Just Watch Me

by John English

  In the end Reagan did not flinch, and Margaret Thatcher, after discussions with Trudeau about his meeting with Gorbachev, decided that the new Soviet leader was a man “to do business with.” Trudeau’s impact on the end of the Cold War was marginal: perhaps a small push on Reagan to follow the direction toward which his instincts were already leading him, maybe an encouragement to other smaller nations to speak up against nuclear madness, and more likely an influence on Mikhail Gorbachev, whose Canadian visit deeply affected the path of perestroika. However, if Trudeau won powerful friends in Moscow, he offended and upset others closer to home, notably External Affairs, the defence establishments, conservative think tanks, and, more troublingly, some of his old supporters. This disillusioned group included Allan Gotlieb, who increasingly saw the merits of the American complaints about the Canadian prime minister; Mitchell Sharp, without whose backing he would not have become leader in 1968; and Allan MacEachen, who was the key to his return to politics in 1979. And then, of course, there was Margaret Thatcher, who never forgave him for the peace initiative. Years later, MacEachen recalled that at Trudeau’s final G7 summit in Britain, Thatcher “could not have been more disregarding toward Mr. Trudeau.” There was no reference to his imminent departure from power, and “when he tried to intervene, she would never give him the floor.” Geoffrey Howe, Thatcher’s foreign secretary at the time, told him that she simply would not mention Trudeau’s name. On Thatcher at least, Trudeau had left his mark.67

  By contrast, the peace initiative brought an outpouring of personal accolades for Trudeau. Margot Kidder forgot the decision to test cruise missiles in the North and celebrated the fact that her close friend was no longer “on the other side.” Gale Zoë Garnett, Barbra Streisand, and many others joined the chorus. Jimmy and Kathleen Sinclair, Margaret’s parents, told him, “We are so proud to follow your crusade for a sensible approach to peace and clarity among the nations.” Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister, to whom Trudeau had dedicated his book of speeches on nuclear issues and the peace initiative, praised him warmly. So did many who had travelled the path of peace with him. Patrick Gossage and Robert Fowler remained loyal to the end, and became angry with colleagues who mocked the initiative and questioned Trudeau’s sincerity. Thousands of letters poured into his office. Pascale Hébert, the daughter of his closest male friend, Jacques, praised him because he took “the most beautiful path on earth, the path of peace—it is very moving.” Sometimes, she went on, when she lost hope, “seeing a man like you, one of the only ones who could appease, subdue, and lead the great powers to dialogue, I am reassured.” Her father wrote separately, telling Trudeau that the initiative had a wonderful effect on Canadians, “especially young people!”68

  Nothing mattered more than young people to Trudeau, but they were not enough. Time had run out for him: the peace initiative petered out in February 1984, and the brief surge in the polls had retreated late the previous fall. The caucus became openly rebellious, the press sharply critical, and future leaders jostled in the wings. There can be no doubt that Trudeau wanted to stay: Tom Axworthy juggled the polling numbers to prove to the prime minister that he remained the most popular leader and that his international stature carried Canadian votes; his female friends worried about the emptiness of his life after politics, which had filled his world so completely; he remembered the frustrations and disappointments he had felt when he briefly lost power in 1979; and he knew that he still had work to do and dreams to fulfill. His physical vigour, his intellectual quickness, and his capacity for work remained at their exceptional peak. But there comes a time in political life when choices narrow quickly, and they did for Trudeau in February 1984, the beginning of his fourth year in office in this, his fourth government. An election had to be called before long, and most believed that another Liberal leader would triumph again. He, most surely, would not.

