by John English
Charles’s parents, especially his mother, Malvina, a mayor’s daughter and a doctor’s sister, knew that their world of the farm, parish, and family would soon be lost. They were determined that the boys among their eight children would have a chance in the new world they faced. They sent Charles to Collège Sainte-Marie, an eminent classical college in Montreal established by the Jesuits in 1848, once the previously banned powerful religious order was allowed to return to Canada. Although situated in the heart of the city, the college was—at least in the later view of some students—a place apart. Its discipline, beginning in the morning with prayers at 5:30, followed by study at 6:00 and Mass at 6:30, took the students “away from the daily realities and the concerns of the day.”14
Paradoxically, by stepping out of the world, these boys became part of a privileged elite that would eventually dominate the fields of law, politics, religion, and medicine in twentieth-century Quebec. Those areas, however, were the traditional ones for francophones in the province, and, in the new industrial age, they increasingly brought fewer material rewards than did the world of finance and industrial capitalism, where the English dominated. Moreover, politics seemed increasingly beholden to wealth, and the francophone politicians of the time catered to the English capitalists. Just as some leading Quebecers, especially in the Roman Catholic Church, developed a critique of modern capitalism, others came to terms with its needs—including Charles Trudeau.
A few notebooks survive from Charles’s years at Collège Sainte-Marie, and they cast a faint light on his education and personality. Warned by his parents that failure meant a return to the farm, he was diligent. In his final year, 1908–9, he wrote and defended his thesis in Latin in a class on philosophy given in that language. He also copied out quotations to memorize and reflected negatively on the issues of the early years of the twentieth century—revolution, alcoholism, and war. “War kills the arts, the sciences, the civilization,” he wrote and then transcribed quotations supporting that cryptic declaration. On the key question of imperialism, he was not yet a stern critic of Britain. One of his quotations suggests it would be dangerous to separate from “Albion”: “We would be incomparably weaker, isolated as we are in a nation of five million facing an immense country of sixty million.” Moreover, Quebec needed foreign investment. But he had some doubts: “The authority of the mother country and the decisions of the Privy Council are not sufficient protection for the rights of Catholics in a province.” The seeds of nationalism had taken root. After Charles left the college, where he won many prizes despite a reputation as a troublemaker, he studied law for three years at the Montreal campus of Laval University (which became the University of Montreal in 1919).15
Charles seems to have been a good student: his notes are impressive in their organization and detail; he wrote in a fine and even elegant hand; and his classical education provided a strong intellectual base. Yet, in the accounts of those who knew him later, he changed radically at this time. He became an extrovert who loved games, gambling, and the high life. At home, though, it was different. In interviews, both Suzette and Pierre recalled him as a strict father who, though often absent, was intense and dynamic when present. He taught Pierre boxing, shooting, and even wrestling tricks. He also made him independent. Trudeau later told how disappointed he was that his friend Gerald O’Connor was put in the second grade and he in the first. He complained to his father, begging him to ask the principal to promote him. “No!” his father said. “It’s your problem. Knock on his door and ask him yourself.” Pierre did—and he happily joined Gerald in the second grade. In the seventies George Radwanski described how, when Trudeau spoke of his father, his eyes lit up and his gestures became more animated. He got “the impression of a child who may have been unknowingly overawed by an exceptionally dynamic father, perhaps in ways that contributed to his childhood sensitivity, insecurity, and later self-testing and rebellious.”16
Trudeau himself wrote more openly about how his father was “very extroverted. He spoke loudly and expressed himself vigorously. His friends were the same.”17 On weekends at Lac Tremblant, he invited guests, sometimes as many as twenty, and expected Grace to cook for them. “They liked to get involved in our games,” Trudeau recalled; “they liked to play cards, and they liked to drink and feast.” Sometimes the parties were organized in the basement of their Montreal home, but normally, he explained, “the only time in the whole day that we got to enjoy his company” was when Charles came home for dinner, took a quick look at the children’s schoolwork, and disappeared into the night to work or play. Although Pierre credited his father with teaching him sports, he claimed, despite visits from the flamboyant Montreal mayor, Camillien Houde, that they did not discuss politics: “I never asked my father any questions on the subject, and he for his part made no attempt to arouse my interest.” But, at the very least, he did so indirectly.
