Grew up in Leamington, Ontario

David Takayoshi Suzuki is an award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster.

• Born in 1936 in Vancouver, British Columbia

• Grew up in Leamington ON

Since the mid-1970s, Suzuki has been known for his television and radio series, documentaries and books about nature and the environment. He is best known as the host of the popular and long-running CBC Television science program The Nature of Things.

David Suzuki and author Farley Mowat speak at a news conference, Toronto, 1988. (Bill Becker/CP)

He is also well known for criticizing governments for their lack of action to protect the environment. Suzuki co-founded the David Suzuki Foundation in 1990, to work “to find ways for society to live in balance with the natural world that does sustain us.”

In 2004, David Suzuki ranked fifth on the list of final nominees in a CBC Television series that asked viewers to select The Greatest Canadian of all time.

David Suzuki reflects on his last 80 years

Read Essay of David Suzuki “We lost something, a strong sense of community and connection to place”. He wrote it for 1000 Towns of Canada especially  

David Suzuki grew up in Leamington, Ontario. He attended Mill Street Elementary School and Grade 9 at Leamington Secondary School before moving to London, Ontario.

David Suzuki, ‘My Magical Swamp’

“When I was a boy after the war, I was extremely shy because I was a Japanese-Canadian and Canada had just fought a war with Japan. My family moved to Leamington in southern Ontario and in my loneliness, I always found comfort fishing for perch on the public dock in Lake Erie, biking to Point Pelee (which was yet to become a national park) and using a dipnet to search for treasures in roadside ditches.”

Watch great David’s biography by Isaac Paterson, Grade 5 student at Garden Avenue Junior Public School, Toronto