Just Watch Me

by John English

  10. John Campbell, The Iron Lady, vol. 2 of Margaret Thatcher (London: Pimlico, 2004), 319; Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 168.

  11. Trudeau and Head describe the plans for Montebello and Cancún in Canadian Way, 158ff. The major study of Canadian development assistance points out that Canadian “ODA” rose from $122.35 million in 1965–66 to $903.51 million in 1975–76. David Morrison, Aid and Ebb Tide: A History of CIDA and Canadian Development Assistance (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1998), 8. Comments on Head’s role and the reasons for his departure were discussed by several of Trudeau’s former assistants at a special interview/dinner organized by Library and Archives Canada, March 17, 2003. When I questioned why Head had left the Prime Minister’s Office, the general view was that it was his own choice and that his influence remained large.

  12. MacGuigan’s posthumous memoir of his years as external affairs minister details the many interventions. See Mark MacGuigan, An Inside Look at External Affairs during the Trudeau Years: The Memoirs of Mark MacGuigan, ed. P. Whitney Lackenbauer (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2002). He describes his frustration with Trudeau’s interventions and his differences on East-West matters in chap. 2. The full version is available in Fonds John English, University of Waterloo Archives. Robert Bothwell has written that “MacGuigan was not close to Trudeau, and the prime minister often seemed to respect neither his political position nor his policy. MacGuigan swallowed hard.” Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion, 377.

  13. John Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin, 2005), 211–12.

  14. On the meetings, see Roy Rempel, Counterweights: The Failure of Canada’s German and European Policy, 1955–1995 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1996), 87. Trudeau wrote to Schmidt on July 21, 1978, upon his return from Germany: “During the two days we spent sailing, we had the opportunity to go more deeply into the issues confronting us in the world at large and we discussed the relations between the Federal Republic and Canada. On both counts I was gratified to note the large degree of convergence in our approach.” He added: “You are becoming a familiar figure to Canadians, and I am sure each visit will bring you a warmer welcome than the last.” Archiv der sozialen Demokratie, file L-E-K Schmidt. I would like to thank Dr. Wilhelm Bleek for this reference. With Roy Rempel and Hans Stallman, he has written an excellent account of the friendship between Trudeau and Schmidt, “Die Männerfreundschaft zwischen zwei politischen Kapitänen,” Zeitschrift für Kanada Studien 20, no. 2 (2000): 62–86. On Schmidt’s view of Carter, see Helmut Schmidt, Men and Powers: A Political Retrospective, trans. Ruth Hein (New York: Random House, 1989), 181–87. In a note to Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, an official reported that “this Federal Chancellor and many, many Germans believe this American Administration does not understand the FRG’s problems” (underlining in original). Robert Blackwill to Brzezinski, Oct. 12, 1979, NSF Brzezinski, President’s Correspondence with Foreign Leaders, box 7, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library.

  15. See Rempel, Counterweights, 98. John Halstead, Canada’s leading authority on Germany at the time, confirmed the importance of Schmidt’s influence in a conversation with me.

  16. These statistics are taken from the best account of Canadian development spending and policy: Morrison, Aid and Ebb Tide, 453–54.

  17. In the Canadian Interest? Third World Development in the 1980s (Ottawa: The North-South Institute, 1980). Another analysis of Trudeau’s performance claims that “Canada’s relations with the Third World were better conceived, and worse managed, than they deserved to be.” Nevertheless, Jack Granatstein and Robert Bothwell conclude: “The balance is, nevertheless, ever so slightly favourable.” Pirouette, 307.

  18. An excellent example of criticism at the time is Robert Carty and Virginia Smith, Perpetuating Poverty: The Political Economy of Canadian Foreign Aid (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1981). Another excellent analysis, which discusses these criticisms, is Kim Nossal, “Personal Diplomacy and National Behaviour: Trudeau’s North-South Initiatives,” Dalhousie Review 62 (summer 1982): 278–91. MacGuigan’s comments are found in his Inside Look, 76.

  19. The trips are described in R.B. Byers, ed., Canadian Annual Review of Politics and Public Affairs 1981 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 311–12. The road to Cancún is described in Head and Trudeau, Canadian Way, 158ff.

  20. Bernard Wood, “Canada’s Views on North-South Negotiations,” Third World Quarterly 3 (Oct. 1981): 651.

  21. Canada, House of Commons Debates (15 June 1981).

  22. Schmidt, Men and Powers, 246. On Schmidt’s and Reagan’s initial views of Mitterrand, see Globe and Mail, July 16, 1981, reporting a comment of a German official indicating that Schmidt thought Mitterrand a pinko, and Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York: Random House, 1999), 442. On Thatcher and Reagan on the White House lawn, see Campbell, Iron Lady, 263. John Kirton interview with Henry Rau, former National Security Council official, May 7, 2004 (http://www.g8.utoronto.ca/oralhistory/nau040507.html). The G8 Centre at Trinity University, Toronto, is an excellent repository of literature on the institution and summit outcomes. See also Peter Hajnal, The G8 System and the G20: Evolution, Role, and Documentation (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007), which is a product of the Centre.

