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by John English


  33. Harold Laski, The State in Theory and Practice (1935; New York: Viking, 1947), 3.

  34. Max Beloff, “The Age of Laski,” The Fortnightly, June 1950, 378.

  35. Harold Laski, Authority in the Modern State (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1919), 74–75; and Bernard Zylstra, From Pluralism to Collectivism: The Development of Harold Laski’s Political Thought (Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1968), 75.

  36. Trudeau had met often with CCF intellectual and McGill law professor F.R. Scott. He was more interested in Scott’s strong civil libertarian stance in wartime than in his CCF activity. He certainly voted CCF in the 1949 federal election when he was the agent for the CCF candidate in Jacques Cartier riding in Montreal. TP, vol. 2, file 6. Trudeau also met with Scott and Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) researcher Eugene Forsey in May 1949. TP, vol. 11, file 18. He applied for a job with the CLC in April 1949. One of his law professors at the Université de Montréal, Jacques Perrault, a prominent CCF activist as well as the brother-in-law of André Laurendeau, wrote a letter of introduction for Trudeau on April 28, 1949, to the CLC. He said that Trudeau had stood first in his class at law school and recommended him as “an ideal research man in general for your movement in Canada and more particularly for the province of Quebec.” Perrault to A. Andras, assistant research director, CLC, April 28, 1949, ibid., file 23. It is tempting to contemplate Trudeau’s fate had he worked for the CLC in the early 1950s. He would have been more definitely linked with the CCF and, almost certainly, would have been a CCF candidate—probably a losing one in a Montreal constituency. Most likely, he would never have become a Liberal Party leader.

  37. Claude Ryan to Trudeau, Sept. 25, 1947, TP, vol. 8, file 30. Other clippings in the same file indicate other activities.

  38. Trudeau attended the LSE Canadian Association, which had its first meeting on February 19, 1948. Among the attendees were Robert McKenzie, later an eminent British political scientist; John Halstead, a future Canadian diplomat and writer; and John Porter, Canada’s most celebrated sociologist when Trudeau entered politics in the 1960s. Ibid.

  39. Trudeau Agenda, 1948. March 20, 1948, TP, vol. 22, file 20.

  40. Trudeau to “M. Caron,” nd, ibid., file 23.

  41. Interview with Jacques Hébert, Feb. 2006.

  42. Laski wrote: “The bearer of this letter, M. Pierre Trudeau, is well known to me. He has been a member of my seminar in this School, and has won both my regard and respect for his vigour and tenacity of mind, and for his power to arrive independently at his conclusions. I recommend him with warmth and respect.” Trudeau later responded by naming Laski as one of the five greatest intellectual influences upon his life. He named no other teacher and, in this respect, Laski was a mentor as no professor at Paris, Harvard, or Montréal had been. TP, vol.11, file 23.

  43. Léger letter, June 15, 1948; and Beaulieu letter, June 23, 1948, ibid. They said Trudeau was a journalist for Notre Temps and Le Petit Journal.

  44. Suzette to Trudeau, March 10, 1946, TP, vol. 3, file 40; and Trudeau to Charles Trudeau, Oct. 20, 1948, TP, vol. 53, file 36.

  45. Trudeau, Memoirs, 48.

  46. Agenda 1948, Aug. 28, 1948, TP, vol. 11, file 20.

  47. Trudeau, Memoirs, 49–51.

  48. Ibid., 53–54. The journals of the trip are in TP, vol. 11, file 21.

  49. Trudeau to family, Oct. 23, 1948, ibid., file 22.

  50. Trudeau to family, Dec. 2, 1948, ibid.

  51. The record is confused. Although Trudeau was enrolled in a doctoral program at LSE and had asked Laski to supervise his thesis, he now regularly said that the thesis was for Harvard. Having completed his general examinations at Harvard, he was eligible to proceed on to the thesis stage. However, there is no record at Harvard or in Trudeau’s records that he had found the required supervisor or had undertaken the necessary registration of the thesis. Harvard was very loose in thesis supervision. As a student there in the 1960s, I learned of one Canadian academic who had been working on his thesis for twenty years. In any event, Trudeau’s thesis was really a pretext for travel, and his journals of the trip are more appropriate for journalism than for thesis research.

