Best Activist,
Best Humanitarian:
David Suzuki
DavidSuzuki.org
David Suzuki might still be railing against climate change, but Canada’s most famous scientist has accepted some things as inevitable.
“Basically at my age, you can kick the bucket at any minute, right?” he says, with a playful smile.
The beloved environmental activist, author and speaker turns 80 on March 24. While the staff at the David Suzuki Foundation are busy planning events across Canada to celebrate the milestone, though, Suzuki is thinking further ahead, to the future of the organization he co-founded 25 years ago.
“I’ve got to be concerned about the foundation carrying on after I’m gone,” he says, looking deceptively youthful and relaxed in his Kitsilano office, which he walked to that morning. “When we started the foundation I never thought in terms of who would take over or become part of it after. I didn’t intend to lumber my children with the responsibility,” he continues, “but in fact they do want to be involved, and they’re bringing different expertise […] to the foundation and they want to carry on.”
Since its inception, the David Suzuki Foundation has been a prominent voice on climate change issues in Canada. Through speaking engagements, the Blue Dot movement, and his weekly, syndicated opinion column, Suzuki has also championed green economic ideas, healthy communities, and environmental rights and justice in a way that ordinary Canadians can relate to.
In fact, thanks largely to his 37 years as host of the CBC television program The Nature of Things, the Japanese-Canadian elder has earned the mantle of Canada’s granddad – that friendly face that regularly reminds you to be a steward of nature and take only what you need. His benevolent message is likely a large part in why our readers voted him Vancouver’s Best Humanitarian and Best Activist in our Best of the City Readers’ Choice poll this year.
When (and if) he does ultimately step back into life as just a regular granddad, however, Suzuki says that there will still be much work to be done.
“There will always be work to do,” he admits. “When we started the foundation in 1990, the Worldwatch Institute had published an article called the ‘Turn Around Decade’, and they said that we had to change society in the next 10 years, or else we were toast,” he recalls. “So really I set up the foundation with the idea that we had 10 years, and here we are 25 years later. We’re still working on the same problems, basically.”
He has hope, though, that the next generation is equipped to handle things differently.
“There is a huge shift happening,” he says, highlighting the urban agriculture movement as an exciting local example. “I see it in young people […] and your futures are what are at stake.”
And, having spent decades of his career engaged with the highest levels of government, Suzuki is also optimistic that Canada’s newly elected Liberal cabinet is the right team to address the coming challenges, which include protecting the world’s longest coastline, as well as protecting the economy from the possible impacts of climate change.
“To me, the signal of a really profound shift was immediate when [Justin] Trudeau was in, and he appointed a cabinet that was 50 per cent women,” says Suzuki, who has four daughters himself. “That is something so profound, because, if you think of the Harper government, the Harper government was driven by [Stephen] Harper. It was like one man dictating, and diversity is the key to making good decisions. Bringing in gender equity was huge, to me.”
