Brent Cameron
August 12, 1947 ~ May 20, 2012
Brent Cameron, visionary educator and founder of SelfDesign Learning Foundation, passed away peacefully on Sunday May 20, 2012 in the Kootenay Lake Hospital, Nelson BC, surrounded by family and close friends. He had been ill with prostate cancer for several years.
Brent was born in Calgary to Neil Cameron and Desley “Bunty” Hyde and attended the University of Calgary in the 1960s. He worked as a teacher in Canal Flats, British Columbia. He married Maureen Gallagher and settled in Sirdar BC. Their daughter Ilana was born in 1977. Brent and Maureen started their own health food store, Pure Coincidence, which they operated in Creston for several years.
In 1983 they moved to Vancouver, where Brent founded Wondertree, an educational program, based on the principles of consensus and trust that supported learner's interests and emotional wellbeing.
Wondertree launched Brent on a journey of educational creativity, insight and vision. In 1993 he built on the concepts of Wondertree to create Virtual High, a learner-centered program for teens in a mansion in Vancouver.
In the years that followed, Brent used the internet to facilitate learning and link learners and mentors in creative and productive ways. He incorporated leading-edge insights from fields as diverse as child development, neuroscience, and family theory, and created unique models that optimized our potential for learning.
In 2002 Brent launched SelfDesign Learning Community as an online, government-certified independent school with 10 colleagues and 100 learners.
Soon after, Brent partnered with River Meyer in writing his book, "SelfDesign: Nurturing Genius Through Natural Learning" and began giving presentations and building the foundation for a broader application of SelfDesign methodology.
In recent years, Brent worked tirelessly to support the growth and development of the SelfDesign Learning Foundation and SelfDesign programs for K-12 learners in BC and beyond. In 2006 Brent and his colleagues received a Prime Ministers award and a BC Ministry of Education award for their work in SelfDesign. In 2010 Brent received his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia, Faculty of Education. In the 2011-2012 school year SelfDesign enrolled close to 2,000 BC-based learners including those in remote locations, special needs learners and home-based learners.
With his passing Brent leaves his wife and SelfDesigning partner River, daughters Ilana and Lia, longtime collaborators and colleagues in his SelfDesign work, numerous close friends, and a wide-ranging community of supporters and people positively influenced by his genius and generosity.
We wish to honour Brent’s life, legacy and his contribution to children, families and education with events in Sirdar, Nelson and Vancouver.
Scheduling of these events will be posted at 'Friends of Brent Cameron’; www.brentcameron.ca. To learn more about SelfDesign learning, go to www.selfdesign.org.