Dr. Suzuki is on a big media blitz these days, promoting his new autobiography. There’s high profile interviews on BC and national CBC radio. As they’ve pointed out in the lead-ins to the interviews, according to the Official and Canonical List of the Greatest Canadians (Male), at #5 David Suzuki is apparently the greatest living Canadian. Holy crap.

Somewhere along the line there’s been a sea change in Dave’s profile. Back in the day (in this case, back-in-the-day on the scale of my short life), David Suzuki was a underregarded geek. Being a Suzuki fan was a very slightly subversive thing biology nerds did in an effort to construct an alternative glamour around their own geekiness. Subtle, inside jokes about Dave made in mainstream company generally turned out to be just too insider for any sort of response beyond blank looks. Somewhere in the last couple or five years, David has emerged from his crusty bearded cocoon as some kind of national media figure. I suppose he’s been very intentionally developing a media profile for years, but since 2000 he’s passed some threshold, gained some kind of critical mass, and become a more or less mainstream icon within Canada. Well, that’s great. Welcome to the nature show. Those who have long loved him for his slightly belligerent, bug-eyed sense of effusive positivist wonder in the face of the mulitudinous mysteries of the natural world are happy to share. For the full effect, you really need to start watching the Nature of Things on a fairly regular schedule, preferably starting at an early and impressionable age. That way your mental outlook will be optimally molded towards awe and respect for the natural world. If your main impressions of the Great Man come from the current media circus you are certainly free to partake in the Canadian-style cult of personality which is growing up around him, but I promise it’s a much more fulfilling experience if your impressions of him are shaped mostly incidentally to the slices of nature he presents to you through his TV programming. His doesn’t lack for interesting personality traits to endear or mock, but really I think the body of work he has contributed to through his career is every bit as compelling.

So there’s my backhanded attempt to lay claim to the David Suzuki legacy for those of us biology geeks who feel like the rest of the world is showing up late to the party and without much respect for the orginal costume theme. Regardless, if you’re going to have a national hero, you could do a lot worse than Dave. He’s got something for everyone: nature for the nature nuts, science for the scientistas, fire and brimstone environmentalism for the conservationists and politicos, a subtle undercurrent of spirituality for the meta-minded. And in each of those cases, the stuff he brings is good stuff. There’s no question that the TV shows he narrated helped shape the course of my life. That time in a packed Whistler audatorium when he picked me out of the front row attendees to lock eyes for the “I am you. You are me.” part of his speech was something of a full-circle moment for me. More than you know Dr. Suzuki, more than you know. And now as he becomes a national figure, perhaps He is Canada, and Canadians are Him. Especially if they buy the tshirt.