Justin’s first campaign
A snapshot from election day 1972
Oct. 30, 1972. Liberal leader Pierre Trudeau had just voted in Ottawa and was putting on a bit of an acrobatic show with his son Justin, 10 months. As the Star reported: “Do your stunts,” he said to Justin, gurgling and applecheeked in a white parka. “Everyone wants to see how smart he is.”
The day’s result: a slim minority for Trudeau over Robert Stanfield’s Conservatives.
Justin Trudeau recalls: “I would have been less than a year old in ’72, but I have memories of election campaigns — particularly in ’79 and ’80 when we got to travel across the country by train, and loved it . . .
“My father was always tossing us up in the air, always doing acrobatics with us, getting us to jump off the tops of dressers into his arms, so we’d know how to push our boundaries but also trust him.
“. . . He was very physical with us and he used to challenge us on every different aspect — whether it was spiritually, with his theological challenges around religion, or whether it was intellectually, with debates around the dinner table, or physically, with games and feats of strength. And I certainly have adopted that approach with my kids.
“I look at that (photo) and I smile, because I’m constantly tossing my kids around and balancing them, and even strangers’ kids, in my arms.”
— As told to Jim Coyle
Behind the lens: Legendary Star photographer Boris Spremo, who covered Pierre Trudeau from coast to coast, remembers this picture well, 43 years later, and also the challenges of covering Trudeau
père: “At one point he grabbed his kid and threw him up in the air, put him upside down. He was very spontaneous. You had to watch him all the time or you’d miss something.”
Justin Trudeau takes a page from his father’s playbook and hoists his younger son, Hadrien, into the air during a campaign stop in Montreal last month.