David Suzuki

by David Suzuki

  As women have been widening their athletic opportunities, academically they have exploded ahead. I well remember my high school graduation in 1954, when perhaps 10 percent of my class went on to university and boys captured most of the prizes and awards. Almost fifty years later, when I attended Severn's and then Sarika's graduation, girls earned most of the awards and held incredible records of community and extracurricular service.

  Women now make up more than 60 percent of university undergraduates, more than half of students in graduate studies, medicine, and law schools, and a rapidly increasing number are enrolling in engineering, agriculture, and forestry, areas traditionally male domains. The social ramifications of this huge gender shift will reverberate through society for decades, I am sure.

  Troy and me in the hull of the Klondike, a sternwheeler boat in Whitehorse, Yukon, that Troy was helping to restore

  I wonder, however, about the boys who are not winning the awards they once did and who are not going on to university, but not because I think they should be represented fifty-fifty. Personal experience tells me that women mature socially and intellectually much sooner than boys. I know I was brain-damaged by testosterone and figure I'm just starting to catch up to women, except that senility threatens to intrude any minute. My son, as much because I was his father as anything else, did not complete university and graduated instead from Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design in Vancouver. He has become an excellent carpenter and, more recently, an accomplished boatbuilder, and I am very proud of what he has become. Yet I worry as I watch him inform others, almost apologetically, that he never completed university.

  Has university become the standard by which we measure a person's worth? If so, it is a mistake. I have as much regard for Troy's talent as a carpenter and boatbuilder as I have for any academic with a bachelor's degree or even a PhD. And every time my car breaks down or my sewer gets plugged, I am very grateful to and admiring of the tradespeople who come to my rescue.

  The declining proportion of men in academia may, as the Fraser Institute suggests, reflect discriminatory standards, although I doubt it. I believe we have the opportunity to get our priorities and values right. Yes, we need academically trained people, as we need violinists, artists, and so many other talents. In a multicultural society such as Canada's, diversity has become our great strength, and we have to find ways to honor that diversity, especially as gender barriers are removed in most occupations.

  One serious challenge of this gender shift is the conflict between a woman's professional ambitions and the biological imperatives of her body. The decline in fertility after the age of thirty is quite dramatic and often leads to heroic medical interventions, such as in vitro fertilization for older women. Could we develop ways for women to have it both ways, to pursue a career while also having children?

  My wonderful secretary, Shirley Macaulay, worked for me for more than twenty years until she was forced to retire by the university. I despaired of finding someone who could replace her as both efficient secretary and friend. When Shirley and I finally interviewed Evelyn de la Giroday, we both agreed she would be an ideal replacement, younger, experienced, and willing to be firm if necessary. I was very disappointed to learn that Ev was pregnant and that she wanted to spend quite a while with her baby before returning to work. “What about bringing the baby to the office, where you could nurse her and still work?” I asked.

  Ev was a bit dubious, but we agreed to try it out. After Ruthie was born, we set up a playpen in my office at the University of British Columbia while Ev worked in the room adjacent. It worked very well. The baby slept a lot, and besides, I was out of the office most of the time anyway. Evelyn could feed or change the baby in the privacy of my office and still carry out her duties. What surprised me was the protest raised by faculty and students. Ruthie very seldom cried loudly enough to be heard outside my office, but people became aware there was a baby around, and rather than being intrigued by the experiment, academics were indignant at what they felt was an inappropriate presence in their hallowed halls. Fortunately the arrangement worked for long enough for Ev to be happy to find a sitter to take care of Ruth at home, and Ev worked for me for years after.

  BEING A PARENT IS the most important thing I have done in life, and I have always been completely committed to my children, though not in the same way my father was. Through my childhood memories, it seems to me my father devoted a huge amount of his time to me. Whether at work or play, he included me on his trips, which were important parts of my formative years, and he spent hours listening to my childish prattle and questions, trying to respond and answer as fully as he could. I have failed to emulate that with my children.

  After my first marriage had ended, I endeavored to be with the children every day I was in Vancouver and was aided by Joane's generosity in allowing me unrestricted access to them. But often my mind was distracted, not totally focused on them but off somewhere else. I was too selfish to give myself over to being Dad 100 percent, and I regret that, not only for the children's sake but also for my own. I was just unable to give myself totally to the moment and fully enjoy them.

  Joane was my first love, and though we have met less and less often over the years, she has always had my greatest respect and gratitude for the years we did spend together and for never using the children as a weapon to punish me for my shortcomings. They had been conceived in love. When our marriage ended, we didn't negotiate conditions for the amount of money I would pay her in alimony because, as she told the stunned lawyer, “I trust Dave.” I have always tried to live up to that faith. I supported Joane so that she could be a full-time mother, a job she did wonderfully.

