by John English
He even asked Gordon Robertson whether he should draw up a summary of arguments for and against banning Communists.* His memoranda reflected the government’s concern that foreign-language publications were often Communist in sympathy, but he concluded by pointing to Prime Minister St. Laurent’s view that legislating against opinion was wrong. While noting Conservative leader George Drew’s stern anti-Communism, he also observed the young Saskatchewan MP John Diefenbaker’s strong attachment to the principles of human rights. In the tradition of the public service, he presented choices objectively, carefully analyzing the impact of decisions. It is small wonder that Gordon Robertson wrote to him: “Your note outlining government and opposition statements … is just what I wanted and should be very helpful”—helpful, of course, to the Liberal government of Louis St. Laurent.34
Although Trudeau’s Ottawa memoranda fit the requisite blend of clear prose and well-reasoned argument, occasionally his strong streak of independence and caustic impishness broke through bureaucratic restraint, as when he wrote about national registration: “Having done very little to prevent man from being anything but a number in a series of numbers, we have no right to object when the government institutionalizes that philosophy through national registration.” His advice, though carefully measured, normally expressed his own views. National registration, he suggested, might be appropriate in wartime but not in peacetime. Communism was a threat, but existing legislation was sufficient to meet it. Only on one subject—federalism—did his own opinions break through the usual official Ottawa wisdom.35
Trudeau’s time in Ottawa made him extremely interested in the character of federalism, in both the theoretical and the practical sense. His far-ranging education had often dealt with the subject, and Emmanuel Mounier, Harold Laski, and Frank Scott had probably become the pre-eminent influences on him, despite their own very different approaches. Still, until he began working in the Privy Council Office, Trudeau was more likely to write about democracy or economic and political equality than about federalism.
Ottawa clinched his fascination with the various theories of federalism and its application in Canada. Pierre Vadeboncoeur, one of his closest friends at the time, later described Trudeau as one who approached political questions “through his legalistic side.” François Hertel similarly emphasized that, to understand Pierre, you had to realize that he was essentially “a lawyer.” While it is true that both men were bitterly estranged from Trudeau when they made these remarks, their comments have validity.36 Once in Ottawa, Trudeau drew increasingly on his legal training and his conception of the importance of law, statutes, legislation, and, implicitly, political order. The legal structures of Canadian federalism began to fascinate him—in the way that a young pianist experiences his first lessons in counterpoint and harmony and finally understands how beautiful chords are made. In a setting where surprisingly few officials had a legal education, Trudeau’s training in the law and in philosophy gave him advantages, especially in debate.
There was one additional legacy of his Ottawa years: he became much more interested in Canada, in how it worked and how it could fail. He attended the Dominion-Provincial Conference of 1950 and took copious notes on the discussions of possible constitutional change. He also revised official documents, as the government took advantage of his fluent bilingualism. To his superior’s delight, he used his lawyer’s skills to undermine provincial arguments. His views on Maurice Duplessis did not echo the harsh opinions of his superiors, who thought the Quebec premier a destructive and devious boor in federal-provincial meetings. In his opinion, Duplessis did not represent his province well because he was too narrowly nationalist and too blind to the forces of change. After one exchange, Trudeau remarked that Duplessis’s intervention was “interesting but Supreme Court would have to be changed.” F.R. Scott, then an adviser to the Saskatchewan CCF government, impressed him most with his arguments that the best way to break through constitutional impasses was to begin with fiscal issues and social security. It was the same view that Pierre Vadeboncoeur had expressed on Trudeau’s behalf the previous summer in Le Devoir.
