by David Suzuki
The sensational woman was Tara Cullis, who was working on a master's degree in comparative literature at Carleton. She was twenty-two; I was thirty-five. I learned later she used to watch Suzuki on Science with her boyfriend and had attended my talk out of homesickness for British Columbia. After hearing my lecture, she felt for the first time in her life that she could imagine marrying someone—me.
Later that evening, my good friend Gordin Kaplan, in the Biology Department at the University of Ottawa, invited me to Nate's Restaurant for a snack, and I took Tara along with me. Afterward Gordin drove us to Tara's apartment, where I left her, and she promised to see me in B.C. when she went home for Christmas. I kissed her, and we knew this was pretty special. As I got back into the car, Gordin commented, “She didn't have much to say.” Well, neither had I—Tara and I were both so overwhelmed that we were almost speechless to each other during the meal, but we remember Nate's with great fondness.
How helpful that she was from B.C. Her father, Harry, was superintendent of schools and lived in Squamish, and as soon as I got back to Vancouver, I left a message with her parents that I had called. Soon Tara and I had a date in Vancouver, and we both knew this was serious.
On New Year's Eve, we hiked up Mount Hollyburn in North Vancouver with one of my students, his girlfriend, and another couple, to stay in a cabin there. It was buried under snow, but we dug our way in, got the woodstove going, and soon the room was warm and the table set with food and drink. That night, when we were in our sleeping bags, I asked Tara to marry me. And she did, on December 10, 1972, exactly a year to the day after we had met.
My children have been my pride and joy, but getting Tara to marry me was the greatest achievement of my life, and our marriage continues to be an adventure. Even now, when I come home from a long trip, my heart flutters at the thought of being with her. I had never believed in love at first sight—it was actually lust at first sight—but whatever it was, it was powerful, undeniable, and ongoing.
Tara was always years ahead of her age group in school. She graduated from high school when she was fifteen, but her father kept her there through grade 13 so that she would be a year older when she went to university. She was a top scholar, having been part of the accelerated program in West Vancouver, as well as a champion hurdler and an all-round athlete. And aside from her beauty, she made me feel like a slow learner when it came to discussing literature and history.
When we met, I had told Tara I anticipated her parents would have objections to me because of my race and my age. To my amazement and everlasting respect, neither of those were issues—only my divorce was. They were concerned that I had been divorced and that I had children. But they welcomed me into their home and have been bulwarks in supporting Tara and me in all we have done and in being terrific grandparents. I love and respect them enormously.
Wedding photo of Tara and me, December 10, 1972, with
(left) Dad and Mom and (right) Freddy and Harry
When we were buying the house that is our home today, I had to ask them for help to make a down payment on the mortgage and suggested that when Harry retired, I could add another story to the house and they could come and live with us. We bought the house, added a story to it later, and they moved into their separate apartment with us in 1980, an arrangement that has worked wonderfully for all of us.
Harry loves a good discussion and often provokes arguments by taking a position he may not even believe in, yet I fall for it over and over. As a result, there have been times when I was so mad at him that we were yelling at each other while the women hovered, trying to calm us down. Every human relationship has its ups and downs—there are times when I know Tara is furious at me and times when I'm ticked at my children, but that's the nature of human relations. On the whole, living with Harry and Freddy has been wonderful. They have Tara and their grandchildren right there to visit and fuss over them, and Tara can go upstairs to seek their advice while looking after them now that they are getting older. I am away a lot but can relax because Harry, especially, takes on the care of the house and garden as he has since he moved in.
BEFORE WE MARRIED, TARA said she would keep her maiden name, and I agreed wholeheartedly. She had been called “Cullis” all her life; it was part of her history and persona, and she didn't want to give it up. Today, no one would give it a second thought, but in the early 1970s, many looked on such a decision with disdain. (One annoying consequence of the antiquated, patriarchal practice of adopting another's surname is encountered when searching for a high school friend and discovering she has disappeared, having taken on the identity of Mrs. Harry Smith.) We found out that in Canada, it was illegal for a married woman to keep her maiden name.
We did not go on a proper honeymoon. Because I had been invited to spend a month in the Soviet Union on an exchange program in the summer of 1973, we decided we would wait a few months after marriage and take a long trip. Tara had emigrated from England when she was five and most of her extended family were still there. We planned to stay in England for a month to visit relatives, then travel through continental Europe for another month before flying to the Soviet Union, where an itinerary had been arranged. Next we would fly from Moscow through India, Thailand, and South Korea before spending a month in Japan. We would fly home to Vancouver via Honolulu, completing a four-month round-the-world trip.
Tara had never taken out Canadian citizenship, but before we set off, she needed a passport, and she wanted to travel as a Canadian. She and brother, Pieter, went to the passport office to each apply for a passport, expecting no problem, because they had lived here since they were children. Sure enough, Piet's application was readily accepted.
Tara then stepped up, and the clerk saw she had the same last name as Piet. “Oh, you're his wife?” he asked. “No,” Tara replied, “he's my brother.” The clerk was confused: “But you say on the forms that you are married.” “Yes, I'm keeping my maiden name,” Tara told him. The clerk told her that was illegal, and her application for a passport was rejected.