  Four years before, he had taken a walk on a snowy winter’s night and decided the following morning that he had many more miles to go before his political sleep began. Now, on February 28, he left 24 Sussex Drive and walked again into the snow, thinking about the boys, the house in Montreal, and the fights with Reagan and Thatcher, but surely too about the power, the people, and the access that would vanish when the “ghost of power” finally descended. Later, he wrote that George Santayana had defined happiness as taking the “measure of your powers.” That night he measured his own and knew that it was finally time to go.69

  * Although Lester Pearson would agree with Granatstein’s vigorous defence of peacekeeping and even of unification as laying “the groundwork for a military force capable of carrying out coherent, realizable roles,” he did not share the belief that Canada should pull out of NATO and NORAD, whatever their faults, and strongly opposed the emphasis on the “national interest” in the foreign policy review. In his own copy of the document, Pearson wrote: “Surely a far better foreign policy is that which is based on a national interest which expresses itself in co-operation with others; in the building of international institutions and the development of international policies and agreements, leading to a world order which promotes freedom, well-being and security for all.” The copy with Pearson’s handwriting was in the possession of Geoffrey Pearson, Lester’s son, who shared it with me. Granatstein’s later criticisms of the focus on peacekeeping and unification are found in his Canada’s Army: Waging War and Keeping the Peace (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 353–61, in which he presents an excellent summary of Trudeau’s defence review and its impact.

  * There is evidence that some departmental officers found the workmanlike approach preferable to the glitter and pinstripes of the golden age, whose reputed glories caused considerable resentment among the successors of Pearson, Norman Robertson, and Charles Ritchie. In reviewing the memoirs of the tough-minded and blunt Derek Burney, one of the finest diplomats of the later period, the equally frank Paul Heinbecker, who served as ambassador to both the United Nations and Germany, said that Burney’s group was a “made-in-Canada generation, tough-minded, self-confident and savvy, even a little ruthless, neither to the manor nor to the manse born, contemptuous of the fake Oxford accents and Ivy League preciousness that many predecessors had cultivated.” There are echoes of Trudeau’s 1968 attitudes in Heinbecker’s remarks. Paul Heinbecker, “Burney’s Prescription Is Not a Good Fit for Today’s Washington,” Diplomat and International Canada Magazine, May–June 2005.

  * When Reagan visited Ottawa on March 10, he had what he termed a “warm welcome” from Canadians lining the street. Curiously, he and his wife, Nancy, were given separate bedrooms—the first time they had slept apart in their married life. On meeting Trudeau, he wrote in his diary: “Discovered I liked him. Our meetings were very successful. We have some problems to be worked out … but I believe we’ve convinced them we really want to find answers.” He impressed Trudeau less, particularly when he told a joke about two Israeli soldiers on a patrol looking for Egyptian soldiers, for which they had been promised a reward of fifty thousand dollars for each one captured. They fell asleep, woke up, and found themselves surrounded by the entire Egyptian army. One Israeli soldier turned to the other and said, “We’re rich.” J.L. Granatstein and Robert Bothwell, Pirouette: Pierre Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 321.

  Trudeau met Reagan in Washington on July 10 for discussions about the summit. Reagan concluded correctly that the summit would “discuss ec. Issues, N.-S relationships & some East-West trade matters.” They also discussed pipelines and economic policies. Reagan concluded ominously: “I think our problem is that he leans toward outright nationalization of industry.” He had dined with the Reverend Billy Graham on the Friday before he left for the Monday conference, and they had talked about international affairs and the many world leaders Graham knew “thru personal acquaintance.” He said little about the summit in the diary but was, as Schmidt reported, enthralled with Montebello, “a marvelous piece of engineeri
ng.” Ronald Reagan, The Reagan Diaries, ed. Douglas Brinkley (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 7, 31.

  * Gotlieb soon found that Trudeau had another purpose for him: to supervise the building of a new Canadian Embassy. The Departments of Public Works and External Affairs had held a competition, which Trudeau’s close friend Arthur Erickson lost badly. Furious, Erickson demanded that Trudeau intervene because he suspected, correctly, that officials at Public Works did not like him. They had accused Erickson, one of Canada’s most respected architects, of sloppy presentations that would lead to excessive costs and complications. Trudeau did intervene, Erickson’s design was selected, and Gotlieb was now charged with supervising the construction of the new building, even as other Canadian officials in Ottawa made constant difficulties for him. Trudeau, Cabinet colleagues said, always had a strong interest in architecture and would carefully examine models brought before him, as with the model for Vancouver’s Canada Place designed by Toronto architect Eb Zeidler.

