Just Watch Me

by John English

  6. Apps is quoted in Toronto Star, June 17, 1984. Chrétien is quoted in Ron Graham, One-Eyed Kings: Promise and Illusion in Canadian Politics (Toronto: Collins, 1986), 217. I attended the convention as a delegate and many impressions are my own.

  7. Davey to Anka, April 2, 1984; Asper to Davey, March 12, 1984. Keith Davey Papers, box 32, file 36, Victoria University Library.

  8. Davey to Anka, April 2, 1984; Davey to Streisand, May 4, 1984; ibid.

  9. Globe and Mail, June 14, 1984.

  10. Ian Brown’s article was in the entertainment section of Globe and Mail, June 16, 1984. The Trudeau transcript is from Toronto Star, June 15, 1984.

  11. Toronto Star, June 15, 1984; personal notes; Globe and Mail, June 16–17, 1984.

  12. Kennedy’s moving speech to the Democratic convention in 1980 ends with these lines: “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.” I’d like to thank Jack Cunningham, a University of Toronto doctoral student, who pointed out the similarities, which are obviously not coincidental. Gordon’s denunciation of Trudeau is found in Denis Smith, Gentle Patriot: A Political Biography of Walter Gordon (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1973), 253–53.

  13. Michel Vastel, Trudeau: Le Québécois (Montréal: Les Éditions de l’Homme, 2000), 273ff.; Brian Mulroney, Memoirs 1939–1993 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2007), 301. On Gregg, see Christina McCall and Stephen Clarkson, The Heroic Delusion, vol. 2 of Trudeau and Our Times (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1994), 419. Peter C. Newman, The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister (Toronto: Random House, 2005), 80–81; Allan Gotlieb, The Washington Diaries: 1981–1989 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2006), 226–27.

  14. Photographs of the living room and Cormier-designed furniture and the multilevel exterior are found in Ernest Cormier and the Université de Montréal, ed. Isabelle Gournay (Montréal: Centre Canadien d’Architecture/ Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1990), 79. Cormier had taken excess materials from the university and incorporated them into his home.

  15. Personal memory of discussion with archivists, Aug. 1984. Interview with Alexandre Trudeau, June 2009. There are numerous memoirs of Trudeau’s retirement years in Pierre: Colleagues and Friends Talk about the Trudeau They Knew, ed. Nancy Southam (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2005), especially chap. 15, “Papa.”

  16. Robert Simmonds’ comments are found in Southam, Pierre, 119. Interview with Jim Coutts, April 2009; Trudeau, Memoirs, 348.

  17. Brooke Johnson, Trudeau Stories, copy provided by author. Conversation with Brooke Johnson, Nov. 2008.

  18. Ibid. The reports written by Trudeau can be found in full on the website of the InterAction Council: http://interactioncouncil.org/. Tom Axworthy accompanied Trudeau and helped with the reports. He testifies to the enormous influence of Helmut Schmidt on this organization and on Trudeau. Conversation with Tom Axworthy, Feb. 2009. Bartleman discussed the Cuba intervention by Trudeau with me in Jan. 2007, and while Trudeau’s influence is unclear the conversation between Trudeau and Castro most certainly occurred.

  19. Alexandre Trudeau, “Introduction,” to Pierre Trudeau and Jacques Hébert, Two Innocents in Red China, ed. Alexandre Trudeau (Vancouver and Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 2007; original 1961),11–12. My comments here derive from discussions and correspondence on the subject with Alexandre Trudeau. For a debate about the influence of Catholicism and Trudeau’s attraction to “authoritarian” approaches, see the comments in John English, Richard Gwyn, and P. Whitney Lackenbauer, eds., The Hidden Pierre Trudeau: The Faith behind the Politics (Ottawa: Novalis, 2004), particularly the exchanges between the philosopher of religion Gregory Baum and religious sociologist David Seljack (145–50). Tom Axworthy commented: “I think [Trudeau] was rather agnostic about the use of the state, except as a means to try to expand human freedom; restricting in one case, but allowing it to exercise some measure of regulation on the market on the other” (150).

  20. There are numerous accounts of these events. Trudeau, Memoirs, 358ff.; Mulroney, Memoirs, 508–28; André Burelle, Pierre Elliott Trudeau: L’Intellectuel et la Politique (Montréal: Fides, 2005), section 7; L. Ian MacDonald, From Bourassa to Bourassa: Wilderness to Restoration, 2nd ed. (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2002), chap. 22; Clarkson and McCall, Heroic Delusion, 425ff.; and especially Trudeau’s articles in Toronto Star and La Presse, May 27, 1987, and his interview with Barbara Frum on CBC at http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/media/topics/368-2083/. More generally, see the fullest account in Andrew Cohen, A Deal Undone: The Making and Breaking of the Meech Lake Accord (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1990).