That was a shocker, and she returned home furious. She needed a passport if she were to travel with me, and she intended to travel on a Canadian passport. She found that so long as a woman never used a married name, she could continue to go legally by her maiden name. We were outraged at the rejection of her passport application, so I called The Vancouver Sun and told someone in the newsroom about the situation. I thought it would make a good story, and I was stunned after the journalist listened to my spiel and responded, “So what's the news? Besides, I happen to have a wife who loves to use my name.” Click; that was it. Ironically, only a few weeks later, The Vancouver Sun ran a front-page story about an American woman who was denied an American passport because she refused to use her husband's name. If it's in the United States, that's a good Canadian story.
Eventually, Tara found someone in the federal External Affairs Department in Ottawa who didn't reject her application out of hand. This was a precedent-setting request, he informed her, and she could go to Ottawa to make her application in person. “You will get your passport,” he promised her, “but I can't guarantee it will be made out in your maiden name.” She was given a date to make her case and flew to Ottawa, full of trepidation because we didn't know what the outcome would be.
In the end, she was granted a passport in her maiden name, a precedent that few are aware of and most today simply take for granted. Our daughters have assumed both of our names, as Cullis-Suzuki, but what happens when more and more children take on double-barreled names and begin to meet and marry? In any case, I'm proud that Tara stood up to the authorities.
OUR FIRST YEAR OF marriage was a truly happy time in my life. We traveled, got to know each other's foibles, and found our relationship deepening beyond anything I could have imagined when we became engaged. So I was shocked when Tara told me that although she had loved being with me and traveling to new places and meeting new people, she wanted to pursue studies beyond a master's degree. She
could have taken the easy path and applied for a doctoral program at UBC (where, as a faculty member's wife, she could enroll free), but her area was comparative literature and there was no such department at UBC. I encouraged her to apply to schools with extensive programs in her field of interest, and she ended up being accepted at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
We were happy newlyweds, and the thought of being separated while Tara studied elsewhere was daunting. I moaned to Shirley Macaulay, my secretary, “How can I be apart from her for two or three years?” To which Shirley replied, “Right now, two years seems like a long time. But believe me, in a few years, it will seem to have been nothing.” And she was right. Tara went away, and that separation was very hard. But I had a busy life, and she threw herself into her course work.
We had decided we would call each other every day, regardless of the cost. That call became our lifeline, something we continue to this day when we are apart. My contract with the CBC stipulates that when I am away on a shoot, I am allowed one call each day to Tara. I was amazed at how many times I could schedule my trips so that I could take in Madison on my way. I don't think we ever went longer than a month without seeing each other, and while the intervals apart seemed horrendously long, she had soon completed all her course work, selected a professor to work with, and thought of a thesis topic.
I thought her thesis was brilliant. Tara's father and brother were trained in science, and she had done well in math and science in school. Focusing on French, German, and English literature, she showed that during the nineteenth century, serious thinkers were writing about science and the implications for society (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was a classic in the genre), but in the twentieth century, when science and technology had become the dominant element in our lives, writers seem to ignore it altogether.
Tara's thesis, “Literature of Rupture,” used the metaphor of the two hemispheres of the brain to suggest that in the nineteenth century, writers integrated science and literature just as the corpus callosum in the brain connects the two parts. But in the twentieth century, it was as if the corpus callosum had been severed, as is done for severe epileptics, so that a situation analogous to what C.P. Snow called the “two cultures” was created. It was a brilliant analysis, and we were delighted when Tara graduated with a PhD in 1983, a remarkable achievement when you realize she had given birth to two children in the interim.
MY THREE CHILDREN WITH Joane were a very high priority to me, but Tara and I agreed it would be great to have children together. However, my children were still young, and Tara and I, in the flush of new love in 1972, didn't want to risk a pregnancy. To avoid relying on the birth-control pill, Tara had an IUD, and it worked fine.
In the meantime, we had many good times with my children. In the summer of 1976, after René Lévesque and the separatist Parti Québécois he founded were elected to form the government of Quebec, Tara and I decided to take Tamiko and Troy, who were teenagers, to Chicoutimi in Quebec for six weeks of total immersion in French. We were appalled by the notion that the province might try to secede from Canada, and becoming bilingual seemed to be one small way to show Québécois how much we cared about them.
Tara and I were two of only three adults among the students in the course in Chicoutimi that summer. The rest were like Tami and Troy, teenagers there to learn some French and have fun. We were all billeted with different families, Tara and me together and Tami and Troy with the other kids. We had chosen a good area, because this was the heart of separatist country and most people we met did not speak English, so we had to speak French. We moved to three different villages, Baie-des-Ha!-Ha!, Saint-Félicien, and Chicoutimi, where we stayed with different families.
It was an intense program, six weeks with teachers who not only drilled us in classes during the day but also accompanied us on various outings and on evenings at the pub. Tara and I were serious about learning to speak French as well as we could; for Tara, it had the added interest of being one of the languages she used in her field of comparative literature. We decided we would try to speak French all the time, not just in school and on field trips but when we were alone at night. Although we were still almost newlyweds, we quickly found that concentrating on speaking an unfamiliar language definitely cooled our ardor. We decided the French-only edict was lifted when our feet were no longer on the floor.
