by John English
Events were moving fast—too fast, it seemed to some. On January 30 the Canadian Press ran a story, which appeared across Canada, that “professional politicians” were asking, “Has Justice Minister Trudeau, without even declaring candidacy for the Liberal leadership, peaked too soon?” The next day a “Mrs. R.A. King” responded to the story in a letter to the Montreal Star: “Last summer, John Diefenbaker chided Mr. Trudeau for appearing in the House of Commons in casual clothes. As far as I am concerned, if this brilliant Canadian chooses to run for the Liberal leadership and becomes prime minister, he can preside over parliament in a bedsheet!” Such responses infuriated the other candidates, and the Canadian Press reported that there was “naturally some ill-feeling … at Mr. Trudeau’s jet-propelled rise to national prominence.”12
The reports were true. Convention organizer Richard Stanbury, who in his diary had described the Montreal meeting as a “good launching pad” for Trudeau, learned that Mel McInnes, the special assistant to Allan MacEachen, the minister of national health and welfare, was complaining that the party hierarchy favoured Trudeau. Stanbury wrote to MacEachen offering to resign if the minister truly believed he was not impartial. MacEachen accepted the reassurance. However, it did not help that his relative and close friend Bob Stanbury, a Toronto MP, announced at the end of January that he was organizing a committee to “draft” Trudeau. Moreover, Bob Stanbury told the press that a poll in his riding indicated that Trudeau was already the frontrunner, even though not formally a candidate.
Gérard Pelletier, who, unlike most journalists, had not been impressed by Trudeau’s performance at the Quebec Liberal Federation,* now faced constant pressure from Paul Martin, to whom he was parliamentary secretary. First Martin demanded to know if Trudeau was running; then, within days, he was so obsessed with the subject that, four times, he called Pelletier “Pierre.” On January 23 he even sent his son, “Paul Martin Junior, as he calls himself,” to tell Pelletier that his father wanted to be identified with the “leading wing of the [Quebec] party and not with the old guard.” However, members of “the leading wing” refused to sign up with Martin because they were waiting for Trudeau. They would continue to wait.13
Trudeau had one more event he and his supporters did not want to miss: the opportunity to challenge Daniel Johnson at the constitutional conference of February 5–7, 1968, in Ottawa. There, Lester Pearson, barely concealing his preference for a francophone successor, seated Trudeau next to him. He had already ceded the intellectual ground to Trudeau, who, on February 1, had issued a booklet, in Pearson’s name, entitled Federalism for the Future, which outlined the federal government’s stance and Pearson’s own views.14 After its release, Trudeau gave interviews outlining how the federal government would approach both the conference and the demands from Quebec. The booklet rejected special status and the “two nations” policy espoused by Daniel Johnson, the federal Progressive Conservatives, and the NDP because Trudeau believed that special status would lead inevitably to separation. Instead, it emphasized the linguistic rights of francophones throughout Canada, placing them on an equal basis with anglophones in Quebec.
Trudeau had known Daniel Johnson since the 1940s, when they were both conservative young Catholic nationalists in Quebec who strongly opposed conscription and the war policies of the federal Liberals. In the close world of Montreal legal, religious, and academic circles, Johnson and Trudeau had frequently encountered each other, but their relationship soured after Johnson was appointed Maurice Duplessis’s assistant. In that role he became the target of nasty cartoons by Hudon in Le Devoir, where he was depicted as a court jester, and of scurrilous jibes by opponents who labelled him “Danny Boy.” As a Union nationale member of the National Assembly since 1946, however, Johnson was often underestimated, certainly by Lesage. It came as a shock, then, when he stunningly defeated the Quebec Liberals in 1966 and began to consolidate his victory.
Johnson was highly intelligent and a shrewd politician, yet he was not ready for Trudeau at the constitutional conference. He expected Pearson to lead the debate with his customary diplomatic skill, and the other premiers, who shared some of his doubts about the Trudeau program, to accept the recommendations on linguistic equality proposed by the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. Indeed, he had welcomed the initiative in the preceding weeks. What he did not anticipate was the major role Trudeau would play. Before the conference, Trudeau spoke derisively of “the little empire” the Quebec provincial government sought to build. He told Peter Newman, his ever more enthusiastic promoter, that he wanted to “take the fuse out of explosive Quebec nationalism by making sure that Quebec is not a ghetto for French Canadians—that all of Canada is theirs.”
