Josefa Cameron
Co-Editor-in-Chief and Executive Editor
Instagram Like a Prayer / Instagram Personal
Josefa Cameron (she/her) is the Co-Editor-in-Chief and Executive Editor of Like A Prayer Magazine and an experienced journalist and reporter. She is based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People. She has an English Literature degree from Dalhousie University and a degree in Cultural Anthropology from The University of British Columbia with a minor in Art History. She went to The University of King’s College for Journalism. With experience as a radio news writer and broadcaster, as well as a radio show host, she is currently researching Canadian radio content for a book publishing project. Josefa brings her writing, editing, and interviewing skills as well as experience in newsrooms and publications to Like A Prayer. She hopes to build the publication and brand as a tool for connecting people, amplifying varied voices, and sharing stories and ideas. Born in Nova Scotia and having lived in Cape Breton until she was eight, she feels at home by the stormy Maritime sea.
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What are you most proud of professionally? And who or why?
After my first degree, I moved from Vancouver to Calgary, where my parents now live, and I started writing for a local magazine. It was the magazine's first issue and they asked me to write an article on Amanda Lindhout, the Canadian humanitarian, public speaker, and journalist. It was my first really serious assignment. Lindhout wrote a book, A House in the Sky, about her experience of being kidnapped while on a reporting assignment in southern Somalia. She was tortured and held captive for fourteen months. Now, she travels the world to speak about overcoming her trauma, being resilient, and giving back to women in need in Somalia. After reading the book, which was an extremely intense and moving read, my sister and I drove early one morning from Calgary to Lindhout's house in Canmore. We had coffee and chatted for hours about her book, her life, her experience in Somalia, and what it was like to integrate back into Canadian society afterwards. We also asked her for advice on a variety of subjects. I was immensely honoured and grateful to have the opportunity to meet such an inspiring woman. I wrote the article and it received a shocking amount of positive feedback. The experience of writing about Lindhout was a turning point in my career as a journalist. I remember driving away from the Rockies and thinking "these are the types of stories I want to help tell." Before her, I mostly wrote about music and art, which was fun and exciting. But since her, I look for stories that have layers and purpose, stories that are complex and a challenge for me to articulate, which are rewarding to write. Speaking to and writing about inspiring people with interesting stories who overcame adversity is now my niche – it is what makes me tick.
What’s your vision for Atlantic Canada in 10 years? What’s our biggest opportunity now?
I do not want Atlantic Canada to change too much, in the sense of untouched nature and sprawling shoreline. I absolutely love the close proximity to hiking trails and the coast line from where I live in Halifax. I also love the quiet beaches and hidden camping nooks and crannies in Cape Breton. It would be a tragedy for Nova Scotia to become overdeveloped without preserving the most special aspect of what we have to offer. That said, I do see a growing interest in Atlantic Canada from friends who live elsewhere. I think that with the spread of COVID-19 and people appreciating a more relaxed lifestyle because of it, there is a heightened interest in unperturbed activities and tourism like kayaking, fishing, cross-country-skiing, cycling, and camping. It reminds me of when I was a kid and all the outdoorsy activities you could imagine were right on our back doorstep. In my opinion, people are drawn to Nova Scotia for this trait. If you want a quiet vacation in nature to discover hiking trails with spectacular views and feast on local produce, it is right here. If you want a flashy vacation on a cruise or resort, you can find that elsewhere. I find a lot of young people around my age are either reigniting their interest in an outdoorsy lifestyle, or they are discovering the value of it for the first time. I hope that within the next ten years, Nova Scotians, along with the rest of Atlantic Canadians, grow more and more proud of this characteristic and do not try to be something we are not. I hope we learn to embrace the fact that we have harsh winters and learn to adapt, take advantage of the snow and the fresh air, and encourage this sort of tourism while making as little impact on the environment as possible. While on my travels in Scandinavia, I learned that they have a saying, “there is no such thing as bad weather, there is only bad gear.” I think we can learn from this, as our winters tend to be similarly harsh to that of Scandinavian countries. Once we simply put on our toques and mittens, we can relish in what nature offers.
What was your greatest stage of growth? What made it a shift for you?
I have been writing for newspapers and magazines since I was eighteen. Something most people do not know, is that journalists do not get to choose the titles of their articles. This is for space-related reasons regarding layout, as well as editors trying to keep content succinct and thorough throughout their publications. The reasons for doing this are valid, but it always bothered me when I would put grueling time and effort into a piece and an editor would slap a vague title across it. This only happened a handful of times, most of the editors I have worked with have been amazingly detail-oriented. However, I felt that when this did happen, it often did not do the story justice, and sometimes I could even tell that the editor did not even read the story.
