by John English
25. For opposing views on Trudeau’s role in Africa, see Ivan Head and Pierre Trudeau, The Canadian Way: Shaping Canada’s Foreign Policy, 1968–1984 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1995), 107–15, and Linda Freeman, The Ambiguous Champion: Canada and South Africa in the Trudeau and Mulroney Years (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997). On Lee Kuan Yew: conversation with former high commissioner to Singapore Barry Carin, March 2008. Carin said that Lee Kuan Yew had no interest in Canada apart from Trudeau.
26. Ford reacts critically in his memoir, Our Man in Moscow: A Diplomat’s Reflections on the Soviet Union (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 119. There is a good summary of the negative Canadian press reaction in Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review 1971, 258–60.
27. Trudeau’s comment is quoted and assessed in Leigh Sarty, “A Handshake across the Pole: Canadian-Soviet Relations in the Era of Détente,” in Canada and the Soviet Experiment: Essays on Canadian Encounters with Russia and the Soviet Union, 1990–1991, ed. David Davies (Waterloo: Centre on Foreign Policy and Federalism, 1993), 133n37. The article is the best assessment of Trudeau’s behaviour during the visit.
28. Ibid. Sarty translates part of the editorial in which Pravda denounced Trudeau’s critics as “local champions of ‘Cold War,’ supported by all kinds of reactionary émigré rabble and unbeaten Hitlerite stooges” in Canada. Trudeau was praised for his search for “new friends and trading partners to strengthen [Canada’s] independence” (125).
29. The two versions are in NP, box 750, 34452, National Archives, Washington. The final was sent on November 23, 1971. The quotation is from the Nixon Tapes, Rmn e5341, July 6, 1971, National Archives, Washington.
30. American Embassy, Ottawa, to Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, May 27, 1969, White House Situation Room files, box 670 Canada, National Archives, Washington. See http://www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/japan/schaller.htm, in which American diplomatic historian Michael Schaller has summarized the mood in Washington based on archival materials in a report for the National Security Archive.
31. The Canadian Forum editors published Gray’s report and a commentary on it as A Citizen’s Guide to the Gray Report Prepared by The Canadian Forum (Toronto: New Press, 1971).
32. The full tape of the meeting between Nixon, Kissinger, and Trudeau was released in December 2008. The excerpts here have been taken from a CBC news clip, which can be heard electronically at http://www.thestar.com/Article/550024. The tape also reveals the instructions to Haldeman. A good discussion of the impact of Nixon’s economic policies on Canada is found in Bruce Muirhead, Dancing around the Elephant: Creating a Prosperous Canada in an Era of American Dominance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005).
33. Trudeau’s report to Cabinet on the visit occurred on December 12, 1971. It concentrated on the Auto Pact and was generally upbeat (RG2, PCO, Series-5-a, vol. 6381, LAC). The best discussion of Nixon’s policies and Canada’s response is in Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion, 319ff.
34. Trudeau made the remark to the Press Club in Washington on March 26, 1969. Quoted in Globe and Mail, March 27, 1969.
35. National Security Council Trip Files. President’s Visit (April 17–19/72), box 471, National Archives, Washington.
36. Norman Hillmer and J.L. Granatstein, Empire to Umpire: Canada and the World to the 1990s (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1994), 296–99. Nixon Tapes, Rmn_734, Dec. 11, 1971, National Archives, Washington; New York Times, June 19, 1972.
37. These views are expressed in Bothwell, Drummond, and English, Canada since 1945, 410. See also a critique from the left in Alvin Finkel, Our Lives (Toronto: Lorimer, 1997), 139ff. Joel Bell, one of the authors of the Trudeau government’s industrial policy, says that “In the end … the government came to feel that projects were being carried out whose justification lay too much in the virtue of their regional location and not enough in their industrial logic” (Joel Bell, “Industrial Policy in a Changing World,” in Thomas S. Axworthy and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, eds., Towards a Just Society: The Trudeau Years [Markham, Ont.: Viking, 1990], 91). In the same book, Lloyd Axworthy defends regional development policy but admits that DREE had major “problems.” He argues that later policies were successful, particularly in Manitoba (“Regional Development: Innovations in the West,” in Axworthy and Trudeau, eds., Towards a Just Society, 249ff.).
38. Trudeau to John Godfrey, Feb. 14, 1972, ALP, MG 32 C-86, vol. 1, file 12, LAC; John Gray, “The View from Ottawa,” Maclean’s, Jan. 1972, 4; and Jerome Caminada, “Canada’s Struggle for Identity,” Times (London), Feb. 17, 1972.
39. Paul Litt, draft biography of John Turner, chap. 9; Stanbury Diary, Sept. 1, 1971. See also Wearing, L-Shaped Party.
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE LAND IS NOT STRONG
1. Gordon Gibson to Trudeau, Sept. 9, 1969, TP, MG 26 07, vol. 121, file 313.05, LAC. Trudeau wrote, “Hell, No,” on the list of appointments that contained the other meetings mentioned.
2. Weiss’s remarks are in ALP, MG 32 B22, vol. 30.
3. New York Times, Sept. 14, 1972.
4. “The Prime Minister confirmed that it was still his intention to hold a regular Cabinet meeting each week. He added that the odd case might occur where it might be feasible to hold a Cabinet meeting outside of Ottawa, provided that 4 or 5 other ministers were available.” Cabinet Conclusions, RG2, PCO, Series-A-5-a, vol. 6395, Sept. 7, 1972, LAC.
5. The farmer story is from Christina McCall-Newman, Grits: An Intimate Portrait of the Liberal Party (Toronto: Macmillan, 1982), 130. Interviews with Trudeau ministers, University Club, Toronto, May 24, 2007; Lynch, quoted in Ottawa Citizen, Oct. 26, 1972.
6. Eric Kierans with Walter Stewart, Remembering (Toronto: Stoddart, 2001), 202–3; Denis Smith, Gentle Patriot: A Political Biography of Walter Gordon (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1973), 252–53; and Walter Gordon, “Last Chance for Canada,” Maclean’s, Sept. 1972, 72.
7. Conversation with Kathy Robinson, May 2008.
8. The changes in the Unemployment Insurance Act in 1971 expanded coverage “to nearly all members of the labour force, including teachers, public servants, the armed forces and higher income earners.” Claimants also received benefits much earlier, and pregnant women could collect up to fifteen weeks of maternity benefits. Changes in 1972 brought higher costs for employers, which irritated business groups (Canada Year Book, 1980–81 [Ottawa: Dept. of Supply and Services, 1981], 263, 269). The leading historian of unemployment insurance, James Struthers, described the changes as dramatic: “Over its 69-year history, UI has oscillated between these two competing poles of social protection and moral hazard. Until 1975 social protection dominated. During years of prosperity, eligibility for UI was gradually broadened and benefits levels were increased, slowly throughout the 1950s when seasonal workers were added to the scheme, and explosively between 1971 and 1975 when UI was liberalized to cover 96 percent of the labour force. Only eight weeks of work in a year were needed to make a claim, and benefits reached 66 percent of insurable earnings.” Globe and Mail, April 15, 2009.
9. Stanbury Diary, privately held, Oct. 5, 1972; Heather Balodis to Alastair Gillespie, Sept. 18, 1972; and Gillespie to Balodis, Sept. 27, 1982, GP, vol. 34, file Letters and Reply, LAC. In his reply to Balodis’s very specific letter, Gillespie pointed out that the number of investigators was being significantly increased, that business was being encouraged to ensure compliance, and that “90% of the persons who lose their jobs” face “real hardship.” He pointed out that “it is the cheaters, the fraction of people who are taking advantage of the scheme, which angers us all and which smears the most human and comprehensive scheme that I know of.” Of the Balodis complaints, three were clearly “abuses” in her view, but their actions were fully within the law, as in the case of someone who “hopes to work part-time, receiving payment in cash so that her UIC cheques will not be diminished.” The Mackasey reforms were controversial within the Cabinet and remain so. Many years later Charles Caccia, whom many regard as the most left-wing member of the Trudeau Cabinet
, told me that he thought Trudeau let Mackasey go too far. He did not understand why greater attention had not been paid to the problems that might be created by extending benefits to seasonal workers.
10. The Liberal candidate’s address is quoted in George Radwanski, Trudeau (Toronto: Macmillan, 1978), 259.
11. Joseph Wearing, The L-Shaped Party: The Liberal Party of Canada 1958–1980 (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1981), 199; Pierre Trudeau, Memoirs (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993), 158–60; and Radwanski, Trudeau, 264.
12. Stanbury Diary, Oct. 27, 1972; Wearing, L-Shaped Party, 196–97; and interviews with Trudeau ministers, University Club, Toronto, May 24, 2007.
13. The description and comments about the hotel room and party are from the October 31 entry in the Stanbury Diary.
14. The quotation from “Desiderata” is in New York Times, Oct. 31, 1972. See also Toronto Star, Nov. 1, 1972.
15. Interview with Alastair Gillespie, Sept. 2007; Stanbury Diary, Oct. 31, 1972.
16. Globe and Mail, Nov. 3, 1972.
17. I owe the references to the calls for resignation by Ross Whicher and Bill Lee to Paul Litt’s forthcoming biography of John Turner. Andras was himself bitter: a small businessperson, he annoyed Stanbury in the early morning of October 31, when he and John Nichol, a former party president, “got on the phone with [B.C. Senator] George van Roggen and started talking about the necessity for getting rid of all the socialism in the party.” Stanbury Diary, Nov. 1, 1972.
18. Ibid.
19. Cabinet Conclusions, RG2, PCO, Series A-5-a, vol. 6395, Sept. 7, 1972, LAC; Margaret Trudeau, Beyond Reason (New York and London: Paddington Press, 1979), 116; and interview with Margaret Trudeau, Feb. 2006.
20. Wearing, L-Shaped Party, 199.
21. Trudeau, Memoirs, 158–60; Radwanski, Trudeau, 264.
22. Pepin had narrowly lost his riding but refused to appeal to a judge. Marchand and others believed the party should do so. Stanbury asked Trudeau to intercede and to ask Pepin to permit the party to launch the appeal. Trudeau said he would do so, though he wanted to make sure that Pepin did not “take a public stand against us.” Pepin refused, arguing that it would appear, in the eyes of separatists, that a bought Liberal judge was paying off the party. Stanbury Diary, Nov. 10, 1972.
23. On Pepin, interview with Sheila Mary Pepin, Aug. 2007. Interview with Herb Gray, July 2007. Trudeau’s negative views on Davis and especially Richardson were well known to colleagues. Conversation with Albert Breton, Feb. 2006.
24. On the Cabinet meetings, see interviews with Trudeau ministers and associates at Library and Archives Canada, Dec. 9, 2002, and March 5 and 17, 2003. Whelan’s admiration for Trudeau is evident in his own memoir, Whelan: The Man in the Green Stetson (Toronto: Irwin, 1986).
25. An excellent study of the fitful approach to the reform of non-pharmaceutical drug policy is Marcel Martel, Not This Time: Canadian Public Policy and the Marijuana Question, 1961–1975 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006). The title confirms the interpretation presented in this section.
26. Stanbury Diary, Nov. 9, 1972; Wearing, L-Shaped Party, 199.
27. McCall-Newman, Grits, 149.
28. I am deeply indebted to my former student Professor Stephen Azzi, whose work on Walter Gordon has illuminated the profound ties between Gordon and the Toronto Star: Walter Gordon and the Rise of Canadian Nationalism (Kingston and Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1999).
29. Davey claims that Trudeau was having fun at the dinner, but it is more likely that McCall’s account is the accurate one. See Keith Davey, The Rainmaker: A Passion for Politics (Toronto: Stoddart, 1986), 162–63, and McCall-Newman, Grits, 149–50. Interview with Marc Lalonde, Aug. 2007; interview with Tony Abbott, Aug. 2005.
30. Toronto Star, Jan. 5, 1972; Globe and Mail, Jan. 4, 1972. “IDB” stands for the Industrial Development Bank, and “UIP” for the Unemployment Insurance Program. On Trudeau’s new attention to the monarchy, see John Muggeridge, “Why Trudeau, in 1973, Became a Monarchist,” Saturday Night, Jan. 1974.
31. The interviewer was George Radwanski. See his Trudeau, 270. Richard Gwyn, The Northern Magus: Pierre Trudeau and Canadians (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1980), chap. 13. He points out that by 1976, it was no longer appropriate to tell bilingualism jokes such as the one about the lifeguard who let people drown because, although he knew the word nager (to swim), he did not know how to swim. Trudeau’s commitment, described so well by Gwyn, is obvious in a letter he sent to his Cabinet on April 19, 1973, in which he complains that despite new rules promulgated in February 1970 regarding the use of French and English in the operations of Cabinet, “the number of documents submitted in French, while it has increased, remains small.” Moreover, “the language of discussion is predominantly English.” Trudeau asks that departments submitting documents through their ministers should have the titles in French and English. While expressing himself as willing to listen to “difficulties” this might create, Trudeau adds: “It is particularly important in this context that Ministers and Cabinet take every opportunity to use both languages consistent with the efficient and timely discharge of their responsibilities.” Trudeau to Alastair Gillespie, April 19, 1973, GP, vol. 144, file “Correspondence with PM 1-11-1,” LAC.
32. John Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review of Politics and Public Affairs 1976 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 83–44, describes the Spicer report on official languages and the reaction.
