by John English
Many responses were elegiac, others critical, but few were bland. Bouquets of flowers immediately appeared outside 1418 Avenue des Pins. Chrétien returned home from Jamaica to the House of Commons, where leaders paid tribute to Trudeau and some MPs wore red roses in his memory. Joe Clark, now leading a Conservative rump, spoke warmly, although a future Conservative leader, Stephen Harper, then head of the National Citizens Coalition, wrote in the National Post that Trudeau had “flailed from one pet policy to another” and, when faced with Nazism and fascism, “took a pass.” But he was a rare dissenter. Trudeau would have smiled as most of his old enemies dulled their barbs, and he would have enjoyed a New York Times tribute in which the Canadian-born journalist Rick Marin talked about his first meeting with “this hip-looking old guy” who walked into a Manhattan dance hall “with a gorgeous chick on each arm.” He had “made Canada cool.” Trudeau, he wrote, “had style. Almost everything about him was the antithesis of the two men [Al Gore and George W. Bush] jogging for the presidency in the United States.” Small wonder, he concluded, that Canadians had “fanatically mourned” this man. And the mourning, if not fanatical, was extraordinary by any standard, and completely unpredicted and unprecedented in Canadian political history. Trudeau mattered.36
Thousands flocked to the Hall of Honour in Parliament’s Centre Block, where Trudeau’s body lay in state until it was taken from the Hill as a band played “Auld Lang Syne.” Then, as a train bore his casket from Ottawa to Montreal, crowds unexpectedly appeared in small towns, at level crossings, and in the wasteland along the Ottawa River. In Montreal his casket lay at City Hall, where thousands more lined up to pay their respects before the funeral on October 3, 2000, at Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica. Three thousand people crowded into the church, including Margaret, with their two remaining sons, and Deborah Coyne, with Sarah. Dignitaries mingled with former and current ministers, MPs with celebrities, and Leonard Cohen appeared as an honorary pallbearer. Fidel Castro was the sole head of state in attendance, although two of Trudeau’s friends represented, respectively, the United States and Great Britain: former Democratic president Jimmy Carter and former Conservative prime minister Edward Heath. Above them in the balconies were others, mostly ordinary folks and young people like my fourteen-year-old son, who had travelled from a distance, stood before the basilica in the cool autumn air since midnight, and finally found their way to a lofty perch, bearing proudly the beige funeral program with a single rose below the inscription “Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1919–2000.” Chrétien read the liturgy of the Word, and Sacha followed with a passage from the Book of Daniel. Roy Heenan and Jacques Hébert gave eulogies, and then it was Justin’s turn.
Justin talked about what Pierre Trudeau meant as a father, how the sons knew they were “the luckiest kids in the world.” He gave us “a lot of tools,” he said: “We were taught to take nothing for granted. He doted on us but didn’t indulge…. He encouraged us to push ourselves, to test limits, to challenge anyone and anything.” Justin recalled that his dad taught him when he was eight years old that he should not mock Joe Clark, that no one should “attack the individual” but should show “respect,” even while disagreeing with opinions. From the front pews of the church, Clark, whom Trudeau came to know was a decent man, nodded his head and smiled.
Trudeau demanded much from his sons, but Justin thanked him “for having loved us so much.” Echoing Trudeau’s essay on canoeing written in the forties, he ended:
“My father’s fundamental belief never came from a textbook. It stemmed from his deep love for and faith in all Canadians, and over the past few days, with every card, every rose, every tear, every wave and every pirouette, you returned his love. It means the world to Sacha and me. Thank you.
“We have gathered from coast to coast to coast, from one ocean to another, united in our grief, to say good bye. But this is not the end. He left politics in ’84. But he came back for Meech. He came back for Charlottetown. He came back to remind us of who we are and what we’re all capable of. But he won’t be coming back anymore. It’s all up to us, all of us, now.
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep. He has kept his promises and earned his sleep.
“Je t’aime Papa.”
Justin then came down to the flag-draped casket, bent to reach out to his father one last time, and placed a rose there for him.
As Justin and Sacha signed the register, the organ burst forth with Mozart’s “Lacrymosa.” Cardinal Turcotte bade farewell, having conveyed “Pierre Elliott Trudeau to his rest,” and prayed that “all that for him was great and holy” would be “respected and preserved” and that “any evil he may have done be pardoned.”
