Feb. 13, 2017 "Filmmaker devoted his life to sharks":
His award-winning film Sharkwater led to bans on shark fishing and shark-fin soup around the world
DIANE PETERS
In the 2006 documentary Sharkwater, Rob Stewart, the film's writer, director, producer, narrator and star, did things that few others ever attempt. He went scuba diving with sharks of numerous species, often stroking and even hugging them. He also took a lengthy free dive - no oxygen tank, just holding his breath - with sharks.
In another daring move, Mr. Stewart climbed a building to film illegally obtained shark fins drying on a roof. His boat was chased out of Costa Rican waters by men with guns. He contracted a flesh-eating disease after sustaining cuts on his body from diving.
"Rob knew that in order to get people to watch his films he needed [to include] a lot of action in them," says Dustin Titus, a friend and colleague who helped market some of Mr. Stewart's films. (After the filming for Sharkwater was over, Mr. Stewart was sick for months, suffering from dengue fever, West Nile virus and tuberculosis.)
The Toronto-born photographer, filmmaker and environmental activist was 37 when he died on Jan. 31 in the waters off the Florida Keys, halfway through shooting his new film, Sharkwater: Extinction.
He regularly pushed limits to get gorgeous, heart-wrenching footage for his documentaries and combined the images with plainly stated facts. He aimed to dispel myths and show how sharks' plight has an impact on human life.
"He had this incredible gift of being able to show the beauty of the world," says Sarika Cullis Suzuki, a friend who is a marine biologist, activist and daughter of David Suzuki. "We too often focus on the battles and what was lost; he showed us what we still have."
His approach worked: Sharkwater won more than 40 awards around the world and will air on Netflix later this month. The film and his ceaseless advocacy resulted in numerous bans on shark fishing and shark-fin soup around the world. (He sent China a copy of the film and it aired on state TV. Consumption of shark fins dropped afterward - by half in Hong Kong alone.)
He followed up with 2012's Revolution. It took him four years to film this wider look at the environment and activism. In a 2012 interview about it and his book Save the Humans, Mr. Stewart told The Canadian Press, "We're facing a world by 2050 that has no fish, no reefs, no rain forest and nine billion people on a planet that already can't sustain seven billion people. So it's going to be a really dramatic century unless we do something about it."
Revolution won 19 awards. In 2015, he released The Fight for Bala, a film about the at-risk Bala Falls in Muskoka.
In addition to his films, he cofounded the non-profit United Conservationists, which funds the Fin Free campaign, nature reserves and other environmental projects around the world. He was known worldwide for his public speaking and his skills as a diver, and became friends with celebrities including billionaire Richard Branson and actor Adrian Grenier.
Young, handsome and svelte, Mr. Stewart played well to the camera. He had an engaging surfer-dude drawl - you would never know that he stuttered as a kid and trained himself out of it over many years.
Julie Andersen, a United Conservationists co-founder who collaborated on films with Mr.
Stewart, marvelled at how he was able to remain perfectly dressed and coiffed even while filming in a hot, damp Madagascar jungle.
"We're going to make the environmental movement cool," he once told her.
To him, conservation was far more than a fad, though. When Mr. Titus first went to Mr. Stewart's apartment around 2006, he was surprised to see wall-to-wall books: serious literature and complex biology textbooks that he had clearly read. "Rob looks cool all the time but he's actually super nerdy."
When Ms. Cullis-Suzuki first met him, at an event, she asked what impact Sharkwater had made on the world. Without a pause, he began listing all the regions where shark fishing had become illegal. "He knew all the stats off the top of his head," she says.
Robert Brian Stewart was born on Dec. 28, 1979, in Toronto, to Brian Stewart and Sandra Campbell, entrepreneurs who own and run Tribute Entertainment Media Group. Obsessed with animals from a young age, Rob got his first goldfish around four.
Visiting the fish store was a weekly routine and staff there soon began calling him with news of new arrivals. The boy later got a monitor lizard and a boa constrictor, which he named Mali. "His bedroom was like a menagerie," his father says.
On family vacations in the Caribbean, "we'd still be unpacking and he'd be in the water, looking for creatures and talking to the locals," his father recalls. Rob saw his first shark at the age of eight, and fell in love. When he was 13, he insisted his entire family, including elder sister Alexandra, get scuba-diving certifications.
He got his first underwater camera at the age of 14, learned to free dive at a young age and got his scuba instructor certification at 18.
At the family cottage, Rob busied himself catching frogs and other wildlife. He'd often swim alone to a nearby island, despite his parents' fear that boats would hit him. "I'll just dive to the bottom until they go by," he replied.
Rob excelled at his studies and went to the private all-boys Crescent School starting in Grade 7.
He met Mr. MacLeod that first day; they were the only two with long hair. They'd hang out at Mr. Stewart's house, among the many fish tanks and animal books.