  23. Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2005), 549. The anecdote about Thatcher and Mitterrand is found in Morris, Dutch, 442.

  24. Robert Putnam and Nicholas Bayne evaluate the summits since the first at Rambouillet in 1975 in Hanging Together: Cooperation and Conflict in the Seven-Power Summits, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987). On the Japanese prime minister dozing and Trudeau playing with the rose, see Jacques Attali, Verbatim, vol. 1 of Chronique des années 1981–1986 (Paris: Fayard, 1993), 62–63. The story on the Middle East was told to me at the time by external affairs minister Mark MacGuigan. Separately, Marc Lalonde and David Smith, a Liberal activist and MP between 1980 and 1984, have confirmed the story, as has Eddie Goldenberg, Jean Chrétien’s assistant at the time.

  25. Pierre Trudeau, Memoirs (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993), 332, for anecdote about Reagan, which is repeated in slightly different form in Morris, Dutch, 442–43. The Reagan view of Mitterrand is found in ibid., 442. For Schmidt’s favourable assessment of Reagan, see his Men and Powers, 245. The comment about Reagan’s “obsession with communism” is in Trudeau, Memoirs, 329.

  26. Conversation with Dr. David Cameron, who worked at the Privy Council Office during the constitutional crisis, April 2009.

  27. Bothwell and Granatstein, Pirouette, 322–23; Morris, Dutch, 442–43; Campbell, Iron Lady, 264; and the memoir of the period by the controversial French politician Jacques Attali, who was present: Verbatim, 59–104.

  28. Office of the Prime Minister, “Prime Minister’s Statement at Joint Press Conference by Heads of Delegation in the Opera of the National Arts Centre, Ottawa, Tuesday, July 21, 1981,” personal copy.

  29. “Memorandum of Conversation,” July 16, 1981, Meese Files LOC1/9/10/3, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

  30. External Affairs, “A speech by the Right Honourable Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Prime Minister, to the United Nations Conference on Energy,” Nairobi, Kenya, Aug. 11, 1981, Statements and Speeches No. 81/22.

  31. Alexander Haig, “Memorandum for: The President,” on “Your Meetings with Other Heads of State or Government in Cancun, October 21–24,” Oct, 2, 1981, Meese Files, LOC1/9/10/3, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library; Campbell, Iron Lady, 341; Thatcher, Downing Street, 170. Trudeau’s private comments to the Commonwealth Conference are found in PM Delegation to External, Ottawa, Oct. 8, 1981, EAP, RG 25, Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, 1981, vol. 11092, file 23-3-1981, (LAC), and his public remarks are in Byers, ed., Canadian Annual Review, 314.

  32. Campbell, Iron Lady, 341; Thatcher, Downing Street, 170. Trudeau has two full pages of
colour photographs of Cancún in his Memoirs, 304–5.

  33. Head and Trudeau, Canadian Way, 159–60. Conversations with Mexican representative Andrés Rozental and German representative Hans Sulimma, Oct. 2008.

  34. Allan Gotlieb, The Washington Diaries: 1981–1989 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2006), 12–13. The threat to Canadian membership in the G7 is discussed in Granatstein and Bothwell, Pirouette, 324.

  35. Canada, House of Commons Debates (18 Dec. 1981). See MacGuigan, Inside Look, 56, for the favourable reaction from the Poles.

  36. Notre Dame University speech, May 17, 1981. Public Papers of the President of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1981 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1982), 434.

  37. Gotlieb, Washington Diaries, 61.

  38. The speech is reprinted in Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Lifting the Shadow of War, ed. C. David Crenna (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1987), 40–43.

  39. Gotlieb, Washington Diaries, 66; MacGuigan, Inside Look, 58; Alexander Haig, Caveat: Realism, Reagan, and Foreign Policy (New York: Scribner, 1984), 309.

  40. The best account of the period is found in Granatstein and Bothwell, Pirouette, chap. 12. The impact of the National Review article is discussed on pages 328–29. Zink’s article is “The Unpenetrated Problem of Pierre Trudeau,” National Review, June 25, 1982, 751–76. The Gotlieb exchange with Deaver is in Washington Diaries, 72. The Pitfield, MacGuigan, Gotlieb effort to conciliate the Americans can be followed in Gotlieb (73ff.) and is described by MacGuigan in Inside Look, 122–23.

