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.