While Mr. MacLeod would look at the books' pictures and the captions, his buddy seemed to have all the content memorized.
"He was like a human encyclopedia regarding anything to do with animals and the ocean," says Mr. MacLeod, who helped his friend with films and activism years later. "He was obsessed with animals, and I was, too, but he was [at the] next level."
Rob eventually told his parents that school was "really boring with just guys." They said he could go to public high school at Lawrence Park Collegiate if he stayed on the honour roll. Several of his buddies changed schools with him. There, he played on the rugby team and excelled academically.
He went on to study biology at Western University, taking lots of math because, he told his parents, it was a "bird course." He took advantage of special exchange programs that took him to Kenya and Jamaica.
In Kenya, students went out to collect wildlife and share it with the class. Others found snails and crabs but they gathered around Mr. Stewart's container, teachers included, knowing he'd have something good. He opened it to reveal a black mamba, one of the world's deadliest venomous snakes. Everyone leaped back, terrified, while Rob picked up the snake, saying, "Check it out, guys!"
After graduation, he did photography for the Canadian Wildlife Federation's magazine, which was published at the time by his parents' company, and did freelance work as well. That work took him all around the world.
He wanted to have more of an impact, though, so he bought a video camera and devoured a book on how to make movies, which a girlfriend gave him. He began shooting Sharkwater in 2002, at first flying on points and using his own money, plus some from his parents, then eventually receiving some tax credits and distribution support.
Thus began a whirlwind career of travel, creating films, speaking, working on projects with others and constant learning. Mr. Stewart accomplished a great deal quickly. "Rob's parents are very successful business people [and] his sister went to Harvard. But Rob took that same work ethic and intelligence and drive and applied it to the planet," Mr. MacLeod says.
Those close to him marvel that, despite everything he knew and saw - hundreds of sharks slaughtered, dying reefs, the shark-fin mafia wielding weapons - Mr. Stewart remained an optimist.
Ms. Andersen says: "He saw some pretty gnarly stuff. But he had incredible faith in mankind and our ability to change. He made you believe anything was possible."
Rob Stewart leaves his parents; sister; brother-in-law, Roger Rudisuli; and two nephews.
To submit an I Remember: obit@globeandmail.com Send us a memory of someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page. Please include I Remember in the subject field
Associated Graphic
Canadian filmmaker and environmental activist Rob Stewart is seen on a boat off the coast of Florida before he went missing on Jan. 31.
http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20170213.
OBSPOBSTEWART/BDAStory/BDA/deaths
My opinion: I didn't know him before, but he really followed his passion.
Dec. 31, 2019: He loved animals and specifically sharks and then he became a filmmaker.
I know my little brother loved animals when he was a kid and he still loves them by watching all those animal documentaries on TV. However, he didn't get into it as a career and went into business.
In another daring move, Mr. Stewart climbed a building to film illegally obtained shark fins drying on a roof. His boat was chased out of Costa Rican waters by men with guns. He contracted a flesh-eating disease after sustaining cuts on his body from diving.
"Rob knew that in order to get people to watch his films he needed [to include] a lot of action in them," says Dustin Titus, a friend and colleague who helped market some of Mr. Stewart's films. (After the filming for Sharkwater was over, Mr. Stewart was sick for months, suffering from dengue fever, West Nile virus and tuberculosis.)
The Toronto-born photographer, filmmaker and environmental activist was 37 when he died on Jan. 31 in the waters off the Florida Keys, halfway through shooting his new film, Sharkwater: Extinction.
He regularly pushed limits to get gorgeous, heart-wrenching footage for his documentaries and combined the images with plainly stated facts. He aimed to dispel myths and show how sharks' plight has an impact on human life.
"He had this incredible gift of being able to show the beauty of the world," says Sarika Cullis Suzuki, a friend who is a marine biologist, activist and daughter of David Suzuki. "We too often focus on the battles and what was lost; he showed us what we still have."
His approach worked: Sharkwater won more than 40 awards around the world and will air on Netflix later this month. The film and his ceaseless advocacy resulted in numerous bans on shark fishing and shark-fin soup around the world. (He sent China a copy of the film and it aired on state TV. Consumption of shark fins dropped afterward - by half in Hong Kong alone.)
He followed up with 2012's Revolution. It took him four years to film this wider look at the environment and activism. In a 2012 interview about it and his book Save the Humans, Mr. Stewart told The Canadian Press, "We're facing a world by 2050 that has no fish, no reefs, no rain forest and nine billion people on a planet that already can't sustain seven billion people. So it's going to be a really dramatic century unless we do something about it."
Revolution won 19 awards. In 2015, he released The Fight for Bala, a film about the at-risk Bala Falls in Muskoka.
