Letters to my Grandchildren

by David Suzuki

  He was naturally curious and would always get people to talk about themselves. Since we all love to talk about ourselves, they would think he was a terrific guy. And he was. But Dad had his shortcomings. He was very generous and would give anything if a person was interested—fishing gear, fish, vegetables, whatever—even though we were never wealthy, and I often felt he did it for show.

  In hindsight, I realize his generosity established a network of people who were often just as generous in return. This is what makes the potlatch such a powerful cohesive force among west coast First Nations. But when Dad gave a person something but was not thanked or acknowledged fully, Dad never forgot and always held it against that person—a bad trait that I inherited. Still, I admire Dad’s generosity and try to emulate it in sharing my good fortune. It’s why Nana and I have tried to involve you all in gathering food for Christmas hampers that we deliver to the Salvation Army. We feel it’s important for you to know how fortunate you are and that the joy of Christmas is as much in sharing as it is in receiving.

  AFTER RENÉ LÉVESQUE was elected the first separatist premier of Quebec, I worried about the real possibility that Canada might be broken up. Quebec is a huge part of what I love about Canada, and I did not want to see it become a separate nation. But what could we do way out in British Columbia? Nana and I decided that at least we could learn French so that in any interactions with a Québécois person, we could speak in their language. So I took Tamiko, Troy, and my young bride, your nana, to Chicoutimi, in Quebec, for six weeks of total immersion.

  Chicoutimi is the heart of separatist country, so everyone there was going to speak to us in French. Nana and I were the only adults in our class. The rest were teenagers who were on school programs to learn French. We were billeted with three families—two different ones for Tamiko and Troy, while Nana and I were together with one family, thank goodness. We spent the days with teachers and on trips. It was a great experience.

  At the end of our stay, we had an evening of celebration with our hosts and teachers. Nana and I wrote a play (in French, of course) based on the Frankenstein story. In our play, two people, one French and the other English, are sewn together by Dr. Frankenstein in an experiment. When the two wake up and discover they are physically linked, they begin to fight (in English and French) and finally demand to be cut apart. All the French–English problems of Canada are articulated by the two characters, who, in exasperation, want to be separated. We ended the play with the doctor explaining that together they combine the power of two and will be much stronger than either alone. There was nothing subtle about the play, and deep in the heart of separatist Quebec, I thought it was pretty nervy. We got a standing ovation from the Québécois audience.

  While we were preparing for the evening, Tara (your Nana) and I were running around making sure folks knew their lines, checking the costumes and the operating-room scenery, and memorizing our own lines. One of the kids from the class was surprised that we were taking it all so seriously. “Why?” I asked. To which he replied, “It’s just a nothing concert. Like, who cares?” I was stunned because the fun was in all the running around and doing the best we could.

  I am so pleased that each of you is learning from your parents, who always throw themselves into whatever they do. Tamo and Midori, both your parents enthusiastically supported your sports abilities and loved taking you winter camping. Ganhi and Tiis, your parents always go all out, whether it’s fishing or camping, preparing a feast, or working to preserve the Haida language. Jonathan, your parents worked tirelessly to maximize your physical and mental abilities and for you to become an expert at using computers. And Ryo, look at your parents, both raising you and working to get their PhDs at the same time! I am so proud of them but also so pleased that they are such great role models for you to follow.

  {six}

  MY LIFE IN MEDIA

  MY ANGELS,

  Pardon me for continually talking about the past, but that’s what most of these letters are about, and in this time of enormous and rapid change, I believe that elders have a special role in reminding people of what once was. The rate and scale of change today are staggering. Take mobile phones, for example. New models are coming out all the time, with more bells and whistles that stimulate a rush to get the latest offering. I’m always astounded to see the long lineups for the latest models of iPhones, as well as laptops and computer games.

  Because I am a teacher and scientist, communication has been a major activity in my life. As I’ve said, Dad always felt that to do well in Canadian society, one had to be able to speak in public, so he trained me as an orator. When I taught in university, I mimicked the way I had prepared for oratorical contests when I was young, writing out my lectures longhand, then practising out loud, often in the shower, and driving my family mad.

  I took pride in teaching, especially in the early years, when my classes were small and I could see when students were confused or when they suddenly “got it.” I never used slides or audiovisual aids; I used the blackboard, because as I wrote, I gave students time for an idea to sink in. I’ve often listened to lecturers who use PowerPoint to show slides, then proceed to read what’s on the slides! Why give a talk about something that can be handed out on a sheet? I find that drawing a graph or picture or writing words provides time for students to think about the ideas or processes being presented, so long as they aren’t madly trying to copy what I’m writing or drawing—that’s what I hand out to them.

  Today when I visit classes, I am astounded by the technology, which, I have to admit, can be a superb aid to teaching. I think that, in my area, seeing chromosomes line up and split during cell division or graphic animation of DNA replicating or being read is better than words or crude drawings. I cannot imagine teaching today, but still, I do wonder how engaged a student can be when a class becomes like watching a TV show. A lecture is powerful when the presenter loves the subject and conveys excitement, joy, and especially passion. I always took pride in my lectures because I love genetics so much. In fact, I was kind of arrogant about being a good speaker until I heard Harvard’s Nobel Prize winner George Wald give a lecture to undergrads. I had heard that he was considered one of the greatest lecturers in the school’s history, and when I heard him, I could see why. He was passionate, insightful, and humorous, and he completely captivated me and set a standard I always tried afterward to emulate.

