Сhapter THREE
IN 1954, WHEN I graduated from high school and went away to college, my family had never owned a television set. At that time in London, Ontario, television was still a novelty, and a pioneer who purchased a TV set required a giant antenna to pick up signals from Cleveland or Detroit. I remember the thrill of sitting in my uncle's living room watching shadowy on-screen images flitting through a curtain of heavy electronic snow—it was the technology more than the programs that fascinated us. But watching television had never been part of my early family life, and when I went away to college and then graduate school, I was too busy to watch TV.
On another front that would turn out to be a thread in the fabric of my life, my father had encouraged me to take up public speaking. In Japanese culture, extreme deference is paid to authority and social position, and self-deprecation and politeness often mean people are reluctant to speak out or stand up for themselves or their ideas. In Canada, a culture in which outspokenness or aggressive self-promotion is often admired, the inability of many Japanese Canadians to stand up and speak with enthusiasm or authority is a disability.
My father was a very rare Japanese Canadian, outgoing, gregarious, and articulate, and he wanted me to be the same way. “You've got to be able to get up and speak in public,” he told me over and over when I was a teenager. He worked hard to train me to give speeches, and at his urging, I entered oratorical contests and won a number of them.
Amherst College in the 1950s aimed to graduate students who were well rounded in the humanities and the sciences. Every Amherst undergraduate of the time, regardless of area of specialty, had to take such courses as English and American Studies and a foreign language; one of the more idiosyncratic requirements was that all students had to be able to swim two lengths of the pool. Amherst men also had to take public speaking in sophomore year. The course was a joke among the students, because no one ever failed, but I took it seriously and won top marks in the six speeches we had to give over two semesters. As well, as an honors biology student, I was required to make a scientific presentation to students and professors in each semester of my senior year, and I discovered I had an ability to present complex scientific topics in a way that not only was understandable but also excited the listeners. I realized teaching was something I enjoyed and could do well, and in graduate school this awareness was reinforced in the seminars and discussions I led.
After I arrived at the University of Alberta in 1962 to take up my first academic position, I soon earned a reputation as a good lecturer and was invited to give a talk on a program called Your University Speaks, broadcast on a local television channel. It featured university professors lecturing on subjects in their areas of expertise, aided by slides. As the title of the show suggests, it was a pretty stodgy series. But I was curious and accepted the invitation (I think we were even paid twenty-five bucks), and apparently I did all right, because I was asked to go back the next week and the next and the next until I ended up doing eight programs. The series was broadcast early Sunday mornings, so I was shocked when people stopped me and told me how much they had enjoyed one of the shows I had done. Initially I couldn't understand why anyone would watch TV on a Sunday morning, but I began to realize television had become a powerful vehicle to inform people.
I moved to the University of British Columbia a year after returning to Canada, and in Vancouver I was asked to appear on television to do the occasional book review or commentary on a scientific story. I became more interested in the medium as a way to communicate and ended up proposing a television series to look at cutting-edge science. Knowlton Nash was head of programming at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and approved the series to come out of Vancouver. At one point, he called Keith Christie, who had been assigned to produce the series, and asked how “it” was going. Keith asked what he was talking about, and Knowlton replied, “You know, that Suzuki-on-science series.” Keith tells me he said, “That's it,” and the show was called Suzuki on Science. It was broadcast across the country in 1969 and was my first involvement in a television series with a national audience. It ran for two seasons and was renewed for a third, but I quit: we had a lousy time slot and low budget and I saw no future for the show, exciting though making the series had been.
In 1974, Jim Murray, longtime executive producer of The Nature of Things on CBC Television, began a new show called Science Magazine, a weekly half-hour collection of reports on science, technology, and medicine. He had known about my Vancouver-based series, and after we met and talked, he hired me to be the host of the new one. It was an immediate hit, drawing an audience that was 50 percent larger than the long-running popular series The Nature of Things, which had begun in 1960. I took a leave from UBCto host the program.
Halfway through that first season, Knowlton Nash informed us the series would be dropped. We were shocked, but we carried on. At the end of the last show, I told the audience this was the final segment, thanked them for watching, and said goodbye. I didn't lament our passing or plead for support, but viewers responded with letters and phone calls objecting to our cancellation. The series was restored and ran for four more years.
Being interviewed by students in the late 1960s
During the first season of Science Magazine, Diana Filer, executive producer of the CBC Radio series Concern, attended a speech I gave at the University of Toronto. She had proposed a new science series for radio called Quirks and Quarks and hired me to host it when it went to air in 1975. I was host of both Science Magazine on television and Quirks and Quarks on radio, which was a full-time job, until 1979.