  52. Trudeau to family, Dec. 2, 1948, TP, vol. 11, file 22.

  53. Trudeau to Suzette, Dec. 27, 1948, ibid.

  54. Trudeau to Grace Trudeau, Jan. 18, 1949, ibid.

  55. Trudeau to Grace Trudeau, Jan. 28, 1949, ibid.

  56. Ibid.

  57. Trudeau to Grace Trudeau, Feb. 11, 1949, ibid. Also, Agenda 1949, Feb. 11–12, 1949, ibid., file 18.

  58. Trudeau to Grace Trudeau, March 10, 1949, ibid.

  59. Trudeau to family, March 20, 1949, ibid.

  60. Ibid.; Trudeau, Memoirs, 60. Norman had been contacted about Trudeau earlier and was the ranking Canadian official in Japan.

  61. Trudeau, Memoirs, 61.

  62. George Radwanski, Trudeau (Toronto: Macmillan, 1978), 69–70.

  63. Ibid., 69–72.

  64. Pelletier is quoted in Edith Iglauer, “Prime Minister/Premier Ministre,” New Yorker, July 5, 1969, 44.

  65. “Réflexions sur une démocratie et sa variante,” Notre Temps, Feb. 14, 1948.

  66. Trudeau to Lise and François Lessard, Oct. 19, 1948, Lessard Papers.

  67. Trudeau, “Des avocats et des autres dans leurs rapports avec la justice,” in TP, vol. 22, file 31.

  68. See the Canadian John Humphrey’s Human Rights and the United Nations: A Great Adventure (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Transnational, 1984), in which Humphrey, an author of the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights, points to the centrality of the 1940s in defining human rights.

  69. Trudeau to John Reshetar, as quoted in Clarkson and McCall, Trudeau and Our Times, 2: 46.

  70. Notre Temps, Feb. 14, 1948.

  71. Letter to the editor, Le Devoir, July 6, 1949.

  72. Agenda 1949, May 19, 1949, TP, vol. 11, file 18.

  73. Paul-Émile Borduas, “1948 Refus Global,” in Ramsay Cook, ed., French-Canadian Nationalism (Toronto: Macmillan, 1969), 276–84. Also, François-Marc Gagnon, Paul-Émile Borduas: Biographie critique et analyse de 1’oeuvre (Montreal: Les Éditions Fides, 1978), ch. 13.

  74. Le Devoir, Sept. 28, 1948.

  75. Pierre Vadeboncoeur, “Jean Marchand, autrefois,” www.scn.qc.ca/Connaitre/Histoire/Vad/Vad2.html.

  76. Douglas Stuebing, John Marshall, Gary Oakes Trudeau, 1’homme de demain! trans. Hélène Gagnon (Montreal: HMH, 1969), 44. Interview with Jacques Hébert, Feb. 2006.

  77. Marchand is quoted in Radwanski, Trudeau, 74.

  78. Monique Leyrac and 1949 film in http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=U1ARTU0002065.

  79. Pelletier, Years of Impatience, 14–15, 76.

  80. Trudeau, “Quebec at the Time of the Strike,” in Pierre Trudeau, ed., The Asbestos Strike, trans. James Boake (1956; Toronto: James Lewis & Samuel, 1974), 66–67.

  81. Pelletier, Years of Impatience, 86ff. On asbestos and its significance as a product in Quebec, see William Coleman, The Independence Movement in Quebec, 1945–1990 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 113–15.

  82. Black, Duplessis, 528.

  83. Trudeau, ed., The Asbestos Strike, 329.

  CHAPTER FIVE: HEARTH, HOME, AND NATION

  1. Gérard Pelletier, Years of Impatience, 1950–1960, trans. Alan Brown (1983; Toronto: Methuen, 1984), 85–86.

  2. See Paul-Emile Roy, Pierre Vadeboncoeur: Un homme attentif (Montreal: Éditions du Méridien, 1995).

  3. Quoted in Robert Rumilly, Henri Bourassa: La vie publique d’un grand canadien (Montreal: Les Éditions Chantecler, 1953), 777.

