Dr. David Suzuki - Vancouver

As a popular science educator, David Suzuki has become a household name in Canada and much of North American. As a scientist, he has placed the preservation of the environment for future generations as the world's top priority.

Through his popular television series "The Nature of Things", the CBS radio series "Quirks and Quarks", as well as his numerous books, Dr. Suzuki has brought the concept of living within the planet's productive capacity for a sustainable future into our homes and our consciousness.

His efforts have been rewarded with the ACTRA Award in 1985 and GEMINI Awards in 1986 and 1992 for his television programs. Other honours include the Governor General's Award for Conservation 1985 and the Order of Canada in 1997.

Born in Vancouver in 1936, like many Japanese-Canadian of his generation, he spent some of the formative years of his life in an internment camp. At the end of the Word War II, with only what they could carry in suitcases, his family was forced to begin a new life in Ontario.

Now, through The David Suzuki Foundation, with the help of a growing cadre of dedicated volunteers, he is working toward bringing to local communities the strategies they need to forestall global environmental degradation and collapse. In the process, David Suzuki has made us realize, many of us for the first time, that the fate of our planet rests in our hands -- as individuals and as citizens of the planet.