  41. A recent history details the cruise missile issue. See John Murray Clearwater, “Just Dummies”: Cruise Missile Testing in Canada (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2006).

  42. The description of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” was not original, as Reagan’s biographer points out, but its use by the president had a dramatic impact. See Morris, Dutch, 472–73.

  43. Trudeau, Memoirs, 334.

  44. Jewett’s comments and the chanting demonstrators may be heard on the CBC Archives report by reporter Mike Duffy at http://archives.cbc.ca/war_conflict/defence/clips/1040/.

  45. MacEachen to Shultz, MacEP, July 15, 1983, MG 35 A 67, vol. 806, LAC. Verification was an area of Canadian expertise at the time. It referred to the ability of each side to confirm the other’s promises through electronic surveillance, intelligence, and disclosure.

  46. Conversation with Gale Zoë Garnett, May 2008. Gotlieb, Washington Diaries, 147–49; conversations with Paul Heinbecker, Jacques Roy, and John Seibert, Canadian foreign service officers at the residence; interview with Margot Kidder.

  47. Margot Kidder to Trudeau, May 12, May 17, and nd, 1983, TP, MG 26 020, vol. 6, file 7-3, LAC. Interview with Margot Kidder.

  48. This description comes from the excellent study of the Yakovlev-Trudeau relationship by Christopher Shulgan, a relationship which Mark MacGuigan said was “a private preserve” for Trudeau (MacGuigan, Inside Look, 9). Shulgan, The Soviet Ambassador: The Making of the Radical behind Perestroika (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2008), 248.

  49. There is an excellent account in Shulgan, 248ff. See also the account of the meeting in “Prime Minister’s Discussions with Mr. Gorbachev, May 18, 1983,” EAP, RG 25, vol. 8704, file 20-USSR-9, LAC. The report of Trudeau’s comments surprised Gotlieb, who had increasingly come to believe Trudeau was too soft on the Soviets. He wrote in his diary: “Trudeau the hardliner. Go figure.” Washington Diaries, 159.

  50. New York Times, March 9, 1983; Gaddis, Cold War, 224–25.

  51. Description of Trudeau is in New York Times, March 9, 1983.

  52. Thatcher and the prepared draft are described in Thatcher, Downing Street, 300, and the Reagans’ movie night in Morris, Dutch, 485.

  53. The Gotlieb account is in Washington Diaries, 160–62. Trudeau’s account in Head and Trudeau, Canadian Way, is surprisingly brief but takes credit for the statement quoted, 296–97. There are also good accounts in Christina McCall and Stephen Clarkson, The Heroic Delusion, vol. 2 of Trudeau and Our Times (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1994), 358–59; Morris, Dutch, 485–47; and Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion, 384.

  54. Trudeau, Memoirs, 335–36.

  55. Washington Embassy to Ottawa, Sept. 1, 1983; Pearson to Ottawa, Sept 1, 1983, MacEP, MG 35 A67, vol. 806, LAC. See Globe and Mail, Sept. 5, 1983, for details of reaction.

  56. The MacEachen file above has strong evidence of the differences between Trudeau and MacEachen on the KAL incident. Trudeau’s comments to Hersh are in Seymour Hersh, “The Target Is Destroyed”: What Really Happened to Flight 007 and What America Knew about It (New York: Random House, 1986), 245; and Thomas S. Axworthy and Pierre Trudeau, eds., Towards a Just Society: The Trudeau Years (1990; repr., Toronto: Penguin, 1992), 90. Bothwell and Granatstein, Pirouette, 364, describe the reaction to Trudeau’s description of the incident as an accident.

  57. The following section relies on an unpublished article by Foreign Affairs official historian Greg Donaghy, “The ‘Ghost of Peace’: Pierre Trudeau’s Search for Peace, 1982–84,” which Dr. Donaghy has kindly lent me. It refers to confidential documents that I am unable to consult. See also Head and Trudeau, Canadian Way, 297ff.

  58. Patrick Gossage was brought back from Washington, where he had been a press secretary at the Canadian Embassy, to assist with the press. He reported on the Oct. 7 meeting in Close to the Charisma: My Years between the Press and Pierre Elliott Trudeau (Halifax: Goodread Biographies, 1987), 255. Gotlieb, Washington Diaries, 179.