  Laura, Tamiko, and Troy

  When I told Joane seven years after our separation that my remarriage was going to be a financial strain, without a word of protest she told me she could resume her career now that Laura, our youngest, was in school. Well trained as a lab technician at Ryerson Institute of Technology in Toronto and experienced with the electron microscope at the University of Chicago, Joane was soon running the lab for Pat and Edith McGeer, the famous neurobiology team at UBC.

  Tamiko went away to McGill University in Montreal and studied biology. She hoped to improve her French while she was there but was disappointed at how easy it was to continue speaking English. At McGill, Tamiko fell in love with Eduardo Campos, a Chilean Canadian who was enrolled in engineering and was a computer whiz. They married after graduation and decided to have a footloose life, working for periods and saving enough to travel to different parts of the world. They had decided they would forgo a family for a more gypsylike life.

  But Eduardo's Latin American parents felt it was a mistake, and I did too. When Tamiko approached thirty, she began to reassess the decision, and in 1990 she gave birth to Tamo, my first grandson, and three years later to Midori, my first and (so far) only granddaughter. Tamiko has become one of those supermoms, holding down a job as a chromosome analyst in a hospital while caring for two supercharged children who have grown to be star athletes. Eduardo has used his fluency in Spanish and English to take jobs working in South America and spends a lot of time away from home. In many ways, Tami is repeating the role Tara has played in our home, multitasking because of the absence of her partner much of the time.

  Tamo and Midori were born when Sarika was still a child, so suddenly I had a young daughter and grandchildren when I was spending a lot of time away. It has been unfair to my grandchildren that I have not had the time with them I wished for. I loved attending basketball games to cheer Sev and Sarika when they played in high school but have seldom been in town when Tamo and Midori have had hockey, soccer, snowboarding, and football competitions.

  Grandchildren are such a delight because the relationship is so different from the relationship with one's children. Every human relationship—between lovers, parents, or children—has moments of frustration, anger, and resentment. It's inevitable, because we are human beings with fallibilities and nee
ds that may conflict with those of others. But in a loving relationship, we work these conflicts out, and the benefits and joys more than offset those awkward or trying moments.

  With grandchildren, however, there isn't the chafing that can result from living together day in and day out, so every get-together is a celebration and fun. We can do all those things with grandchildren that we carefully avoided as parents, like buying candy or extravagant toys, then drop them back with their parents to pick up the pieces. It is sheer joy and no responsibility. And because they don't live with us, grandchildren don't see all the flaws in us that their parents know so well—so they can just worship us for what they think we are. It's great.

  When it became clear that we had the financial support to make the television series based on my book The Sacred Balance, Amanda McConnell had the brilliant idea of including Tamo, both to represent me as a child and as a reminder that the next generation had to be included in our perspective. Although I had taken Tamo when he was younger to experience seaweed camp in Gitga'at territory, I was nervous about spending so much time with him alone. “What do I do to keep him entertained?” I wondered. As an enticement on our first shoot, I met him in Florida and took him to Universal Studios, where we shared some incredible rides and had a delightful three days together. He was a wonderful companion and performer throughout the filming.

  Laura chose to attend Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, where she majored in psychology. I was delighted when she fell in love with and later married Peter Cook, a fellow cartoonist on the school paper and also a psychology major. Peter made Laura laugh and drew her out as a personality. Jonathan, their son, is a beautiful child who was found to have suffered oxygen deprivation at birth and has cerebral palsy, a debilitating problem of varying severity, depending on the area of the brain that is damaged. Jonathan has severe problems, will probably never walk, and though blind, he apparently has developed an alternate neural pathway that enables him to recognize symbols and patterns and actually to read.

  What has been so impressive and humbling to me has been the parenting of this heroic young couple, Laura and Peter. They are magnificent parents, pouring love and energy into developing Jonathan's capabilities to the maximum. As my grandson has constrained their world and activities, success and joy have come from struggle and incremental achievements. I have often pondered how strong I would be were I faced with a severely disabled child, whether I would be up to the job. By their actions, Laura and Peter demonstrate the good and the potential that I hope are in all of us when adversity intervenes.

  Son-in-law Peter Cook with Laura and my grandson Jonathan

  Troy spent many years trying to figure out his relationship with me, but he stayed very close to my father, moving in with him for several years. As we have become close again (thank goodness for e-mail), I wonder where he's going in a life still evolving. Like many younger men today, he has chosen not to follow the high-pressure, competitive path that was the model of a “successful” male when I was younger. And as a result, in so many ways, he has led a more varied, interesting life than I have.

  Severn and Sarika are out of the nest but still strongly attached to the family. It is wonderful to have them spend weeks at Tangwyn with boyfriends in tow. Horizons for the girls seem limitless compared with what was expected for Tara's generation of women.

  After graduating from Yale University in 2001, Severn traveled for two years and gave inspirational speeches to adult and youth groups across North America. She then decided to go back to graduate school to study ethnobotany and is now working with Nancy Turner at the University of Victoria; through Sev, Tara and I are vicariously learning about the exciting discoveries of aboriginal gardening along the west coast.