In a group of teenagers, it didn't take long until we were “Dave” and “Tara” and a part of the group, playing volleyball, going to the pub, and just hanging out together. I reverted to high school days, taking great delight in following the crushes, dating, and breaking up among the group. In our gang, there were a couple of boys who had driven to Chicoutimi in their cars, and just as it was in high school, they were the popular ones because they had wheels.
One night we all played volleyball, and when we finished, we hung around outside, trying to delay going home so early. One of the young fellows drove up in his car and three or four giggling girls—including Tamiko—jumped onto his fenders and hood. The driver revved his engine a few times, then took off very quickly and jammed on the brakes after a hundred feet or so, causing the girls to slide off. They jumped back on the car, squealing, and he took off again. Everybody else seemed amused, but I was horrified. Suddenly I wasn't Dave, one of the gang. Now I became “David”—dad.
I had been running for years and was in pretty good shape, so I took off after the car and finally caught up to it when the driver stopped at a light. I yanked the door open, dragged him out of the car, and slammed him up against the side of the vehicle. “What the hell do you think you're doing?” I screamed, so pumped from fear I was almost hoarse.
I looked over and saw Tamiko staring in horror—I must have looked half crazed, and I knew she probably was humiliated to have her father behaving this way. “Get to your room!” I yelled, not caring any longer to be one of the gang. She looked away and disappeared down the street. Fortunately, I calmed down enough to restrain myself from slugging the boy. I was gratified the next morning when he came to me, apologized for his stupidity, and ended with, “You should have hit me. I deserved it.” Tamiko wouldn't look at me for days.
Six weeks is a long time. Not only did we pick up a good deal of French, we became a little community, despite the spread in ages. Although we were often referred to by our teachers as maudits anglais (“damned English”) or vous américaines (“you Americans”), we took it in good humor and grew quite fond of our young separatist teachers.
When it was announced that we would have a spectacle, or performance, at the end, we took it seriously. Tara and I wrote a drama around two individuals, one speaking only English, the other only French. All the rest of the characters spoke only in French. I played a Dr. Frankenstein character who decides he's going to try an experiment and sew these two, an anglophone and a francophone, together to see what will happen. We had lots of fun with the scene in which we got the two “volunteer” main characters operated on surgically behind a curtain and then revealed them joined together as Siamese twins.
At first as a unit they fought, pulling in different directions; then they yelled at each other. The yelling turned to blows. Finally they told the doctor it was intolerable and demanded to be cut apart. “But together you have more than the strength of two,” I said in French. “Apart, you may not even survive.” I know, I know, it was pretty ham-fisted, but we wanted our hosts and teachers to know that we valued the concept of a Canada that included Quebec and that Anglos also had a culture, spirit, and élan. At the end, we all sang “My Country Is a Cathedral” in English. Many people in the audience remarked later that they hadn't known English Canadians had that kind of spirit.
We had formed a close friendship with André and Louis-Edmond Gagné and their children, our hosts in Chicoutimi. They were rare for the Lac Saint-Jean/Chicoutimi area—outspoken opponents of separation and highly critical of the Parti Québécois. In 1979, the Gagnés came to Vancouver to visit us. We took them fishing
, had them stay in our cottage at Sechelt, and showed them around English Canada. They spoke almost no English, and I was very proud to watch Vancouverites go out of their way to help and accommodate them. Twenty years later, when The Nature of Things did a program on bilingualism called “You Must Have Been a Bilingual Baby,” I arranged to interview the Gagnés in Chicoutimi. It was a happy meeting after so many years, but I was stunned and disappointed to learn the entire family had become staunch separatists.
DURING THEIR VISIT TO Vancouver, I had taken the Gagnés to the UBC Faculty Club. We were having a drink in the bar when Tara arrived, obviously upset about something. I took her aside as soon as I could and asked her what was wrong. She poleaxed me with her answer: “David, I'm pregnant.”
One of the great joys of parenthood, bathing Severn
It seemed as though we had made up our minds we wanted children and it simply happened, but I always think of an embryonic Severn struggling around that IUD, embedding herself in the lining of the uterus and hanging on for dear life. The IUD had to be removed, but the risk of miscarriage at this early stage was very high, and we worried about the amount of bleeding after it had been removed. But Sev was well embedded, and eight months later a wonderful gift arrived.
I had tried to devote as much time as I could to my first offspring, but the lab and research had dominated my life and the children had paid a price for this obsession with the end of my marriage to Joane and even beyond that. I was determined not to let that happen again. Research was not taking as much of my time as it did when I was younger and more ambitious, but now I was caught up in both television programming and activism on the environmental front.
Severn arrived to the great joy of my parents, who were retired. All of my sisters and their children lived out east, but now my folks could devote their full attention to this new baby. During Tara's pregnancy, we had begun renovations on our house so that Tara's mother and father could move in with us, and Severn was their first grandchild, so they were thrilled too.