by John English
Pierre was never dolorous, like the students Hertel describes, but he was increasingly restless. In February 1935 the fifteen-year-old wrote a spirited but juvenile essay for his English class, “My Interview with King George of England,” in which he went to visit the monarch because there was so much disorder in his class at school. Arriving at the court, he was escorted in:
Then amidst the sounds of trumpets and cries of “The King!
The King!” a dignified old gentleman entered, escorted by many brilliantly colored soldiers.
“How do you do Sir?” I said.
“Fine, thank you, except for a little trouble with my teeth,” he answered. “I am pleased to meet you.”
“The pleasure is all mine,” said I, “but come let us get down to business, and I would like to see you alone.”
“Very well, you may leave, Captain,” and after a brief argument in which the King proved he could take care of himself, the captain left. [An increasingly angry teacher writes, “Nonsense.”]
Seeing the gentleman was beginning to sweat under his uniform, I bade him take off his coat; having done so I began. [Teacher: “Nonsense.”]
Pierre went on to say that Governor General Lord Bessborough had urged him to see the King because the teacher was “English.” He described the total disorder in his classroom at home:
“They are even setting off matches, no doubt to burn the college, and also stink bombs, the odors of which are very disagreeable. Now our professor, M. Gosling, being from England, I thought you might have some sympathy for him (for he finds it trying on his nerves).”
King George replied that he was very sad, for he “thought that all the boys in the British Empire on which the sun never sets were perfect gentlemen. It must be looked after at once.” He promised to come down to speak to the class at Brébeuf. Then Pierre concluded:
“Thanks very much, George, I knew you would do it. Well, so long, I will be seeing you.”
“Good-bye, Pierre.”
“Good-bye. I think I shall go to Rome now and see if I can convince Pope Pius to come up and see us over in Canada too.”
The teacher wrote: “As a writer of nonsense you may achieve fame but try to become a little more serious and do not use slang.” A gentle caution, but more criticism would follow.61
As Pierre Trudeau became increasingly nationalist in his views, along with his classmates and teachers, his growing enthusiasm was reflected both in his academic work and in the books he read. He focused in particular on Abbé Groulx, apparently finding some of his interpretations congenial. On a copy of an article the Abbé published in L’Action nationale, he underlined a passage stating that some men dream for Canada of “total independence; for their province [Quebec] total autonomy; and for their nationality, a noble future.” He also read one of Groulx’s pamphlets and declared it “very interesting,” adding, “It is necessary to make total preparations,” although it is unclear what those preparations might have been.62
At the same time that he became more interested in national questions, his conservative Catholicism also deepened. The two commitments became inextricably intertwined for him, as they did for many other students too. While he had earlier complained to his parents about the frequency of religious observances, he now began to seek out retreats and discussions about the faith. Still, probably because of his independent spirit and Brébeuf’s elitist ways, he did not become involved in the Jeunesse étudiante catholique, the best-known Catholic youth group of the day. When he edited the school newspaper, Brébeuf, he took strong issue with a request that all student newspapers take a common view. Rather, he read widely in Catholic literature and became especially interested in the Catholic revival in France in the twenties. In the fashion of the times, he vigorously condemned Communists: for example, he denounced André Gide as a Communist who, from a moral point of view, was “one of the most pernicious authors who ever existed.” It was “a matter of life,” of how Catholic faith penetrated all thought.63
In his notebooks, the adolescent Pierre reflected his times and his environment as he groped to understand a complex world. He blamed the Treaty of Versailles and, bizarrely, the British insistence on Germany giving up its colonies for the troubles of the 1930s. And his father’s views found a place with his son. He expressed a traditional view of the difference between men and women: “God made the sexes, that of woman for the work in the house and that of man for the things outside.” Men’s robust bodies suited them for war and voyages, but women’s weaker physique meant that “God has destined them to work at home and bear children.”64 In an October 1937 story he described a soapbox orator who talked about the conscription of twenty years before and warned that another war would mean automatic conscription.65 In a Brébeuf debate he argued against intervention in the Sino-Japanese conflict because “China is infested with strangers, so Japan has a noble aim wanting the yellow race to survive.” He also blamed the “Reds” for causing troubles in China.66
He wrote a short story in Father Robert Bernier’s class in 1936 in which he deplored the isolation of the college and dreamed of what he might do as a sailor on some future adventure. In his fantasy, he travelled the world, joined the air force, engaged in “numerous dangerous exploits, blew up some enemy factories,” and won the war. He then returned to Montreal “about 1976, when the time was ripe to declare Quebec independence.” The Maritimes and Manitoba joined with Quebec to confront the enemies, and “at the head of the troops, I lead the army to victory” over the English Protestant infidels. “I live now,” he fantasized, “in a Catholic and Canadian country.”67 He was the modern Dollard of the fabled “Laurentie” of Groulx and other nationalists of the day.