  4. Le Devoir, April 13, 1949.

  5. The notes for “Où va le monde” are found in Trudeau Papers (TP), MG 26 02, vol. 12, file 1, Library and Archives Canada (LAC).

  6. Pierre Vadeboncoeur, letter to the editor, Le Devoir, July 14, 1949.

  7. “Entrevue entre M. Trudeau et M. [Jean] Lépine, 27 avril 1992 [Lépine interview],” Trudeau Papers (TP), MG
26 03, vol. 23, file 2, Library and Archives Canada.

  8. Interestingly, in his history of the London School of Economics, the German sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf suggested that the school’s influence had been great on the democratic and liberal left in the postwar era. Some would describe the influence as Fabianism, others as socialism, and a few as the welfare state, but what the diverse voices expressed was, in Dahrendorf’s words, “the combination of Westminster-style democratic institutions with a benevolent interventionist government guided by a view of the good or just society.” For much of the West and even the developing world, what it meant was “a little Laski, so to speak, a little Beveridge, some Tawney and a lot of Pierre Trudeau, the long-serving Canadian Prime Minister with an LSE past.” Ralf Dahrendorf, LSE: A History of the London School of Economics and Political Science, 1895–1995 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 405.

  9. Marcel Rioux, Un peuple dans le siècle (Montreal: Les Éditions du Boréal, 1990), 50.

  10. François Hertel, Méditations philosophiques (Paris: Éditions de la Diaspora, 1963), 26. The continuing affection for Hertel is found in Roger Rolland’s tribute to him in Le Petit Journal in 1948. Hertel possessed, Rolland claims, an extraordinary verve. The article, “François Hertel,” is found in TP, vol. 38, file 61. Trudeau had learned from his mother about Hertel’s discontents and his desire to return to Paris. Grace Trudeau to Pierre Trudeau, Oct. 31, 1948, TP, vol. 46, file 15. Hertel’s own description is found in “Lettre à mes amis (15 août 1950, Paris, France),” Cité libre, Feb. 1951, 34–35.

  11. Grace Trudeau to Pierre Trudeau, Feb. 20, 1948, TP, vol. 46, file 16.

  12. E.-Martin Meunier and Jean-Philippe Warren, Sortir de la “Grande noirceur”: L’horizon “personnaliste” de la Révolution tranquille (Sillery, Que: Les Éditions du Septentrion, 2002), 115; see also footnotes 27 and 28, which describe the appeal of Paris intellectual life to Gérard Pelletier and Jean-Charles Falardeau.

  13. Grace Trudeau to Pierre Trudeau, Jan. 8, Jan. 13, Jan. 11, Jan. 17, Jan. 26, Feb.?, and Feb. 20, 1947, TP, vol. 46, file 15.

  14. Ibid., Feb. 27, 1947.

  15. Ibid., July 16, 1947.

  16. Ibid., Oct. 31 and Nov. 20, 1947.

  17. Ibid, Feb. 1 and Feb. 20, 1947.

  18. Ibid., file 20, Feb. 24 and March 28, 1952.

  19. Ibid., June 4, 1948, and Feb. 4, 1949. The estimated conversion of $700 in 2005 dollars is $5,600.00. See www.eh.net/hmit/ppowerusd/dollar_answer.php.

  20. Ibid., Nov. 6, 1948.

  21. Ibid., July 2, 1948.

  22. Ibid., file 17, Feb. 4, 1949.

  23. Ibid., file 18, Oct. 18, 1950.

  24. Kristin Bennett in Nancy Southam, ed., Pierre (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2005), 253.

  25. Grace Trudeau to Pierre Trudeau, Nov. 28, 1951, TP, vol. 46, file 18.

  26. Interviews with Thérèse Gouin Décarie, June 2006; and Madeleine Gobeil, May 2006.

  27. Margaret Trudeau, Consequences (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1982), 77–78; and Henry Kissinger in Gerald Ford Papers, Gerald Ford Library, Memorandum, Dec. 4, 1974, MR 02–75.