  In a lecture, I am engaged in presenting ideas, and even when there is a large audience, I want people to focus on me to make it seem that I am talking to each of them personally. I believe that what one gets out of communication is directly proportional to the amount of effort expended. So print—books, articles, columns—is by far the most effective medium for transferring an idea. For one thing, when you are reading, you can control the speed with which you acquire information simply by slowing down or speeding up. You can also go over a section again and again. But you have to work to get the meaning.

  After print, radio is next most effective because, again, listeners have to exert effort and create the images to go with the words in their minds. Radio is the medium I do best at and enjoy the most. Radio interviews are intimate conversations that can be rich in humour, self-deprecation, and emotion. I love the cut and thrust of a real exchange. Television is overpowering because we are such visual creatures, but it is much more contrived than radio. Usually a single camera is used on a shoot, so what is presented as a dialogue is actually a film of the response of an interviewee, and then the camera is repositioned to film the interviewer, with “re-asks” (where the questions posed in the interview are asked again) and “reaction shots” (often called “noddies,” because the interviewer is filmed nodding and reacting to the interviewee, who is usually gone). The two sets of films are then edited so that to the viewer of the show, it seems there were cameras recording both at once.

  I had always thought that on programs like The Nature of Things, we were offering a picture of nature that would seduce peop
le into loving the real world we share with other species. But on reflection, I realized we were also creating images of nature that were better than the real world. We send wildlife filmmakers to remote places like the Arctic or the Amazon, where they spend weeks and months trying to get the best shots—polar bears emerging from a den, capturing seals, or swimming from ice floes in the Arctic, or flocks of parrots, capybaras, snakes, and jaguars in the Amazon. Then one breathtaking shot after another is edited together so that months of effort are boiled down to a few minutes of action. Technology provides images of nature not possible to see in real time with the naked eye. Microscopy, time lapse, high-definition, drones, submarines, endoscopes—the list of technological innovations for filming is remarkable.

  But anyone expecting to visit the Arctic or the Amazon to witness the hyperactivity seen on The Nature of Things will be disappointed. In the Amazon rainforest, much of the activity takes place at night or in the canopy high above the forest floor. Nature needs time to reveal her secrets, but we are an impatient animal. In a world where satellite dishes and cable deliver dozens of channels from which to choose, my shows have to compete for the attention of remote-control-clutching viewers who have the attention span of a hummingbird. We don’t have the luxury of time to relish the gradual revelations in nature, and the impression we get from films and Tv is of nature hopped up on steroids.

  Still, as long as we realize that the vital ingredient of time is left out, I believe that natural-history films convey a sense of wonder, amazement, and love that we desperately need if we are to appreciate the role nature plays in our lives.

  The bread and butter of The Nature of Things, the thing the series cut its teeth on and is beloved for, is natural history. I’ve always maintained that people have an innate love of nature, that we could get an audience for a show on the sex life of an oyster if it was shot and edited well. Our problem today is choice. There is simply too much of it. I have only been in a Walmart store once, when I was in Prince George, British Columbia, and needed a specific item for a camping trip. I was overwhelmed by the aisles of things I didn’t know even existed, let alone were needed. I left without finding what I wanted because there was simply too much to wade through.

  And that’s how I feel about Tv programs today. Not only can we choose from hundreds of channels on satellite, we can also roam across the Internet and find endless fascinating material. The first time I decided to look at YouTube, I wanted to see if there was film about a remarkable phenomenon I had heard of in hagfish: when they are agitated, they secrete a material that puffs up like jelly, clearly a protective mechanism against predation. I was astonished to find many videos to select from. After looking at a couple, I was presented with more videos on related topics that looked interesting, so I opened a couple of them. I was still watching videos with fascination when I realized that hours had passed! Yes, that world is endlessly fascinating, but it’s pure entertainment. It reminds me of an old science show called What Will They Think of Next? that portrayed science almost as a magic show with scientists as the magicians. This is not my notion of how to demystify science or to make it more accessible to the general public. The Internet gives me the impression that I can be constantly surprised and amazed at peoples’ stupidity, bravery, ability—you name it, you google it, and you’ll find something.

  But when will we find time for each other, or time to go outside and simply be, or just to think or be happy? It is so sad to see groups of people in which many are looking at or watching their cellphone. Even couples who I assume are on a date are often each on their phones.

  Today, radical innovation and multiple changes can spread through society in months. But often unintended consequences result because not enough consideration has been given to the potential impact of new ideas.

  Over my lifetime, so much has changed in the area of communication. My father told me that when he was a boy, he would make “crystal sets” that he could listen to as a radio. Electricity was not required, because the energy of a radio signal was propagated through a long wire antenna that carried the signal to a crystalline material that, I suppose, vibrated and could be heard.