  21. Montreal Gazette, March 30, 1988; and Globe and Mail, March 30, 1988.

  22. Michael Bliss, quoted in Robert Bothwell, Canada and Quebec: One Country, Two Histories, rev. ed. (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1998), 193; Mulroney, Memoirs, 767.

  23. The Canadian Encyclopedia article on Bill 178, the Quebec language bill limiting the use of English, is found at http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0009100. Interview with Paul Martin, May 2009.

  24. The speech was published as Fatal Tilt: Speaking Out about Sovereignty (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1991), 16. For Dickson’s reaction, see Robert J. Sharpe and Kent Roach, Brian Dickson: A Judge’s Journey (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 279–81.

  25. The Maclean’s article was reprinted in Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Against the Current: Selected Writings, 1939–1996, ed. Gérard Pelletier (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1996), 262–74. Vastel, Trudeau, 297, discusses the impact of Trudeau, which is confirmed in the definitive academic study by Richard Johnston et al., The Challenge of Direct Democracy: The 1992 Canadian Referendum (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1996). Mulroney’s comments are in his Memoirs, 955. Bob Rae’s comments are in Susan Delacourt, United We Fall: The Crisis of Democracy in Canada (Toronto: Viking, 1993), 183–84. Delacourt’s book is the best account of Charlottetown’s failure.

  26. From the Maclean’s article in Pelletier, ed., Against the Current, 274.

  27. Stephen Clarkson and Christina McCall, The Magnificent Obsession, vol. 1 of Trudeau and Our Times (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990), 9; conversation with Richard O’Hagan, May 2009; Thomas S. Axworthy and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, eds., Towards a Just Society: The Trudeau Years (Markham, Ont.: Viking, 1990); Ivan Head and Pierre Trudeau, The Canadian Way: Shaping Canada’s Foreign Policy, 1968–1984 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1995); J.L. Granatstein and Robert Bothwell, Pirouette: Pierre Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990); Trudeau, Memoirs; J.L. Granatstein, The Ottawa Men: The Civil Service Mandarins 1935–1957 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1982), 278. After praising earlier prime ministers, including Diefenbaker, for respecting the impartiality and independence of the civil service, Granatstein wrote: “Whether such a judgement could now be made—after almost a decade and a half of Trudeau government, and the politicization of the bureaucracy from the office of the Clerk of the Privy Council downward—is much less certain.”

  28. Interview with Jacques Hébert, Feb. 2006. Powe wrote about the children in “The Lion in Winter,” in Trudeau’s Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, ed. Andrew Cohen and J.L. Granatstein (Toronto: Random House, 1998), 401. See also B.W. Powe, The Mystic Trudeau: The Fire and the Rose (Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2007).

  29. Globe and Mail, Sept. 6, 1991; interview with Alexandre Trudeau, June 2009.

  30. Trudeau makes the comment in a caption beside a photograph of himself and Chrétien taken in 1990 (Memoirs, 365). The Chrétien caucus comment is from personal memory.

  31. Catherine Annau, “The Sphinx,” in Trudeau Albums, Karen Alliston, Rick Archbold, Jennifer Glossop, Alison Maclean, Ivon Owen, eds. (Toronto: Penguin, 2000), 145.

  32. Le Devoir, June 28, 1997. The comments about t
he impact of Pelletier’s death are made by all who knew both men well.

  33. On his questioning of his faith after Michel’s death, see Ron Graham, “The Unending Spiritual Search,” in Hidden Pierre, ed. English, Gwyn, and Lackenbauer, 103. Confidential interviews.

  34. Tetley’s account appeared in Toronto Star, Sept. 28, 2001. Maclean’s was consulted online at http://thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0011606.

  35. Montreal Gazette, Sept. 29, 2000; Le Devoir, Sept. 29, 2000. The “newsmaker of the year” poll and Trudeau’s response are described in Trudeau Albums, 156. John Ralston Saul’s introduction to Nino Ricci, Pierre Elliott Trudeau (Toronto: Penguin, 2009), xiii. The comparison with Lincoln is in Guy Pratte, “What Makes a Country? Trudeau’s Failure as a Leader,” in Cohen and Granatstein, eds., Trudeau’s Shadow, 356–66.

