Trudeau-turner rivalry sparked enduring Liberal party feud

It’s a sight you seldom see. Both the American Stars and Stripes, and the Canadian Maple Leaf flag, a few metres from each other, flapping in the breeze buffeting the Promenade des Gouverneurs overlooking the St. Lawrence River in Quebec City. Both flags at half-mast, for different reasons.

The American flag, attached to the U.S. consulate building, had been lowered in tribute to Ruth Baden Ginsburg, the Supreme Court justice whose death signaled yet another bitterly partisan fight in Washington.

The lowered Canadian flag, on a pole in Parc des Gouverneurs in front of the monument to Wolfe and Montcalm, was to mark the passing of John Napier Turner, Canada’s 17th prime minister for 79 days in 1984.

If you are to stretch for parallels, you could say both Turner and Ginsburg made significant contributions to the advancement of human freedom and dignity in their respective countries. Ginsburg’s legacy would seem to be her work as a litigator in landmark cases for women’s rights which continued in judgements from the bench of the top U.S. court.

Turner, whose legacy in his blinkof-an-eye term as prime minister is negligible, was arguably the most progressive justice minister Canada has seen, from 1968-72, under his boss and nemesis Pierre Trudeau. Turner brought in sweeping changes to the Criminal Code, including liberalizing abortion, decriminalizing homosexuality, tightening gun laws, and cracking down on drunk drivers.

That impressive record of reform gets buried by the fact he was also justice minister during the most controversial suspension of civil rights this country has ever seen with the imposition of the War Measures Act during the October Crisis of 1970.

Turner’s passing marks the sunset an era of Canadian politics, or at least Liberals politics, a Shakespearean drama featuring a long and bitter civil war within the party. It’s misleading to exaggerate it, but the rivalry between the Turner and Trudeau factions of Liberal Land shaped a half century of Canadian politics.

The contest between the two party stars began when Turner ran for the Liberal leadership in 1968 which Trudeau won on the fourth ballot, by about 250 votes over veteran Toronto minister Robert Winters.

Turner came a distant third in that race, refusing to drop out. Following the convention, Turner’s supporters maintained a network to be prepared when the opportunity came to replace Trudeau. There’s a riveting reference in a 1984 biography of Turner by Jack Cahill:

“Deep down he believed he could do a better job than Trudeau. He considered Trudeau to be an aberration in the Liberal successions anyway, not really a Liberal at all. And hadn’t Mike Pearson expressed his concerns about Trudeau on his deathbed and belatedly passed the baton to the younger man, as he should have done in the first place …”

By the time Turner ran for the leadership in 1984, after being out of politics for nearly 10 years, the Trudeau faction of the party had rallied to Jean Chretien, whose populist, streetfighter charm and patriotic fervour seemed to be more of a winning ticket than Turner who seemed like a Bay Street relic whose time had come and gone.

When Liberal Party president at the time Iona Campagnolo declared upon announcing the final ballot of the Liberal leadership race that Chretien “was second on the ballot, but first in our hearts,” the die was cast for Turner’s troubled leadership.

Chretien cashed in on all that Liberal love when he got his second chance in the 1990 leadership contest. Much of the Turner camp, embittered by Chretien’s gang’s constant plotting during his six years at the Liberal helm, had gotten behind Paul Martin, another “golden boy” saviour-in-waiting for the Liberals.

The Martin bunch returned the favour by conspiring to hasten Chretien’s departure from the leadership to make way for his impatient successor. Chretien, the story goes, called an early election in 2000 to thwart Martin’s ambitions (and also to capitalize on an opposition in disarray).

The state funeral for Turner Oct. 6 might lay to rest the mythical rivalry with Trudeau, for whom the nation held a state funeral almost exactly 20 years ago. Some might say that funeral, with the memorable image of a grieving elder son, marked the birth of a new era of Liberal ambitions.