In addition to his films, he cofounded the non-profit United Conservationists, which funds the Fin Free campaign, nature reserves and other environmental projects around the world. He was known worldwide for his public speaking and his skills as a diver, and became friends with celebrities including billionaire Richard Branson and actor Adrian Grenier.
Young, handsome and svelte, Mr. Stewart played well to the camera. He had an engaging surfer-dude drawl - you would never know that he stuttered as a kid and trained himself out of it over many years.
Julie Andersen, a United Conservationists co-founder who collaborated on films with Mr.
Stewart, marvelled at how he was able to remain perfectly dressed and coiffed even while filming in a hot, damp Madagascar jungle.
"We're going to make the environmental movement cool," he once told her.
To him, conservation was far more than a fad, though. When Mr. Titus first went to Mr. Stewart's apartment around 2006, he was surprised to see wall-to-wall books: serious literature and complex biology textbooks that he had clearly read. "Rob looks cool all the time but he's actually super nerdy."
When Ms. Cullis-Suzuki first met him, at an event, she asked what impact Sharkwater had made on the world. Without a pause, he began listing all the regions where shark fishing had become illegal. "He knew all the stats off the top of his head," she says.
Robert Brian Stewart was born on Dec. 28, 1979, in Toronto, to Brian Stewart and Sandra Campbell, entrepreneurs who own and run Tribute Entertainment Media Group. Obsessed with animals from a young age, Rob got his first goldfish around four.
Visiting the fish store was a weekly routine and staff there soon began calling him with news of new arrivals. The boy later got a monitor lizard and a boa constrictor, which he named Mali. "His bedroom was like a menagerie," his father says.
On family vacations in the Caribbean, "we'd still be unpacking and he'd be in the water, looking for creatures and talking to the locals," his father recalls. Rob saw his first shark at the age of eight, and fell in love. When he was 13, he insisted his entire family, including elder sister Alexandra, get scuba-diving certifications.
He got his first underwater camera at the age of 14, learned to free dive at a young age and got his scuba instructor certification at 18.
At the family cottage, Rob busied himself catching frogs and other wildlife. He'd often swim alone to a nearby island, despite his parents' fear that boats would hit him. "I'll just dive to the bottom until they go by," he replied.
Rob excelled at his studies and went to the private all-boys Crescent School starting in Grade 7.
He met Mr. MacLeod that first day; they were the only two with long hair. They'd hang out at Mr. Stewart's house, among the many fish tanks and animal books.
While Mr. MacLeod would look at the books' pictures and the captions, his buddy seemed to have all the content memorized.
"He was like a human encyclopedia regarding anything to do with animals and the ocean," says Mr. MacLeod, who helped his friend with films and activism years later. "He was obsessed with animals, and I was, too, but he was [at the] next level."
Rob eventually told his parents that school was "really boring with just guys." They said he could go to public high school at Lawrence Park Collegiate if he stayed on the honour roll. Several of his buddies changed schools with him. There, he played on the rugby team and excelled academically.
He went on to study biology at Western University, taking lots of math because, he told his parents, it was a "bird course." He took advantage of special exchange programs that took him to Kenya and Jamaica.
In Kenya, students went out to collect wildlife and share it with the class. Others found snails and crabs but they gathered around Mr. Stewart's container, teachers included, knowing he'd have something good. He opened it to reveal a black mamba, one of the world's deadliest venomous snakes. Everyone leaped back, terrified, while Rob picked up the snake, saying, "Check it out, guys!"
After graduation, he did photography for the Canadian Wildlife Federation's magazine, which was published at the time by his parents' company, and did freelance work as well. That work took him all around the world.
He wanted to have more of an impact, though, so he bought a video camera and devoured a book on how to make movies, which a girlfriend gave him. He began shooting Sharkwater in 2002, at first flying on points and using his own money, plus some from his parents, then eventually receiving some tax credits and distribution support.
Thus began a whirlwind career of travel, creating films, speaking, working on projects with others and constant learning. Mr. Stewart accomplished a great deal quickly. "Rob's parents are very successful business people [and] his sister went to Harvard. But Rob took that same work ethic and intelligence and drive and applied it to the planet," Mr. MacLeod says.
Those close to him marvel that, despite everything he knew and saw - hundreds of sharks slaughtered, dying reefs, the shark-fin mafia wielding weapons - Mr. Stewart remained an optimist.
Ms. Andersen says: "He saw some pretty gnarly stuff. But he had incredible faith in mankind and our ability to change. He made you believe anything was possible."
Rob Stewart leaves his parents; sister; brother-in-law, Roger Rudisuli; and two nephews.
To submit an I Remember: obit@globeandmail.com Send us a memory of someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page. Please include I Remember in the subject field
Associated Graphic
Canadian filmmaker and environmental activist Rob Stewart is seen on a boat off the coast of Florida before he went missing on Jan. 31.
http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20170213.