To Johnson’s satisfaction, on the Monday morning in the historic West Block, Pearson opened the conference in expansive, optimistic but dramatic words: “Here the road forks,” he said. “If we choose wrongly, we will leave to our children and our children’s children a country in fragments, and we ourselves will have become the failures of Confederation.” Reassuring speeches followed from the other premiers. Johnson spoke third, after Pearson and Ontario’s John Robarts. He was dour and direct in stating that only the “adamant few” denied that Canada was made up of “two nations.” It was essential that a two-partner Canada be created to ensure the maintenance of the “ten-partner” Canada. Other premiers responded, some comically (W.A.C. Bennett and Joey Smallwood) and others icily (Alberta premier E.C. Manning, who warned of a constitutional “Munich” whereby Quebec would be appeased at the cost of Canadian unity). Outside the West Block, a lonely protester took up this theme on a placard: “Another Munich. Another Appeasement.”
On the Tuesday morning, Johnson lauded the premiers’ general acceptance of linguistic equality but then reiterated his demand for fundamental constitutional change. As he listened, Trudeau was sitting beside the genial and casual Pearson. The intense television lights sharpened all the participants’ features but were particularly favourable to Trudeau’s chiselled face and striking eyes. Johnson, in contrast, appeared uncomfortable under the glare. In his response to the Quebec premier’s speech, Trudeau bluntly expressed his strong opposition to special status and his belief that these proposed changes to the Canadian Constitution would only undermine the position of Quebec’s MPs in Ottawa. He further emphasized the importance of a Canadian Charter of Human Rights to enshrine linguistic rights, a proposal that Manning and Johnson had dismissed the previous day. His tone ever more biting, his voice metallic, Trudeau responded to Johnson’s reference to him as the “député de Mont-Royal” by describing the premier as the “député de Bagot.”
Sensing the tension and worried himself about Trudeau’s tone, Pearson called for a coffee break. During the break, Trudeau curtly nodded at Johnson and muttered that the Quebec premier was seeking to destroy the federal government. Johnson sneered that Trudeau was acting like a candidate, not a federal minister.
Reporters rushed from the room to file their stories. The federal government has finally found its own voice, they stated, as they ignored the complicated substance of federal-provincial relations and focused on Trudeau’s articulate attack on Johnson. English Canadians who had been troubled by the weak federal response to Johnson’s demands for equality or independence were impressed, perhaps because they were weary of the protracted debate about the Constitution and probably because Trudeau had confronted Johnson so effectively. French-speaking Canadians had been given a rare opportunity to hear an important national debate in Ottawa in French. More could have been achieved, but the conference did have two notable results: the acceptance of linguistic equality for both official languages in the government of Canada, and the creation of a formal structure for review of the Constitution through regular conferences. They were no small accomplishment.15
“At the beginning of February,” Jean Marchand later recalled, “Pierre Trudeau was really created.” After the hesitancy that had seemed to mark the response of th
e Pearson government to Quebec’s demands for greater legislative powers, Trudeau came to represent clarity, novelty, and strength. While Claude Ryan and many Quebec editorialists lamented both the tone and the substance of Trudeau’s remarks, English-Canadian editorialists welcomed his approach. Quebec sociologist Stéphane Kelly later described how Trudeau’s “virile performance” at the conference made him a Hamiltonian candidate, “a strong and authoritative leader, capable of establishing order after ten years of political instability.”16
After the conference ended, Trudeau joined his assistant Eddie Rubin and other members of his prospective campaign team. They were probably worried about the intensity of the exchange and its impact, but youthful organizer Jim Davey, who had been assessing Trudeau’s support across Canada, reported that the effect was electric. He concluded: “Trudeau should be presented as he really was, as himself, both for his own personality and his own ideas about Canada, its problems and its great opportunities.” Once the analysis was done, Trudeau walked down Parliament Hill to the Château Laurier, where he stayed when he was in Ottawa, and swam in the elegant art deco pool in the basement of the grand hotel. As he methodically did his laps, he realized the prize might be his. But it was not certain.