I was working a part-time retail job last year. On a slow evening one day, I was talking to a colleague of mine. I was telling him about an article I had just written, but explained to him that I did not title the piece myself. We also started to talk about what we wanted to do with our lives and I mentioned that it was a dream of my sister Paulette’s and mine to build a magazine together. He looked at me quite seriously and said, “be the one who chooses the titles,” and it really stuck with me. After I quit the job and graduated, I started working on Like A Prayer. He and I ran into each other and I told him I started working on the magazine, he was excited and said, "now you get to be the one who chooses the titles.” I had already shifted my mindset from writing for other people's publications to writing for my own, but he gave me further encouragement – a little extra boost. I went from having to go through editors, having to filter the stories I wanted to tell, and modify them for someone else's audience and publication, to having the freedom to interview who I want and to write about what I want, which is a huge stage of growth in my career.
What’s your favourite or most read book or podcast? Now or at each of your greatest stages of growth?
Last spring I took a Canadian Literature course with Professor Brittany Kraus at Dalhousie University. We read and studied Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach, along with a slew of stunning books and short stories by talented Canadian writers. Monkey Beach is simultaneously profound and down-to-earth, it is funny and heartbreaking, beautiful and gritty. I read the book twice after that class and plan to read it again, each time I read it, I discover more layers to the story. Robinson depicts life for a young woman in a First Nations community in Kitamaat, British Columbia. It is a story of loss that is at odds with nature while also being healed by it. Although some chapters are affronting to the senses, I find the overall spiritual atunement with nature and the animal symbolism distinctly soothing. The class itself was memorable, I do not think I ever enjoyed a class as much as Professor Kraus'. Having a cool, young, female professor was definitely inspiring as well. It was eye opening to learn about incredible Canadian writers who were discrete and humble in their success, and who were focused, not on fame, but on craft. As someone who tends to be shy, this approach to writing resonates with me. I would love to one day be part of that lineage.
What’s your deepest learning from this past year? How did/will you apply it?
My family experienced quite a devastation this summer. My parents rented out our childhood home in Mabou, Cape Breton to tenants for ten months. We returned to the house this summer to find it completely destroyed. My father, who is a carpenter, built our home with his own hands. The home holds deeply special memories, it is a place where we, as a family, flock to in the summertime. We are extremely fortunate to have a place to escape to, where our focus is on gardening, painting, swimming, cycling, and relaxing. My twelve-year-old niece said that it is the only place on earth where she does not have to think about her problems, where she can run free. It is on a beautiful, quiet peninsula encircled by water and surrounded by forest – it is quite literally a sanctuary enclasped by nature hidden away from the world.
Despite my parents having a no-pet rule, the tenants were cat hoarders, and essentially cat abusers as well. They treated the house like one big litter box and scratching pad. Nothing was left untouched, even things that were locked away were somehow broken into. Everything had cat feces on it, the stench was putrid, pipes were cut, and windows smashed. My siblings, parents, and I had to throw literally everything out. We spent days lugging every piece of furniture out of our home, we threw away toys, childhood photo albums, clothes, sports equipment, tents, dishes, record albums, couches, tables, mattresses, and tools. My dad even had to rip up the kitchen, bathrooms, and floors. Parts of the walls had to be taken out. It was heart-wrenching work. For a little while, we were left without a place to stay for all of us (we are a big family). We took turns sleeping on beds and couches in one of my sisters' small cabins. My sister, Paulette and I set up our tent. We made the best of it, had bonfires, and swam in the evenings after working all day. There were definitely days, though, that felt hopeless and like we would never get our home back. The house would have been condemned had we let the tenants stay a minute longer. My parents looked into the legalities of the situation and decided it was best not to take it to court, as it was evident that mental illness was the cause.
However, amid the chaos, we grew to truly value each other. We grew in appreciation of our health, our safety, and the fact that we have each other. We realized how blessed we are to have a haven like this in the first place. Our mother always says "a house is made with brick and stone, a home is made with love alone," which rings true especially now. The house is still in tatters, but we have been taking baby steps, and it has improved immensely. Countless generous people have been coming out of the woodwork to help out. In fact, as I write this, I am sitting in a comfortable little suite in Mabou overlooking the green hills, thanks to a kind couple who heard about what happened and are allowing my sister and I to stay here for a week for free! I have learned a lot already during this adventure about myself and my character, about my family and about the kindness of strangers. How well we are working together, as we try to rebuild our home from scratch, is hopeful. I have learned that for every bad apple, there are hundred of good ones. And I am sure I will continue to learn as the universe drops little hints along my journey of discovering what lesson lays behind this incident.
