Angry in the Great White North

David Suzuki revealed some interesting things to Barbara Wade Rose:

At about the same time he metamorphosed from research scientist to scientific broadcaster, Suzuki met and married his second wife, Tara Cullis, an English scholar and committed feminist, and emerged from a second chrysalis. He had been married once before, to a Japanese-Canadian high school sweetheart who finally asked him to choose between his marriage and his research. He spent so much time at his University of British Columbia laboratory it took his three children a year to realize that their father had moved out of the house.

Early in his marriage to Cullis, Suzuki tossed off one of the derogatory comments about whites that had become a convenient weapon with which to stab liberal consciences. "'You white people, you'll never understand what I've been through,"' he recalls saying. "Rather than being cowed by it and pulling back, she immediately said, 'How dare you say that? I as a woman have been through things . . .' And she launched into this attack that said essentially just because you're the victim of racism doesn't mean you can't be as bigoted as anyone else. That for me was a real turning point."

Not just a turning point in his perception about bigotry. Really, it was a turning point in his relationship with people, and with women in particular. In his traditional Japanese family, women were subservient. Now here was a woman with a strong personality.

Strangely, though, Suzuki seemed unable to treat Cullis as an equal. If he couldn't be in charge, he could only be subservient himself:

In speaking of the issues he tackles, he says, "There are many times when I feel I don't want to do it, I'm afraid. It's my wife and family that make me do it. Tara is the big figure in my life."

He notes that the really powerful people in environmental groups are almost always women. "What has really excited me," he says, "is that in the feminist perspective it is something far more profound than just a civil rights issue. It has to do with the whole thing of Mother Earth."

I bet Cullis explained in no uncertain terms just how profound the feminist perspective is. Maybe Suzuki tried to debate that viewpoint. But in the end, Suzuki became Cullis' second banana.

"Women are concerned about their children's lives," he says when speaking about environmental issues. "Men are concerned about the immediate bottom line, which is success, power, and profit. Women know goddamn well that we're talking about -- our children's future."

Good boy. Now go wash those plastic bags. I said go wash those plastic bags!

A devotee of recycling, he sometimes has to be brought up short by his wife when it's late at night and he would rather go to bed than wash any more plastic bags.

He would rather go to bed, but she makes him wash those plastic bags.

And he does it.

Interestingly, while Suzuki doesn't get a pass to get a good night's sleep when there are plastic bags that need washing in order to save the planet, Cullis seemed happy buy up a huge plot of land, even if it represents a grossly large amount of land for a family that size to be using:

He and Cullis used the proceeds from a Royal Bank award several years ago to purchase a piece of property in the Queen Charlotte Islands. They call it Tangwyn, a Welsh name that means "blessed peace".

Cullis is of Welsh extraction. Suzuki wins the money on the strength of his work, but she gets to name it in her ancestral language. Meanwhile, Suzuki can't go to bed until the plastic bags are washed.

Kinda feel sorry for the guy.

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