  28. Grace to Pierre Trudeau, May 11, 1948, TP, vol. 46, file 17.

  29. On Hébert and MacEachen, see Allan MacEachen, “Reflections on Faith and Politics,” in John English, Richard Gwyn, and P. Whitney Lackenbauer, eds., The Hidden Pierre Elliott Trudeau: The Faith behind the Politics (Ottawa: Novalis, 2004), 153–60. On Kidder, see her remarks in Southam, ed., Pierre, 256. On Cattrall, see Line Abrahamian, “Taking Choices, Making Choices,” Reader’s Digest, April 2005, 70–71. Also, conversations with Marc Lalonde, Margot Kidder, Allan MacEachen, and Margot Breton.

  30. Pierre Trudeau, Memoirs (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993), 64. On the salary, see R. Gosselin to Trudeau, Aug. 31, 1949, TP, vol. 9, file 7.

  31. Pierre Trudeau, Federalism and the French Canadians (Toronto: Macmillan, 1968), 5. On the Department of External Affairs and the Royal Commission, see Gilles Lalande, The Department of External Affairs and Biculturalism, Studies of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, Number 3 (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1970), 42–46; and J.L. Granatstein, The Ottawa Men: The Civil Service Mandarins, 1935–1957 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1982), 6. For an excellent description of the character of Ottawa at the time, see Stephen Clarkson and Christina McCall, Trudeau and Our Times, vol. 2: The Heroic Delusion (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1994), 59ff.

  32. See, for example, TP, vol. 9, file 13. Gordon Robertson’s later comments on Trudeau may be found in his autobiography, Memoirs of a Very Civil Servant: Mackenzie King to Pierre Trudeau (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 88–89.

  33. Trudeau to Gordon Robertson, Oct. 28, 1950, TP, vol. 9, file 23.

  34. Robertson to Trudeau, Jan. 6, 1951, TP, vol. 10, file 4. The other documents referred to are found in this file, as is the reference to Diefenbaker. On January 24, 1951, the Cabinet considered the question of internal security controls which Trudeau had been studying. RG 2, PCO, Series A-5-a, vol. 2647, LAC.

  35. Registration quotation is in a Memorandum to R.G. Robertson, March 17, 1951, with attachment to “Mr. Eberts.” The comment is in the attachment, not in the memorandum, which would have received wider circulation. TP, vol. 10, file 27.

  36. Vadeboncoeur’s comments are in Le Devoir, Oct. 20, 1965; and Hertel’s comments are in La Presse, Sept. 17, 1966.

  37. Trudeau’s comments are in TP, vol. 9, file 10. On the complexities of the fiscal and social security questions, see R.M. Burns, The Acceptable Mean: The Tax Rental Agreements, 1941–1962 (Toronto: Canadian Tax Foundation, 1980), ch. 5.

  38. Draft of “Theory and Practice of Federal-Provincial Cooperation,” nd, TP, vol. 10, file 5.

  39. Memorandum to R.G. Robertson, March 13, 1951, ibid., file 3.

  40. Draft of letter to Léger of Aug. 31, 1950, ibid., file 11.

  41. Grace Trudeau to Pierre Trudeau, Feb. 28, 1947, TP, vol. 46, file 17.

  42. Marginalia on Pearson’s speeches of Dec. 5, 1950, and April 10, 1951, TP, vol. 10, file 11.

  43. Trudeau to LePan, April 28, 1951, ibid.

  44. Trudeau to Robertson, June 6, 1951, ibid., file 1.

  45. Interviews with Trudeau staff. Meeting organized by Library and Archives Canada.

  46. He saved the clipping in TP, vol. 38, file 70.

  47. Segerstrale to Trudeau, Nov. 6, 1951, TP, vol. 53, file 1; Trudeau to Segerstrale, nd [Jan.? 1952], ibid.

  48. The notes to the East Block have no dates. Letter about her mother is November 10, 1951, and letter responding to Trudeau complaints is December 21, 1951. Letter about Gibraltar is January 2, 1952. Ibid.