  If we consider Dad’s lifetime as an extension of my experience, it encompasses electronic communication from early radio days. When I was a boy, radios had a series of vacuum tubes that burned out and had to be periodically replaced. When I was about ten years old, I contracted measles and had to stay home in isolation. The curtains in my room were all drawn, apparently to protect my light-sensitive eyes. I only remember long hours lying in the dark room listening to the radio. I got caught up in long-running radio series—Our Gal Sunday, Inner Sanctum, The Lone Ranger, and many others. There were movies back then as well, and teenagers filled the seats at Saturday matinees to watch regular features like Movietone News, cartoons, and series like the Hopalong Cassidy pictures, which ran every weekend.

  We moved to Leamington, Ontario, in 1946. Our next-door neighbours were living in the foundation of an unbuilt house, a basement that was covered by floor joists and subfloor and coated with tar paper. The rest of the house was built over years—as they acquired the money, I assume. One day I was playing with the boy next door, and he told me he couldn’t spend money on candy or soda pop because his family was saving up to buy a television set. I laughed and laughed at him because that sounded like the stupidest thing I had ever heard. I thought his parents had tricked him into believing something that I thought would never actually happen. Stupid me.

  We moved to London in 1949, when the population was about seventy thousand, a big city in those days. Television was coming, and a few people owned sets. You could tell which house had Tv because it would have a huge antenna on the roof to intercept signals from across the border in Detroit or Cleveland, since there was no station in London. It was a big deal to watch a television program, and I remember sitting with a large group in front of a Tv set in someone’s living room. But the images were like shadows, with lots of what was called “snow”—electronic blotches that further obscured the already faint pictures. The sound was all right, but I just couldn’t see what the fuss was about.

  When I left for college in the fall of 1954, none of the Suzuki family owned a television set. Tuition and room and board at Amherst College in Massachusetts were very high, and it was only because I received a scholarship that I could go. I bussed tables on the morning shift to earn extra money, and with studies and socializing on top of that, I had no time to watch television anyway. When I went off to graduate school in Chicago, I was married to your grandmother, Tamo, Midori, and Jonathan, and we had an unplanned baby (Tamiko). It was an intense time. I took care of the baby during the day while Joane worked, and then I went to the lab to work on my research through the night. It paid off when I finished my degree in less than three years. When we arrived at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for my postdoctoral year, in 1961, we stayed in a furnished rental house, and it had a television set! Joane may have watched television, but I was at the lab day and night, including weekends, and so just never got into watching it.

  In 1962, I took a job at the University of Alberta, where I worked the same kind of hours I had at Oak Ridge. The university produced a half-hour weekly TV program called Your University Speaks, in black and white. I don’t even know what station it was broadcast on, but I suspect it was the CBC. It was shown on Sunday mornings, I think around 8:00. Anyway, somehow someone heard I gave good lectures, and so I was invited to present a lecture on aspects of genetics for the show. In the studio, there was just a big camera pointing at me and a screen with a rear projector to show slides. And that was it. I imagined that I was talking to my father, who was always interested in what I was doing but demanded that I explain things to him so that he could understand them. He had no patience for jargon or complex technical detail. “I’m not stupid, but explain it in English,” he would chastise me if I got too technical and didn’t get my point across.

>   As I pictured Dad on the other end of the camera, I found that the technology didn’t intimidate me and the lecture came easily. To my surprise, Guy Vaughn, the producer, was delighted with my performance and invited me back the next week. I think I even got an honorarium of fifteen or twenty dollars for that show. I ended up doing eight shows, my very first television series.

  After I had done three or four programs, I was walking to campus one day when someone accosted me and said, “I saw your show last week. I really liked it.” I was flabbergasted to find that people actually watched television on a Sunday morning. I didn’t, and never saw a single one of my own programs. I stuttered a thank-you, but my brain was in turmoil because I wanted to ask, “Why on earth are you watching television at that time of day?” In the ensuing weeks, a few students and even faculty members said they had caught one of my episodes, and I realized that although I didn’t watch much television, a lot of people did. Even on a Sunday morning. After I moved to Vancouver, someone at CBC heard I had a bit of television experience, and so I was asked to come on different shows now and then to comment on a new discovery, technology, or book.

  I had been shocked at how poorly scientists in Canada were funded compared with our American peers. My first grant was so small that I started thinking seriously about returning to the United States. Ironically, what enabled me to resist going back there was a large research grant I got from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, probably because I had spent a year at Oak Ridge. But I felt that if Canadians were going to support science adequately, they had to understand how science was relevant to their lives. So I suggested to Keith Christie, a cBc producer in Vancouver, that someone should do a science program for television. Although Toronto was the centre of the universe for English-language programming, the cBc did try to let the regions do some work. So Keith proposed a science show with me as the host. At that time Knowlton Nash was both an on-air news reader and head of programming, and he approved Keith’s request. It would be a half-hour show on Sunday afternoon. Not as bad as early Sunday morning, perhaps, but it would be right up against Sunday football. Nevertheless, I was excited at the prospect of a national science show.