Miles Richardson, then president of the Haida Nation, was one of the first three board members, along with Tara and me. One of the strengths of the foundation from the beginning has been strong aboriginal input. Chief Sophie Pierre, the powerhouse administrator of the Ktunaxa-Kinbasket Tribal Council, attended the retreat with her little boy. Norma Cassi, outspoken young member of the Gwich'in First Nation of Old Crow in Canada's Yukon Territory, also joined us. A number of other key people had spent years working with First Nations communities.
By the end of the weekend, the Pender Island retreat had created a new organization. Now the challenge was to get it off the ground. But predictably, after the enthusiasm of the first gathering, everyone went back to their work. They were, after all, engaged scientists, lawyers, professors, and writers with far too much on their plates to begin with. Eight months later, nothing had happened.
Tara decided to get on with it. She met with a respected accountant to learn what had to be done, and she paid for a lawyer who by September 1990 had established our legal status as a charitable organization. Shortly after that, she found space for an office that was formally opened on January 1, 1991. Now the David Suzuki Foundation really existed.
The office was above an automobile repair shop and was cheap, but the gas and paint fumes seeping up through the floor each day must have been a serious health hazard. The roof leaked, the wastebaskets were populated with mice, and everything we had in the office — a raggedy collection of furniture and shelves — was borrowed or donated. From this bare-bones setting we were going to take on the world. It was a place where the original founding group could gather and where volunteers could drop in to work, which they did from the first day. We were gratified to see how willing people were to spend hours and days helping, but now we had to figure out what to do.
One of our first organizational arrangements proved unworkable, and it was my fault. At our founding meeting, we had decided to create a two-headed organization: an institute, which would carry out projects, and a foundation, which would have charitable status and raise funds for the institute. Each would have its own board. I had wanted to free the project arm from worrying about fund-raising so it could focus exclusively on its work, and I thought my best role would be to raise the money to get things done. The problem was that the institute board just wanted to bash ahead, and people became frustrated because we didn't have the money to do it, given that initially all the cash was coming from Tara and me. I didn't begrudge the money, but I wouldn't be able to provide enough for the projects we wanted to develop. I had to get busy helping the foundation raise funds.
Luckily, I was asked if I would like to raise money for a charity of my choice by joining a cruise from Vancouver to Alaska. I was to give lectures, and travelers would pay an extra, tax-deductible $125 to be part of our group. About 140 people signed up, and both Tara and I gave talks and promoted our new organization while discussing the environment. The ship had bars, restaurants, swimming pools, and a theater showing the latest films. Sarika was eight and still extremely shy, so I was surprised when we boarded the ship to see her scamper away with her sister and disappear for hours. She finally returned, breathless with excitement, clutching fistfuls of chocolate bars. “Daddy, Daddy!” she exclaimed. “There are stores with candy and it's all free. All you have to do is sign your name and room number!”
The trip was a delight, as we met people who were filled with enthusiasm and concern for environmental matters; many have remained our friends. Our efforts raised $18,000, which was a grand sum at that stage. But more was necessary; we had to use that money to find our supporters.
Over the years, thousands of people had written to The Nature of Things with David Suzuki. Many asked for transcripts, videos, or the names of experts: those requests were dealt with by staff. But many letters were addressed to me personally, asking a wide range of questions. I felt that if someone had taken the time to write a letter, he or she deserved a response. Usually I could jot a short note on a card, but often I wrote longer letters, always by hand.
All those people I wrote back to and the sixteen thousand who responded to It's a Matter of Survival made for a wonderful list of people we could approach for support. We met Harvey McKinnon, who had a long history of working for charitable organizations like Oxfam, and with his help, we drafted a letter reminding people they'd once written to me and asking for their support to find solutions to the ecological degradation of the planet.
The money we had raised from the Alaskan cruise paid for that first mailing. With the help of many volunteers, in November 1990 Tara sent out some 25,000 letters. What a learning curve that was! And then, just before Christmas, checks and cash began to come in, first as a trickle and then as a flood of full mailbags. Harvey said that in his fund-raising experience the returns were phenomenal.
Tara was both thrilled and appalled. It was one thing to pay for things with our own money; once donations were received, the responsibility was enormous. Having no experience in handling charitable donations, she had nightmares of losing track. We were also very aware that people had donated to us with faith that we would use their money effectively to carry out our mandate.
Within months of sending in forty- or fifty-dollar gifts, people were writing to ask what we had accomplished with their money. Our immediate needs were fund-raising software to track donations, computers to run it, and staff to keep all accounting accurate. We also had to increase our base of support by investing some of the funds in wider mailings. But our early supporters naturally wanted their money to go directly to projects that were protecting the environment. We had to come up with a creative solution that would bring quick results while developing the organization.
Tara and I had already been investing our own money to support Barbara Zimmerman, who was working in Brazil with Paiakan and the Kaiapo of Aucre to establish a research station in the Xingu River water-shed, which drains into the Amazon River. The project helps protect a vast, pristine area, so we transferred this project to the foundation.
I had also been introduced to the Ainu of Japan, an aboriginal people who had held on to their culture through 1,500 years of Japanese occupation. Now they were close to losing their language and their last sacred river, the Saragawa. The river was to be dammed to provide energy for industrial development on the northern island of Hokkaido. Many felt the dam was not necessary and that it would threaten the salmon, a totemic species to the Ainu.
I was asked to help raise international awareness of this latest threat to Ainu culture, so Tara and I sponsored a visit to Vancouver by Ainu children and Shigeru Kayano, an elder in his sixties who was the youngest person still speaking the Ainu language. At one point, the Japanese translator broke down and wept as she listened to Kayano recount how he had been treated as a child by the Japanese. The event was packed and brought the audience to tears.
Remembering our experience with Paiakan and the successful protest against the proposed dam at Altamira, we suggested holding a demonstration at the site of the dam on the Saragawa and inviting aboriginal people from other countries. This idea was enthusiastically accepted, and we ended up raising money to send delegations from several British Columbia First Nations communities: Alert Bay, Bella Bella, and Haida Gwaii. This project we also turned over to the foundation.