David Suzuki - David Suzuki: The Autobiography

DAVID SUZUKI
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Copyright 2006 by David Suzuki

06 07 08 09 10 5 4 3 2

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Greystone Books
A division of Douglas & McIntyre Ltd.
2323 Quebec Street, Suite 201
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada V5T 4S7
www.greystonebooks.com

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Suzuki, David, 1936
David Suzuki: the autobiography.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-55365-156-7
ISBN-10: 1-55365-156-1
1. Suzuki, David, 1936. 2. EnvironmentalistsCanadaBiography.
3. David Suzuki Foundation. 4. Authors, Canadian (English)20th
centuryBiography. 5. BroadcastersCanadaBiography. I. Title.
GE56.S99A3 2006 333.72092 C2006-900541-9

Editing by Nancy Flight Copyediting by Wendy Fitzgibbons Jacket design by Jessica Sullivan & Naomi MacDougall Front jacket photographs: top left, top right, middle right, and bottom left: courtesy of the CBC; bottom right: Chick Rice Back jacket photograph courtesy of the CBC Text design by Lisa Hemingway

Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens
Printed on acid-free paper that is forest friendly
(100% post-consumer recycled paper) and has been processed chlorine free
Distributed in the U.S. by Publishers Group West

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

With deepest gratitude,
I thank and dedicate this book to the general public,
who made my life's work possible.

You watched and listened to my programs;
you read, thought about, and responded to
ideas I expressed in writing.

Your support added weight and
visibility to my efforts and carried me past
numerous roadblocks and detractors.

That support has been a great honor, privilege,
and responsibility, which I have tried in my fallible, human
way to live up to.

My life and career in the university, research, and media
would not have been possible without the generous and enthusiastic
support of so many people in so many ways.

With all my heart, I extend thanks to:

My eldersMom, Dad, Freddy, Harry

My anchor and the love of my lifeTara

The futureTamiko, Troy, Laura, Severn, Sarika,
Tamo, Midori, Jonathan

The many students, postdocs, and associates who made my lab
such a vibrant, exciting, and productive community

The dozens of CBC radio and television staff, freelance researchers,
writers, and media professionals whose efforts have made me look good,
a job that Jim Murray reminded me is not easy

The hundreds of volunteers, staff, and associates who have made
the foundation such a supportive, joyful, and positive community

The tens of thousands of people who have contributed to
the foundation so generously

Elois Yaxley, for bringing some order to my life

Rob Sanders of Greystone Books and Patrick Gallagher
of Allen & Unwin Publishers for steadfast support and encouragement

Nancy Flight and Wendy Fitzgibbons for making this prose readable

And my kid sister Aiko, who taught me so much about life
and who died on the eve of 2006

IN 1986, THE year I turned fifty, I had the temerity to write Metamorphosis: Stages in a Life. It was not intended as an autobiography but as a series of essays. My publisher encouraged me to supplement the pieces with more and more personal material, until the essays were reduced to three at the end of the book. To my astonishment and delight, people were interested in my experiences, and the book sold more copies than any other I have written. At the time, at the relatively young age of half a century, I didn't feel I had matured enough to have a perspective on my life. Now, two decades later, I know I was still a child in maturity, and even now, looking in the mirror, I have difficulty reconciling the old man gazing back at me with the still-young person in the mind behind the face.

Although all people on Earth, as members of one species, share the same anatomy of the brain, the same chemistry of neurons, and similar sense organs, each of us perceives the world in a very personal way. We experience it through perceptual filters that are shaped by our individual genes and experiences, by our gender, ethnic group, religious background, socioeconomic status, and so on. Essentially, our brains edit the input from our sensory organs, making sense of it within the context of our personal history and the values and beliefs we have come to acquire.

Now, as my aging body imposes limits and tells me to slow down, I spend more time in reflection, trying to put my most memorable experiences into a kind of order. It's the way scientists write up a research report or paper: we follow different avenues of inquiry, going down blind alleys, hitting a fast lane or taking a shortcut, zigzagging along as we probe an interesting observation or phenomenon. Then, when it's time to write it up, we shuffle through the experiments, tossing some out and organizing the remainder into an order that creates the illusion that a direct path was taken from the initial question to the final results.

So it is with my life story. I don't have a photographic memory (thank god), and certain events that might have passed unnoticed by someone else may have stuck in my mind, whereas other, seemingly more monumental moments have faded away. This, then, is a story I have created by selectively dredging up bits and pieces from the detritus of seventy years of life. The first five chapters skim over the first fifty years, giving a somewhat different emphasis from that of Metamorphosis and offering some different information about those years, and the rest of the book describes events since then.

Why would anyone else be interested in my life? I know people like to delve into the hidden parts of the lives of people who have acquired some notoriety, hoping to find juicy bits of gossip, signs of weakness, or faults that bring the subjects down off pedestals, or simply to expand on what one knows about a public figure. It's not my intention to satisfy that curiosity. Instead, as an elder, I hope my reflections on one life may stir a reader to consider those thoughts in relation to his or her own life.

JAPANESE IMMIGRANTS BEGAN arriving in Canada in great numbers at the end of the nineteenth century, lured by the tremendous abundance of land, fish, and forests that promised money. Small, diligent, smelling of strange foods, speaking heavily accented English, these Asian newcomers seemed to be another kind of human being, willing to live in cramped quarters and squirreling away their hard-earned money. Laws were passed to bar them from voting, purchasing land, and enrolling in universities.