Diana also introduced me to Bruno Gerussi, whose CBC Radio show had been a forerunner of Peter Gzowski's This Country in the Morning. Bruno became a good friend, and I would often drop in on him in Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast just north of Vancouver, where he lived while filming his long-running CBC Television series The Beachcombers. On one of those visits, he met my father and grew very fond of him, eventually inviting him to play a guest role on an episode.
Bruno also had a script written in which I played a scientist in search of a rare coastal tree. In one segment of that episode, I appeared with the First Nations actor Chief Dan George, who had starred so powerfully in the film Little Big Man with Dustin Hoffman. I was awed and thrilled to be in his presence, but by then he was quite old and frail. In the story, I seek his advice on where the rare tree might be. When I arrived for the shoot, Chief George was seated in a rocking chair on a house porch and covered with a blanket. As the crew went about setting up the lighting and camera, I tried to chat with him. He replied in a barely audible voice, so I realized I was draining his energy and left him alone; I worried about whether he could perform.
Once the camera was rolling and the producer called out “Action!”, Chief George threw off the blanket, straightened up, and delivered his lines forcefully with that unique voice. As soon as the director shouted “Cut!”, the chief immediately drew the blanket up around his shoulders and slumped back into the chair. He delivered like a trouper by conserving his strength between every take. Now that's being a professional.
In 1979, I left both Science Magazine and Quirks and Quarks to become host of The Nature of Things, which had been reformatted and was to become an hour-long program called The Nature of Things with David Suzuki. I left radio with great reluctance. It was the medium I enjoyed most, because interviews were relaxed, and there was an opportunity to be spontaneous, humorous, and even risqué, since tapes could be edited and still retain warmth and intimacy.
In contrast, television is very controlled, because airtime is so valuable. After I've given a speech, I often encounter people who tell me I'm so different from my persona on TV. But it shouldn't be a surprise; that person on-screen is a creation of the medium. My on-camera appearances are carefully planned and controlled, then prepackaged, and the narration is laid down in a studio, where my reading is carefully delivered to fit the pictures. Because radio burns through material and, as host of Quirks and Quarks, I had to do all of the interviews, it demanded far more of my time than television. There was also no denying the much greater audience size of television and therefore, potentially, its greater impact. So I reluctantly gave up Quirks and Quarks, but I continue to take vicarious pride that it has endured and flourished under a number of excellent hosts.
When I began to work in television in 1962, I never dreamed that it would ultimately occupy most of my life and make me a celebrity in Canada. I thought I might have a knack for translating the arcane jargon of science into the vernacular of the lay public, and I felt that speaking on television was a responsibility I had assumed by accepting government research grants and public support in a university. When I appeared on a television show for the first time, I enjoyed the novelty, but I did not anticipate the notoriety that would come from being on-screen regularly. Looking back, I realize how incredibly naive I was. I just didn't understand the relationship between a viewer, television, and information.
Nim Chimpsky, who was taught to use sign language by Herb Terrace of Columbia University
Television is an ephemeral medium; a program we might work for months to create flashes onto the screen to an audience often distracted by other activities—feeding the kids, answering the phone, going to the toilet, walking the dog, getting a drink. Viewers aren't fully engaged through the entire program, and what is ultimately remembered may be a snippet. And if a show is part of a series such as The Nature of Things with David Suzuki, in which diverse topics are covered, the subject matter of any given show may be forgotten, but the one constant feature from week to week—the host—is remembered.
Over time, a relationship is established wherein the audience comes to trust the host and to believe in what he or she is conveying. Think of the enormous following of people like American journalist Walter Cronkite and Canadian counterpart Peter Mansbridge. In the same vein, I too am transformed from being the carrier of information to an “expert.” People assume I am an authority on each subject we cover on the series and that I must know everything in the area of science, the environment, technology, medicine, and so on. Strangers often approach me to ask a very specific question about treatment for a disease, a new technology for cleaning up the environment, or an obscure species discovered in the Amazon. When I answer that I have no idea, they stare in disbelief and demand, “What do you mean, you don't know? I thought you knew everything!”
Even back in the 1960s, when I was dabbling in television, it was referred to as “the boob tube,” and I knew program offerings were mainly idiotic or dull or both. When I entered television as a new career, I was conceited enough to think my shows would be different, glistening like jewels in the muck. Because I was not in the habit of watching television, I thought people would carefully read the program listings to find out what important, interesting, or entertaining show was coming up, look forward to it with great anticipation, turn on the set just before the show was to appear, and sit riveted through the entire program. When it was over, I thought, people would turn off the television and then discuss the show with someone else.
