MOUNTIE WAS TRUDEAU’S CHIEF SECURITY OFFICER
‘My job is to protect you from others, not yourself,’ he told PM
Barry Samuel Moss Born: May 13, 1929, in Montreal Died: Nov. 16, 2014, in Newmarket, Ont.
When I was growing up in Montreal in the late ’60s Trudeaumania was in full swing. We all loved to read stories in the paper about our slightly scandalous, playboy prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
It started to abate in 1971 when Canada’s most eligible bachelor married Margaret Sinclair, but I was still eagerly looking for photos of the PM in the Montreal Star. Not only to see Trudeau, but to see my Uncle Barry somewhere in the background, usually in profile as he scanned the crowds for threats. He was the “man behind the man.”
My father’s only brother, Barry Moss, decided at an early age that he wanted to join the RCMP. It would be a decision he would never regret. He started his career in several communities in Northern Ontario where he met his wife Edith. They married and moved to Blackburn Hamlet in Ottawa which was to remain the family home for over 40 years.
He had two children: Patty, born in 1958, and Barbara born in 1961. He loved being a family man and at the time of his death his children, their spouses and his six grandchildren mourned the smiley and loving man who had been a huge part of their life for so long.
He rose through the ranks at the RCMP, reaching the rank of chief superintendent, and he was chief security officer for the PM from 1971 to 1976.
He accompanied the PM and Margaret on many foreign trips, both official and private, and through two election campaigns, in 1972 and 1974.
He travelled across Canada and to, among other places: Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua, China, Japan, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, England, Denmark and Washington, D.C. He was Trudeau’s only bodyguard when he travelled alone; a second would join my uncle when Margaret accompanied him.
A letter written by Justin Trudeau at the time of Barry’s death noted that “most children do not grow up with security detail accompanying them and their families on trips, but for me it was normal. For five years, my family and I were fortunate to have Barry watching over us, and I speak for many people when I say he will be sorely missed.”
Barry once showed me a photo of him in a rowboat with Justin on his lap, and I didn’t mind sharing my uncle with such a celebrated child.
My uncle recalled in his own words what it was like to watch over such an interesting personality as Pierre Elliott Trudeau: “On a private trip to the Caribbean (when I first started to travel with Mr. Trudeau), Dr. Joe MacInnis, the PM and their wives went scuba diving. We went out in a large raft in the ocean and four of them went diving while I remained aboard the raft. When he resurfaced, Mr. Trudeau asked me if I wasn’t concerned about him being so long underwater, and didn’t I worry about what might happen to him. ’No, sir,’ I said, ‘My job is to protect you from others, not yourself.’ ”
The fact that Trudeau lived a long healthy life showed that he did his job well. My Uncle Barry was not a famous or public man, but like many people who serve in the type of role that he did, he was just doing his job with integrity and he deserves the thanks of all Canadians for having done it well.