Others have painted a darker picture of Charles as “Charlie” or “Charley,” the bon vivant who played poker with rough-edged friends. Stephen Clarkson, co-author with Christina McCall of a study of Pierre Trudeau, has speculated that Charles was sometimes abusive towards Grace. They quote a family friend who said that Charles was brutal with his own friends and made things difficult when he came home drunk.18 There is no documentary evidence to support these suggestions. The family strongly denies the rumours of abuse towards Grace, though not of loud partying late in the night.
A small, wiry man, Charles’s energy and drive for success soon made him tire of petty legal affairs in his reasonably prosperous three-person law firm, Trudeau & Guérin, on St. James Street. In the fashion of the times, Charles-Émile Guérin was a Liberal, while Charles and his brother Cléophas were identified as bleus, or Conservatives. He took big chances; his son’s papers contain an undated notebook detailing his gambling wins and losses, nightly sums that often exceeded the yearly earnings of a Montreal worker. But in 1921, with two children and another, Charles, on the way, he completely changed course. He had noticed how automobiles were increasingly common on city streets and wondered who fixed and fuelled them. In 1910 there were only 786 automobiles in Quebec; in 1915, 10,112; in 1920, 41,562—and, within five years, there would be almost 100,000. By the 1920s, roads had become the largest item in the Quebec budget.19 Sensing the future, Charles opened a garage near his home, and soon he owned several others offering gasoline as well as the maintenance so often needed by the automobiles of the time—a “garage man,” as he had described himself to Grace—and he called his operation the Automobile Owners’ Association, with offices at 1216 St-Denis. The business quickly succeeded, and he ingeniously expanded the association into a club in which car owners signed on for an annual fee in return for guaranteed service.20
By the early 1930s the association had approximately 15,000 members, and Charles owned thirty garages. Imperial Oil noticed his success and offered him $1.2 million for the business in 1932. He accepted and then invested the funds in mining (mainly Sullivan Mines), Belmont Park (a large amusement park in Montreal), and even the Montreal Royals baseball team, of which he became the vice-president. Mining and entertainment were the best investments for the 1930s, and the stock market moved briskly upward immediately after Charles received his funds. Charles’s fortune was, Pierre Trudeau wrote modestly later, a sum that was “quite respectable for the time.” He became a member of the Cercle Universitaire, the Club Canadien, and several golf clubs. In truth, their affluence brought financial security for Grace and her children for the rest of their lives.21 They became and remained members of the haute bourgeoisie of Quebec.
Perhaps what impressed Pierre about his father was the way in which he so cleverly beat the English at their own games. His father had left law early, although he did tell Pierre that it was a “useful” degree. More interesting and rewarding was business, and his extroverted personality fitted it well. Charles had an excellent Jesuit and French education, but he was determined to learn English, and he insisted that his ch
ildren write to him in that language. He even signed some of his letters to them “Papa Charley.” He knew they must learn English to succeed in the Quebec of that time, and he sent them to French schools only after he was certain they were fluent in English. Although Pierre later recalled that the workers in his garages were French, the company name on its stationery was in English alone, and probably the majority of customers were anglophones.22
Yet Charles was committed to the French presence in Quebec. He chose to live in Outremont, not Westmount—his wealth would have gained him easy entry. His club was the St-Denis, the “French” club founded in the 1870s; and his office on St-Denis was far from the centre of bourgeois wealth in Montreal. He was generous to many French Catholic charities, particularly the hospitals. His politics were Conservative and nationalist. Very tellingly, his newspaper was the nationalist bible Le Devoir, and he was even a member of its operating board. Unlike many Quebec francophones of the day, Charles relished modern times and its wonders. The family’s increasing prosperity brought a move from the row house on Durocher to a more substantial Outremont home at 84 McCulloch (sometime McCullough) Street, with a large veranda and rooms for the maid and the chauffeur, Elzéar Grenier. It was also near the great park on Mount Royal, away from the city’s slums, and close to the best schools for the children. The brick house, while not pretentious, was impressive in its three storeys, large rooms, stately furnishings, and easy access to the verdant surroundings on the mountain.