Like many of Pierre’s intellectual meanderings at this time, this fantasy—that he would lead an army that won independence for Quebec in the same year that the Parti Québécois actually came to power—is simply juvenile trivia. In some essays, he favoured anti-Semitic, elitist, and conservative Catholic writers. In others, he merely took positions in a school where debate was strongly encouraged. He even praised the misogynist and elitist L’homme, cet inconnu by Alexis Carrel, as well as other works of a similar conservative Catholic character.68 And, in a speech he gave on the survival of French Canadians in November 1937, he took his approach directly from nationalists like Groulx. “To save our French civilization,” he said, “we must keep our language and flee American civilization.” The “revenge of the cradle,” he predicted, whereby French Catholics had large familes while English Protestants had few children, would soon allow the French population to exceed the English. He attacked immigration, because it tended to increase the English population, but rejoiced that the government had cut off most immigrants during the Great Depression. French Canada, he said, had a precise and even divine role—to propagate “French and Catholic ideas in the New World.”
Yet the young Trudeau was also inconsistent at this time. In his 1936–37 notes, he made favourable references to Jacques Maritain, an eminent Catholic philosopher who opposed fascism and supported liberal democracy. He paraphrased his idea that “if the author is good, he will spontaneously criticize vice and approve good,” and he strongly agreed with this liberal sentiment. He also proudly reported to his mother that he joined with other students in honouring not only the nationalist hero Dollard but also May 24, “la fête de la reine,” the Queen’s birthday, which was “another excellent occasion to display patriotism.”69 Contradictions abound.
Trudeau attended a “semaine sociale” at Brébeuf from November 28 to December 4, 1937, where they discussed a variety of social questions. The diet was strongly nationalist and conservative, and he learned about the “error of economic liberalism,” “the necessity of corporatism,” and “the illusion of communism and socialism.”* To his nationalist teachers and friends there, he could deny strongly that he was “Americanized.” Yet in 1937 he tried to establish a liaison between the student newspaper Brébeuf and its counterpart at the
New York Catholic Fordham College. He told the U.S. editors that “you will come more directly in contact with the French and French Canadians, and the object of Mr. Roosevelt in establishing relations of goodwill and friendship between the American people will be greatly helped.”70 And, on the language question generally, unlike André Laurendeau, Trudeau rejected the popular nationalist cause of unilingualism, following, instead, his father’s view that “because of the advantages which knowledge of the English language presents, the majority of ‘Canadiens’ are compelled to learn English. Far from blaming them, I find them to be perfectly reasonable”—except when they introduced anglicisms into French.71
Pierre could never identify with the element of extreme nationalism that attacked the brothels and nightclubs of Montreal and detested American music and movies. He continued to visit New York, go to the theatre, and adore the Marx Brothers and the sirens of Hollywood. He made a pledge to himself in 1937: “I don’t want to go out with girls before I am twenty years old because they would distract me,” especially frivolous American girls.72 But that summer at Old Orchard he met an American student, Camille Corriveau, “whose beauty I had admired for 4 years.”73 She finally spoke to him on August 18, his resolve melted, and within a week he fell in love. In October she told him he should choose any profession except the priesthood. “Even the life of a policeman would be more exciting,” she thought. Then he returned to Brébeuf.
It was a different world. Father Brossard taught him Canadian history. He was, said Pierre, a patriot but not a fanatic. On October 20 the young Trudeau shaved for the first time. The next day he stood for the “autonomists” in the student parliament and heard Henri Bourassa, the nationalist founder of Le Devoir, speak in the evening. On October 22 he and other students demonstrated against “Communists.” Then he joined the family at Christmas, went skiing for a week before New Year’s, and refused an invitation from his sister, Suzette, to attend a New Year’s Eve dance with her and her friends. The profferred date, “Olga Zabler,” was very pretty, but he was still shy. “I am always timid around women,” he mused, though that reserve frequently made him exaggerate his self-assurance in their presence. In short, he was awkward. Reflecting his frustrations, he made a New Year’s resolution to “cultivate the strongest possible sense of honour” and to avoid any act that would cause him embarrassment. Without doubt, the “exalted patriots,” as Pierre called the fervent nationalists, would not have thought much of his ideas and activities during this holiday season.
