A documentary by Sturla Gunnarsson. Rated G. Opens Friday, October 15, at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas

For British Columbians, it sometimes seems as if David Suzuki is as “eternal” as the landscapes he fights so hard to preserve. This perception is false, of course. Like all human beings, Canada's best-known ecological broadcaster is mortal, and his 2009 lecture at the Chan Centre was as much a defence of his life as it was yet another impassioned cry on behalf of the planet he still hopes to save.

Director Sturla Gunnarsson photographed this inspiring talk and intercut it with footage depicting Suzuki's past achievements as well as the events that made him something more than just another microbiologist with an interest in fruit flies.

Starting with images of a Vancouver that was “still proud to be British”, we soon move on to the disgraceful internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. This banishment appears to have permanently shamed Suzuki's father, a defining moment the scientist has constantly sought to overcome.

Other key stops on this personal journey include Hiroshima, the city where it first looked as if nature itself might die, and the southern U.S., where the thrill of working for NASA was counterbalanced by the peripheral presence of the Ku Klux Klan.

Ironically, the first discrimination that Suzuki recalls encountering was at the hands of other Japanese children during internment. They couldn't forgive the fact that he spoke only English. As for the natural world, this unwilling loner first encountered that during forays to a local swamp that has long since disappeared.

Two marriages, children, academic success, The Nature of Things, aboriginal rights: no one can accuse David Suzuki of living a sheltered life. But as this movie shows in more ways than one, it was a wounded spirit that first decided to heal a wounded Earth.