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Wednesday, September 29, 2010

{allcanada} David Suzuki still has hope

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It is remarkable, because most environmentalists routinely issue doomsday warnings about the health of Planet Earth, that David Suzuki maintains a sense of awe, wonder and hope.

"If you don't have hope," Canada's most famous and eloquent eco-activist tells Sun Media, "there is no point in doing it."

Doing it means educating the public about environmental issues in his lectures, books and on television, including in the long-running series, The Nature of Things.

Doing it also means participating in Sturla Gunnarsson's marvellous new documentary, Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie. It opens Friday after debuting at the Toronto filmfest. It is a personal portrait of Suzuki as a person, scientist and environmentalist. It is also a vehicle for Suzuki to deliver excerpts of a landmark lecture at the University of British Columbia.

Suzuki says he recognizes that many eco-activists "really feel it's too late -- that we are past tipping points." But his message, included in Force of Nature, is more hopeful. "One of my messages is: We're so ignorant that we have no idea how it all works. And, if we're that ignorant, how can anyone say it's too late? We have no idea how encouraging or generous that nature can be.

"I just use as an example: Last year we had the most devastating run of sockeye in history on the Fraser River (in Suzuki's native British Columbia, where he still lives). The government set up a commission saying: What happened to the sockeye? The next year (2010) we have the biggest run of sockeye in the last 100 years. We're going, 'What the ... ?' We have no idea. Nobody knows what is going on.

"But nature, I'm sure, has got a lot of surprises and I am hoping there will be a lot of generosity there. And that's what keeps me going. I can see as a scientist that we are undercutting so much of the planet that keeps us alive. But the hope is that there is still enough there and we're in for a lot of surprises -- some good."

Suzuki's own 74 years of life have included a lot of surprises -- some good. Gunnarsson's documentary chronicles that saga from childhood, including internment in one of Canada's racist concentration camps during the Second World War, to his twilight years as an environmentalist and doting grandfather.

"It was a process," Gunnarsson says about delving into Suzuki's life to make his Planet Earth message more potent. "But I don't think it was a problem with David Suzuki. I had to do more talking with his family.

"But it started as a project about the big ideas and it evolved into a project about the relationship between the man, the life, and the ideas. In every documentary, there is always this kind of process of gaining trust and finding the pulse. It is an intuitive thing knowing where to go and how to go. You know, most of the footage we shot in the first couple of months sort of felt like The Nature of Things. It felt good but it didn't feel like the film that it became. It didn't have the passion and the intimacy."

There is nothing scandalous about Suzuki's life, but there is raw material, including about his two marriages and one divorce. "I am always reluctant to be the central figure," he says. "I always thought of myself as the messenger, the vehicle to transmit information."

But allowing Gunnarsson to intimately portray him also gave Suzuki a chance to talk on the big screen about the big picture -- the health of Planet Earth and what people can do about maintaining biodiversity. "That is the genius of the director," Suzuki says, beaming and full of hope.

Family access was 'difficult'

Nothing was more difficult on the documentary Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie than negotiating access to Suzuki's family, director Sturla Gunnarsson and Suzuki both say now.

"It was a process," Gunnarsson says. "I mean, a big part of it was going places that had significant meaning." That included visits to the B.C. internment camp where the Suzukis were imprisoned during the Second World War because of racism. It meant looking at his own family life through two marriages. And it included visiting with daughter Severen, who is married to a Haida and has given Suzuki another grandchild, his first with his second family.

"As Sturla says, my family has just been very, very jealous of our privacy," Suzuki says. "One of the first things was that my grandson was going to be born and he (Gunnarsson) wanted a shot of his first breath. And my family was outraged!"

Nothing was photographed for the film. "They did not want that," Suzuki says, laughing. "And it was a huge crisis even though, in fairness, I did not even want the crowning shot!"

After that awkward if joyous situation passed, Suzuki discovered there were more issues. "The other thing that I only realized very late was that they were also very concerned about my first family."

But Gunnarsson's approach to Suzuki's family life was delicate and respectful, as is Suzuki's when talking about his marriages (first to Setsuko Joane Sunahara from 1958 to 1965, with three children born; then to Tara Elizabeth Cullis in 1972, with two more children). "Sturla did a great job covering it," Suzuki says. That helped calm his own fears, as well as those of family members.

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