Tip tagged along with his brother on a trip to New York on January 2, 1938. They went immediately to a Broadway musical, the next day to see the American Jewish comedian Ed Wynn, the following day to Rockefeller Center—“c’est colossal!” Pierre wrote—and, in the evening, to the fabled Cotton Club. There, “the orchestra and the comedians were good,” but there was a touch of Brébeuf in his comment that “the review was rather immoral and vulgar.” Far more satisfying was Radio City Music Hall, where he saw the Rockettes kick their legs high. They were “very good,” and the theatre itself “a marvel.” When he got home, he continued to go to movies and to write to Camille, all the while trying to resist his strong urges to approach attractive young women.74
When Pierre returned to Montreal on January 8, Brébeuf enclosed him within its capacious bosom. He was ambitious academically and athletically, although he remarked that a pretty girl could capture his attention “despite my coldness and independence.”75 His ambitions included standing for the school elections and participating in a drama contest. He worried about his popularity because of his shyness and his tendency to be “contrary.” At times he was troubled. He wrote to his mother: “Temperature uncertain, like adolescence.” And, in his notebooks, there is a draft of what is perhaps a poem: “My adolescent heart is like nature / Everything is upset. The temperature of sadness.”76
Father Bernier had reassured him in the fall of 1937 that he had “a Canadien mentality mixed with English,” a combination, in Pierre’s own view, that was “not bad for broadening one’s outlook.” Brébeuf was French, however, and he resolved to improve his French diction, to read more widely, and to attend Mass often. Still, he had pride in his bicultural background, even if many critics of the time deplored the mixing of French and English. He determined that he would continue to sign “Elliott” as part of his name: it was an indication of “good stock and distinction.”77
Then came a brutal blow to this bicultural calm. Just after the early February 1938 elections for the Academic Council, where his great rival Jean de Grandpré narrowly beat him for the presidency, “Laurin” told Pierre that a fellow student had declared he had no confidence in him—“that I was mediocre, Americanized, and Anglicized, in short, I would betray my race. I made it seem that I wasn’t bothered, but it was a profound shock.” “Perhaps I seem superficial about certain things,” Pierre wrote in his journal. “But the truth is that I work. And I would never betray the French Canadians.” If he was accused directly, he would punch the accuser in his face. Then he paused: “However, I am proud of my English blood, which comes from my mother. At least it tempers my boiling French blood. It leaves me calmer and more insightful and perspicacious.” The incident made him more determined than ever to finish first at Brébeuf, the educational jewel of French education in Montreal.78
Four days later, on February 9, the results of yet another election were announced, this time for the Conventum—the class council. Pierre had initially not wanted to run but did so when he discovered that his father had been on the secretariat of the Conventum at his school. He again ran behind Jean de Grandpré, but he won the run-off election and became vice-president. “Oh, inexpressible happiness!” he exclaimed in his diary. He added that he was very pleased that his bilingual name, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, had not hurt him much in the election. In March the issue still bothered him. In English class he pretended to be Irish and, “for a joke,” dared other students to take him on. No battle followed, although Father Landry threatened him with expulsion. However, he wrote in his diary after the class that he was content to have his English blood mixed with his French blood. The blend, he concluded, made him less fearful of going against “the popular spirit.”
Some have claimed that Trudeau was the model for François Hertel’s 1939 novel, Le beau risque—a story about “Pierre Martel,” a young student at a classical college who loses his restlessness as his “soul” becomes thoroughly French. The novel takes the form of a memoir by a priest-professor who is going to Asia. He says that Pierre lacks confidence, despite his intelligence and a successful surgeon father he admires. The narrator, Father Berthier, soon discovers that the father is empty and lacks depth, concerned as he is only with appearance. Like Pierre Trudeau, Pierre Martel has acne, lives in a large house in Outremont, has a wealthy father, takes trips to New York, gratuitously irritates his teachers, prefers individual sports to team sports, loves poetry, and, most tellingly perhaps, spends his summers at Old Orchard Beach. The novel traces how Pierre turns away from the materialist and Americanized world of his father and finds strength in Boucherville, in the traditional world of his grandparents. He confronts his father for his scepticism, his Anglicisms, and his materialism, while, at the same time, he comes to admire his grandfather’s respect for the past and, in particular, the way he has retained the spirit of the 1837 Rebellions. Pierre senses the call of the blood and angrily refuses to go to Old Orchard or to visit a Quebec “inn,” which, he tells his father, must be called an “auberge.” He takes up the continuing struggles of his people, becomes devoted to a renewed Catholicism, and expresses commitment to a world where “we will be more ourselves.”79 Trudeau read the book when it appeared, as did many young Quebecers, but his short review in his journal does not indicate that he identified himself with Martel. Nevertheless, the evidence suggests that Pierre Trudeau, like Martel, was a divided soul in those troubled times.
In the spring of 1938, while Pierre contemplated the comments abo
ut his “Americanization and Anglicization,” he wrote a play entitled Dupés, about a Montreal tailor. In itself a disappointing, slight confection, it won a competition at Brébeuf and was performed there, with Pierre as one of the actors. Jean de Grandpré, Trudeau’s greatest academic rival and a future prominent business executive, played the lead. At the time it was written, nationalists in Quebec were urging a “Buy from our own” campaign, which the Jewish community in Montreal condemned as anti-Semitic. Trudeau’s “comedy of manners” is laced with sarcasm and some bitterness. The main character is a tailor, Jean-Baptiste Couture, who, in the first draft, is described as a good father of a French-Canadian family, honest but sometimes violent. Another character, Jean Ditreau, is interested in Couture’s daughter, Camille, a name Trudeau devilishly chose in honour of his American girlfriend. Others in the play include a few customers, notably the dubious Paul Shick.