  49. Helen Segerstale to Trudeau, Jan. 26, 1952, ibid.

  50. Trudeau to Segerstrale, March 17 [?], 1952, ibid.

  51. Trudeau to Norman Robertson, Sept. 24, 1951, TP, vol. 10, file 1.

  52. Trudeau to Norman Robertson, Sept. 28, 1951, TP, vol. 9, file 2. Trudeau’s immediate supervisor, Gordon Robertson, treats Trudeau’s departure briefly and has not responded to the account of the final conversation between the two presented in Trudeau’s memoirs. See Robertson, A Very Civil Servant, 88–89.

  53. Quoted in Michael Behiels, Prelude to Quebec’s Quiet Revolution: Liberalism versus Neo-Nationalism, 1945–1960 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1985), 62.

  54. Pelletier, Years of Impatience, 114.

  55. Ibid., 112–13.

  56. Accounts are found in TP, vol. 20, file 2.

  57. TP, vol. 21, file 2.

  58. “Faites vos jeux,” Cité libre, June 1950, 27–28.

  59. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Against the Current: Selected Writings, 1939–1966, ed. Gérard Pelletier, trans. G. Tombs (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1996), 27–28. Original, “Politique fonctionnelle,” Cité libre, June 1950, 20–24.

  60. Draft of letter to Jean Marchand, nd [1951], TP, vol. 15, file 8.

  61. Quoted in Pierre Godin, Daniel Johnson, 1946–1964: La passion d
u pouvoir (Montreal: Les Éditions de 1’Homme, 1980), 77.

  62. Paul-André Linteau, René Durocher, Jean-Claude Robert, and François Ricard, Quebec since 1930 trans. Robert Chodos and Ellen Garmaise (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1991), 254–57.

  CHAPTER SIX: NATIONALISM AND SOCIALISM

  1. “Entrevue entre M. Trudeau et M. [Jean] Lépine, 27 avril 1992” [Lépine interview], Trudeau Papers (TP), MG 26 03, vol. 23, file 2, Library and Archives Canada.

  2. Michael Behiels, Prelude to Quebec’s Quiet Revolution: Liberalism versus Neo-Nationalism, 1945–1960 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1985), 70.

  3. Ibid., 60. On Korea, only 21 percent of Quebecers (both French and English) approved of the proposal to send forces to Korea (41% in the rest of Canada) on August 3, 1950. On July 23, 1952, only 32 percent thought it was not a mistake to send troops to Korea (59% in the rest of Canada). See Mildred Schwartz, Public Opinion and Canadian Identity (Scarborough, Ont.: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1967), 80.

  4. Arès to Trudeau, March 2, 1951, TP, vol. 21, file 9.

  5. D’Anjou to Trudeau, Feb. 21, 1951, ibid.

  6. Ibid., March 2, 1951.

  7. Gérard Pelletier, Years of Impatience, 1950–1960, trans. Alan Brown (1983; Toronto: Methuen, 1984), 119.

  8. On Johnson, see Pierre Godin, Daniel Johnson, 1946–1964: La passion du pouvoir (Montreal: Les Éditions de 1’Homme, 1980); Pelletier is quoted in Michel Vastel, Trudeau: Le Québécois (Montreal: Les Éditions de 1’Homme, 2000), 105; Pelletier quotes the critical friend in his Years of Impatience, 87; Thérèse Casgrain, A Woman in a Man’s World (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1972), 139; comments of Jean Marchand from an interview in Stephen Clarkson and Christina McCall, Trudeau and Our Times, vol. 1: The Magnificent Obsession (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1990), 70; and Duplessis in Conrad Black, Duplessis (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1977), 559. Vastel is especially good on the 1950s and spends considerable time dealing with the image and the reality of Trudeau in that decade.

  9. Fournier in Stephen Clarkson and Christina McCall, Trudeau and Our Times, vol. 2; The Heroic Delusion (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1994), 65.

 

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