  Although as children of a faculty member my children could have attended UBC without paying tuition, I had informed all of them I would pay for their postsecondary school education, but they would have to take it outside B.C. because I believe being away from home is half of what this experience is about.

  I had urged Sarika to take one of the acceptances she received from Mount Holyoke College and Smith College in Massachusetts, the two women's colleges near my alma mater, Amherst. But in the end she decided against an all-female school and went to the University of California at Berkeley to study marine biology. Now, through her, I enjoy learning about fish that have so long been important in my life. Tara and I have offered to be her research assistants any time.

  All of my children have become vibrant, interesting human beings, all of them committed environmentalists and contributors to society. If my children and their children know anything, I hope it is that they have my unconditional love and can always depend on that.

  WHAT IS THE MEANING of life? Although I'm an elder, I haven't come close to answering that question. The 1960s were all about enjoying the moment. I remember students having a confrontation with faculty at UBC and one of the leaders who was challenging professors, marks, and classes saying life is about “fun” and university was irrelevant because it wasn't fun. For me, life has been and continues to be about work. I find it impossible to live in the present and to simply relish the joy of the moment. Life for me seems to be all about responsibility and the need to fulfill obligations. It hasn't been fair to Tara, or my children or grandchildren, but a sense of duty and being busy has taken me away from them, even when I am physically with them.

  I have been a pushover for certain kinds of requests for help—from underdogs, like a woman in Woodstock who had struggled for years to galvanize concern about local environmental issues, so I helped her by going and giving a speech that raised money and support for her. I hate it when I hear stories of bullies, like the owner of a marine aquarium in the Niagara region who took a small group of people to court for handing out leaflets urging people to consider the plight of the captive killer whales. I gave a speech to a sold-out crowd and helped the defendants raise tens of thousands of dollars for legal fees to fight their case. I keep trying to help when appeals come from isolated First Nations communities fighting high suicide rates among youth, problems of contaminated water, or arrogant authorities like provincial hydroelectricity corporations.

  But all of these do-good efforts take me away from the family and home, because most of the time I end up visiting and speaking on weekends. It has been utterly selfish for me to put these activities ahead of time spent with family and certainly a conceit to think I can be the one to make a difference.

  My devotion to work has also resulted in an almost obsessive need to be punctual. The one thing that creates tension between Tara and me is our totally different approaches to time. She is motivated by a desire to get as much out of every minute as she can, and that means not wasting time by leaving and arriving early, so she pushes things to the very last minute. In contrast, I like to leave lots of leeway for unexpected holdups and am much happier arriving early and waiting. I practically go bonkers when Tara is late. She claims I once allowed so much time for traffic and the unexpected when we left for a movie in West Vancouver that we arrived two hours early. But that is ridiculous and must be untrue. It is true, however, that I am “anal,” as my daughters constantly remind me.

  Family gathering in June 2005. Left to right, front row: Sarika, me, Jonathan (grandson), Marcia, Richard Aoki (Marcia's husband), and his grandson, Malevai. Back row: Severn, Tara, Peter Cook (son-in-law), Laura, Delroy Barrett, Jill Aoki (niece), and Makoto.

  My friends and even my family believe it will be impossible for me to retire, but I don't agree. Retirement to me does not mean not doing anything interesting and meaningful and just waiting for death. There have been many things I've wanted to do, but I have never been able to devote the time and attention that are needed to do them fully and well. For example, I would love to try my hand at painting, and when I told this to my sister Aiko, who was an artist, she sent me all of the necessary equipment, including a how-to-get-started book, but I've never even removed the wrapping. Many ye
ars ago, when I expressed regret that I had never learned to read music or play an instrument, Joane bought a beautiful recorder for me, but I never touched that either.

  To follow these pursuits seriously, I couldn't just put in an hour a day or every other day; I want to be able to focus on them without distractions of time or other commitments. Maybe it's just a rationalization for doing nothing, but to me, retirement means having the time to do a few of the things I want to do—paint, learn Spanish, do some carving, study geology—before I pass on and the atoms in my body are returned to the natural world from which they came.

  Continuing the fishing tradition: Sarika and Severn with a ling cod

  HUMAN BEINGS BEAR THAT terrible burden that self-awareness has inflicted on us—the knowledge that we, like all other creatures on earth, will die. That's what religions attempt to provide solace for, the unbearable thought of our disappearance forever. Belief in a life after death is one way to bear this truth, although it pains me to see people who seem to care little about this life because they believe they will live forever after they leave it. It even seems that blowing oneself up is preferable to a life fully lived if the promise is seventy virgins in paradise (over eternity, those virgins won't satisfy very long). I have been an atheist all my adult life, although as a teenager, I desperately wanted to believe in a god.