Just Watch Me

by John English

  * Of the 250 hours, about 90 were spent on government business, 50 on political activities, 12.5 on contact with the news media, 30 with PMO and PCO staff, and 67.5 on “paperwork, correspondence, and telephone calls.” George Radwanski, Trudeau (Toronto: Macmillan, 1978), 20–21.

  * Trudeau’s correspondence has abundant examples of sensitivity and thought-fulness, but he expressed such emotions with a reserve that surely reflected his mother’s example. For example, Robert Ford, Canada’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, profoundly disagreed with much of Trudeau’s policy, but they remained warm friends. After his retirement Ford’s wife, Thereza, wrote to Trudeau, thanking him for his understanding about Ford’s physical disabilities, which limited his mobility. He had written to her, asking if he could help when they retired. She replied: “Like to go on record that the Government owes us absolutely nothing and assure you of what an enriching, passionate work it was to try to follow on your footsteps through all those years…. I must touch on another subject very close to my heart and that is the utter elegance, the understanding, the minimization of Robert’s disability. Never once did I feel patronized but at the greatest of ease with you on what at times must have been very difficult circumstances. For that I shall always be intensely and eternally grateful. Yours, most fondly, Thereza.” Ford to Trudeau, nd, TP, MG 26 020, vol. 4, file 26, LAC.

  Interviews with Trudeau’s secretarial staff are filled with instances of personal kindnesses, although there is no doubt that such examples are much rarer in the case of his political colleagues. And there is a significant gender gap. Trudeau found it difficult to be close and warm with men. While Patrick Gossage’s diary regularly notes Trudeau’s distance from himself and other male colleagues, Trudeau aide Joyce Fairbairn, who briefed Trudeau for Question Period, was highly personal in her communications, as for example on his birthday: “Happy birthday Laddie. Here are some homemade chocolate-nut cookies for you and the boys. If you return the tin I will refill it.” She knew his sweet tooth for chocolate well. Fairbairn to Trudeau, Oct. 18, 1978, TP, MG 26 020, vol. 4, file 10, LAC. Trudeau also treated old school chums, several of whom worked in the government, with particular friendliness, often asking senior officials if they could have an appointment when the old friend requested one.

  * Thomas Enders, the U.S. ambassador, held this view—as did others. Patrick Gossage wrote in his diary on January 25, 1978: “Joyce Fairbairn, the PM’s loyal legislative assistant, and Ivan Head, his foreign policy adviser, have the insider track in this PMO; the one has genuine warmth, the other has cool analysis. A general in the PCO tells Dick [O’Hagan] that this isn’t the White House. Ivan sometimes acts as if it were.” Head’s role set a precedent for later prime ministers who sought to have independent advice on foreign policy—in the way that American presidents have national security advisers who almost inevitably quarrel with the secretary of state. Patrick Gossage, Close to the Charisma: My Years between the Press and Pierre Elliott Trudeau (Halifax: Goodread Biographies, 1987; original, 1986), 109.

  * Interestingly, Trudeau’s support among those with only elementary education rose from 44 percent in 1968 to 47 percent in 1979, while the Conservatives remained roughly even (30 percent to 29 percent) and the New Democrats also rose slightly (15 percent to 18 percent). The additional Liberal support came mainly from Quebec, where the Créditistes had disappeared. “The Gallup Report,” June 16, 1979, Keith Davey Fonds, box 11, file 12, Victoria University Archives.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE FALL OF