Well, of course, now I know that's not how we watch television at all, especially today, with so many choices available. More likely, we come home from work and turn on the set as we go about doing other things. Often the TV is on during dinner and remains on until we go to bed. Even when we are watching a program, our attention may be distracted. By the time we go to bed, we won't remember whether something was on That's Incredible! or The Nature of Things with David Suzuki.
In the 1970s, Bob McLean was host of a noon talk show on CBC and invited me to be a guest. At one point, he asked me out of the blue, “What do you think the world will be like in one hundred years?” My answer went something like this: “If there are still humans around by then, I think they will curse us for two things—nuclear weapons and television.” Surprised by my answer, he ignored both my suggestion that humans might not survive another hundred years and the nuclear issue to blurt out, “Why television?” My response was, “You've just asked a pretty profound question. Suppose I had replied, ‘Bob, that's a tough one. I'll have to think about it' and then proceeded to think, not say anything, for ten seconds. You'd cut away to a commercial within three seconds, because TV can't tolerate dead air. That's the problem; it demands instant response, which means there's no profundity.” Thinking back on that reply, I'm rather impressed with it, because I still believe that today.
I worry about the impact of computers and television, because the cyberworld is seductive—not because it is so real, but because in many ways it's better than reality. You can have the kinkiest sex yet not worry about getting caught by a partner or contracting aids, and you can hit the wall in a car race or get shot down in a dogfight in the air and walk away undamaged. Why bother with the real world when you can get all the heart-thumping thrills of the real thing and none of the risks or harm? I always thought our programs on nature would be different; they would show people the natural world through wonderful images that would teach them to love and treasure it. But now I realize that I, too, am creating a virtual world, a fabricated version of the real thing.
If we want to do a program on diverse life forms in the Arctic or the Amazon, we send a cameraperson to those places to spend months trying to get as many sensational shots as possible. Then, back in an editing room, from hours of film we pull together the best pictures and create a sequence of images—polar bears, seals, and whales in the Arctic or parrots, Indians, piranhas, and jaguars in the Amazon. In the end we have created an illusion of activity that belies the truth. If anyone actually visits the Amazon or the Arctic expecting to see what they saw in a film, they will be very disappointed, because the one thing nature needs is the one thing television cannot tolerate: time. Nature needs time to reveal her secrets, but television demands the juxtaposition of one hard-earned shot after the other, a kind of nature hopped up on steroids to keep the viewers' attention so they don't run out of patience and switch channels. Without understanding the need for time, what is perceived is a Disney-fied world providing so many jolts of excitement per minute.
Today, in almost any city in the developed world, cable television provides instant access to sixty to one hundred channels, and a satellite dish can deliver hundreds of channels. Merely grazing through such a vast offering with a remote control is liable to consume half a program. Whizzing through the channels, one is struck with the sense that Bruce Springsteen is right when he sings, “Fifty-seven channels and nothin' on.” As the viewer clicks past, every program tries to reach out of the set, grab the person by the throat, and insist, “Don't you dare change channels!” How does a show do that? By becoming louder, shorter, faster, sexier, more sensational, more violent. It's no accident that The Nature of Things with David Suzuki has offered programs on psychopaths, female castration, and the penis. But there is a price to be paid to acquire that audience: when you jump into a cesspool, like everyone else you look like a turd.
In 1992, before the Earth Summit in Rio, I screened a program on the first United Nations–sponsored conference on the environment in Stockholm in 1972 as reported by The Nature of Things. In 1972 there might have been two or three channels competing withCBC, and The Nature of Things was only a half hour long. To my surprise, there were three- to four-minute on-camera interviews with the anthropologist Margaret Mead and the biologist Paul Ehrlich. Today, The Nature of Things with David Suzuki is an hour long (although up to fourteen minutes may be taken up by commercials), but we would never run an on-camera interview longer than twenty to thirty seconds. Images, far more than words or ideas, determine what is on television programs today, and depth and content are sacrificed. What I find creepy is that I too felt the 1972 interviews dragged and were boring; in spite of my desire for more meat in my information, I wanted it sped up.