When Charles was not at his garage or his club, he travelled sometimes to Europe and often to the United States. In one letter that Pierre sent to his father, Grace added a postscript: “Will write you in Los Angeles—at Biltmore Hotel. I don’t know of any other.”23 Clearly, Charles was always difficult to follow, a trait his son inherited, yet his presence was strong, sentimental, and loving with, or away from, his family. On September 28, 1926, he sent a postcard with a photograph of an airplane to Pierre and wrote over the picture: “There I was for nearly 3 hours.” On the back he informed his young son: “Whatever you do when you grow to be a man, Pierre, don’t be an aviator. Your Papa would be too much afraid. 3000 feet high, a speed of 125 miles an hour for 3 hours. Gee that’s long!” From New York City in May 1930 he sent another postcard, with a cartoon of a young boy who is being rebuked by his mother for spitting on the floor: “Hello there, Pierre! Are you the papa at home just now? Tell them they have to take orders from you. Love & kisses, Pa.” He wrote from San Francisco a few months later, “My own Pierrot,” and told him, “Glad to see that you can do anything when you want.”24
Pierre was equally warm in his letters to his father—which were normally written in English. He wrote in the summer of 1929, when the children and Grace were at their summer home at Old Orchard Beach in Maine:
Dear Papa
How are you? We are having a good time. We are doing our exercises three times a day. Tippy [brother Charles] is learning how to swim pretty good. I can float and I like it. We went on a picnic yesterday afternoon—ten kids. We played around and when it was time to eat we had to open our bottles on a barbwire fence! There were lots of mosquitoes so we came home. I would like to have my bike down here and Tippy would his also. Did mamma tell you about it? Hope you come back soon.
Your loving son, Pierre
(P.S.) don’t forget the bike.
Pierre’s plea was gently rebuked. On July 19 Charles replied to “Mon cher petit Pierre”:
I am very glad to see that you’re having a good time, that you are doing your exercises and you are good “kids” because Mamma told me so in her last letter …
Being the oldest I hope you are showing Tippy how to swim and you yourself are watching him: the biggest brother should always do that.
I like to see that you have learned how to float and I bet you have also improved your swimming. Now, is Suzette doing her exercises good and is she practicing swinging? I wish I had an eye on her too and show her how to get strong and healthy and wise.
Yes, Mamma told me about your “bike,” Pierre and you may be sure Mamma does not forget anything when she thinks it can please her “kids” but my opinion is that out there you don’t need the “bike” because you can play all sorts of games on the beach, have all sorts of exercises etc., which is much better, I think, than promenading on the streets with a “bike.” Never mind, Pierre, if the other guy gets one: he won’t be any better off and then you have things that he does not have and besides there are very few boys that have a bike over there. In fact I don’t think I saw one.
Now tell Suzette that I expect a letter from her by return mail and I don’t see why she has let you write before her.
Tell Tippy too that he can at least write a postal card and sign his name.
Tell Mamma that I’ll write tonight or tomorrow. Keep on having a good time and be good. Don’t forget your exercises and your swing and listening to Mamma and by doing all that you’ll be working as hard as your papa and work is what makes a man out of one.
