One of our two-hour specials was a program on logging practices, produced by Jim Murray. It was called “Voices in the Forest,” and one segment included an interview with loggers who were working on a MacMillan Bloedel cutblock near Ucluelet on Vancouver Island. The loggers had been warned we were coming and had permission from the company to talk to us. After we had parked the car and were getting the camera ready, four burly men spotted us and stopped their chain saws to come over. They started badgering me, blaming “environmentalists” for taking jobs away from them, while I tried to argue that it was technology, big machines, and computers that were putting them out of work. It was great theater and never got out of hand.
As we ended the interview and the crew began packing their gear, I continued to talk to the loggers. I told them, “I worked in construction for eight years. To this day, carpentry is my great joy. I love to work with wood. I'm not against logging, and I don't know any environmentalist who wants to shut down the forest industry. We just want to be sure your children and grandchildren will be able to log forests as rich as the ones you're working in now.”
Immediately one of the loggers retorted, “There's no way I want my kids to be loggers. There won't be any trees left for them.” I was stunned, and I regretted that we didn't have the camera still rolling to record his comment, which made it so clear that we weren't arguing about the same things. The loggers were focused on the immediate paycheck to put food on their plates and pay the mortgage, and I was discussing the long-term sustainability of the forests. Those loggers clearly understood that the way forestry was practiced, the trees were going and wouldn't be replaced, but they were trapped by the need to keep their jobs and the money coming in. And that's the way it is in so many areas, whether in fishing, petrochemicals, industrial agriculture, or forestry — the problems are viewed either from the short-term perspectives of employees and investors or from the long-term perspective of environmentalists.
One of my more interesting interviews was with Jack Munro, then head of the International Woodworkers of America-Canada (IWA), who once suggested that people who encountered a spotted owl should shoot it to preserve jobs for his union. He is a big, blustery man, and he went after environmentalists with a vengeance. For the show on logging, our researcher did a preinterview with Munro and won his agreement to be interviewed by me. I knew the session would be heated and argumentative, but I wasn't all that nervous, because I knew he was blunt and forceful and that the interview would be great television.
We arrived early at the union offices to set up our lights and camera and were all ready when Munro arrived. He acted as if he were surprised, and when he was told that David Suzuki was there to interview him, he boomed in a loud, gruff voice, “Suzuki! I don't want to talk to that asshole!” He knew damned well I was there to interview him, and I assumed it was all an act to impress his own staff or to intimidate me. Finally I growled back at him, “Listen, if you don't agree with me, well, here's your chance. Sit down and talk about it.” And he did.
I knew Jack was a lot of bluster, and that was okay with me. What I didn't respect was his caving in to his employers, who convinced him that environmentalists were his enemy. From the 1970s to the '90s, the number of jobs in the forestry sector had fallen by more than a third, and the volume of wood being cut in B.C. had doubled. Yet he was blaming environmentalists and the creation of parks as his enemy for taking away jobs. He accepted the industry line that to be globally competitive, the forest sector had to bring in big machines that displaced men and to apply computers that also increased productivity while reducing jobs. I never understood why the IWA wasn't an ally of environmentalists. We should have been working together to maintain forests, and therefore jobs for loggers, forever.
MY MAIN ROLE IN The Nature of Things with David Suzuki is to perform “stand-ups,” the segments I do on-camera to introduce or end a program or act as a link from one section to another. I write the pieces according to my viewpoint and then work with both the producer and the writer to shape my script to fit the show as they picture it. Sometimes, when the film is finally edited, a stand-up turns out to be irrelevant or totally off the mark and is discarded, but often it is useful and helps the flow of the program.
Once the stand-ups are honed and accepted (by the producer and me), I have to commit them to memory, which I do by repetition, just the way my father taught me to prepare for oratorical contests. I either rehearse the script in my head or say it out loud, memorizing a line or sentence until I can deliver it without a stumble or mistake. Then I go to the next line or sentence, repeating the entire sequence up to that point each time. If I flub or forget, I start over. I do this until I can repeat the whole thing over and over without a mistake.
If the piece lasts a minute or less, I can usually memorize it in just a few minutes, but when the stand-up is a minute and a half or two minutes, it might take ten or fifteen minutes to get it down pat. Once I know I have to do a stand-up, I withdraw from banter with the crew and become totally uncommunicative, because all I'm concentrating on is the stand-up. Unfortunately, to outsiders it can I look as if I'm not doing anything, so they approach and try to talk to me.
Memorizing lines is the most stressful part of television for me. I always thought Roy Bonisteel, the craggy, deep-voiced host of the CBC television series Man Alive, was perfect for his job. In person, he was down-to-earth, salty, and humorous, but on-camera, he had a gravity that was just right for the religious show. He told me he would tape his on-camera pieces exactly as he wanted them to be said and then play the tape through an earpiece hidden by his hair. That way, he could hear himself and simply repeat what he had said, perhaps lagging behind the tape by four or five words. It worked for him.
I always felt my life as host would have been so much easier if we had had a teleprompter from which I could read the script. But Jim Murray was adamant that I had to memorize my lines because, he said, he would be able to tell if I was reading a teleprompter. As I watched newsreaders and other hosts of television programs render their lines naturally and effortlessly from prompters, I felt sure I too could do it while conveying the impression of naturalness and spontaneity — that's what it is to be a professional.
One day, when I was supposed to be filming a stand-up at Allan Gardens in Toronto, I urged Vishnu Mathur, the producer, to get a teleprompter for me to use. He did, and I recorded several pieces. It was bliss, because now I could relax, joke with the crew, and generally feel human for a change, delivering my lines flawlessly for each take. When the stand-ups were done, Vishnu was satisfied that they were fine, and we turned them over to Jim, who insisted on screening all my stand-ups so he could select the ones he felt worked best.
Jim was an outstanding executive producer and paid close attention to every aspect of The Nature of Things with David Suzuki. As money for the series began to be cut back during the '80s and '90s, he kept the budget for each show high and reduced the number we put out, rather than lower the quality to maintain the count. He was a stickler for detail, screening rough cuts, deciding on every stand-up, poring over scripts, even checking on color correction of final prints. Producers approached him for his approval at each stage of production with great trepidation, as he was known to tear shows apart and demand that they be completely reedited or even that new footage be shot. But I've always believed it was Jim's attention to detail and demand for quality that made our series so enduring and powerful.