  PIERRE TRUDEAU

  For Pierre Trudeau, the world was not unfolding as it should. When, on election night, he spoke of a beautiful world despite all its cynicism and grief, he again drew upon “Desiderata,” the poem often found hanging in college dorms and hippie hangouts in the sixties—a reminder of halcyon times when it seemed that a new political age had dawned. That vision of change crumbled on May 22, 1979, as English Canadians decisively tore up the remnants of Trudeaumania. The next morning, melancholy mingled with sadness when newspapers throughout the world featured a photograph of Margaret Trudeau dancing wildly in the early morning at New York’s fashionably notorious Studio 54. The newspaper coverage that followed was not kind. According to the Los Angeles Times, which published a large photograph and a detailed story of the event, Margaret thought Pierre’s defeat was “a shame because [she] loves Canada.” The conservative Chicago Tribune, which also featured the photograph, mocked her claim that Pierre would be good in opposition because he would fight “boringness.” She told reporters amid the din of the disco that the defeat had upset her greatly and that she planned to fly home soon to be with Pierre. “I’ve never left him,” she declared. “He’s the most wonderful man I know. We’re always together even though we’re apart.”

  The marriage had been irremediably broken for some time, but the erstwhile fairy-tale couple came together again as they prepared to move their possessions out of 24 Sussex Drive. Apart from his mother’s home, it had been the only house in which Trudeau had lived as an adult. The eleven years he had spent there changed his way of life dramatically—initially, because of the large retinue that served him and, later, through the presence of a wife and three children. When Pierre and Margaret legally separated in 1977, he gained custody of the children, but Margaret remained very much a part of their lives and had visiting rights for her sons, which she exercised fully. She spent five days every two weeks with them when she was in Ottawa, and sometimes Pierre joined the group. On one visit in 1978, for instance, they took the boys on a day’s canoeing trip. According to Margaret, “we packed a picnic of their favorite food [and] joked all day long.” But then it was time to depart. “Mommy, don’t go,” Michel, the youngest, pleaded when Margaret told him she had to leave to finish her latest film. Justin, the oldest, explained: “She has to go. She’s working.” Sacha, the bluntest, rejected this justification: “Why doesn’t she work at being a mother then?”1 But as we shall see, she did, very hard.

  Anger drove Pierre and Margaret apart, but as Margaret said on election night, her love—let’s use her word—for him endured. Pierre’s feelings for her seem to have been an unusual blend of frustration, occasional bitterness, a sense of failure, and lingering affection. The children were a continuing bond, and, to their mutual credit, as parents they avoided the bitter encounters that frequently mark separated couples in their interactions with their children. There were problems, of course, particularly in the first months, when Margaret lived in borrowed New York apartments, travelled constantly seeking work, dated celebrities, wrote Beyond Reason, and became an actor in the film Kings and Desperate Men. Always parsimonious, Pierre was foolish in that he refused to give her any financial support, which would have made his own situation, and hers, much easier. To be sure, Margaret initially craved the excitement of Park Avenue accommodation and the fever of New York discos, but her strong sense of motherhood compelled her to return to Ottawa often to be with her children. Lacking funds, however, she had no Ottawa home. As she later wrote, Pierre was “loath to aid me to live a life apart from him and our sons.” Answering Sacha’s plea, she replied, “Mummy has to work.” And that was true.

  Sometimes on her visits, “Mummy” stayed at 24 Sussex; at other times she stayed with friends. The situation troubled Pierre, whose own youth had been marked by regularity and discipline, and he felt uneasy about Margaret’s extended visits with her Ottawa friends, many of whom he also knew. Opening the hard shell that normally encased his emotions when dealing with colleagues, he even asked Hugh Faulkner, the minister of Indian affairs and northern development, whose wife, Jane, was perhaps Margaret’s closest friend, whether he minded that Margaret was staying with them. Faulkner was unsure what Trudeau meant by the question, and the conversation soon loped into generalities. The situation remained messy until Trudeau finally lent sufficient money to Margaret for a down payment for a home. After she settled in a house not far from 24 Sussex, the boys’ life gained
a welcome pattern, and Trudeau campaigned in 1979 knowing that their mother would be there for his children. He came to realize he could count on her love for them, and that was an exceptional blessing. In Jane Faulkner’s retrospective view, Margaret was a wonderful mother, whose children became her world.2

