One of Canada's most recognized faces -- he placed fifth in CBC's The Greatest Canadian poll which, since he's still with us, made him the greatest living Canadian -- David Suzuki is a well-known environmental activist, award-winning scientist, professor, broadcaster, author and a very in-demand speaker and lecturer. On Sundays, however, the Vancouver-born Suzuki, 72, relishes roles of another sort: husband, father and an American-football-addicted couch potato.

Describe your perfect Sunday.

First of all, waking up in bed with my wife -- absolutely critical because I travel so much. And preferably after having a wonderful evening having dinner with friends on Saturday night, so I'm waking up late having slept in.

No formal obligations for the rest of the day. So I go upstairs, I make tea for [wife] Tara which I take down to her in bed, and make coffee for myself. Then, I sit down with the newspaper and get ready to watch a day of American football. Halfway through the day, we'd whip off and go down to Granville Island Market and just buy something for dinner. Then I get back home to watch more football and cook up dinner, usually a salmon, and spend it with the kids for the evening.

Is this perfect Sunday somewhat of a rarity?

One of the things that I've discovered is most of my out-of-town time on weekends is spent giving lectures on weekends to support an environmental or native group somewhere. I've decided to not do that any more. During the week I'm already doing lots of things, and I often don't even have the weekends with family because I'm off doing these free lectures for other groups and they're almost always on weekends so [I made the decision last year] that maybe I deserve to take the weekends off.

How has it been so far?

I'm still doing too much talking and travelling. Our foundation [David Suzuki Foundation] works on a four-day workweek. My wife says: "Stop talking about retiring. Just go to a four-day workweek, and you'll have three days for a weekend," which I think is wonderful. I have to start doing that.

How did you become a fan of American football?

I spent eight years in the United States getting my education. This was during my formative adult time and television was just coming in and I started watching American-type football, both college and NFL. I feel kind of traitorous, coming back to Canada and I'm still hooked on NFL games. I think these Canadian games are more exciting but certainly in terms of television, the NFL games are very well televised, and Sundays are when the big games happen.