  59. The speech is published and edited “by Mr. Trudeau to improve its clarity,” in Trudeau, Lifting the Shadow, 75–80.

  60. Globe and Mail, Oct. 27–28, 1983.

  61. Granatstein and Bothwell, Pirouette, 369. Thatcher is quoted in Donaghy, “‘Ghost of Peace.’”

  62. The Chinese meeting is treated briefly without comment in Head and Trudeau, Canadian Way, 305. Geoffrey Pearson, who accompanied Trudeau, was appalled by the meeting and dismissive of Trudeau’s performance (personal memory of conversation). Geoffrey Pearson has described his travels with Trudeau to China and has attached documents he wrote at the time in Anecdotage (privately published, 2007), 49–50. Richard and Sandra Gwyn, “The Politics of Peace,” Saturday Night, May 1984, is the best contemporary article on the initiative and is based on interviews with confidential sources.

  63. Gossage, Close to the Charisma, 255; Roy MacLaren, Honourable Mentions: The Uncommon Diary of an M.P. (Toronto: Deneau, 1986), 165; and Donaghy, “‘Ghost of Peace.’”

  64. Regarding Reagan and The Day After, see Morris, Dutch, 46. James Mann, The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War (Viking: New York, 2009). Neither Canada nor Trudeau is mentioned in the book, which demonstrates Reagan’s strong antinuclear views, views that were opposed strenuously by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, among others. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (1994; repr., London: Abacus, 1995), 250.

  65. Gossage, Close to the Charisma, 256ff.; Gotlieb, Washington Diaries, 193–94.

  66. Trudeau’s comments on Fowler, “Memorandum for the Prime Minister,” Dec. 22, 1984, PCO file U-4-5, quoted in Donaghy, “‘Ghost of Peace.’” Correspondence with Gale Zoë Garnett, July 2009.

  67. MacEachen made the remarks at a collective interview with Trudeau ministers, Library and Archives Canada, Dec. 9, 2002.

  68. Conversations with Kidder and Garnett; “Kathleen and Jimmy” Sinclair to Trudeau, Jan. 14, 1984, TP, MG 26 020, vol. 17, file 17-6, LAC; Gossage, Close to the Charisma, 263; Pascale Hébert to Trudeau, Oct. 30, 1983, TP, MG 26 020, vol. 6, file 6-7, LAC; Jacques Hébert to Trudeau, Dec. 20, 1983, ibid. The book dedicated to Palme is Trudeau, Lifting the Shadow.

  69. Trudeau, Memoirs, 142.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: HIS WAY

  1. Ronald Reagan, The Reagan Diaries, ed. Douglas Brinkley (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 246; Donald Jamieson, No Place for Fools: The Political Memoirs of Don Jamieson, ed. Carmelita McGrath,
vol. 1 (St. John’s: Breakwater, 1989), 11.

  2. Jamieson, No Place for Fools, 12–14. Interview with Alexandre Trudeau, June 2009. The quotation about Trudeau in the snowstorm is from Ottawa Citizen, March 1, 1984. French politician Jacques Attali’s fascinating memoir of the period relates a conversation between Prime Minister Thatcher and President Mitterrand: Trudeau had told her, she claimed, that his peace initiative resulted from his concern about the coming Canadian election. Mitterrand responded that the cruise missile decision was very difficult for Trudeau, but Thatcher had no patience with the argument. Trudeau had not defended the cruise effectively, she scoffed, and besides, he did not have the right to raise such doubts when Canada spent only 2 percent of its GDP on defence (Verbatim, vol. 1 of Chronique des années 1981–1986 (Paris: Fayard, 1993), 522. Thatcher does not mention her disciplining of Trudeau in her memoirs, though she acknowledges that he informed her during her September 1983 visit to Canada that Mikhail Gorbachev was someone to watch. Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 320–21.

  3. These assessments are taken from Ottawa Citizen, March 1, 1984; Globe and Mail, March 1, 1984; and Montreal Gazette, March 1, 1984.

  4. Kidder to Trudeau, May 4, 1974, and undated postcard, TP, MG 26 020, vol. 6, file 7-3, LAC. Sandra and Richard Gwyn, “The Politics of Peace,” Saturday Night, May 1984, 19. Geoffrey Pearson to Trudeau, June 28, 1984, personal copy of Geoffrey Pearson.

  5. Michael Tucker, “Trudeau and the Politics of Peace,” International Perspectives (May–June 1984): 7–10; Adam Bromke and Kim Nossal, “Trudeau Rides the ‘Third Rail,’” ibid., 3–6. The second article is more sharply critical and reflects opinion within the department, as a recent unpublished paper by Greg Donaghy, head of the Historical Division of Foreign Affairs, confirms. The articles credit Trudeau for awakening Canadians to international issues but argue that resources and preparation were inadequate and that “quiet diplomacy” could have been more effective—a view Trudeau strongly opposed in his memoirs (Memoirs [Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993], 340–41) and in his speech to the Albert Einstein Peace Prize Foundation on November 13, 1983, which is published, with an introduction by David Crenna, in Lifting the Shadow of War, ed. C. David Crenna (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1987), 116–21.