  For her part, Margaret admired Trudeau’s own devotion to their boys, who increasingly became the centre of his world now that he was a single father. As we have seen, the breakdown of the marriage occurred during a period of intense political turmoil in Canada, one where Trudeau needed to make critical decisions. His extraordinary ability to compartmentalize, born of the intense self-discipline developed in his youth, served him well as he coped with the emotional demands of single fatherhood in his late fifties. When Trudeau’s aides later responded to a question about how Trudeau coped with his personal problems, the term most often used was “discipline,” a quality he never lost whatever the external events.3 While the responsibilities were enormous because of his role as prime minister, he was fortunate in having a strong support system around him. He was able to count on highly skilled and compassionate help to care for the children and, not incidentally, to keep his tight schedule working. When he was at 24 Sussex, the routine was clear. Trudeau would wake up at 8, have breakfast, and kiss each child before he got into the limousine that sped him to Parliament Hill. On her first day in 1978, household coordinator Heidi Bennet discovered quickly how much precision mattered to Trudeau. Shortly after he greeted his nervous new employee, Trudeau asked, “Where’s Michel?” The little one was missing when Justin and Sacha lined up for the morning hug as Trudeau departed for the office. Annoyed, he told Bennet curtly that he expected to see all three boys before he left each morning. They both began to search for him, without success. Then, just as Trudeau reluctantly got into the car to leave, Michel toddled out the front door calling, “Dad, Dad, Dad.” A beaming Trudeau leapt out of the back seat of the limousine, grabbed his son, and carried him back into the house. Bennet concluded that despite his initial bark, “a man who so obviously loved his children couldn’t be all that bad.”4

  Other staff came to the same conclusion, even if Trudeau was a demanding “boss”—a term well known in the home, where young Justin referred to his father as “the boss of Canada.” Leslie Kimberley-Kemper and Vicki Kimberley-Naish were responsible for the evening drill at 24 Sussex, which began with dinner for the boys at 5 p.m. and Trudeau’s return just after 6, as they were finishing the meal. The boys would rush to embrace him as he greeted them heartily with “Salut, les enfants.” While Trudeau changed into his swimming trunks and began his fifty laps, the boys went upstairs to put on their suits, too, and according to an exactly timed schedule, arrived at the pool as Pierre was swimming his final lap. If they were a minute late, Trudeau, “a very precise man,” would querulously ask, “Was there a problem getting the children down here on time?” A “problem?” Kimberley-Kemper later wrote with gentle sarcasm. “Three preschoolers finishing dinner, upstairs into robes, and downstairs at a precise time! Why would there be a problem?”5

  Each night, Trudeau would read to the boys, first from the Bible and then something secular and literary—children’s stories in the early years, the classics later. They would laugh, ask questions, wonder as children always do, and then, just before they went to sleep, they would pray together—following the pattern Trudeau had known since he first heard his own mother’s voice.6

  Although the staff was superb, Trudeau sometimes faced challenges alone as single parents must. There was the Labrador puppy, for instance, that Farley and Claire Mowat had given the Trudeaus. He had soon been named “Farley,” and like his namesake, the Lab delighted children but could be most unpredictable. Once Trudeau was awaiting the arrival of Pakistani prime minister Ali Bhutto, and he had asked Energy Minister Alastair Gillespie to come earlier to brief him on a lively debate Gillespie had had with Bhutto on nuclear proliferation. Trudeau met Gillespie at the door and showed him into the living room, where Bhutto and other guests would soon arrive. The prime minister and his most elegant Cabinet minister immediately became aware of a large pile that Farley had left in the middle of the carpet. Trudeau quickly found a dustpan and cleaned up the mess. No sooner was that done than he noticed a photograph on a table of India’s Indira Gandhi, which he quickly stuffed into a drawer. Then, as he scurried about the room, trying to make certain that everything was in its proper place, he discovered clusters of nuts that Sacha, the rascal of the three boys, had hidden in and around the sofa.