OBSPOBSTEWART/BDAStory/BDA/deaths
My opinion: I didn't know him before, but he really followed his passion.
Dec. 31, 2019: He loved animals and specifically sharks and then he became a filmmaker.
I know my little brother loved animals when he was a kid and he still loves them by watching all those animal documentaries on TV. However, he didn't get into it as a career and went into business.
That's the thing with being interested in something as a kid, teen, or adult. You can make a career out of it, or you like it only as a hobby.
Stewart could have gone into a marine biologist, scientist, or author.
Feb. 10, 2017 "Out with the girls": Today I found this article by Frazier Moore in the Edmonton Journal. I never saw the show because I don't have HBO. I'm not a fan of any of these actors.
However, I did like this article because it's about Lena Dunham who is a TV writer and producer and star of the show. She wrote the pilot at 23 yrs old and got it produced at 25. She was living my goal:
Let’s go surfing! The final season of Girls begins with Hannah, the series’ ever-outto-prove-herself writer, braving sand, sunblock and neoprene for the sake of a magazine assignment.
As usual with this comedy of over-bright 20-somethings searching for themselves, the episode feels reliably true to character yet unpredictable as Hannah gains a measure of personal insight that extends beyond her lack of acumen on a surfboard. It premières Sunday on HBO. Debuting in 2012, the series instantly became a cultural touchstone as it charted the Brooklyn-based adventures of Marnie (Allison Williams), Jessa (Jemima Kirke), Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) and Hannah (Lena Dunham).
Dunham is also the series’ creator as well as writer, producer, director and its overall creative wellspring.
Dunham talks about this concluding season and the five seasons before:
A LITTLE TOO GNARLY?
Certain beaches on Long Island draw a surfing crowd conspicuously outfitted with sleek physiques.
It’s a different story in the nearby urban canyons.
“If you live in New York City, you almost forget you have a body,” Dunham says. “You’re just walking around trying to get everywhere, like a floating head making your way through crowds.”
HARD TIMES
Filming of Girls wrapped for good last September. Then Dunham went straight into stumping for Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“When the show was over, I had taken all my creative energy and put it into campaigning. Then it was: ‘Hillary Clinton’s not president. Our TV show’s over. Donald Trump is in control of the free world. I guess I’ll be staying in bed today.’ ”
A FINE TIME
Filming the last season was “overwhelming and beautiful and nostalgic and at times deeply disorienting,” Dunham says.
For much of its run, Girls was “the only thing and everything I had,” she says, “which is part of why separating from it is so complicated. But I feel really lucky because, so often, a huge marker of your 20s is feeling like you don’t have a place to put your passion and your energy, and like you don’t have a way to feel seen. I never had to struggle with that.
“I did sort of struggle with going to brunch with my friends. I wasn’t necessarily the greatest at the things that are supposed to mark your 20s — moments where you let yourself drift on the tide, even when you’re in pain, and you connect with people and go to a party without knowing exactly what time you need to be home. I didn’t have that experience.
“Hannah got to be Hannah, and I got to pretend to be her,” Dunham says. “Pretending to be her at a party was better for me than actually being at a party. As a result, I got everything I needed in my 20s. I had a different, really amazing, experience.”
WRITE OF PASSAGE
Dunham is a writer who can turn out a Girls script in a night, and whose sureness of vision for show seems beyond dispute. “But I’ve had moments of crisis and doubt about the show,” she says, “and I’ve had moments of crisis and doubt that comes from being ages 23 to 30, which is a time rife with crises and doubt — which is what our entire show was about.”
She was 23 when she started writing the pilot script and turned 25 while the first season was in production. Last June, as the final season was shooting, she crossed the Great Divide into 30. She has no further pressing need for 20s generated crisis and doubt. Being 30 comes as a relief.
NO LONGER A PRODIGY
It’s not a word Dunham condones, but based on her early and multifaceted success, she has been hailed as something of a wunderkind.
Maybe for future projects she’ll be judged on different terms, as an artist for whom age is no longer an aspect.
“I’ve got a lot of ideas and a lot of things to say,” she says. “Whether they’re in the form of books or plays or performance art that’s done in the corner of my parents’ garage, I don’t know. I may not have another cultural-lightning-rod television show in me, And I wouldn’t be upset if I didn’t, because that’s not an experience you need to repeat over and over in your life.
“I don’t feel an overwhelming preoccupation with making sure that whatever comes next matches the scale of Girls.”
HANNAH’S LAST LAP
But whither Hannah in these last 10 episodes of her maturing 20-somethingness?
“We really tried to do both of the things that are glorious about any final season, which is wrap everybody up in a thoughtful way that makes you feel like you’ve completed a real journey with them — and also, do what the show has always done, which is not be tidy.
“Those two things are kind of at odds,” Dunham says. “But I don’t think anyone’s done a series finale like we did. It’s a very different version of ending a series.”
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