Trudeau honours MacEachen as ‘peerless’ parliamentarian
ANTIGONISH, N.S. — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau remembered Allan MacEachen as a “once-in-a-lifetime” calibre cabinet minister who helped transform Canada into the country of its citizens’ dreams at a memorial service in Nova Scotia.
Politicians of various generations were among the crowd at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish on Sunday to commemorate MacEachen, who died at the age of 96 last week.
Speakers described the longserving Liberal MP and senator from Nova Scotia as a consummate public servant whose mix of political savvy and devotion to his constituents helped usher in some of the most ambitious Canadian social reforms of the postwar era.
“Whether they credit him or not, Canadians are living in the country that Allan J. built, and they like it,” Trudeau told the crowd. “Let us honour him by recommitting ourselves as Canadians to continuing his life’s work of hard things done well.
“His life’s work — a Canada in which good enough is never good enough, and better is always possible.”
Former prime minister Jean Chretien was among the honorary pallbearers as Mounties in serge carried a flag-draped coffin into the auditorium to the wail of bagpipes, the musician having flown in from Scotland in keeping with MacEachen’s last wishes.
The prime minister bowed his head before MacEachen’s coffin as he took to the stage in a tartan tie honouring his own Scottish heritage.
Trudeau said MacEachen receives too little credit for helping his father, Pierre, execute their shared vision for Canada when he was prime minister.
MacEachen was the legislative muscle behind many Canadian social programs, including the creation of medicare in the 1960s, he said.
The political allies were a “match made in heaven,” said Trudeau, their friendship founded on the bedrock belief that all people are created equal.