Just Watch Me

by John English

  At a moment when the poet Philip Larkin said, with characteristic irony, that sexual intercourse was invented between the Chatterley trial and the Beatles’ first LP, Trudeau appeared to embody the several revolutions of the decade. As Richard Gwyn has written: “He not only mirrored the prevailing liberalism of Canadians, he personified it and magnified it.” He seemed, Gwyn continues, “a prototypical, secular liberal leader.” But he was not. He attended church far more regularly than nearly all his colleagues in Ottawa or his neighbours in Montreal, and he admired the profound Catholic faith of his friend Gérard Pelletier. Moreover, he personally disapproved of abortion and accepted the Church’s strictures on divorce and even on birth control. Nevertheless, he broke with the ecclesiastical hierarchy over the state’s right to limit individual behaviour. A sin it may be, he held, but a crime it is not. Sin is to be settled with God; crimes are the concern of Caesar.20

  The reform of the Criminal Code reflected Trudeau’s own understanding of the relationship between the state and the individual. Without Trudeau the changes would have been less sweeping and, therefore, less controversial. They became the core of the Just Society he proposed to create for Canadians after he became prime minister. Trudeau’s Bill C-195, first introduced in December 1967, had more than one hundred clauses that covered a broad range of activities, ranging from homosexual sex between consenting adults to gambling to the use of the lash (this last, surprisingly, was still permitted under Canadian law as punishment for certain crimes).* The omnibus bill troubled John Turner when he inherited it in 1968, and he mused about breaking it up into smaller bills. He even suggested that there might be room for free votes on individual items such as homosexuality activities or abortion. The notion of a free vote had been raised by Conservative leader Robert Stanfield during the campaign of 1968, and not surprisingly, free votes appealed to opponents of these controversial changes because they opened up the possibility of “lobbying” MPs to defy government policy. Trudeau and Turner jousted over this idea, but Trudeau quickly asserted control and told Turner a free vote was impossible. As a result of this delay, however, the reform of the Criminal Code fell from the list of government priorities for that first fall session of 1968. When, on September 5, Trudeau briefed the Cabinet concerning the Throne Speech, he said that official languages, reform of Parliament, and the foreign and defence policy reviews would take precedence. And in an early glimmer of environmentalism, he said that the word “pollution” would be used several times in the speech from the throne.21

  While Trudeau and the Department of Justice considered criminal law reforms, an international commission established by Pope John XXIII was in its final stages of deliberation. With a diverse membership that included married couples, the commission’s mandate was to adapt Catholic doctrine to contemporary life. However, after Turner received his copy of the mandate from the commission in spring 1968, Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae on July 25, pointing out that the commission was divided, that the Pope had final authority, and that traditional doctrines on birth and the family should be maintained. To “rulers of nations,” the encyclical made a direct plea: “We beg of you, never allow the morals of your peoples to be undermined…. [D]o not tolerate any legislation which would introduce into the family those practices which are opposed to the natural law of God.”

  When the Canadian bishops met in September, this document fuelled debate about their role and their relationship with the political process. An intense lobbying effort began, and Catholic Liberal legislators felt the pressure acutely—none more so than John Turner. In response he deftly turned his close ties with Catholic leaders into an advantage. He argued with them privately that the abortion legislation merely “codified” what was already the existing situation in common law jurisdictions. The proposed legislation, which provided for legal abortion on the advice of three doctors when the mother’s health was in danger, reflected the fact that in Canada and other common law jurisdictions, the courts, for more than fifty years, had not allowed a single prosecution against a mother or a doctor for an abortion when the mother’s survival was in question. Turner and Trudeau found the Quebec Catholic Church more willing to accept the new legislation than the Catholic Church in English Canada. Perhaps the reason lay in the strong support for the reforms by the United Church, the largest Protestant denomination in the country. During the first parliamentary session, the strong support across party lines for the Criminal Code reform began to dissolve as anti-abortion crusaders battled with others who considered the reforms too hesitant.22

  Faced with intense pressure, Turner asked for a meeting with the executive of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. Under the leadership of Bishop Alex Carter of North Bay, they met with Turner at the Cercle Universitaire, an old Ottawa mansion that was now an exclusive private club. Turner made his standard argument that the changes were simply “codification” of what currently existed in the law. At that point Bishop Carter interjected to end the meeting with the words: “Gentlemen, I think John has convinced us. Let’s have a drink.” The issue, however, did not disappear—indeed, concern about the Pope’s reaction to the omnibus bill affected Canadian planning for Trudeau’s visit to the Vatican in January 1969. Moreover, the longtime secretary of the Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bernard Daly, has a different memory of the understanding arrived at that day, one that disputes the agreement Turner claimed was reached.23 Whatever the outcome, Turner left the meeting ready to move forward with legislation ending the threat of life imprisonment for doctors who approved abortions.

