WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2009
COVER STORY
THEPROVINCE.COM I
E-TODAY I B3
The inside story of David Suzuki
One of Canada's most recognized faces will be seen through the lens of his past ICON:
BY GLEN SCHAEFER
M
MOVIE REPORTER
a funky art gallery amid he boarded-up store onts of Hastings Street, scientist and TV persanality David Suzuki is running through a lecture as movie director Stur la Gunnarsson and a half-dozen others watch. On Thursday, he'll be deliver ing that same talk to an audience ofhundreds at the Chan Centre, in a lavish multimedia produc tion for Gunnarsson's cameras, billed as Suzuki's legacy lecture. It will be woven into a feature documentary alongside Suzuki's filmed travels to the places that shaped his life, from the Second World War internment camps of the Slocan Valley, to the rebuilt Japanese city of Hiroshima and the forests ofHaida Gwaii. For two generations of Cana dians, there hasn't been a time when Suzuki wasn' t famous, fromhis mid-1960s start asCBCTV's hippy-ish, friendly face of science, to his latter-day role as one of the world's most forceful advocates in the effort to miti gate climate change. Which was a problem for the Vancouver-raised, Toronto based Gunnarsson when he was approached to make the docu mentary. "I thought what can you do with David Suzuki that hasn't been done?" Gunnarsson says. "He's so familiar, he's such a franchise. His thoughts that used to be radical have become em braced. He's part of the ortho
doxy now:'
David Suzuki's past and present is being woven into a film. - SUBMITIED PHOTOS
Gunnarsson was a student at the University of B.C. in the 1970s when Suzuki was a pro fessor of genetics there. "My first memory of Suzuki is seeing him hitchhiking to UBC in the rain. He was a star on cam pus, he had this group of grad students around him who loved him, and they were really push ing back the frontiers in the ge netics lab, doing experiments on fruit flies. He was known as the ford of the flies:' The director met Suzuki six months ago, and envisioned a movie where Suzuki's talk onthe interconnectedness ofhumanity
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David Suzuki: the Legacy Lecture
Where: Chan Centre, 6265
Crescent Road, UBC (lecture); UBC Museum of Anthropolo gy (after party) When: 7 p.m. Thursday (sold_ out), 1 p.m. Thursday (rehears al), 9 p.m. (after party) Tickets: $20 (rehearsal) at Ticketmaster or davidsuzu ki.org or call 604-732-4228. $1,500 (after party, includes charitable tax receipt)
Sturla Gunnarsson is making a feature about David Suzuki. and the environment would be complemented by Suzuki's own look back at how those ideas were shaped. The director want ed Suzuki to dig into his own past by revisiting those places. So Suzuki isn't getting quite the documentary he first envi sioned. "I did not think of myself at the centre of it;' says Suzuki, ainaz ingly youthful at 73. "I had for mulated a whole kind of science description from the Big Bang up to the present:' During filming that started last spring, the director kept the camera running as Suzuki re membered his Canadian-born family being shipped to a camp away from the B.C. coast during the Second World War. "He has pulled stuff out of me that I had forgotten I even had, and some of it has been not pleasant," Suzuki says with a half-laugh, half-sigh. When the Second World War ended, Suzuki remembers run ning out as a boy to where oth er kids were celebrating with fireworks. "I ran up to this kid and said 'Can I have a firecrack-
'Get lost, Jap, we just beat you: I hadn't remembered that until Sturla asked me. I broke down at that point. I'd forgotten the pain of that moment:' But Suzuki also remembers the internment camp as the place where he first discovered na ture. "Despair or anger, in the end it doesn't get you anywhere, it destroys you;' says Suzuki, add ing that he applies that think ing to the discussion on climate change as well. His family moved from B.C. to Ontario afterthewar, whenB.C:s government made it clear to the Japanese that they were no lon ger welcome. Decades later, af ter studies in the U.S. and an as sistant professorship in Alberta, Suzuki was offered a post at UBC in 1963. "I call my Dad, said 'I've just accepted a job at UBC;' Suzuki says. "The first thing he said was, 'Why are you going back there, they kicked us out: He'd been born and raised in Canada and been treated like that, wiped out after the war. Bitterness just ate at him:' Suzuki notes that his father al so urged him as a kid to enter school_ oratory competitions, unwittingly nurturing the tal ents and confidence that would spawn the son's TV career. Gunnarsson says Suzuki's per sonal discoveries have given im mediacy to their work together. Suzuki's 7 p.m. lecture at the Chan, a benefit for the David Suzuki Foundation, is already a sellout. Gunnarsson will also film a 1 p.m. rehearsal there, and tickets for that are still available at $20 each. As well, a $1,500-a ticket after party is planned for UBC's Museum of Anthropolo gy, to feature performances by Sarah Mclachlan, Randy Bach: man and k-os. "What an amazing thing, that this funny-looking old man would become a highly respect ed guy in Canada;' Suzuki says. "To me, it feels very happy that I've been able to overcome what happened during the war and become a figure of respect:' The documentary is set for a fall theatrical release next year.