Who inspired you, directly or indirectly? How have they inspired you?
I know this is cliche, but my mother is a significant inspiration to me. Throughout my childhood, and especially during my adulthood, I have witnessed her strength and dignity while facing hardship. She truly holds our family together. She always has faith that things will work out and that they are meant to be. She always reassures me that, as tough as moments might be, there is a reason for everything and I simply need to be in tune, my soul needs to be silent enough to hear what lesson is meant to be learned. I receive the most helpful and wise advice from her. Her father passed away when she was fourteen from a sudden heart attack. My grandmother had to start working again with ten children. My mother worked every weekend to help her mother, even before her father's death. At age twelve she regularly cleaned her uncle's house, who had seven children, and a couple years later, she began cleaning a convent on weekends. It helped her stay out of trouble and out of petty drama. She carried this no-drama attitude into her adulthood. In my teenage years, when I saw some of my peers' mothers involving themselves in whether their daughters were popular or pretty, my mother focused on forming her children into becoming adults with good values and strong characters and constitutions.
She worked as a teacher my entire life. A few years ago, she received her Master’s in Psychology and now works as a counselor. People come up to me all the time and tell me how my mother changed their kid’s life, their brother’s life, or their own life. They say things like “she told me that I am not my family, and that I can forge my own path, I come from a family of alcoholics and now I’m a doctor” or “she came to my family’s house when we had nothing and dropped off boxes with food and clothing and helped me pass my exams to get into university.” She truly does more in a week than I could possibly do in a lifetime, but I know she is in my blood and I aspire to be like her. She inspires me to be a woman of conviction, strength, confidence, and love.
What would you have done differently?
I have a very acute sense of intuition. I can read people pretty easily. I wish I listened to my intuition more closely growing up. I would have saved a lot of time and would have avoided stressful situations if I had listened to myself better, especially regarding relationships and friendships.
What are the principles you live by?
I try to be like my mother, a person with conviction, strength, confidence, and love (these are my basic principles). Aside from that, though, as I grow older, I am more and more wonderstruck by the world. Whenever sadness clouds over me, or a situation seems overwhelming, I just think about the bigger picture, how I am just one of 7.7 billion people on earth right now. And about how miles off the coast, not far from here, there are minke whales, blue whales or even humpback whales, moving through the ocean, barely stirring up waves, communicating to each other in song. It is just remarkable to me, to think that these whales might live longer than me, and the ocean itself definitely will, it’ll be here long after I am – it puts things into perspective. This tactic might not work for everyone and psychologists might not agree that it is a healthy strategy, but it works for me!
How have you recovered from fractured professional relationships? What uncomfortable truths have you learned about yourself in those experiences?
When I was 23, I got a job as a reporter for the local newspaper near the town I am originally from in Cape Breton. So, I moved there for the spring and summer. For almost two months, I lived alone in my family’s house (the one I mentioned earlier) in the middle of the woods before my family arrived in the summer. At the newspaper, I worked among local journalism giants who had been in the field for decades. They worked in an old school manner, barely digitized any of the content, and did not give any feedback. As the youngest, and newest team member, I was sent on every assignment you can imagine. From marathon races to ribbon cutting events, from accidents to community concerts. The usual editor fell ill and someone else stepped in for a while. I remember staying up almost all night once to hand in an article I was assigned the day before. That morning, my car nearly broke down on my drive through the windy country road to work, and I had a minor fender-bender situation which left me shaky and on the verge of tears. During our daily briefing, I was too shy, rattled, and tired to speak up about the story ideas I had been working on. There was silence on my turn and a bit of a lump in my throat.
The stand-in editor asked me to stay behind after the meeting and said to me “If this is too overwhelming for you, if you aren’t cut out for this, you can just leave.” With my eyes welling up, I told him, “No, I can do this, I am cut out for this.” On my run that evening, I ran to the beach, dipped my feet in the water, still cold from the winter months, and promised to myself to bring my ideas to the table with confidence and to stop looking for feedback. The second I stopped expecting feedback was the second I started enjoying my job. I was given my own weekly column. I started to get along with the team, they started showing me the ropes, I started pitching more stories, we began laughing over the editorial table, and I can even call them friends today. One day, when I passed something in, I even received a “Thank you!” My point is, do not expect feedback at work and definitely do not write for feedback, it skews everything.
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Editor, Journalist, Writer, Drummer, Radio Show Host