Hon. Marty Klyne: Honourable senators, with a heavy heart, I rise to honour Dr. Jane Goodall who passed away last week at the age of 91. She was a lovely lady to spend time with, and I am privileged and honoured to call her a friend.

We remember Dr. Goodall as a world-renowned primatologist, conservationist and United Nations Messenger of Peace. She also founded the Jane Goodall Institute, a community-driven organization working around the globe to save wildlife, including in Canada. To this Senate, Dr. Goodall was a friend who inspired and contributed to our efforts to pass the world’s strongest legal protection for captive wild animals, the Jane Goodall act.

As I said when she visited us in April of last year, Dr. Goodall’s discoveries about our closest living relatives — chimpanzees — revolutionized humanity’s understanding of our relationship with animals. Dr. Goodall used science to prove what many Indigenous Peoples have always known: We are not separate from our fellow creatures but connected to them as “all our relations.” The late Honourable Murray Sinclair, who authored the original Jane Goodall act, called her “. . . truly an elder of our global society . . . .”

With Dr. Goodall’s passing, Mother Nature has lost her greatest champion. Humanity has lost a hero who embodied the best of us. Yet her spirit and work live on in those she inspired, including thousands of young people through her Roots and Shoots program, which is active in over 75 countries.

At this hour of climate change, mass extinction and cruelty to animals and each other, Dr. Goodall taught us that mission number one is to keep hope alive. She showed us that hope is not an attitude; it’s an action. She taught us we can make a difference every day, and we must never give up.

I’ll speak more about Dr. Goodall’s legacy. First, here is a little more about her life.

As a child growing up in England, Dr. Goodall dreamed of going to Africa to live among and learn from wild animals. As she often joked, the plan was also to give Tarzan the chance to marry the right Jane. Her family didn’t have much money, and the world was different then for girls. As she said, everyone except her mother laughed at her dream. Yet she persevered.

In her early twenties, Dr. Goodall got a job as a secretary to Louis Leakey, the anthropologist who discovered fossils of early humans in East Africa. He sensed her promise and hired her to study chimpanzees, our closest living relatives. In 1960, Dr. Goodall and her mother travelled to Gombe Stream in Tanzania. Young Jane’s dream of living in the forest had come true. The stage was set for Dr. Goodall to revolutionize biology, break barriers for women and girls everywhere and change the world.

Patiently gaining the chimpanzees’ trust over months, she observed an individual chimpanzee whom she named David Greybeard make and use tools to fish for termites. At the time, scientists believed toolmaking separated humans from animals. In response, Dr. Leakey sent his famous telegram, “Now we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as humans.”

Dr. Goodall had proven, contrary to the male-dominated scientific understanding of the time, that animals have minds, personalities and emotions. Her discovery has had profound implications including, in her view, spiritual ones. In Dr. Goodall’s words:

Being out in the forest, I had this great sense of spiritual awareness, of some spiritual power. And it was so strong out in the forest. You cannot help but understand how everything is interconnected. I often used to think sitting out there on my own that . . . maybe there is a spark of that great spiritual power in each one of us. And if it’s so, then maybe it’s in every animal too. Maybe it’s what gives us life. Because we must label everything, we call it a soul. So if we have a soul, then so do the chimpanzees.

Over time, Dr. Goodall’s work transformed into a vision and a mission to save our closest relatives and all living species from extinction, with a focus on community-based conservation. Until her death, Dr. Goodall travelled 300 days a year, spreading her message of hope, including with a visit to Ottawa just last month.

As Prime Minister Carney said at Dr. Goodall’s passing, we must now “. . . take up her torch.” I turn to her legacy and what we can all do to be a little more like Dr. Goodall.

Senators, this past weekend, you may have seen the documentary on Netflix entitled Famous Last Words. It turns out that Dr. Goodall pre-recorded an interview to air only after her passing.

If you didn’t see it, you may have heard about it. This is because Dr. Goodall commented on several world leaders whom she would like to see Elon Musk invite for a very long trip on his spaceship. I add Dr. Goodall’s last words to our record at some length:

In the place where I am now, I look back over my life. I look back at the world I’ve left behind. What message do I want to leave? I want to make sure that you all understand that each and every one of you has a role to play. You may not know it, you may not find it, but your life matters, and you are here for a reason.

And I just hope that reason will become apparent as you live through your life. I want you to know that, whether or not you find that role that you’re supposed to play, your life does matter, and that every single day you live, you make a difference in the world. And you get to choose the difference that you make.

I want you to understand that we are part of the natural world. And even today, when the planet is dark, there still is hope. Don’t lose hope. If you lose hope, you become apathetic and do nothing. And if you want to save what is still beautiful in this world — if you want to save the planet for the future generations, your grandchildren, their grandchildren — then think about the actions you take each day.

Because, multiplied a million, a billion times, even small actions will make for great change. . . . I just hope that you understand that this life on Planet Earth isn’t the end. I believe, and now I know, that there is life beyond death. That consciousness survives.

I can’t tell you, from where I am, secrets that are not mine to share. I can’t tell you what you will find when you leave Planet Earth. But I want you to know that your life on Planet Earth will make some difference in the kind of life you find after you die.

Above all, I want you to think about the fact that we are part — when we’re on Planet Earth — we are part of Mother Nature. We depend on Mother Nature for clean air, for water, for food, for clothing, for everything. And as we destroy one ecosystem after another, as we create worse climate change, worse loss of diversity, we have to do everything in our power to make the world a better place for the children alive today, and for those that will follow.

You have it in your power to make a difference. Don’t give up. There is a future for you. Do your best while you’re still on this beautiful Planet Earth that I look down upon from where I am now.

God bless you all.

That was from Jane Goodall.

Thank you.