  Polls generally favoured the change, as they did for divorce, where existing practices seemed ridiculous. Because adultery was the major ground for divorce, lawyers would pay to “set up” male or female clients who wanted divorces, and courts winked at the fraud. However, public opinion was not so accepting of the proposed reform in the laws concerning homosexuality. In the final days of the debate on the Criminal Code amendments in the spring of 1969, the suggested change to allow physical intimacy or other “indecent” acts between any two consenting adults caused lively debates in Parliament. Under the existing law, anyone committing “buggery or bestiality” with another consenting adult—even in private—was liable for imprisonment of fourteen years, while “gross indecency,” an undefined act, resulted in a sentence of up to five years. The proposed change would end criminal sanctions for such activities.24

  A firm in Trudeau’s own riding took a poll indicating that the divorce and abortion reforms were popular with Canadians, with 83 percent favouring the former and 73 percent the latter. However, the proposed changes in legislation dealing with homosexual acts were not popular: only 24 percent approved and 76 percent disagreed. Ironically, Trudeau had fewer doubts about this legislative change than he had about the other two major reforms. He had, in the early fifties, tried to help a prominent Quebec literary figure who had been barred from a job because of alleged homosexuality; many of his friends were gay, as were a number of Cabinet members he would appoint, and he thought the prohibition of private behaviour was a flagrant denial of civil rights. As the reform bill neared approval, the parliamentary debate reflected the polling results, and the homosexual legislation became the major focus. The attack became ferocious and thousands of letters and petitions of protest flooded Parliament Hill, even though several ministers, including Trudeau and Turner, consistently minimized the extent of the changes. A resident of Jasper wrote to Turner: “This present Government … will go down in history as the Government which made homosexual acts legal within this country. I imagine many homosexuals did not practice this vice because it had been illegal, and they had enough respect for the law to contain their desires.” Now they surely would “because of your Bill!” Turner argued passionately that he continued to believe that the acts to be permitted among two consenting adults were “physically and morally repugnant, but they were now considered private conduct beyond the reach of the state.” In the final debate, Diefenbaker, who
liked Turner, asked why he was “carrying” the issue, and as so often was the case, Diefenbaker answered his own question: “I know why he is carrying it; he has got a dagger in his back, and on the hand of that dagger is the hand of the prime minister.” Créditiste leader Réal Caouette offered the most peculiar interpretation of the new legislation: “Being homosexual is now okay, as long as it is in private between consenting Liberals.”25

  Despite the angry words in the House, the exchange attracted surprisingly little public attention. In April-May 1968, the debates over foreign policy and the Official Languages Bill dominated the attention of Parliament and Cabinet. And, of course, the Canadian reforms were responding to changes in other Western democracies. Trudeau, and especially Turner, continued to attest that these legislative changes represented only a minor challenge to traditional religious and moral positions. Their arguments have proved convincing to some historians. Andrew Thompson, for example, entitled his study of the Criminal Code reforms as “Slow to Leave the Bedrooms of the Nation.” He refers to a pamphlet issued by NDP member of Parliament Ed Broadbent, which attacked Trudeau’s reforms and derisively dismissed the prime minister as a “swinging Mackenzie King who wanted a with-it generation to accept a conservative program with a clear conscience.” Yet the long-term results and the passion of both advocates and opponents suggest that the total package represented a sea change in the relationship between a watchful state and the private actions of individuals.* The debate and the legislation planted the seeds for a real public awareness of individual rights. Those sprouts grew quickly, and the culture wars of later decades were fought on those same fields.26

  The legislation, then, was not simply the product of an alteration in public attitudes. It was also a reflection of Trudeau’s commitment to a Just Society and his own view of individual rights and the public interest. His personal experience had taught him how slowly attitudes change. When he was first being considered for the Liberal leadership, Lester Pearson, that most tolerant of Canadians, had privately asked him for assurance that he was not a homosexual. During the 1968 campaign, rural Quebec commentators had mocked him about his sexual identity, and right-wing newsletters openly claimed that he was gay. The Ottawa gossip even suggested that his close relationship with his bachelor assistant and friend Michael Pitfield was homosexual in character. The FLQ manifesto, which, to Trudeau’s great annoyance, millions heard in both official languages, called Trudeau a “fairy.” The rumour even spread beyond Canada’s boundaries and made an impact. According to Henry Kissinger, Nixon disliked Trudeau from the beginning because he thought he was a “queer”—“all evidence to the contrary,” he added, laughing deeply.

  As the bachelor Trudeau neared mid-century, he began to date with the energy of a sixties teenager, and as Kissinger aptly said, “power is the greatest aphrodisiac.”27 Although some of his interests—classical music, philosophy, and political theory—were not those of most young people, he possessed a youthful flair, a romantic attachment to the wilderness, a chiselled body, a sharp wit, and, of course, power. Not surprisingly, the press was very interested in his personal life, especially when he was outside Canada. Trudeau usually revelled in the attention. When an attractive female reporter in Hawaii asked him what it was like to be “the world’s most eligible bachelor,” he replied that he didn’t benefit from it too much:

  “For instance,” he speculated, “if I were to ask you for a date tonight—”

  “I’d say no,” she interrupted, “because I’m married.”