Throughout the next decade, Trudeau developed this position more precisely.37 His Ottawa experience began to persuade him that the problems he observed in Quebec could be confronted through a more effective Canadian federalism:
But there is yet another reason why co-operation is indispensable to a federation. What is popularly referred to as division of powers is in reality division of legislative jurisdiction. And since legislative jurisdiction does not always ideally correspond to divisions of administrative jurisdiction, it so happens that very often the government most apt to legislate on a given subject cannot be relied upon to administer the laws most efficiently. Thus the legislative power of one government will have to seek co-operation with the executive or judicial power of another; which in short means that federal and provincial governments, far from seeking efficiency through complete independence in their spheres, will resort to agreement and understanding.38
While increasingly persuaded that federal government initiative in social and fiscal realms was essential, Trudeau argued that the provinces should maintain authority where they had clear constitutional responsibilities. He therefore vigorously attacked a bill on civil defence that came forward in 1951. “The most offensive provisions,” he told his supervisor, Gordon Robertson, were “those which appear to be based on a fantastic conception of federalism.” Some parts of the bill extend the “peace, order, and good government” clause of the British North America Act far beyond what its drafters intended. “It is preposterous,” he declared, for the federal government “to claim jurisdiction over the provincial governments themselves.” Cooperation, he wrote in another memorandum, “is indispensable to a federation,” and neither jurisdiction can proceed “with complete disregard” of the other.39 His view of the federation differed from that of some Canadian officials who were, in the postwar era, strongly centralist. Those views derived from his past—and they would affect the future.
If Trudeau was dutiful and restrained in his first year in Ottawa, he nevertheless chafed at the restraints that the government of Canada placed on its civil servants. He impatiently drafted a letter to Le Devoir in May 1950, complaining that “public servants do not have the right to have opinions.” He never sent it. However, his differences with the St. Laurent government became significantly greater when Canada decided to enter the Korean War during the summer of 1950, after the North Koreans invaded the South, and the United Nations, through the General Assembly, authorized an America-led intervention.
Trudeau disapproved of that decision and, especially, of Lester Pearson’s strong advocacy of Canadian participation. Pearson believed that the North Korean attack represented the same threat to the young United Nations as the Italian attack on Abyssinia (Ethiopia) had been in 1935 to the League of Nations. Just as Canada announced an expansion of its earlier participation, Trudeau wrote hastily to Jules Léger, who was then a middle-rank officer in External Affairs:
Dear Jules,
I’ve just heard Pearson’s speech on Korea in the House. Not a single original thought. A little current history, a lot of propaganda … Asia is heading down hill. There is still time to save Europe, at least by introducing the European division [of External Affairs] to that study on neutralism you spoke to me about.40
Trudeau was a rare dissenter on Canadian foreign policy at a time when even the socialist CCF had joined the Cold War consensus on the need to confront the Soviet Union in Europe and in Asia. Grace Trudeau was also caught up in the fervour. She had written to her son during his world travels in February 1949:
Does world news reach you fresh? What do you think of Cardinal Mindszenty’s trial, Hungarian. It is the talk of the whole world. Prayers have been recited in all churches; now it is the Protestants who are being persecuted, those Reds are infiltrating themselves at an alarming rate, and no doubt we Americans of this continent are too willing to clo
se our eyes, and not be on guard to the subtleness of their smooth ways. Everyone repeats that there exists a large number of communists in Canada. Are you going to be able to exterminate them with all your knowledge?41
In this case, Trudeau did not heed Grace’s advice or share her views.
