David Suzuki

by David Suzuki

  Luckily, I was asked if I would like to raise money for a charity of my choice by joining a cruise from Vancouver to Alaska. I was to give lectures, and travelers would pay an extra, tax-deductible $125 to be part of our group. About 140 people signed up, and both Tara and I gave talks and promoted our new organization while discussing the environment. The ship had bars, restaurants, swimming pools, and a theater showing the latest films. Sarika was eight and still extremely shy, so I was surprised when we boarded the ship to see her scamper away with her sister and disappear for hours. She finally returned, breathless with excitement, clutching fistfuls of chocolate bars. “Daddy, Daddy!” she exclaimed. “There are stores with candy and it's all free. All you have to do is sign your name and room number!”

  The trip was a delight, as we met people who were filled with enthusiasm and concern for environmental matters; many have remained our friends. Our efforts raised $18,000, which was a grand sum at that stage. But more was necessary; we had to use that money to find our supporters.

  Over the years, thousands of people had written to The Nature of Things with David Suzuki. Many asked for transcripts, videos, or the names of experts: those requests were dealt with by staff. But many letters were addressed to me personally, asking a wide range of questions. I felt that if someone had taken the time to write a letter, he or she deserved a response. Usually I could jot a short note on a card, but often I wrote longer letters, always by hand.

  All those people I wrote back to and the sixteen thousand who responded to It's a Matter of Survival made for a wonderful list of people we could approach for support. We met Harvey McKinnon, who had a long history of working for charitable organizations like Oxfam, and with his help, we drafted a letter reminding people they'd once written to me and asking for their support to find solutions to the ecological degradation of the planet.

  The money we had raised from the Alaskan cruise paid for that first mailing. With the help of many volunteers, in November 1990 Tara sent out some 25,000 letters. What a learning curve that was! And then, just before Christmas, checks and cash began to come in, first as a trickle and then as a flood of full mailbags. Harvey said that in his fund-raising experience the returns were phenomenal.

  Tara was both thrilled and appalled. It was one thing to pay for things with our own money; once donations were received, the responsibility was enormous. Having no experience in handling charitable donations, she had nightmares of losing track. We were also very aware that people had donated to us with faith that we would use their money effectively to carry out our mandate.

  Within months of sending in forty- or fifty-dollar gifts, people were writing to ask what we had accomplished with their money. Our immediate needs were fund-raising software to track donations, computers to run it, and staff to keep all accounting accurate. We also had to increase our base of support by investing some of the funds in wider mailings. But our early supporters naturally wanted their money to go directly to projects that were protecting the environment. We had to come up with a creative solution that would bring quick results while developing the organization.

  Tara and I had already been investing our own money to support Barbara Zimmerman, who was working in Brazil with Paiakan and the Kaiapo of Aucre to establish a research station in the Xingu River water-shed, which drains into the Amazon River. The project helps protect a vast, pristine area, so we transferred this project to the foundation.

  I had also been introduced to the Ainu of Japan, an aboriginal people who had held on to their culture through 1,500 years of Japanese occupation. Now they were close to losing their language and their last sacred river, the Saragawa. The river was to be dammed to provide energy for industrial development on the northern island of Hokkaido. Many felt the dam was not necessary and that it would threaten the salmon, a totemic species to the Ainu.

  I was asked to help raise international awareness of this latest threat to Ainu culture, so Tara and I sponsored a visit to Vancouver by Ainu children and Shigeru Kayano, an elder in his sixties who was the youngest person still speaking the Ainu language. At one point, the Japanese translator broke down and wept as she listened to Kayano recount how he had been treated as a child by the Japanese. The event was packed and brought the audience to tears.

  Remembering our experience with Paiakan and the successful protest against the proposed dam at Altamira, we suggested holding a demonstration at the site of the dam on the Saragawa and inviting aboriginal people from other countries. This idea was enthusiastically accepted, and we ended up raising money to send delegations from several British Columbia First Nations communities: Alert Bay, Bella Bella, and Haida Gwaii. This project we also turned over to the foundation.

  Wearing my blanket from B.C. First Nations as I am feted by Ainu people in Hokkaido

  I had so looked forward to attending the demonstration and was disappointed when the date chosen for it coincided with a meeting of the International Congress of Genetics in Edinburgh, Scotland. I had agreed to be a vice president of the congress and to deliver a talk there, so I missed the gathering on Hokkaido. By all accounts it was a spectacular display as the First Nations from Canada danced and sang on the site of the dam. The event garnered a huge amount of media coverage. Unfortunately, it failed to move the Japanese government; the dam was built a few years later.

  We were involved in other projects that became part of the foundation's early stable of accomplishments at little or no cost to the organization. Environmentalists and natives in western Colombia asked for help to protect the rich Choco rain forest, so Tara and I paddled a dugout up the Bora Bora River with a National Film Board crew from Canada to visit the people living in houses built on stilts and to produce a widely distributed program on the issues. In these ways, we demonstrated to our supporters that the foundation was actively engaged in significant projects, buying us time until the board could launch a well-thought-out slate of activities.

