In the vast lobby of Toronto’s sprawling CBC headquarters, people can seem kinda small. David Suzuki, the affable, unwavering host of environmental docu-series The Nature of Things, stands even smaller than most. But during the recent CBC “upfronts” — when the network presents its upcoming season to attending press, advertisers and employees — the announcement of Suzuki’s name sparked wild cheers from the otherwise reserved crowd. Clearly, three decades spent spouting inconvenient truths has turned David into Goliath.
“That was amazing,” Suzuki gushes a few minutes later, in a secluded backroom. “I think that was for a crusty old bugger hanging in — going from a Young Turk to an old man with respectability. That pleases me very much that my own colleagues have respect for me.”
The country does, too. In 2004, Suzuki was voted greatest living Canadian, bolstering the Companion of the Order of Canada and reams of other honours bestowed upon the enviro-rock star.
“I never set out to be a celebrity and I wear celebrityhood with great difficulty,” he demurs. “But celebrity attracts the press.” He redirects the conversation to “real” celebs, praising the likes of George Clooney and Angelina Jolie while slamming bandwagon-jumpers.
“Fifteen years ago I was asked to go to an event Tom Cruise had organized — he’d gone to the Amazon and came back keen. But where the hell is Tom Cruise now? It pisses me off that he got the press there but he dropped it.”
Suzuki is 72, a number belied by his clear focus and boundless energy but which provides much-needed perspective on environmentalism’s ebb and flow.
“This is a bittersweet moment for me,” he says. “It’s sweet that the environment is back up there but it’s bitter because we were already here 20 years ago. People don’t remember that a guy ran for president in the US in 1988 and said, ‘If you elect me, I’ll be an environmental president.’ It was George Bush and there wasn’t a green bone in his body but he said it because that’s what the public demanded.
“So now that the environment’s come back up, is this just gonna pass like the other one?”
History, of course, teaches us to be cynical, but Suzuki holds a sunnier outlook — he’s spoken with pollsters and believes we really, truly mean it this time.
“In ’88 it was a white, middle-class, university-educated movement. But this time it goes right across social and economic class. It’s not just An Inconvenient Truth,” he says, citing climactic calamities like the melting Arctic, Vancouver’s devastating Stanley Park windstorm and hurricane Katrina.
“This one isn’t going to pass.”
The Nature of Things’ 29th season has already roamed through China and features upcoming episodes on Antarctica, alternative energy, robots and will even pair Suzuki with his daughter.
“She’s this young, up-and-coming activist saying, ‘We’ve got to find solutions. It’s my world — you’re an old man but what about me?’ So we’re going on a voyage and I hope it becomes a whole series.”
The Nature of Things’ mandate to illuminate the scientific perspective on global issues has remained constant, even as the show evolves with its medium.
“Now you’ve got to reach out of the set, grab [viewers] by the throat and say, ‘Don’t you dare switch.’ So you’re more sensational, more violent, more sexy. The nature of the way we’re getting ideas across has changed. We’re competing for an audience that is increasingly like a hummingbird.”
Still, Suzuki says rather than feeling frustrated, he keeps sending his message out there with unflagging enthusiasm. “I’ve been doing television since 1962 so I’d have to look in the mirror and say, ‘You’re a goddamn failure.’ But what I do is look in the mirror and say, ‘Who in the hell do you think you are? You’re one person. All you can do is the best you can.’ So I’ve been fortunate in having the CBC. I’ve been fortunate in having the show. I just do the best I can.”
With that, a CBC publicist arrives to take Suzuki to makeup. He has an interview booked with ET Canada and messages to spread.
Southern exposure
With climate change shrinking the arctic into a Nordic battleground for control of an inevitably navigable Northwest Passage, folks often forget about the other pole. The Nature of Things sent an intrepid team to rectify this with their four-part series Antarctic Mission, which Suzuki describes as, “absolutely riveting but scary as hell.”
The first three eps focus on climate-change science while the fourth boasts a more adventurous angle as some of the crew endure the nine-month winter way down south.
“It’s rare these days that you have the opportunity to film for such an extended period,” says director Caroline Underwood, who spent six of the expedition’s 17 months aboard the 51-metre SEDNA IV schooner. “It was a real opportunity to immerse yourself in the place, which I think comes across in the pictures. There was the feeling of the early explorers being in this boat — but at the same time we are using the latest in HD and satellite technology.”
The crew returned home with eye-popping images — crumbling icebergs, pregnant leopard seals, adorable (and sadly declining) penguins, prehistoric underwater creatures — and worrisome science.
“It’s the story of what is happening in one of the few places in the world that we think of as pristine and untouched,” Underwood says. “[But] the climate change we are experiencing in the far north is also happening in the far south — and it has very profound consequences.”
THE NATURE OF THINGS: ANTARCTIC MISSION AIRS JULY 20, JULY 27, AUG 3 AT 6PM; AUG 30 AT 7PM ON CBC.