33. Gwyn, Northern Magus, 219–20. Spicer, who became language commissioner in 1970, traces his long career in defence of bilingualism while expressing his doubts about the approach in his memoir Life Sentences: Memoirs of an Incorrigible Canadian (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2004). Spicer’s successor, Graham Fraser, has written a work on the official language policy: Sorry I Don’t Speak French: Confronting the Canadian Crisis That Won’t Go Away (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2006). The classic attack on Trudeau’s policy was written by a former military officer, J.V. Andrew: Bilingual Today, French Tomorrow (Richmond Hill, Ont.: BMG, 1977). The sales of the last book probably exceeded those of all others listed in this note. On the roots of the air dispute, see Sandford Borins, The Language of the Skies: The Bilingual Air Traffic Control Conflict in Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1983). John Meisel, Working Papers on Canadian Politics, 2nd ed. (Montreal and London: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1975), 218–19.
34. Meisel, Canadian Politics, 222.
35. The instructions to embassies are in Tim Porteous to Jean Coté, External Affairs, March 29, 1971, TP, MG 26 07, vol. 121, file 313.09, LAC. See McCall-Newman, Grits, 157, in which Margaret is reported as complaining about Roberts’s strong enforcement. Margaret acknowledged that Roberts was enforcing the existing rules but complained bitterly about McCall-Newman’s persistence in trying to get an interview with her on a Russian trip. Margaret said the result was “bitter journalism” directed against her by McCall-Newman. See Trudeau, Beyond Reason, 105.
36. Ibid., 111.
37. Ibid., 99, 114. In an interview in February 2006, Margaret Trudeau confirmed these impressions and remarks, which were presented in Beyond Reason.
38. Ibid., 115.
39. In his biography of Yakovlev, Christopher Shulgan points out that Wikipedia in 2008 claimed that Alexandre was named after Yakovlev. He disputes the story, pointing out that Yakovlev had only recently arrived and had not yet established a close relationship with Trudeau. He also notes that Yakovlev’s memoirs indicate that Lyudmila Kosygina, the daughter of Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin, who had met Margaret Trudeau and befriended her on the Trudeaus’ Soviet visit in 1971, had suggested the name. When Pierre and Margaret were discussing nicknames, Trudeau said that Alexandre could be nicknamed “Sacha.” Margaret didn’t believe him, so Trudeau told her to call Yakovlev, which she did. Yakovlev confirmed that, indeed, Alexandre could be “Sacha,” and the nickname stuck. Alexandre Trudeau himself says that he w
as “named after Yakovlev,” which is essentially what the Wikipedia story claims. In essence, the mists of memory cloud the issue. See Christopher Shulgan, The Soviet Ambassador: The Making of the Radical behind Perestroika (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2008), 179. Conversation with Alexandre Trudeau, April 2007. The Wikipedia entry is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Trudeau.
40. Trudeau, Beyond Reason, 133–34; interview with Margaret Trudeau, Feb. 2006.
41. Arthur Erickson would play a large role in Trudeau’s life after this initial experience. The many letters sent between Trudeau and Erickson are in TP, MG 26 020, vol. 2, LAC.
42. See Shulgan, Soviet Ambassador, 179–80.
43. This section draws on Trudeau, Beyond Reason, 134–37, and Radwanski, Trudeau, which is especially valuable because the first chapter follows Trudeau in a typical day at the office. Other sources include McCall-Newman, Grits, 133, and interviews with Margaret Trudeau and Justin Trudeau, as well as Jim Coutts, Robert Murdoch, Tim Porteous, Jacques Hébert, Albert Breton, Marc Lalonde, and several others who interacted with the Trudeaus in those times.
44. Trudeau, Beyond Reason, 136.
45. Ibid., 120–22, 136.
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE STRANGE REBIRTH OF PIERRE TRUDEAU
1. Document in ABP, privately held.
2. Alastair Gillespie, “Memorandum to Self: Notes on Hudson Institute Seminar, Aug. 22, 1972,” GP, vol. 46, file “associations e21,” LAC; interview with John Kenneth Galbraith, Oct. 2005; and Jason Churchill, “The Limits to Influence: The Club of Rome and Canada 1968 to 1988” (PhD diss., University of Waterloo, 2006), 132ff. Trudeau remarked on his interest in the Club of Rome but dissociated himself from The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York: Universe, 1972), whose conclusions had become discredited, in a conversation with American ambassador Thomas Enders in 1976. “Conversation with Trudeau August 1976,” WSP, Economic Policy Board, files 1974–77, box 224, file 7660247, Ambassador Enders, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.