Trudeau’s opponents were already in the field, and delegates were making commitments. Paul Martin began his phone calls before breakfast and continued late into the night, in complete disregard of Canada’s varied time zones. Pelletier and Marchand thought that the bilingual Martin would take at least half the Quebec delegates if Trudeau did not run. Mitchell Sharp, Canada’s finance minister, was constantly in the news, and his elegance and authority had considerable influence in both the Canadian public service and corporate boardrooms. Paul Hellyer, the defence minister, was already at forty-four a multi-millionaire and a seasoned political veteran. Through his historic if controversial unification of the defence forces during the Pearson government, he had stood up to the generals and never retreated. John Turner, at thirty-eight, was even younger and already a junior minister. He had grown up in British Columbia, won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, danced with an enchanted Princess Margaret, learned French and practised law in Montreal, and had invited Trudeau to his wedding to Geills Kilgour, the daughter of a leading Winnipeg businessman. This impressive and handsome young politician, Peter Newman wrote, “jogged into the race … with a list of professional and personal attributes that made him sound like a story-book prime minister, or at least a story-book prince.”
Other candidates included the brilliant albeit idiosyncratic Eric Kierans, who had been a minister in the Lesage government; Joe Greene, a lawyer from eastern Ontario, who consciously appealed to the boys and girls from back concessions; and the Nova Scotian Allan MacEachen, the craftiest parliamentarian of his times. It was already a remarkable field when Gérard Pelletier and Pierre Trudeau drove together to Ottawa on Sunday evening, February 11, 1968, and tried to sort out Trudeau’s confused thoughts.17
Trudeau told Pelletier that he was close to a decision, but uncertainty persisted. Marchand was working hard in Quebec, but Claude Ryan, the editor of Le Devoir, was preparing to endorse Sharp; Maurice Sauvé was leaning towards Martin; and Maurice Lamontagne had become a bitter opponent of Trudeau. After the constitutional conference, André Laurendeau criticized Trudeau and expressed his support for Johnson, while René Lévesque, now organizing a separatist party, dismissed Trudeau as the new Nigger King (roi-nègre) of Quebec. Jean Lesage also made known his displeasure with Trudeau. Two impressive young francophone ministers, Jean-Luc Pepin and Jean Chrétien, had committed to Sharp, as had the powerful C.M. “Bud” Drury, whom Trudeau much admired. Although Quebec Liberal Party president Claude Frenette, who had won a decisive victory over a Hellyer candidate in January, was an enthusiastic Trudeau supporter, he and Marchand needed a decision from Trudeau soon. But Trudeau refused to decide. He told Pelletier that Sunday evening that he had two major considerations, which Pelletier summarized in his diary:
Has he the right to run for the highest position in the party after only two years in Parliament and barely ten months in the Cabinet? Why is it that no one thought of him in November, and two months later his name is all over the press? Why is there all this agitation in the party, by all those who want to see him leader?
Always wary of the press, Trudeau found it “ironic and disquieting to be hoisted onto the shoulders of the media.” His second consideration followed from the first:
Even if he was convinced of the legitimacy of becoming a candidate, he would still take into account a “visceral resistance,” a diffuse anxiety, “something” in him that counselled himself against the undertaking.
Pelletier responded to Trudeau at length on the first point as they continued their drive to Ottawa. Trudeau should not worry about his hesitations, he advised. If he did not hesitate, he would be presumptuous, but presumptuous he had never been. He would have to trust the judgment of others about his capacity to govern and the risks it involved. In Pelletier’s view, the media attention, which was already dubbed “Trudeaumanie” in French and “Trudeaumania” in English, was in some ways a “spinoff” of the Kennedy legend that had so profoundly affected North American politics—and would again, in March 1968, as Bobby Kennedy began his historic and tragic quest for the American presidency. Trudeau should not worry, Pelletier insisted. “If that myth settled on the shoulders of an incompetent, a candidate without vigour, he would be crushed. But it happened that Trudeau had a certain stature. He would never be crushed by the myth. On the contrary, he had what was needed to sustain the myth and make it reality. Chance, but not only chance, had chosen Trudeau.”