Kisses to all, Papa Charley
There would be no bikes on Old Orchard Beach that summer.25
Charles’s frequent absences brought a flow of postcards, and ten-year-old Pierre responded with banter and warmth. In an undated letter of the late 1920s he assured his father that he did “not mind staying till half past five every afternoon” at school because, when he got home, he had all his homework done. After saying that he had not missed his 5BX exercises, a military calisthenics drill, and had missed piano practice only once, he concluded: “I have nothing more to say so I will close up my letter giving lots of xxxxxx and love.” In the summers they went to the Laurentians, followed by a long stay at Old Orchard Beach. In their Lac Tremblant cottage, the children “would listen for the faraway sound of tires on the bridge across the outlet of the lake that would mean [Charles] was arriving.” Pierre often became playful in his signoff, once declaring himself J P E Trudeau and another time mimicking the end of radio programs: “We are now signing off. Please stand by for station announcement. Your loving son, Pierre.”
In 1933 Charles decided to take the entire family and Grace’s father to Europe. Sixty years later, Pierre said that he retained “a thousand vivid images of it” in his mind. For the first time, he said, they (presumably the children) “experienced the remarkable feeling of being almost totally out of our element.” He enjoyed that feeling and always would. He developed an abiding wanderlust. One story that Trudeau retold many times was how his father stopped the car in front of a German hotel and said, “Pierre, rent us the rooms.” Faced with the challenge and possessing limited German, the thirteen-year-old lad nevertheless made the deal.
Although Charles gave his older son adult tasks, Pierre retained a childlike tone when dealing with his father in his early teenage years. He wrote to his father from Old Orchard Beach in the summer of 1934. He and Tippy, who seems to have become the subordinate younger brother, had just enjoyed the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup, and he reported on the arrival and departure of friends and relatives. The latest group did not “interest me much as there are only girls in both families,” he said, but the complaint was almost certainly a fib. Beach photographs from the period suggest that Pierre’s already penetrating eyes were constantly fixed on the girls, who were often grouped around him. Once again he reported on his exercises and concluded: “I hope you come up and see us sometime soon. Now I must be signing off as everybody is on the beach and I must go too. Kisses (xxx), Pierre.”26 Pierre treasured these summer months and yearned for his father’s presence.
On March 30, 1935, he complained to his parents, who were then vacationing in Florida as the Montreal Royals began their spring training, about the “disagreeable” winter season in Montreal. He eagerly awaited the coming Easter vacation, but even more the summer holiday that was only three months away. At school he had received a “Bene,” but the most interesting event of the month was the visit of “Antoni, the famous Canadian magician,” who had mystified th
e students with his extraordinary tricks. His mother returned from the South on April 8, and Pierre immediately wrote to his father:
Dear Papa,
As Maman has decided to send you my report card [from Brébeuf] which came today, I’ve decided to add a few words:
When I got home this evening, Maman told me you were ill and I hasten to wish you a speedy recovery. I’m relieved to know it is apparently nothing serious.
He expressed hope that his father would write soon, noted that he had obtained another “Bene,” and suggested that the results of his essays should also please him. Then he concluded:
Don’t stay away too long and try to be with us for Easter at least!
We’re all well here. Goodbye!
Your loving son,
Pierre
But Charles did not come home for Easter.
The pneumonia that had not been “serious” had caused a heart attack. When Grace heard that Charles’s condition was quickly worsening, she and Suzette flew down to Florida, leaving Tip and Pierre with an aunt. Before Pierre could send his letter, the telephone rang. From the landing in the stairwell, he saw his aunt turn towards him. “Your father is dead, Pierre,” she said.27 “In a split second,” he recalled later, “I felt the whole world go empty. His death truly felt like the end of the world.” And forty years later he said: “It was traumatic, very traumatic … I still can’t go to a funeral without crying.”28 Death had come quickly for Charles, who was only forty-six, and it traumatized the whole family.* Grace told Suzette: “I’ll never be able to bring up the boys alone.”29 Pierre himself recalled that, at fifteen years of age, “all of a sudden, I was more or less the head of a family; with him gone, it seemed to me that I had to take over.”30 Brébeuf’s rector wrote to him: “Poor little one! But you are a little Christian, Pierre, and you have the consolation of our beautiful Catholic faith.”31 It helped, but the distraught boy tore up the letter he had written to his father.