  Tara had done a heroic job of getting the organization off the ground while learning everything from rules governing charities to board–staff relations, newsletter production, fund-raising techniques, and personnel issues. She had given up a prestigious teaching position at Harvard University to be a full-time volunteer for the foundation, but it took a huge toll. Whether at home or at play, she carried her work with her, an enormous weight of responsibility. I was still running around filming with The Nature of Things with David Suzuki, giving talks in different places, and raising money to support our foundation projects. Tara was stuck day in and day out with the nuts and bolts. She worked long hours, often seven days a week, coming home physically drained and psychologically burdened by worry.

  Several times in those first twenty-four months, I told her, “Tara, let's drop it. You gave it a try, but it's just too much work. I can't do my share, and it's ruining your health.” But she stayed with it, something for which I have enormous admiration and gratitude. The foundation became her baby, and she was going to nurture it and see it grow into an effective organization.

  Gradually we raised enough money to hire staff. Board members rolled up their sleeves. Soon we could bite the bullet and hire an executive director to give the foundation leadership and get the new, board-directed projects up and going.

  We received a number of applications and winnowed them to a shortlist that included Jim Fulton, the Canadian member of Parliament who had tipped me off about the struggle over logging in Windy Bay in Haida Gwaii. Jim had been a probation officer and as a candidate for the New Democratic Party (NDP) had stunned political commentators by wresting the riding of Skeena away from the Liberal cabinet minister Iona Campagnolo.

  Skeena is all of northwestern B.C., a vast area the size of France. It's exhausting just thinking about how a politician can work in Ottawa yet serve such a huge riding three thousand miles away. Jim says he missed every one of his kids' birthdays while he was in office. Jim is a larger-than-life character. He is well over six feet tall and has a powerful chest and
arms and a belly that could absorb any frontal attack. With his hair and mustache now turned white, he reminds me of those mountain gorilla males called silverbacks; like them, he commands respect by sheer physical presence.

  But Jim also has a mischievous air about him, and he has delighted in childlike play both as a politician and as executive director of our foundation. Perhaps his most famous stunt as an mp came when, in an attempt to stop the spread of a virus infecting the sockeye salmon, the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans had put a barricade in the Babine River, which drains into the Skeena, thus preventing the salmon from reaching their spawning grounds. Jim learned about it and drove to witness the fish smashing repeatedly into the barrier as they tried in vain to move upriver. He captured a large female sockeye, which was dying without reaching the spawning beds to complete her lifecycle. Jim put her in a bag and took her carcass to Ottawa.

  There he donned baggy pants, slipped the bag down his pant leg, and smuggled it into the House of Commons. He rose during Question Period to query the minister of Fisheries and Oceans about the sockeye in the Babine, knowing the answers from Erik Nielsen would be bafflegab. As Nielsen waffled, Jim suddenly yanked the salmon out of his pants, splashing slime onto his NDP colleague Margaret Mitchell, who screamed and alarmed the parliamentarians. Jim strode across the floor and slammed the fish onto Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's desk.

  Jim Fulton, former Member of Parliament and now executive director of the David Suzuki Foundation, at play

  All hell broke loose. Some thought Jim had pulled a weapon. In the pandemonium, Jim walked out to address the waiting media. It was a sensational stunt he claims spurred Nielsen to act and let the Babine sockeye through to spawn. But it also led to the passage of “the Fulton Rule,” which forbids a parliamentarian from carrying anything into the House that can be used as a weapon. Jim says he is proud of the fact that at the end of the species' next four-year cycle, the sockeye run in the Babine was one of the largest in recent history.

  Jim was a serious politician and served his electorate well, as shown by his steadily increasing share of the vote through four elections. But it was on tough national issues—debates that lasted for years—that Jim really demonstrated his strength and vision of Canada.

  In 1981, he successfully led the constitutional debate for the NDP in the House to secure the recognition and affirmation of aboriginal and treaty rights. For the next twelve years, Jim led the constitutional fight for the Nisga'a in Parliament, and today they have the first modern-day treaty in Canada.

  Jim focused the battle on the floor of the House to save South Moresby, known to the Haida as Gwaii Haanas. It was his motion that was unanimously passed in Parliament and that triggered the release of $140 million to “seal the deal.”

  For five years, Jim debated Prime Minister Trudeau's decision to allow Amax Corporation to dump 100 million tons of toxic waste into Canada's pristine Pacific fishing grounds. Jim won, the dumping was halted, and the House ruled that the authorization of the dumping was an abuse of power. It was a remarkable story of tenacity and courage.

  During the Gulf War, Jim exposed Canada's illegal production and testing of nerve gas at Defence Research in Suffield, Alberta. And long before Kyoto, Jim's work with Paul Martin and David MacDonald on climate change led to an all-party report calling for 20 percent cuts from 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 2005.

  When Jim decided to end his political career after fifteen years, his departure was eloquently lamented by columnists and colleagues on both sides of the House.

  I was incredulous but delighted when Jim applied to become executive director of our foundation. We had no track record as an organization, and we faced a huge challenge in raising the money to do our projects. I thought he was just checking around to see what possibilities were available, but he insisted he wanted the job. It was flattering that he would consider us, but I joked to him that if he had a gender change, the decision would be a slam dunk; I was committed to hiring a woman, and I told our board I favored a female candidate.

  But during our deliberations, it became clear that Jim's track record as a committed environmentalist, his experience as a politician, the high esteem he commanded from First Nations and communities, his irresistible personality, and his exuberant energy made him the best choice. Our final decision was unanimous, and we were thrilled when Jim accepted our offer. We could pay him only a fraction of what he could command elsewhere, but when I apologized, he replied that he would get a pension from his years as a member of Parliament, and besides, “we have to be lifers on these issues.”

  By the time we hired him, we had already begun to acquire the financial support that enabled us to move to a new office on Fourth Avenue in Vancouver, in the heart of the Kitsilano neighborhood that had been a hippie magnet during the 1960s and '70s. It was an ideal location, and the building, built and owned by businessman Harold Kalke, is heated and cooled through geothermal heat-exchange pipes driven into the earth.

  During the '60s and '70s, when I had an active genetics research program at UBC, the people in the lab worked and played together, a surrogate family. When I walked into our offices at the foundation, I felt a similar joy. Here were people earning a decent living wage and believing they were working toward a better world.

  Jim came into the job with great vigor and soon launched projects as if we already had the money. I'm still hostage to my early years of poverty, but he had faith that we would raise the necessary funds. And he was right, but in the beginning, I was very nervous about all the spending. We were a brand-new, tiny organization with big plans; less than a year after opening our doors, we had a list of ten project areas we eventually wanted to cover.

  If we were going to be effective in communicating with the public, we had to know something about what motivates people to change their behavior. After all, we would be going up against corporations such as the automobile, fossil fuel, forestry, and pharmaceutical industries, which spend billions on advertising and public relations. So we sponsored a conference in May 1995 and invited people who have studied and helped influence social change to share their insights; those talks were published as “Tools for Change,” a document that has infused the way we do our work.

  These days we are bombarded by media stories and headlines crying that the economy is the bottom line and should dictate the way we behave, our priorities, and our sacrifices. That never made sense to me—we know we are biological creatures, that if we don't have clean air, water, soil and energy, we cannot lead healthy, productive lives—so we commissioned John Robinson, head of the Sustainable Development Research Institute at UBC, to write “Living Within Our Means,” which outlined humankind's fundamental needs and the real bottom line of sustainability.

  AS WE BEGAN TO scope out our first project on fisheries, it became the model for later work. Salmon are iconic animals for aboriginal peoples on both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of North America. If northern cod pulled Europeans to the shores of Newfoundland for five hundred years, the five species of Pacific salmon—sockeye, pink, chum, chinook (or spring), and coho—lie at the heart of Canada's coastal First Nations cultures, nourishing them physically and spiritually.

  In thousands of rivers and streams along the west coast of North America, the return of salmon to their natal waters—in numbers that dwarf those of the fabled bison and passenger pigeons in the past and the caribou and wildebeest today—is one of nature's greatest spectacles. But salmon had disappeared from hundreds of rivers, and runs in many others were dropping steeply. Urban development, farming, logging, pollution, dams, and fishing had deeply affected populations that once flourished from California to Alaska; now they were maintained in large numbers only in B.C. and Alaska. As well, ocean-bottom trawling was destroying habitat crucial to marine biodiversity; a roe fishery to supply Japanese markets was devastating herring populations that were critical feed for many species, including salmon; salmon aquaculture was being touted as a rep
lacement for wild populations.

  We asked a group of distinguished experts to meet and discuss the nature of the problem, its primary causes and potential solutions. We then sought a more detailed analysis; Carl Walters, a world-renowned fisheries authority at the University of British Columbia, accepted our invitation to write a scientifically based evaluation of the state of Pacific salmon. Carl brought the analytic powers of computers to the fields of ecology and fisheries management and was known for his hard-nosed approach and fearlessness in telling it like it is. His report was extensively reviewed by scientists and fishermen before publication to ensure its accuracy and credibility.

  The report, “Fish on the Line,” concluded that salmon runs were in trouble along the coast of B.C. It put the responsibility for the problems on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), indigenous peoples, and commercial and sport fishers—in other words, on everyone with a stake in the future of the fish.

  With so much finger-pointing, it upset everyone, as expected. All interest groups knew the fish were in trouble, but none was willing to give up its share of the bounty. The report was criticized bitterly, and the media played up the angry critics. The David Suzuki Foundation had a major impact in delivering the message that the salmon runs were in trouble, and that there was clearly a need for a different management strategy. Now, what could be done about it?

  In our next study, Lynn Pinkerton, today a professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., and Marty Weinstein, adjunct professor at the UBC Fisheries Centre, both longtime workers in First Nations communities, identified common features in sustainable fisheries around the world. In all such cases, the resource was managed by the local fishing community, which not only was responsible for maintaining stocks but also was held accountable for their state, and the knowledge and experience of the fishers themselves provided the basis for the fishing practices. These findings were published in a report entitled “Fisheries That Work.”