Pelletier then turned to the second objection and asked Trudeau, “Do you sleep well?” Yes, he replied, “very well,” but it was in the mornings that he began to worry about feeling unhappy as prime minister. He would lose the joie de vivre and “never accomplish anything worthwhile.” Pelletier again rejected Trudeau’s fears and said that this resistance would disappear once he made a decision. He had seen what had happened since the three friends came to Ottawa. Unlike Marchand and himself, Trudeau took to Parliament and government “like a duck to water—every minute of it, or almost.” Then Pelletier made the crucial point that the press did not know: Pierre, he said, “your whole life has been a preparation for politics.” The car became silent. When they arrived and Pelletier shut off the engine, Trudeau remained seated. Finally he spoke: “I think you’ve convinced me,” he said quietly. “I’ll see, tomorrow morning.”18
Finally, the die seemed cast when Pelletier, Marchand, and Trudeau met for lunch on February 13 in Marchand’s office. Yet Trudeau still refused to make a commitment and demanded reassurance. They met again in the evening, but “the conversation slipped into the same old ruts.” Earlier, on the weekend of February 9, Trudeau had gone to the Ontario Liberal convention, where his brief appearance resembled that of a rock star as young women squealed and grabbed at him while reporters thrust microphones into his face. He told an insistent crowd that he would decide within ten days. Bob Stanbury, Donald Macdonald, and many others who organized the Toronto meeting were becoming increasingly impatient as their political futures became hostage to Trudeau’s delays. The same was true of Marchand and Pelletier after they met Trudeau for dinner on that Tuesday night. The conversation convinced Marchand and Pelletier that Trudeau probably would not run. They then went to a meeting of the Trudeau “team” without Trudeau and, in Pelletier’s words, felt as though they were living “in a bad dream” as Trudeau’s many Ottawa supporters plotted a Trudeau campaign that would likely die before birth. Trudeau apparently did not tell Marchand and Pelletier that he had met with Pearson earlier, before the dinner with them, and that the prime minister, whose common sense he had come to admire, had encouraged him to run. Later, he shared his thoughts with Marc Lalonde and Michael Pitfield before he walked slowly back to the Château Laurier and decided his fate that cold winter night.19
The
next morning, Valentine’s Day, Trudeau surprised Marchand and Pelletier in the Parliamentary Restaurant by telling them he would run. Marchand immediately announced that he would step down as Quebec leader at the Wednesday morning caucus and that Jean-Pierre Goyer, a fervent Trudeau supporter, would help him organize the Quebec caucus for Trudeau. Trudeau was not yet ready to go public with his decision, and he wanted proof of support. Goyer, accordingly, promised a crowd of over fifty Quebec MPs and senators for a noontime gathering on Thursday, February 15, but only about twenty showed up. It was disappointing, and also an indication that Trudeaumania might have swept the media but had run into some resistance on Parliament Hill. Trudeau fretted; Marchand fumed. Pelletier and others worked the phones and determined that caucus support in Quebec was strong. At 6:30 that evening the Trudeau team of Marchand and MPs Edgar Benson, Jean-Pierre Goyer, and Russell Honey met with assistants Eddie Rubin, Pierre Levasseur, Jim Davey, and Gordon Gibson. They carefully counted the potential support and concluded that Trudeau already had 675–700 votes on the first ballot. That number was not enough to win, which required about 1,200 votes, but it was enough to convince Trudeau that he should announce his candidacy the following day.20
On February 16, 1968, Trudeau walked across the street from his West Block office to the National Press Club and declared himself a leadership candidate. It was a remarkable announcement, unlike that of any leadership hopeful before. He drew the press into the conspiracy that he and his friends had created, and it captured them—for a while: