The Nature of David Suzuki
Getting silly and serious with Canada's eco-icon for his 89th birthday (March 24, 2025)
Photo: Rayne Ellycrys Benu
Skaana’s first podcast featured Dr. David Suzuki. Who else?
And the reason we had a language warning on the podcast was because when I asked the eco-icon about first-term Trump’s war against facts and Justin Trudeau’s pipeline plans, the great Canadian let loose enough f-bombs to sink that pipeline.
Suzuki swearing is no longer a shocker - but it was so off-brand in 2017 that someone at the Suzuki Foundation told me it was the most open and candid interview they’d ever heard him give and… no f%$#@#! way were they going to publicly share it.
They also told me that he was evangelical about getting people to read my book, The Killer Whale Who Changed the World - which was published by Greystone and The Suzuki Institute. And he said some very nice things about the book that we didn’t include here. I still love this interview because he wasn’t just angry, but passionate. He choked up at one point too. So it’s the only interview we ever re-ran - and I’m sharing it again for his birthday…
One reason the interview was so candid is that I had a history with “the doc.”
In the late 1990s when my comedy duo, Local Anxiety starred in our own TV comedy special Greenpieces - which we billed as “the world’s first eco-comedy” (arguably still the world’s only eco-comedy) I “played” a tree-hugger who considered Suzuki God. And I was determined to have him guest star. Though Suzuki and I both lived in Vancouver, we both worked various gigs at CBC in Toronto - so we shot this in a park across the street from the CBC building. Yes, I really need to find and download a higher quality video version.
A few years later we asked Suzuki to guest-star on one of our songs… Five Simple Things. The idea was that everyone could and should choose the five things they felt capable of doing for the planet. In 2025 I’m not sure simple things will get the job done but… here’s the tune… And, in honour of Suzuki’s 89th spin around the sun maybe you can think of one simple thing you can do today to make the planet just a bit more liveable for the other animals we share it with. And us.