On a copy of one of Pearson’s speeches on December 5, 1950, in which he claimed that Canada had urged moderation and a sense of global strategy, Trudeau scrawled: “Not very really.”42 Five months later he sent private notes to Douglas LePan and Pierre Trottier, both of External Affairs, attacking another of Pearson’s speeches. In his note to LePan deploring Pearson’s attack on the “hard-faced despots in the Kremlin,” Trudeau pointed out that the cultured Canadian diplomat John Watkins* had “pictured Soviet Russia as a country of war-weary, peace-loving people, naïvely proud of their primitively democratic institutions; whose government was mainly engaged in improving the civilian economy, and was even proceeding with a certain amount of demobilization.” Similarly, Trudeau said that the Canadian mission head in China, Chester Ronning, who sympathized with Mao’s side, had indicated that “progress is being made in their solution for the benefit of the Chinese people as a whole.” Given these reports, Trudeau concluded (in somewhat flawed English):
Either Mr. Pearson is unacquainted with such reports, then he is not doing his job; or, being acquainted with them, he discounts their veracity, then he is guilty of retaining the services of two foreign service officers who are gullible soviet stooges; or, believing in their veracity, he still prefers to spread the belief that the Communists are intent on starting a war, then he is misleading the people. Wars are fought with physical courage, but in these times courage of a finer temper is required to affirm one’s belief in truth and justice. If Mr. Pearson had that courage, would he not acquaint the public with facts which might tend to open an avenue of comprehension and sympathy towards the potential enemy?
He wickedly signed the letter “Comrade Trudeau.”43
In his note to Jules Léger complaining about Pearson, Trudeau had recommended that Léger read the latest Esprit, some articles by Étienne Gilson in Le Monde, and a piece by Hubert Beuve-Méry of Le Monde which pondered neutralism in Europe. He did not hide his dissent from the consensus, and his colleagues began to mock his stance in a friendly way, calling him “Citizen” as a mark of his left-wing rebelliousness.
While Trudeau remained cordial, it soon became clear that neither his opinions on international affairs nor his personality were suited to the puritanical and earnest ways of St. Laurent’s Ottawa. Still, he continued to work on his files and did not turn down social invitations. “It was very kind of you to have me in for dinner last Monday,” he wrote to Norman Robertson a couple of months later, on June 5, adding, “Wine excellent.”44 At this dinner, his host apparently gave him an article that had appeared in the Partisan Review by Lionel Trilling, the Columbia University English professor who had abandoned earlier Marxist and radical left positions during the first stages of the Cold War. Clearly, Robertson wanted to draw the clever young francophone away from the European temptation of neutralism in the increasingly fierce battle between the West and the East.* Trudeau, however, held tightly to the arguments against both the Korean War and the rapid strengthening of North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in Europe—forces that included a significant Canadian presence. In both cases, he believed that Canada was simply following American policy towards the Soviet Union and China—policy he deemed too uncompromising and aggressive.
Although there was a cadre of talented young francophones in External Affairs, there were few in the Privy Council Office where Trudeau worked. Moreover, the women in the office were exclusively secretaries. As Margaret Trudeau commented, he treated these women professionally, as working colleagues; and they responded to his charm and invariable courtesy with an admiration that is still quickly evident when they speak of him. He was considerate, familiar yet respectful, and polite. When some of these female employees were interviewed shortly after his death, they expressed deep admiration mingled with fondness. Words like “gracious,” “thoughtful,” “shy and charming” were frequently used.45 Yet Margaret mentioned another category—“the dates”—who were often “celebrities” in the seventies and the eighties.
In the fifties, Ottawa had few celebrities, but Trudeau’s attention was captured one September morning in 1950 by a front-page article in the Ottawa Citizen which featured a large photograph of Helen Segerstrale. “Your attention Men,” the article began. “May we introduce Miss Helen Segerstrale, 20 years of age, accomplished and beautiful. She’s just out from Sweden to take over a clerk’s job in the Swedish Embassy.” She had studied at Lausanne, where she specialized in French literature, and spoke five languages. The dark blonde, strong-featured Swede would, the Citizen proclaimed, be “Sweden’s antidote to the ‘crisis blues.’” Interestingly, Trudeau, a relatively small, very thin, though strongly muscled man, was attracted to beautiful, full-figured, and tall women. He kept photographs of most of the women in his life, and they usually fit this description. He clipped out the newspaper column, quickly forgetting his “blues” as Canadian troops prepared to go to Korea, and began his pursuit of Ottawa’s newest celebrity.46
By Christmas, Trudeau had managed an introduction and set out, intensely, to win her heart. No doubt Helen, who became Hélène to Pierre as they became more intimate, was immediately intrigued by the unlikely civil servant who drove a Harley-Davidson and a Jaguar, dived and swam like the Olympian movie star Johnny Weissmuller, bought expensive Italian-tailored suits and wore them elegantly (in a town where Eaton’s department store set the fashion standard), and could converse about a Rodgers and Hammerstein opening in New York and a recent performance of Sartre’s Huís Clos in Paris.* Their letters mingle polylingual banter (including some Swedish), ceaseless repetition of love’s language, tales of travel planned or finished, and philosophical reflections.
