Rob Stewart Tries to Spark a Revolution
Sharkwater Extinction Keeps his Dream Alive
In case you missed the memo, Rob Stewart’s final movie, Sharkwater Revolution, opens across Canada the weekend of October 19th. There’s something amazing in that last sentence, so I’m gonna write it again: THE MOVIE OPENS ACROSS CANADA.
A Canadian movie is opening across Canada. A documentary about a critical environmental issue is opening across Canada. This is the biggest documentary release in Canadian history. As a filmmaker I know that the fate of every movie where the characters don’t have superpowers is determined by the box office number on opening weekend. So be there opening weekend. Buy your tickets now. Keep the dream alive.
I’ve already seen the movie and despite the fact that it was finished after his death it not only showcases Rob’s heroism — and his astonishing footage — but his passion and his optimism.
In 2012, I hosted Rob’s talkbacks at the Vancouver International Film Festival when he launched Revolution. The last time we talked was about him blurbing my book. He couldn’t make the publishing deadline — he was too busy chasing sharks. He posted something lovely about the book on his Facebook page and, not long afterwards, he went for his final dive.
Here’s a slightly edited version of a story I wrote about Rob and his mission to save the sharks — and the humans — for The Tyee in 2012.
The first time I met Rob Stewart was at an environmental film festival in Barcelona and the program director said I had to meet the other Canadian, the guy from Toronto. I looked around the outdoor table, glanced at the good looking young guy dressed in stylishly casual colourful European clothes and searched for a Canadian director in black jeans, t-shirt and ball cap. When the guy in the bright Barcelona attire introduced himself he told me he’d been in Europe for so long with his film Sharkwater that he’d gone native. That was back in 2007 and Stewart has been so busy touring with his film for the last four years that he’s barely touched down in Toronto since then.
For Stewart Sharkwater wasn’t a movie so much as a mission. The award-eating documentary, which included his adventures with Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Society, was just the excuse to get people talking about saving the sharks, the same way we talk about saving the whales and the wild salmon. As he toured the world with his documentary Stewart became a one-man antidote to Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws — trying to transform our primal fear of the blood-scenting fish with the really sharp teeth into a campaign to stop people from slicing up our cinematic nightmares to spice up Chinese soup. The movie led to several countries banning the sale of shark fins and raised awareness about the plight of the species pretty much everywhere.
When we met a few weeks ago in a downtown hotel suite just before his film Revolution’s world premiere at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival the still too stylish to be from Toronto filmmaker talked about how saving the sharks led to his new mission — which is also the title of his just released biography/manifesto written with Evan Rosser — “Save the Humans.”
Revolution chronicles Stewart’s Sharkwater revival tour and catches the moment a student at a screening in Hong Kong asked him why he was bothering to save the sharks when we were on the verge of losing the oceans. The question hit Stewart harder than Spielberg’s infamous Great White. Suddenly Stewart found his focus shifting from saving the sharks to saving the oceans.
“The book is thirty-two years of my life, Revolution is four years of my life and (making) Sharkwater is four months of my life,” says Stewart. “It covers every crazy pet I’ve had, every experience.” And those crazy experiences include taking underwater photos from the age of 13 and being certified as a scuba instructor trainer at 18.
Stewart met his first shark when he was a kid and it was love at first bite. “My parents took a vacation in the Caribbean every year and I got to hang out at coral reefs and meet these animals.” Asked if seeing his first shark was what turned him green, Stewart smiled. “I think I was passionate from having a goldfish from the time I was zero onwards.”
Stewart says Sharkwater inspired the creation of at least a dozen different conservation groups. “The conservation movement credited it as being one of the big instigators for pushing shark fin bans and getting the community and public involved… We got Sharkwater seen by 120 million people in China. So, you know, the word’s out there for sure. Yao Ming has become an active spokesperson for anti-shark movements for the past four, five years. It’s happening.”
Once he shifted his focus from sharks to humans Stewart connected with environmentalists like University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver who he calls, “one of my favourite scientists” and started trying to figure out what was wrong with the planet and how to save it and us.
“I think I’m going to work with Andrew in the future. I think he’s going to be involved in our conservation group. I’ve come up with something called the collapse prevention report, CPR — which I want conservationists to give to every country in the world for their birthday, which will be constantly updating graphical representations of the country’s resources. How much of each resource do you have and what are the current consumption trends and why will your country collapse? So Canada would collapse for different reasons than Chad would collapse, for example. So from that point on every citizen can hold their government and corporations accountable for the resources that they have and for the destruction of their life systems. Right now we can’t manage what we don’t know, all this stuff is getting destroyed without us knowing it. Andrew wants to be involved with that.”
Stewart’s also created an environmental group of his own, United Conservationists, “designed to show people how to change the world, to help try to get humanity back towards sustainability.”
As soon as I ask about it he starts to read me the mandate: “We’re realists, dreamers, and revolutionaries. We believe in Earth, life, and that 3.5 million years of evolution humans created a world of unmatched productivity and diversity.”
Stewart says he’s still figuring out how to make the group work because his original dream was to bring conservation groups together, “like a unionization, so we can present united front to governments and corporations.” He abandoned that mandate after discovering something that won’t surprise BC environmentalists — he couldn’t get green groups to play well together. “We were embraced so beautifully with Sharkwater — finally scientists had a voice and were using it to raise money, this was all great. Then I start a conservation group and all of the sudden everybody was competitive with me. They’re not inviting me to their events. It changed overnight, just like that.”
Although Stewart’s mission has shifted from saving sharks to saving people he hasn’t given up on fighting for his friends to keep their fins and he wanted to make sure anything I wrote would mention Vancouver’s Claudia Li who runs Fin Free Vancouver — Shark Truth.
Stewart will be speaking after every showing of his movie at VIFF and on the screenings on the sixth and seventh he’ll be joined by his parents and executive producers, Brian and Sandy Stewart. On the sixth I’ll be hosting the Q&A after the show. Stewart will be the one in the cool clothes.