  “Because you’re married …” he responded, “… well, you shouldn’t hide your ring under your notebook.”28

  In the later sixties his mood shifted, and he spoke surprisingly freely about wanting to abandon his bachelorhood. Perhaps it was the commitment to pursuing the leadership that had prompted such thoughts: his hope for a family was certainly an issue that had weighed on his mind when he’d embarked on the leadership quest and even caused him to consider turning down the historic opportunity. Later, after he became prime minister, reporters quizzed Trudeau at the Ottawa airport about rumours that he had been married during his trip to the North in July 1968. He denied the suppositions but then replied, surprisingly: “I’m constantly thinking of marriage.” To a CBC reporter in a 1968 year-end interview, he responded that instead of making a resolution to remain a bachelor, he was “rather despondent that leap year should have passed by without my really having had time to make the kind of deal I would have liked. But, never mind,” he said. “This year I’ll be taking initiatives!”29 And he did.

  Margaret Sinclair remained very much in his mind and was often by his side after Trudeau wooed her following their encounter at the leadership convention. By Christmas 1969, Trudeau and Margaret “were confessing to each other that [they] were unmistakably in love.” Certainly, there were doubts: he was too old and she too young and different. They saw each other secretly in the fall of 1969 and spent weekends at Harrington Lake, where they rumpled the beds in the other rooms to deceive the staff into believing that others had been there. There were only two public occasions in 1970: once at the National Gallery, when Margaret dressed for a costume ball as a “hippie” Juliet, and once at a dinner party at the home of Wendy and Tim Porteous. At the gallery, groups froze when they came near, and Margaret, surprised by the coolness of her welcome, sobbed uncontrollably after they left. At the Porteous home, everyone spoke French, which Margaret did not understand. For a brief time in the winter of 1970 the two broke up. Margaret began dating a divinity student, and Trudeau and Streisand had their fling. But then, at Easter, shortly after Pierre and Barbra had gone their separate ways, Pierre and Jean Marchand spent a ski holiday at Whistler, and Margaret met up with Trudeau there. Romance blossomed again, and Margaret decided to enroll at the University of Ottawa for the fall term in the Department of Psychology. As she warmed to Pierre, he, not surprisingly, pulled back, telling her she was “too young and too romantic.” They broke up once more and Margaret returned to British Columbia, but then he called during a visit to Vancouver in early summer 1970 and asked her to go scuba diving with him in the Caribbean. “What for?” she fumed. “More pain? I can’t go on playing this sort of life.” He begged for patience and asked her to fly back to Ottawa with him.30

  She then spent a weekend with him at Harrington Lake, and one summer afternoon beside the shimmering water, Trudeau, entranced, murmured that they should talk about marriage. It was not a proposal, he said later, but Margaret thought it was. As one of Trudeau’s closest friends remarked, Pierre was playing dangerously in those times. Margaret jumped to her feet, flung her arms around him, and exclaimed, “When? Tomorrow?” A startled Trudeau replied, “Let’s take it easy,” but Margaret jumped into the lake and swam around in circles “like a frenzied dolphin.” When she finally emerged from the water, Pierre set out some conditions: she should be “a good faithful wife to him, give up drugs, and stop being so flighty.” He warned her that he was fifty years old and “extremely solitary by nature.” Trudeau was troubled. Had he gone too far? As Margaret wrote later: “This period was the closest I ever came to seeing Pierre out of full control in all our time together.” While becoming “most attentive and loving,” he believed, in Margaret’s words, “that he must convince himself that it would work.” The year had been rough politically, with language battles in Montreal streets, continual labour strife, and Aboriginal protests throughout the country.

  Trudeau decided to take a break in the month of August, in the Caribbean with Margaret and the noted ocean scientist Dr. Joe MacInnis and his wife, Debby. He then vacationed alone that summer at the Aga Khan’s home in Sardinia and on a yacht in the Mediterranean. He also decided to speak with his long-time friend Carroll Guérin.31

  Carroll had spent much of her time in Europe and England in recent years and had been on a spiritual quest, including a period in a monastery.* For these reasons, she had seen Trudeau only intermittently since he had entered politics, althoug
h she remained emotionally committed and dated no others until the late sixties. Strikingly beautiful, Catholic, liberal, fluently trilingual, independently wealthy, and knowledgeable about the arts, Carroll was not in awe of Trudeau, and their relationship was full of respect and playfulness. Over the years, he had raised the question of marriage, to the point where he began one conversation with the disclaimer: “Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to marry me today.” Now he told her he was seriously contemplating marriage (to Margaret Sinclair), and referring to their discussions of the past brought the topic up one last time, but Carroll quickly turned it away. “No,” she replied. She did not think Trudeau could share the spiritual life she was devoted to and told him that, because they “could not meet at that level of togetherness which would come from Grace,” marriage was not a good idea. She also knew that he wanted children, and her health might make that difficult. She has a letter thanking her for her thoughtfulness and for considering his proposal.32