The service ended with “O Canada.”37
* There were many tributes to Trudeau. The Globe and Mail, a frequent critic, praised him for his vision of Canada and the clarity of that belief: whatever his faults, it allowed, “he stood for something.” It also published a tribute by York University historian Paul Axelrod, declaring that historians would rank Trudeau among the “great” prime ministers—with Macdonald, Laurier, and King. However, editor Richard Doyle, later a Conservative senator, ridiculed the tribute, citing the editor of the Ottawa Citizen, who called it “third-rate schlock.” He added: “He did it his way and, in truth, that is what the convention was about—any way but his.” Globe and Mail, June 16 and 18, 1984.
* In the early eighties, Trudeau took a particular interest one summer in a parliamentary guide. When he met her on the Hill, he asked if she was free that evening. She said she was going to a party at the home of another guide whose name was Neatby. “Neatby!” Trudeau exclaimed. “I know Blair and Jacquie Neatby well.” It was true—he had met them in the early fifties when they were both young historians in Ottawa. That night the eminent biographer of Mackenzie King, Dr. Neatby, was surprised when security officers and a limousine appeared at his home. The prime minister had come to his daughter’s party. Conversation with Dr. H.B. Neatby.
* Mulroney did ask Trudeau if he would advise him on “foreign affairs,” and Trudeau agreed. He told him that he should be “friends with the United States” but not “subservient to the American government.” Mulroney then irritated Trudeau by calling a press conference immediately after the meeting and making “a big production out of the announcement that Trudeau was going to advise him on international affairs.” The Liberals, of course, were not amused. Trudeau, Memoirs (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993), 358.
* Alexandre Trudeau commented: “From the little I saw of his interactions with Sarah, he was incredibly gentle towards the little girl, if a little awkward. A grown daughter would have surely made for a beautiful presence in his later life.”
* Rating prime ministers became a popular sport for pollsters, journalists, and historians as the century ended and a new millennium arrived. Two eminent and playful historians, J.L. Granatstein and Norman Hillmer, asked twenty-six of their academic colleagues to rate the Canadian prime ministers. Trudeau came fifth, behind King, Macdonald, Laurier, and St. Laurent (Prime Ministers: Ranking Canada’s Leaders [Toronto: HarperCollins, 2000]). However, an Ekos poll in December 2002 found that 32 percent of the respondents considered Trudeau “the greatest Canadian.” Cancer victim Terry Fox was second, with 6 percent, while Pearson and Lévesque tied at 3 percent (http://www.canadainfolink.ca/pms.htm). In 2004 the CBC ran an extensive contest, asking Canadians to identify the “greatest Canadian.” Trudeau had an early lead but fell behind when, reportedly, environmentalist David Suzuki, a supporter of the NDP, asked his supporters to cast their votes for former NDP leader Tommy Douglas—who won. Trudeau finished third behind Douglas and Fox, the highest of the prime ministers. Journalist Rex Murphy “made the case” for Trudeau (http://www.cbc.ca/greatest/). Finally, in the summer of 2007, the Beaver asked readers to identify the worst Canadian. With over fifteen thousand votes cast, Trudeau won over serial killer Clifford Olson, sexual deviate Paul Bernardo, and the runner-up—Stephen Harper, the Con
servative prime minister of the time. For friends and foes, Trudeau mattered. The Beaver: Canada’s History Magazine 87, no. 4 (Aug./Sept. 2007).
NOTES
A complete bibliography for both volumes of The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau may be found on the following websites:
http://www.cigionline.org/person/john-english and
http://www.randomhouse.ca
Papers, such as the Trudeau Papers, appear in abbreviated form in the notes below. The key to these and other abbreviations is as follows:
ABP Albert Breton Papers
ALP Arthur Laing Papers
ALoP Arthur Lower Papers
AP Abbott Papers
CP Cadieux Papers
EAP External Affairs Papers
GP Gillespie Papers
LAC Library and Archives Canada
LPP Liberal Party Papers
MacEP MacEachen Papers
MP McLuhan Papers
MSP Michael Shenstone Papers
NP Nixon Papers
PCO Privy Council Office
QUA Queen’s University Archives
TP Trudeau Papers
TuP Turner Papers
WSP William Seidman Papers
CHAPTER ONE: TAKING POWER
1. Calgary Herald, April 8, 1968; Jennifer Rae quoted in Nancy Southam, ed., Pierre: Colleagues and Friends Talk about the Trudeau They Knew (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2005), 242; and Margaret Trudeau, Beyond Reason (New York and London: Paddington Press, 1979), 29. The importance of Trudeau as a “cultural” phenomenon is brilliantly explored in Paul Litt, “Trudeaumania: Participatory Democracy in the Mass-Mediated Nation,” The Canadian Historical Review 89 (March 2008): 27–53. Litt notes that “sex denoted Trudeau’s radical freedom as an individual. Uninhibited by spouse and family, he was free to consume it.” It was a mark of the fact that Trudeau was “with it” (41).
2. Bob Rae, From Protest to Power: Personal Reflections on a Life in Politics (1996; repr., Toronto: Penguin, 1997), 40–41; B.W. Powe, Mystic Trudeau: The Fire and the Rose (Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2007), 217; Spectator, June 28, 1968, 881–82; Peter C. Newman in Toronto Daily Star, April 8, 1968; Ramsay Cook, The Teeth of Time: Remembering Pierre Trudeau (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2006), 42. Cook’s excellent book makes it clear that William Kilbourn played a much less central role in the Toronto petition than I suggested in volume 1.
3. Pearson made the comment to Bruce Hutchison. Interview with Bruce Hutchison, June 1989. The cartoon may be found in Michael Cowley, Sex and the Single Prime Minister: A Study in Liberal Lovemaking (Toronto: Greywood, 1968), np. Pearson’s brother-in-law, Herbert Moody, recalled that when Pearson visited in the summer of 1968, the former prime minister became irritated when Maryon and his own wife constantly extolled Trudeau’s virtues. Pearson dismissed Trudeau as a centralist and deplored their enthusiasm. Interview with Herbert Moody, June 1989.
4. Le Devoir, April 3, 1968.
5. Ibid.
6. Zink collected his columns in Trudeaucracy (Toronto: Toronto Sun, 1972), a book in which he claims he invented the term “Trudeaumania.”
7. The critiques by Rioux, Dumont, and Vadeboncoeur were collected in André Potvin, Michel Letourneux, and Robert Smith, L’Anti-Trudeau: Choix de textes (Montréal: Éditions Parti-pris, 1972). Samples of Zink’s writings may be found in his Trudeaucracy. Ryan’s defence of Trudeau is found in Le Devoir, May 25, 1968.
8. On Trudeau and his mother, see the first volume of this biography, Citizen of the World (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2006), 209–19. The description of his mother at this time is the product of several conversations with family members and friends. On the visit, see Montreal Gazette, April 10, 1968.
9. Cabinet discussions of April 17, 19, 20, and 22, 1968. RG2, PCO, Series A-5-a, vol. 6338, LAC; Montreal Gazette, April 23, 1968; Pierre Trudeau, Memoirs (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993), 93–98; and Paul Martin, So Many Worlds, vol. 2 of A Very Public Life (Toronto: Deneau, 1985), 634.
10. The quotations are from Winters himself, who was interviewed by Martin Sullivan in Mandate ’68 (Toronto: Doubleday, 1968), 381.
11. Richard Gwyn gives an excellent description of Trudeau’s staff and friends in “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” chapter 5 of his Northern Magus: Pierre Trudeau and Canadians (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1980). The quotation and the description of the “standpat” Cabinet are found in John Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review for 1968 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 29–30.
12. Cabinet discussions of April 17, 19, 20, and 22, 1968. RG2, PCO, Series A-5-a, vol. 6338, LAC.
13. Trudeau, Memoirs, 93–98; and Martin, So Many Worlds, 634.
14. Montreal Gazette, April 23–24, 1968; and Trudeau, Memoirs, 93–98.
15. Suzette Trudeau is quoted in Catherine Breslin, “The Other Trudeaus,” Chatelaine, Oct. 1969, 87. The song debuted on a Montreal CBC-TV show hosted by Trudeau critic Laurier LaPierre and Trudeau fan Patrick Watson and is quoted in Litt, “Trudeaumania,” 39; McLuhan on the tribal society is quoted in W. Terrence Gordon, Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding (Toronto: Stoddart, 1997), 235. The letter on the debate is found in Marie Molinaro, Corinne McLuhan, and William Toye, eds., Letters of Marshall McLuhan (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1987), 352–54. An interesting analysis of McLuhan’s attraction to the Trudeau phenomenon is found in Arthur Kroker, http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=70. He traces McLuhan’s approach to understanding media to his Catholic humanism.
