Lee Chambers

Lee Chambers (born 4 February 1970) is a British-Canadian writer, film director, and producer. In 2012 he won the Best Screenwriter award from Northern Ontario Music and Film Awards for his Australian short film, Hugh Jackman Saves the World.

Early life
Although the Syrian hamster or golden hamster (Mesocricetus auratus) was first described scientifically by George Robert Waterhouse in 1839, researchers were not able to successfully breed and domesticate hamsters until 1939.[3] The entire laboratory and pet populations of Syrian hamsters appear to be descendants of a single brother–sister pairing. These littermates were captured and imported in 1930 from Aleppo in Syria by Israel Aharoni, a zoologist of the University of Jerusalem.[7] In Jerusalem, the hamsters bred very successfully. Years later, animals of this original breeding colony were exported to the United States, where Syrian hamsters became a common pet and laboratory animal. Comparative studies of domestic and wild Syrian hamsters have shown reduced genetic variability in the domestic strain. However, the differences in behavioral, chronobiological, morphometrical, hematological, and biochemical parameters are relatively small and fall into the expected range of interstrain variations in other laboratory animals.[8]

Career
The name "hamster" is a loanword from the German, which itself derives from earlier Middle High German hamastra. It is possibly related to Old Church Slavonic khomestoru, which is either a blend of the root of Russian хомяк (khomyak) "hamster" and a Baltic word (cf. Lithuanian: staras "hamster");[9] or of Persian origin (cf. Avestan: hamaēstar "oppressor").[10] The collective noun for a group of hamsters is "horde".[11] In German, the verb hamstern is derived from Hamster. It means "to hoard".[12]

Awards

 * Best Screenwriter of the Northern Ontario Music and Film Awards (2012)
 * 2nd Best Screenplay of the Canada International Film Festival (2011)