  36. National Post, Oct. 5, 2000; New York Times, Oct. 6, 2000.

  37. “Pierre Elliott Trudeau 1919–2000,” Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal, personal copy. Justin Trudeau eulogy, Toronto Star, Oct. 4, 2000.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I must first thank the family of Pierre Elliott Trudeau and the executors of his estate for asking me to write this biography. The Trudeau family is deeply interested in and knowledgeable about history, literature, and, of course, Canadian politics. They gave me full access to Trudeau’s personal papers, which form the core of this volume. Justin Trudeau and Sophie Grégoire, Alexandre Trudeau and Zoë Bedos, and Margaret Trudeau have all shared their memories and offered hospitality as I carried out my research, and I thank them for their generosity and for the complete freedom to write what I believe to be true about Pierre Trudeau.

  As with volume 1, this volume has benefited from the generous support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, which permitted me to employ several of my doctoral students to assist me in the creation of this book: Matthew Bunch, Jason Churchill, Beatrice Orchard, Andrew Thompson, and Ryan Touhey. Their own thesis research contributed greatly to this tome.

  I have dedicated this volume to my brother, who was an active member of the New Democratic Party when Pierre Trudeau was prime minister. My mother always supported the Liberal Party and Trudeau, while my father always cancelled out her vote until he, too, finally voted Liberal when I became a candidate. By that time, however, Trudeau was out of politics. I learned from them that different political opinions have legitimacy and that differences in politics do not mean that people cannot have a happy marriage, which my parents certainly did. I also owe much to my wife, Hilde, who died of cancer just as I was completing volume 1, and to my son, Jonathan, who follows politics closely and diligently checks my facts about the past and the present. I would also like to thank my mother-in-law, Barbara Abt, and my sister-in-law, Linda Abt, for their support, and Angela Granic for her great assistance.

  Many friends, colleagues, and associates have been enormously helpful in the writing of these two volumes. Although I did not know Pierre Trudeau—I met him a few times, but he would not have recognized me had I walked past him—my own life has often intersected with his work and his associates. It is surely a commentary on Trudeau’s relationship with his political party that even though I was a constituency president and a campaign chair from 1977 to 1980, I spoke with him only once—during the week before he resigned. I served again as a constituency president in his last government, but I never met him or talked to him during those years. Nevertheless, I have known many of his Cabinet ministers and his chief political strategists for over three decades, and some of his closest and most influential friends for almost four decades. I have attended political conventions where his influence dominated, and like all Canadians, I watched Pierre Trudeau as his extraordinary career deeply affected our lives.

  My sources for this book are, therefore, often personal memory and impressions, formed long ago but mediated by time and historical interpretation. Several years ago I heard the anger of Jack Pickersgill, for example, a Liberal political giant of an earlier time who had profound doubts about some of the paths Trudeau followed. I was privileged in the mid-seventies to hear a lively debate about Trudeau’s merits between Paul Martin and Allan MacEachen, fuelled by fine scotch. These two astute and experienced politicians deeply disagreed, with Martin, then Canada’s high commissioner to the United Kingdom, arguing for the prosecution while his minister, MacEachen, defended Trudeau with expected eloquence and surprising affection. Later, I encountered many members of Trudeau’s immediate staff—drivers, secretaries, assistants, and guards—who shared MacEachen’s fondness for Trudeau as a person, based on their respect for a decent, caring, and fair human being. Leaders from Mao through Churchill have been exposed in harsh light by physicians, valets, and others who attended the daily needs of their great employers. For Trudeau, the opposite seems true, as Nancy Southam’s valuable collection of personal memories of the former prime minister clearly demonstrates.

  As a generalization, the same structure of remembrance fits the Liberal Party during the period when Trudeau was predominant. His popularity was strongest among the rank and file, particularly within ethnic communities, while his chief detractors were often found among the higher officers of government and party. As I researched and wrote this book, I found that even as I read Trudeau’s documents and speeches, I also recalled long-ago conversations in which prominent Liberals tore into Trudeau and blamed the party’s woes on his record. They provided a necessary check on any biographer’s natural tendency to accept the protagonist’s arguments or frame of mind, and, like the debates in my own family, I hope they have introduced some balance into my understanding of the former prime minister.