When I began a career in television, I realized how important the applications of scientific ideas and techniques were to people's lives, and I thought my role was to make those applications accessible to the general public. By watching my programs, I thought, the audience would acquire the information they needed to make informed decisions about how science and technology would be managed. I wanted to empower the public, but the opposite happened because of the nature of the medium. Regular viewers of The Nature of Things with David Suzuki watch the program on faith that what we present is important and true, and they come to expect me to tell them what to do or to act on their behalf. If I phone a politician's office, even the prime minister's, chances are very good that my call will be returned within half an hour—not because I'm an important person, but because an informed politician knows that a million and a half people watch my shows regularly. Those viewers have empowered me, putting an enormous weight of responsibility on me and on the producers of our programs to ensure that the shows are impeccably researched.
AS THE HEAD OF a large research lab, I was constantly at the center of activity. If not actually carrying out an experiment myself, I would be having discussions with various members of the team, reading new publications, arguing about what we should be doing next, talking about student projects, and so on. What a contrast with making a television program; although a shoot involves moments of intense activity and concentration, those are punctuated by long periods of sitting around waiting, and the host is the least important factor.
Each member of the filming team has a very specific role, though we all chip in when there's gear to be packed, lugged, or unpacked. Depending on the amount of funding we have, the size of the ensemble varies. On a well-funded shoot, there may be a producer, writer/researcher, cameraperson, camera assistant, soundperson, lighting person, and me, the host. I contribute the least in creating the film, yet I receive most of the credit for the final product. A producer, having conceived of a program and been intimately involved in the research, shooting, and editing, is often understandably ticked off when the program airs and that producer then meets someone who says, “Hey, Suzuki's show last night was great.”
My main preoccupation in a shoot is what I am going to say on-camera or what questions I need to ask in an interview to elicit the responses we want. When we are doing an interview, we generally know where the subject is going to fit in the show and what we want or expect that person to say. When the interviewee is, say, a spokesperson for a chemical company that is polluting a river, everyone knows The Nature of Things with David Suzuki is not going to be interested in all the good things the pr representatives tell us it is doing. The company spokesperson will try to stick to a message worked out beforehand whereas I will probe and spar, hoping the subject will let down his or her guard, reveal some emotion, or stray from the set refrain. At the same time, the company line will often be so patently false that, when backed up against the evidence, it will clearly be revealed as just a pr stance. An interview in those circumstances is an elaborate dance by both sides.
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.
Publicity shot for The Nature of Things with David Suzuki
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.
Although Vishnu had gone along with my request to use a teleprompter, he was worried that Jim would see what we had done when he looked at the footage. To our enormous relief, Jim screened the stand-ups and approved them without a murmur—he couldn't tell I was reading off a screen! Now, I thought, the days ahead would be so much easier.
But Jim's temper was notorious. Vishnu was too intimidated to tell him we had fooled him, and I didn't want to get Vishnu into trouble by squealing on him. If we continued to use the prompter, Jim would eventually notice the cost of its rental on our expense sheets. So I kept memorizing my pieces and suffering through the shooting because we didn't have the courage to confront our boss. When Jim reached mandatory retirement age and his replacement, Michael Allder, was appointed, I timorously asked whether we could start using a prompter. To my great relief, Michael's response was, “Of course.”
I know that, to the viewer, working in television might seem exciting and glamorous. But it isn't. Oh, there are moments when one witnesses something spectacular, such as a group of elephant seals on land or whales emitting a curtain of bubbles to surround and drive fish. Those occasions are special, and what adds to that is the knowledge that very few people in the world will ever have that firsthand experience. Through television, it has also been my great privilege to meet some amazing people—lots of Nobel Prize winners and other remarkable people; for example, the English scientist James Lovelock, who coined the term “Gaia hypothesis” to express his idea that Earth is a single living entity; the English primatologist Jane Goodall; the Kenyan paleontologist Richard Leakey, and many others. But most of the time on location, we are filming wide shots, close-ups, and the same scenes over and over from different angles so they can be edited to form a sequence the viewer seldom realizes is a collage.
We usually have one camera on a shoot. When we do an interview, we keep the camera trained on the person being interviewed. When that's over, the camera is repositioned for a “reversal” and I “re-ask” the questions, this time with the camera on me. It's a challenge to remember the way a query was originally asked from off-camera. I also do “noddies,” in which the camera films me nodding or shaking my head, smiling, or looking puzzled, all to provide material an editor can blend to give an illusion that there were two cameras shooting the whole thing. These “reaction shots” also allow an “edit point” in an interview. If a long reply has to be cut at a certain point and then connected to a later part, we cover the edit by putting in a reaction shot. If we shoot a scene without recording sound, it is said to be shot “MOS,” reputedly a take on the Austrian-born American film producer Otto Preminger, who would shout, “This shot is mit out sound,” which became MOS.