  Finally, the prime minister and his minister were able to turn to their discussion of nuclear non-proliferation.7

  Despite the careful schedule that surrounded Trudeau, when he was with his children, “he gave the impression of having all the time in the world.” He participated in their games with tremendous enthusiasm, and the children adored him for his childlike and childish ways. Often they played “Monster,” where Trudeau would hide and the boys would try to find him in the many hideaways in the old mansion. When they approached his lair, the fearsome beast would leap out, roar, and chase the squealing boys back to bed. During weekends at Harrington Lake, the formal routine broke down, although Trudeau continued to schedule work every day, as well as playing, canoeing, swimming, and hiking with the boys. Despite the informality of these interludes, Trudeau rarely gave compliments or “words of thanks” to staff directly, preferring to have any expression of gratitude passed on through the appropriate hierarchy. In this respect and several others (tipping, for example), he reflected earlier times. Yet the staff felt they were “part of the family” as 24 Sussex became, in Heidi Bennet’s words, not so much the Official Residence of the Prime Minister of Canada but “first and foremost the home of a very busy dad and his three sons,” all of whom sought “as normal a life as possible.”

  Bennet believes that Trudeau also thought of their group as part of his family. Media aide Patrick Gossage recalls that neither his senior political staff nor his ministers were invited to Christmas celebrations at 24 Sussex: the guest list included his chauffeur, his private secretary, the housekeepers, the RCMP officers who guarded him, and the ordinary folks who were truly his family. Bennet tells of an instance when she found the cleaning maid Gertie weeping: her son was dying of cancer. When Bennet gave Trudeau the sad news, he exclaimed, “On no, poor Gertie,” and went off to search for her before Bennet could say another word. The sixty-year-old single father needed a family.8

  Leaving 24 Sussex so Joe Clark and Maureen McTeer and their daughter, Catherine, could move in was difficult. The Trudeaus had transformed the old mansion, with the swimming pool, the sauna, and the children’s rooms all reflecting those changes. Stornoway, the official residence of the Opposition leader, is in some ways more attractive than 24 Sussex. Unlike the prime minister’s residence, which stands isolated on a cliff overlooking the Ottawa River, it is deep in the heart of the prime Rockcliffe residential area, and its interior design appears more comfortable and functional, especially after much-needed renovations were made in the summer of 1979. To the Trudeaus, however, 24 Sussex remained home, and Stornoway was a disappointment.

  June 4 was the day designated for Trudeau to submit his resignation to Governor General Ed Schreyer, one of the prime minister’s most controversial appointments. It was a clear, sunny morning, and Trudeau astonished waiting reporters when he drove his vintage white Mercedes 300SL* across the road and into the spacious grounds surrounding Rideau Hall, the Governor General’s residence. As soon as he emerged, they were ready with their questions:

  “What are you going to do?” they wanted to know.

  “I’m going to think about it,” he replied.

  “But how do you feel?”

  “I’m free.”

  Then he drove off, halting briefly on the driveway to greet a surprised Heward Grafftey, who would soon become a minister in the new Clark government. “Congratulations and God bless,” he said.9

  Defeat did bring
freedom: there were no guards at the gate, no security people close at hand, and fewer obnoxious reporters and cameras. But freedom tasted bittersweet to Trudeau—who had come to relish the diverse choices facilitated by political power. Normally reticent, Trudeau found political life a theatre where his reserve evaporated as he met heads of state, mixed with celebrities, and flew off on weekends to New York on the Challenger, the government jet, to meet new friends like Barbra Streisand, Arthur Schlesinger, and Anthony Quinn (who became a good friend). Through architect Arthur Erickson and his partner, Francisco Kripacz, Trudeau was drawn into Hollywood and to wealthy retreats on the Mediterranean and in the Hamptons—a world of yachts, long parties, late night swimming, and, in the words of the day, beautiful people.*