In diplomatic mail delivered “by hand” to the East Block from the Swedish Embassy the following summer, notes arrived bearing such unofficial messages as “You made me sooooo happy … you are the most wonderful person on this side of the globe … no, even on both sides (though I don’t know any Chinese yet, I’ll have to find out.” And, on another occasion: “I feel like a young debutante, who has the love of a young man who must write sentimental things to the object of his great desire.” She signed her letters “Puss.” Beaches beckoned, and candlelight dinners at twilight were followed by intimacy. His Catholic commitment to chastity had disappeared sometime in the fifties, as it apparently did for many others of the faith. Yet he, like many who wavered from the official teachings, remained committed to the church.
Pierre and Helen began to talk about spending their lives together. Grace Trudeau had come to know her well during her frequent weekend visits to Montreal with Pierre, and she began to guide Helen on a critical path towards marriage: her conversion to Roman Catholicism. Like most Swedes, Helen wore her traditional Lutheran faith lightly and did not resist change. The process, however, became complicated when she received different messages from the parish priests and from Pierre’s Montreal friends. She told him how she had explained to her own mother that it was not he who was imposing Catholicism on her, but that she was finding Catholicism an attractive way to live:
On the contrary, you always told me how important it is to be free, to follow your nature, and that religion is a question between oneself and God. And then I told her [her mother] that the clerical atmosphere in Quebec could hardly have led me to Catholicism, on the contrary; I explained how you and your Cité-Libre friends at the meetings made me understand the problems and trouble the Catholic priests can cause. But it’s always the same thing that is difficult for us, “free Vikings of the north”: to feel humble and to keep faith precious and essential, and to disregard man’s imperfections as having nothing to do with faith.
With Pierre’s help, Helen wrote several times over the foll
owing few months, she would find the humility that was the prerequisite to Catholic belief, commitment, and marriage.47
Now over thirty, Pierre was anxious to marry. Still, he was an exacting lover, demanding in the attention he craved yet fiercely independent in his own allocation of time. And, to complicate matters, by the late summer of 1951 he had decided to leave the civil service, travel in Europe and other exotic places, and then return to find his future in Montreal. Ottawa, he realized, was not a congenial place for him to accomplish his goals, and he craved the freedom he had earlier possessed. Amid Pierre and Helen’s declarations of profound love that fall, there were frequent arguments. Still, they continued making plans to marry.
Then, in December, Trudeau wrote Helen a brusque letter complaining about her “manner.” Baffled at his anger, she responded: “My love, I love you, I always have and always will to the end of the world. My love, is this itself not enough? Evidently not, because you seem to say that I don’t express my love well enough or often enough.” He apologized and asked her to meet him in Gibraltar in January 1952, enclosing with his letter a collection of Rimbaud’s poems.48
Like Thérèse, Helen had decided that the relationship would not work. On January 26, 1952, she wrote and told him she had decided they should not marry. There were, very simply, too many crises and too much torment in their relationship. It was now necessary to “see things as they are.” Among the problems was religion, which had concerned her “constantly during your absence.” The leap of faith required to become Catholic was proving to be difficult. His absence had not made her love stronger. Indeed, she had met someone shortly after Trudeau left on his trip the previous October, someone he probably knew. In one week with him she had found more “harmony and peace” than she had ever known before.49