  Trudeau had thought Ottawa a pathetic national capital when he lived there in the fifties because it lacked the architectural grandeur of other national capitals. Facing his last term in office, he was determined to leave his physical mark on the city. His government commissioned the two major museums in Ottawa: the National Gallery, designed by Moishe Safdie, and the Canadian Museum of Civilization, designed by Douglas Cardinal. As the museum was still in the planning stage as Trudeau’s political life came to the end, he told his ministers and aides: “I want the biggest hole you can possibly dig.” By the time the Conservatives came to office, the hole for the Canadian Museum of Civilization was so big, it was impossible to stop. Gotlieb’s frustrations are described throughout The Washington Diaries: 1981–1989 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2006). Trudeau’s interest in architecture and the plan for the “hole” are described in detail in my interviews with many of the principals at Library and Archives Canada, December 2, 2002 (tape now at LAC). On December 14, 1981, Erickson asked Trudeau to intervene and told him: “Your name frightens” the bureaucrats. Erickson to Trudeau, Dec. 14, 1981. TP, MG 26 020, vol. 2 contains this note and many other letters, including one of April 16, 1984, telling Trudeau that there must be rapid work in Washington or the Conservatives may come into office and halt the project.

  * When Allan Gotlieb met Helmut Schmidt in Austria in August 1986, Schmidt remarked, “How nice a man Trudeau was.” Gotlieb questioned the statement, agreeing that he was a “great man,” but then quoted Lord Acton: “Great men are almost inevitably bad men.” Gotlieb, who had been close to Trudeau, Michael Pitfield, Albert Breton, and others, became increasingly critical of Trudeau in the 1980s. His diary suggests that Trudeau’s sharp criticisms of the United States and, to a lesser extent, Israel were a factor. When Schmidt was critical of the United States, Gotlieb replied: “I am very pro-American. That is why we must understand how their system works and therefore what is realistic to expect from them.” Gotlieb, Washington Diaries, 399–400.

  * These figures were included in a report produced by the Parliamentary Information and Research Service of the Library of Parliament at the request of Liberal senator Colin Kenny, a former Trudeau aide. When the report was released, Kenny compared Trudeau favourably to Brian Mulroney, under whom defence spending fell almost continuously, reaching 1.6 percent, even though, in defence specialist David Pugliese’s words, Mulroney “brought in a hawkish defence policy in the late 1980s.” He pointed out that Prime Minister Stephen Harper had increased defence spending to only 1.2 percent of GDP, far lower than the 2.1 percent average of the Trudeau years. “They talk the talk but when it comes time to walk the walk they’re just not there,” Kenny charged. “They don’t even come close to the so-called pinko days of Mr. Trudeau.” (Pugliese’s story, with Kenny’s statement, appeared in the National Post, Dec. 4, 2007.)

  The Conference of Defence Associations (CDA) responded by pointing out that defence spending under Liberal prime minister Louis St. Laurent had averaged 6.5 percent; under Conservative John Diefenbaker, 5.4 percent; and under Lester Pearson, 3.8 percent. Citing J.L. Granatstein’s Who Killed the Canadian Military? (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2004), which called Trudeau “indifferent” to defence needs, with an “anti-military attitude”(116–17), the CDA stressed that Trudeau’s record should be compared to that of his predecessors, not his successors, and that spending under Trudeau, in terms of the percentage of GDP among Canada’s NATO allies, fell short. Although sharply critical of Trudeau, Granatstein does admit that Trudeau reflected the views of Canadians at the time. A research report produced for this book by Tavis Harris, a military historian, assembled articles from the 1970s which reflect the strong anti-military sentiment present at the time, even in such unexpected locations as the editorial board of the Globe and Mail. There were strong forces urging greater defence expenditures in the business community, particularly on equipment spending, and in the Maritimes, where in many areas the economy was dependent on defence expenditure. Col. Alain Pellerin of the Conference of Defence Associations and the office of Senator Kenny assisted Harris in his work.