WORKING IN TELEVISION HAS been very rewarding and has given me a great deal of pleasure. I have also enjoyed the traveling it has entailed, but there has been a downside as well.
In 1993, Nancy Archibald began to work on a two-hour special on dams. Nancy was Jim Murray's partner and had become the executive producer of The Nature of Things when Jim was recruited to take over The National Dream, the blockbuster series based on Pierre Berton's book and hosted by the prolific Canadian author. Nancy proposed to look at megadams around the world and ascertain whether they had lived up to their promise.
Protests had been launched against a dam proposed on the sacred Narmada River in India, and the charismatic firebrand Medha Patkar had spent years rallying indigenous people who would be flooded out by it. In 1985, the World Bank had committed a $450-million loan to build the dam at Sardar Sarovar, but, led by Patkar, public protest forced the bank to set up an investigative committee in 1991. It was chaired by former United Nations Development Program administrator Bradford Morse of the U.S., and he took on Canadian lawyer Tom Berger as deputy chair.
Having represented the Nisga'a First Nation in a landmark case and consulted other First Nations as commissioner of the ground-breaking Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, Berger had a long track record of working with aboriginal people in Canada. The Morse Commission traveled extensively in western India, listening to the people who would be affected most by the project. In the end, the report came down heavily against funding the dam, and the World Bank withdrew its promised support. By then, it had become a matter of national pride, and the Indian government went ahead and built the dam on its own.
When Nancy started filming, the Narmada dam was not yet complete. We applied to the Indian government for permission to film but were turned down when officials discovered that we would be focusing on dams. We decided to film without a permit. As we expected, the country is so vast and complex that there was no way our activity could register in the upper echelons of government before we were already in and out.
We went in December, and although the weather was still warm by Canadian standards, it was winter, when a tremendous amount of coal is burned even by the poorest street people. The air was unbelievably polluted. As we rode in a three-wheeled taxi through the streets of Bombay in early morning, coal dust hung in the air and swirled about in great clouds as we passed by. I found it hard to take a breath and couldn't imagine what the pollution was doing to our lungs. When I returned home, I became very ill with lung congestion. I couldn't shake it, and after ruling out a viral, bacterial, or parasitic infection, my doctors decided I had asthma. Subsequent tests revealed I do not have asthma, but I have been left with chronically weak lungs and allergies that flare up whenever I visit a new city or there is heavy smog.
Another difficult shoot was in 1999, when Geoff Bowie produced a program on the tragedy of the Aral Sea in central Asia. Bounded by Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, only a few decades ago this great inland sea was a rich source of fish, including sturgeon, salmon, and plaice, and villages dotting its shores were magnets for summer tourists. The Aral Sea was the fourth-largest inland sea on Earth when the Soviet Union decided to make the surrounding region the cotton center of the world. Soon, vast areas of land were growing cotton, one of the most chemically demanding crops we have. Heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers polluted the sea, and so much water was drawn from the two main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, that they were reduced to a trickle.
After 1960, the level of the sea began to drop. Biodiversity was heavily affected. Before 1960, more than 70 mammalian species and 319 bird species were known, but by the end of the twentieth century, those figures had dropped to 32 and 160, respectively. What were once beaches became wide swaths of toxic sand that spreads on the winds.
Today the Aral is the tenth-largest inland sea, most of its fish species are extinct, and the shoreline has retreated more than sixty miles from the once-seaside villages. Child and maternal mortality levels around the Aral Sea are the highest in the former Soviet Union. People in the region suffer high levels of respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis and asthma, as well as diseases of the liver, kidney, blood, thyroid, and heart. And poverty ensures they have no way out. It is a stark story that informs us we must pay attention to the ecological ramifications of our projects.
To film the Aral, we flew to Tashkent and then drove to a number of communities, ending at the former edge of the sea, where the beach sand was a witches' brew of toxins. We flew to the retreating seashore, where I was reluctant to breathe deeply because I knew how polluted the air was. The food and water were contaminated. It was heartrending to visit hospitals, where medical staff were unable to help the patients. I found the entire trip unpleasant, because I knew I was taking in all those toxins, and I couldn't wait to finish. But unlike the fifty million people around the sea, I had the option of leaving. The story of the Aral Sea is a fable for our time, the result of ignoring the effect of our megaprojects on the surrounding ecosystems.