, Cameron completed 16 out of the 20 courses. He started off slowly, taking one course his first semester, then two, working his way up to four. However, when he hit four courses, he was also working 25 hours a week. The demands on his time became too onerous, causing him to drop back down to one or two courses each semester.
“I really liked working with Peter Ove,” Cameron says in regard to who his favourite instructors were at Camosun. “He was one of the people that I would talk to outside of class, as well. Great guy to chat with.”
Psychology and sociology were Cameron’s favourite subject areas while at Camosun; he also took a screenwriting course he enjoyed. However, when trying to complete a computer science class to fulfill his science requirement, COVID hit. Not being very familiar with computers, Cameron needed the added help that the online format was unable to offer. COVID also impacted his life at work.
“So [COVID] was a big challenge,” he says. “That, actually, that’s kind of where I lost my way in terms of schooling because when COVID hit, first off, the whole world shut down. But suddenly the homeless population had nowhere to go. People that were once on couches, and, you know, renting rooms across town or whatever were suddenly all out on the street. The need in the community was so big that schooling tapered.”
Despite being only four courses short of his Pre-Social Work degree, Cameron says that if he continues on with social work, he feels his time at Camosun is over—he’s ready to head to UVic.
“I have, first off, a ton of relevant experience out in the community, which is a big part of studying for social work, of course, but I’ve also authored or co-authored dozens of academic papers so, that, I’m hoping, will move me forward in my education,” he says, adding that if he decides to change direction and study something new, he will consider returning to Camosun.
Part of the enjoyment of being at Camosun for Cameron was reading Nexus, where he ended up volunteering, then working.
“I had decided I was going to be a journalist for some reason when I was 15, and I didn’t pursue it,” he says. “I ended up with the roofing company and doing a lot of different work in the trades as well. So, it was great to go back. I wish I would have done that sooner, but life happens.”
Starting at Nexus was easier than Cameron expected. Wanting to write about music, Cameron went to talk to Nexus managing editor Greg Pratt about his ideas. Cameron recalls expecting to be asked for a portfolio and some sample work. Instead, Pratt gave him a 600-word article on the local comedy scene.
“The story went incredibly well,” says Cameron. “There was a local comedian that I had known years prior. Did a great interview. And the way the story was told, when I walked away from the office, the student editor at the time said Greg said, ‘That was our new features writer.’ I guess I made an impression on him.”
If Cameron does continue on with his studies at UVic, he says writing for UVic student newspaper Martlet is a possibility; he misses writing for Nexus.
“That was such a big part of my own entertainment. I got a chance to interview and then go and meet a lot of my heroes at shows coming into town. And reviewing albums, for example… I spent my whole life talking about music and hanging out at concerts, and that was all gone when COVID hit; that almost replaced that social aspect. Music was such a big part of my identity my whole life. For those years, [music] wasn’t, it was a rough time for a lot of people. I did very well… in my time [at Camosun] and Nexus was huge in that.”
One memory Cameron has coming out of COVID is of a City and Colour show he reviewed for Nexus. He says at the beginning people were lined up six feet apart.
“The line looked like something like communist Czechoslovakia; like everyone is incredibly stretched [out]… Take two steps and stop, two steps and stop.”
Cameron says that any time someone sneezed it was met with a death stare from those around them. However, after a few drinks and four songs into the concert, masks started coming off.
“It was amazing to watch that,” he says. “You know, had it been three months later, I wouldn’t have experienced that. It was just a great, great time. Shitty in a lot of ways, but it’s pretty cool.”
Recovery may have brought Cameron to Victoria; however, it was a need for change that brought Cameron to Camosun. Committing to having a new job before school started landed him at SOLID.
“I came to SOLID in order to have enough money to buy a coffee between classes. It was not just a part-time gig. I took two four hour shifts a week, and rapidly grew through that,” he says. “And by January the next year, I think I was the coordinator for SOLID at the Harbour, running a small team, and our team started to grow then, and so that kind of changed. I changed my direction after beginning, but SOLID was just there to give me a few bucks to help me get through school. It was not the other way.”
Initially starting out as a part-time overdose response worker at the Harbour, also known as The Victoria Wellness and Recovery Centre, Cameron has taken on many different roles at SOLID. He attributes his ability to easily move into these positions to coming from a family that owned a restaurant, and his own experience owning a roof business.
“Whoever plugs the holes,” says Cameron, “I guess will rise within the group.”
Prior to taking a four-month leave, Cameron was the director at SOLID. He now oversees the shelter program. Working within the homeless and drug-user community is a demanding job requiring a lot of flexibility.
“It’s not a nine-to-five job… I’ve got my own experience, family, the other people around the recovery community, and you know, the phone’s ringing an hour before work and it’s ringing until bedtime, and it’s just… It’s a lifestyle. It’s not you clock out and get back to your actual life,” he says. “It’s not a job with that.”
During COVID, Cameron says the demand for resources was “ridiculous” but with his background in trades and coming from the street and drug-using community, he did well at SOLID. The organization was able to open several kinds of services; increased by approximately five times its size; and got into temporary housing. SOLID now has four temporary housing locations and teams at all four sites across Victoria. The most recent location is in St. John the Divine on Mason Street, which houses a 30 mat overnight shelter program; it opened in December 2023.
“That goes to show how far we’ve come as a group over the years. Ten years ago, we had one employee—a guy named Mark Wilson, who’s still one of the directors here—and over time that’s increased. But at first, we’re just kind of brought along for the ride. And we’d help out with support here and there in various services across town. But nobody would have trusted the drug-users group to run the project this big in a church overnight [with] very little supervision or oversight.”
According to Cameron, the North Park neighbourhood is cleaner and quieter due to the work of SOLID.
“Just simply by providing the best service we can, that’s how this has just grown tenfold now that we have 100 employees,” says Cameron.
They also have many volunteers running programming five days a week, drop-ins six days a week, and drop-in peer support groups. One drop-in program offered is a journalling group. SOLID membership has also now grown to over 3000 people.
In his personal life, Cameron says he still manages to have a lot going on; work and recovery are a major part of it but they’re also social. He says he has lots of friends working out in the field, and there’s lots of work/life overlap.
“We get better as a community,” he says.
Looking ahead, Cameron says that while he has a significant role in SOLID, it “feels like it’s time for change at this point.”
“I think that’s quite standard in non-profit [organizations] especially,” he says. “You work as hard as you can for a few years, and burn out, [take a] day to rest, and then set your sights back on, oftentimes, a new direction.”