  Trudeau’s greatest impact on the Canadian military was his insistence on bilingualism in the armed services, a part of Canada’s government where francophones were very much underrepresented and where the use of French was rare. By 1993 the percentage of francophones in the military was 27 percent, higher than that in the general population, and functional bilingualism was a requirement for promotion above the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Despite much bitterness and complaint, the result, Granatstein writes approvingly, was an army that “was a better reflection of the country’s duality than almost any federal institution—indeed, better than any Canadian institution of any kind.” Granatstein, Canada’s Army, 372.

  Trudeau’s son Alexandre joined the Canadian Reserves when he was a student at McGill University in the mid-1990s, trained at Camp Gagetown in New Brunswick, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant.

  * Alsop, the wife of prominent columnist Joseph Alsop and a descendant of John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States, had once declared that she saw “no future in being an ordinary person.” She did write the article, “Architectural Digest Visits: Pierre Trudeau,” which describes the remarkable renovations of the Cormier art deco house (Architectural Digest 1, 1986, 106–13). Trudeau’s pride in the house was evident in an exchange with Barbra Streisand. He sent her photographs of the house in 1983, to which she replied: “I’ll show you mine … if you show me yours! My deco house, that is!” Streisand had developed a strong interest in art deco and believes that she may have been responsible for Trudeau’s choice of home. They often discussed architecture when they met. Unfortunately, she was not able to tour Trudeau’s Montreal home until after his death, when Justin Trudeau showed her around it. Interview with Barbra Streisand, July 2009. Streisand to Trudeau, nd, TP, MG 26 020, vol. 11, file 11-57, LAC. The description of Alsop comes from her obituary in the New York Times, Aug. 20, 2004.

  *Marie Choquet, a friend of Trudeau and a political activist, wrote to him after an evening at Sussex Drive, two days before the cruise missile announcement on July 15, 1983. She told him to “get moving!” He now had “international stature” while “the whole world is going berserk, largely because of the vacuum or, if you prefer, the complete breakdown of foreign policy in the U.S.” In a blunt conclusion, she talked about his sons and then told him:

  Time is running out and now, more than ever, there is an opportunity for you to do what you are best at: long-term world vision strategy.

  Get away from the shackles you let yourself in for by being too docile vis-à-vis your staff and your cry-baby Cabinet & do what you were given the capacity to do.

  Otherwise, as a great admirer of yours said to me recently: “I’m so afraid that history will see him as the man of missed opportunities.

  Choquet to Trudeau, July 13, 1982, TP, MG 26 020, vol., 3, file 3-3, LAC. Another close female companion of that period spoke to me
about Trudeau’s mood at the time. Choquet’s comments about the “cry-baby Cabinet” were reflected in her memories of the period as well. Confidential interview.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  HIS WAY

  Margaret Thatcher humiliated Pierre Trudeau at his last G7 summit in London in early June 1984, refusing to recognize him when he tried to speak, failing to note his upcoming retirement, and neglecting to wish him well for the future. His peace initiative had infuriated her, particularly in the early winter, when he had urged Western leaders to speed negotiations with the Soviet Union at a time when she believed, perhaps correctly, that a demonstration of strength was their immediate need. Ronald Reagan wrote in his diary that Trudeau and socialist French president François Mitterrand usually had a “different viewpoint” but “we overcame them.” Still, he continued, “There was blood on the floor—and not ours.” As Trudeau, dejected and isolated, gathered his papers at the summit’s end, Reagan suddenly sat down beside him and, as others watched and heard, amicably expressed his affection for “Pierre,” as he always called him, and offered his “good wishes” for the future. “Reagan didn’t have to do that,” Trudeau told Don Jamieson, his former minister who was now Canadian high commissioner to the United Kingdom. “Whatever else he may be, he’s a good man.”1 But Thatcher’s disdain raised Trudeau’s fears that he was tumbling into the dustbin of history—and his alarm was justified.