  In formulating my impressions of Trudeau and his impact on Canadian politics and life, I am indebted to many people, including those who worked with me in my own political life: David Cooke, Jim Breithaupt, Elaine and Roly Rees, Betty and Peter Sims, Mary and Jim Guy, Shawky and Kathie Fahel, the late Walter Muzyka, Irene Sage, the late Vir Handa, Constantine Victoros, Munif Dakkak, Chris Karakokinos, the late Andy Borovilos, Steve Skropolis, Don and Katie Thomson, Noreen and Pat Flynn, Louise and Paul Puopolo, Janice Bryson, Jean Reilly, Wendy Angel and John Shewchuk, James Howe, Joan Euler, Basheer Habib, Marianne Apostolache, the late Tim Fitzpatrick, Merv Villemaire, Andrew and Nancy Telegdi, Janko Peric, Bryan Stortz, Pat Rutter, Jamie Martin, Dalbir Sidhu, Prakash Ahuja, Herb Epp, John Milloy, the late John Sweeney, Sue King, Carl Zehr, Jim Erb, Ray Simonson, Chris Farley, Mike Carty, the late Doug and Linda McDowell, Karen Redman, and Berry Vrbanovic.

  I would also like to thank the institutions that have supported me during the writing of this book. I entered the University of Waterloo as a student in the sixties and have been a professor there since the early seventies. It has provided a firm base for research and teaching, and I have the greatest respect for it as an extraordinary institution. My personal debts are too many to list, but I must acknowledge the support of my departmental chairs and good friends Pat Harrigan and Andrew Hunt; their superb assistants Nancy Birss, Donna Lang, and the inimitable Irene Majer; my deans Bob Kerton and Ken Coates; Provost Amit Chakma; and Trudeau’s friend and neighbour who is now my president, David Johnston. Ken McLaughlin worked with me in many capacities while I was writing this book, most recently at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), where I serve as executive director.

  At CIGI, I owe a great debt to my assistant, Lena Yost, who has helped me in so many ways for many years, and to her summer replacement, the effervescent Jen Beckermann; I also want to thank my many colleagues there: Daniel Schwanen, who stepped in as acting director for a year while I worked on this book; Andy Cooper, my deputy director and long-time collaborator; and Paul Heinbecker, who always offered a corrective view based on his distinguished service as a Canadian diplomat and Brian Mulroney’s chief foreign policy adviser. Alison De Muy and her partner, Andrew Thompson, read the manuscript, and many others helped in diverse ways. I would especially like to thank Ji
m Balsillie, the chair and founder of CIGI, who has generously given his time, vitality, and intellectual drive to guide me as I set up this foreign affairs think tank, which, in many ways, reflects Trudeau’s own view that we must now all become citizens of the world. Board members Scott Burk, Ken Cork, Cosimo Fiorenza, Dennis Kavelman, and Joy Roberts have also been supportive, as have government representatives Drew Fagan and Graham Shantz.

  More recently I have served as the general editor of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire biographique du Canada (DCB/DBC), where Robert Fraser, Willadean Leo, Geocelyne Meyers, and Loretta James are the excellent staff backing my work. My collaborator at Université Laval is Réal Bélanger, Laurier’s biographer, who once worked closely with Robert Bourassa. His wise counsel, enormous knowledge of Quebec history, and warm friendship have sustained me often. I also owe a great debt to my predecessor at the DCB, Ramsay Cook, who has written a splendid personal memoir of his own interaction with Pierre Trudeau; like Cook himself, it is wise, generous, and intellectually first class.

  Many others who have written about Trudeau have provided a solid foundation on which to build this biography. There are now dozens of books on Trudeau, but special mention should be made of Stephen Clarkson and Christina McCall’s two-volume Trudeau and Our Times, which is magisterial in its scope; Richard Gwyn’s Northern Magus, an early classic; George Radwanski’s Trudeau, based on the best contemporary interviews with Trudeau; Anthony Westell’s Paradox, an insightful tract; Monique and Max Nemni’s much-needed intellectual biography of Trudeau, Young Trudeau; Michel Vastel’s provocative Trudeau: Le Québécois; André Burelle’s highly critical Pierre Trudeau: L’Intellectuel et la Politique; and two recent personal accounts of Trudeau—Bruce Powe’s Mystic Trudeau: The Fire and the Rose and Nino Ricci’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Readers of this second volume will recognize the importance of three published diaries—by Paul Martin Sr.; Trudeau aide Patrick Gossage; and Liberal MP Roy MacLaren. I also owe an enormous debt to the National Film Board and especially the CBC /Radio-Canada, whose archives contain a remarkable visual record of Trudeau, which I consulted frequently. Interestingly, when my short biography of Trudeau for the DCB/DBC volume on Canada’s prime ministers was edited by the fine editorial team at Laval, they checked the Trudeau quotations against the visual or audio record in the CBC archive, and many times the print record was not identical with what Trudeau actually said. After that experience, I have tried, in my research for this volume, to check the electronic records against the print, again with similar results.