16. Walter Stewart, The Life and Times of Tommy Douglas (Toronto: McArthur and Company, 2003), 273. Descriptions of the campaigns are based on interviews with campaign advisers Ramsay Cook, Gordon Gibson, Jacques Hébert, Marc Lalonde, Tim Porteous, Richard Stanbury, and several of Trudeau’s Cabinet ministers.
17. Trudeau, Memoirs, 100–101. The best accounts of the campaign are in Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review for 1968; and Sullivan, Mandate ’68.
18. Joe McGinniss, The Selling of the President 1968 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969). Trudeau’s fake fall is described by Bernard Dubé in Montreal Gazette, April 9, 1968.
19. Stewart, Tommy Douglas, 272.
20. Globe and Mail, April 9, May 22, 1968.
21. Pierre Trudeau, Personal Journal 1938, Jan. 1, June 19, 1938, TP, MG 26 02, vol. 39, file 9, LAC.
22. Cabinet Conclusions, RG2, PCO, Series A-5-a, vol. 6323, July 25, 1967, LAC.
23. Assessment of de Gaulle’s opinion by Canadian officials in France quoted by David Meren in “Les Sanglots longs de la violence de l’automne: French Diplomacy Reacts to the October Crisis,” The Canadian Historical Review 88 (Dec. 2007): 626.
24. Cook, The Teeth of Time, 74.
25. Conversation with Barney Danson, May 2007. The story about Danson’s opponent’s comment is found in Barney Danson with Curtis Fahey, Not Bad for a Sergeant: The Memoirs of Barney Danson (Toronto: Dundurn, 2002), 90; Iglauer’s impression was confirmed by Trudeau aide Tim Porteous in conversations with him in September 2007. Edith Iglauer in Southam, ed., Pierre, 82–83. Pearson adviser Keith Davey, who had been excluded from the campaign, was even brought in to help. See Martin, A Very Public Life, 634.
26. Richard Stanbury Diary, privately held, June 1968.
27. Quoted and described in Donald Peacock, Journey to Power: The Story of a Canadian Election (Toronto: Ryerson, 1968), 368.
28. Comments made by Martin Sullivan, who travelled with Trudeau during the campaign. See Sullivan’s Mandate ’68, 313. Interview with John Nichol, Aug. 2005. For a description of the Nichol confrontation, see Christina McCall-Newman, Grits: An Intimate Portrait of the Liberal Party (Toronto: Macmillan, 1982), 118.
29. Gazette, June 20, 1968.
30. A summary of where the newspapers stood is found in Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review for 1968, 43–44. The summary notes that five English-language papers shifted from their 1965 Conservative support to the Liberals. Among them was the influential Globe and Mail. Intervie
w with Richard Stanbury, Sept. 2006.
31. These figures are taken from the charts at the end of John Meisel, Working Papers on Canadian Politics, 2nd ed. (Montreal and London: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1975).
32. Gallup poll analysis from Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review for 1968, 62–66; Ryan in Le Devoir, June 17, 1968. Elected Seats: PC 72 (27.3%), L 155 (58.7%), NDP 22 (8.3%), Ralliement des Créditistes (RC) 14 (5.3%), Other 1 (0.4%). Popular Vote: PC 2,554,765 (31.4%), L 3,696,875 (45.5%), NDP 1,378,389 (17%), SC 64,029 (0.8%), Ralliement des Créditistes (RC) 359,885 (4.4%), Others 71,895 (0.9%).
33. Globe and Mail, June 26, 1968. The front page includes a group of quotations from a variety of opposition politicians under the title “All running against Trudeau and Trudeau beat us all.” Part of the account is drawn from Peacock, who was with Trudeau in the Château Laurier suite. Journey to Power, 381–82.
34. Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review for 1968, 65.
35. John Duffy, Fights of Our Lives: Elections, Leadership, and the Making of Canada (Toronto: Harper Collins, 2002).
36. Kitchener-Waterloo Record, May 26, 1968; “Santa Claus” speech quoted in George Radwanski, Trudeau (Toronto: Macmillan, 1978), 108–9.