URBAN Environmentalist

Severn Cullis-Suzuki’s holistic world of sustainability involves concrete, and technology, and nature, for sure.

by ADRIAN MACK

“My family is focused a lot on the problems of the world, and yet our lives have become so enriched and amazing because of it.”

Her hair tumbles in a thick black rope that occasionally obscures her eyes; her recycled trench coat is elegantly threadbare in the fashion of any well-appointed Main Street boho; and her brown boots look almost a little too big for her feet. Severn Cullis-Suzuki appears younger than her 27 years and certainly less like an internationally recognized activist than an eye-catching West Coast hipster or art student. Loping up West Broadway for a brief chat with SharedVISION, the first thing she does is confess, with a sheepish grin, that she had to drive the 12 blocks to our appointment “because I’m running a little late.”

It’s a refreshingly vulnerable moment, and it’s not the last, as Cullis-Suzuki sits down at the Greens and Gourmet restaurant to field personal inquiries about her work, her life, her well-known family, and all points in between. Taking polite sips from a Happy Planet smoothie, Cullis-Suzuki never entirely lets her guard down, but she doesn’t sidestep any of the questions either, and only admonishes that things are getting “too personal, personal” when she’s asked about the “father-daughter issues” that inevitably arose in the Suzuki home during her adolescence.

“When your daughter grows up, you’ll know,” she says with a broad, knowing smile. “He’s an older male and I’m a younger female, so there are some fundamental [differences]. But, mostly, we agree. He’ll ask me, ‘What do you think of this?’ I’ll answer and then I’ll hear it in some speech and I’ll be, like, ‘That’s my idea!’“

And, thus, we have our first scoop of the day: David Suzuki, the much-loved and deeply venerated advocate for science and sustainability in a world on the brink of disaster—not to mention a nominee for CBC’s The Greatest Canadian—is also a plagiarist. Cullis-Suzuki rolls her eyes. “Well, I steal from him, too,” she says, unimpressed.

The younger Suzuki shares more with her father than initially meets the eye. Or ear. The cadence of her speech is measured and warm in a familiar way, and so is her optimism in the face of accelerating environmental woes.

“It’s more challenging to be optimistic,” she concedes, “but one of my main themes, I’ve realized, is basically the yin and yang of things. You know, my family is focused a lot on the problems of the world, and yet our lives have become so enriched and amazing because of it.”

Cullis-Suzuki talks at length about the far-flung places she’s been and the extraordinary people she’s met. The Dalai Lama comes in for special praise. Cullis-Suzuki first met him in India, when her father was tapped to teach science to some Tibetan monks. Cullis-Suzuki’s head was shaved at the time. A few years later, and with a full head of hair, the Dalai Lama picked her out at a conference in Vancouver, remarking, “We’ve met.”

“How many people has the Dalai Lama met in the last three years?” she asks. “It’s crazy. That blew my mind.”

Cullis-Suzuki has met more than her fair share of remarkable people, especially after her legendary speech to the UN’s Earth Summit in 1992. She was 12 at the time, and Al Gore promptly joined her fan club. Since then, her public presence has waxed and waned, as she’s gone about the business of getting an education. She recently finished the first draft of her Master’s thesis in ethnoecology, in consultation with Chief Adam Dick of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation.

With the publication of a book she co-edited, Notes from Canada’s Young Activists: A Generation Stands Up for Change (Greystone), in April, she’ll be back in the public eye soon enough. She is predictably lucid about her fame and the necessary media dance it brings with it.

“It’s funny to see my own little media blips,” she says, “because I really didn’t have very much going on at one point, and then Vanity Fair got in touch with me.” With no celebrity or high-society murders in her background, the New York-based glossy presumably wanted Cullis-Suzuki to pump up its progressive-liberal cred. “They highlight do-gooders,” she quips, “and they wanted a ‘Hall of Fame’ photo, and so I did it. And after that, the Canadian media was all over me. I don’t take the media too seriously. I’ve learned they’re a bunch of sheep, really.”

And the press, these days, tends to focus on personality over issues; does this aggravate her? “I don’t mind,” she shrugs. “It’s just a very human thing. We react to the human story. If we can identify the gossip in something, it’s relatable. And a big part of my message is that your life is your message. Your life is what you do for your family and the world.”

And with that, Cullis-Suzuki kindly dishes a few relatable nuggets about the Suzuki home, such as that her father “is not the greatest person to meet all the time. He can actually be quite rude...my mom and my sister are always kicking him under the table. ‘Be nice, be nice! This person really cares about you,’ and he’s just like, ‘Raaaggghhhrrrrr!!!’ He’s pretty shy, unbelievably.” Cullis-Suzuki also reveals that her younger sister was “mortified” by the ballyhooed fig-leaf picture (“he was so proud of himself,” she giggles), and that charades is a long-standing family favourite.

As Cullis-Suzuki finishes her smoothie and prepares to meet with SharedVISION’s photographer, she says, “People always want to take my picture on the beach, but I want to do something urban. I’d like to do something totally…concrete.” It’s a final shot of that inimitable Suzuki pragmatism; the soft touch with big issues that makes both daughter and father such vital and attractive crusaders for planetary health.

“We need to make cities livable,” she asserts. “I don’t even really identify with being an environmentalist, because to me, when I think of the word ‘environment,’ I think of trees, and parks, and conservation. Whereas my idea of where I want to live, in a holistic world of sustainability, involves concrete, and technology, and nature, for sure. We need a more integrated, instead of fragmented, world. I like urban.”

Maybe she should dangle from a crane, above the hole in Cambie Street where the RAV Line is going?

“Sure,” she says, screwing up her face as she gathers her things. “Good one.”

Adrian Mack is a Vancouver writer and musician who would prefer it if his daughter inherited a planet that isn’t broken. For information on Severn Cullis-Suzuki’s new book, Notes from Canada’s Young Activists, visit douglas-mcintyre.com.

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