Trudeaumania (1.0)
There are still many Canadians who remember the impact of those flickering television images from nearly half a century ago. It was June 24, 1968, and the eve of a federal election. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada’s newly anointed prime minister, was confronting a crowd of rioting Quebec separatists in Montreal’s Parc La Fontaine. There had already been death threats from terrorists, so when objects started flying at the reviewing stand, dignitaries including Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau and Quebec premier Daniel Johnson felt it prudent to take shelter. But Trudeau remained — defiantly facing down his enemies.
Historian Robert Wright calls this “one of the dramatic moments in Canadian history.”
When the Liberals emerged victorious the next day, winning the majority government that had eluded them during the years of Lester B. Pearson’s prime ministership, their win seemed almost an anticlimax to the turbulence of the night before.
In his new book, Trudeaumania, Wright examines the phenomenon of the cerebral Quebec academic who rose somewhat improbably to high office at a time when the country’s future was in jeopardy. Wright, now 55, was only a child when all this happened, but his meticulous research and sense of high drama have allowed him to re-create those Saint-JeanBaptiste Day riots with a compelling you-are-there immediacy.
Making them the prologue to his book was an inspired move, because it thrusts us quickly into the constitutionalturmoiltouchedoffbyQuebec’s Quiet Revolution, introducing us to some of the key players in the struggle for national unity — from anxious Ottawa federalists to terrorist bombers in Quebec. It also starts guiding us into the complex mind of the hipster Montrealer who was to give Canada its own Camelot mythology.
It’s a mythology that Wright sometimes questions in this supremely readable volume. It’s also one Trudeau himself would shrug off: Indeed, he was doing so the very morning after the riots. Asked by a journalist why he hadn’t left the stand the night before, Trudeau laconically replied: “I was curious. I wanted to see what was happening.” This was classic Trudeau.
The salient moments of a remarkably speedy rise to power are vividly evoked here: Pearson’s crucial decision in 1965 to bring three committed Quebec federalists — Trudeau, labour leader Jean Marchand and journalist Gerard Pelletier — to Ottawa; Trudeau’s stellar performance as a taboo-busting minister of justice; his successful bid to succeed Pearson as Liberal leader and prime minister; his subsequent federal election victory over Robert Stanfield’s Conservatives.
Aspects of the personal style that contributed to the Trudeau legend do find reinforcement in this book, despite its author’s concern for setting the record straight. One can smile at the commotion that erupted in the Commons when he showed up wearing an ascot.
Equally, one can admire his low-key defence of legislation decriminalizing homosexuality — when he observed nonchalantly that the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation. And there is no doubt that the “Trudeaumania” that swept across the country was a very real thing — yet this too was part of the enigma.
Frustrated Globe and Mail columnist Scott Young put it this way: “The most difficult thing for a born-innocent bystander to understand about HarperCollins
the federal election campaign is what moves women and young girls specially to flock around Pierre Trudeau, throw themselves upon him, press their bosoms against him, act out in all ways a human parody of reason. Have any of them read his books and speeches?”
We’ve seen some of the same thing happening recently with Trudeau’s son, Justin. But in 1968, the elder Trudeau managed to rise above the frenzy and bring an intellectual rigour to that campaign, particularly when it came to his commitment to federalism and his rejection of a “two nation” solution for Canada and Quebec.
Those who lived through the constitutional battles of the late 1960s and wrote about them knew all too well that many of Pierre Trudeau’s most avid supporters had a simplistic view of him: It was enough that he was a Quebec francophone who would stand up to Quebec. That image still persists, so it’s important that Wright should balance the equation, stressing Pierre Trudeau’s hatred of nationalism in any form, coupled with a nuanced approach to federalism highlighted by his belief that a key part of the solution involved ensuring French-speaking Canadians that they belonged everywhere in the country.
Wright also does sterling service to Trudeau’s memory in reminding us of his courageous and tough-minded contribution as justice minister at the 1968 constitutional conference — an event that, in this book, provides the reader with further drama when he demolishes the soft federalism of Daniel Johnson — and of his early initiatives in support of a Charter of Rights for Canada. But Wright doesn’t flinch from the less pleasant aspects of the man — for example Trudeau’s acquiescence in the Liberal election machine’s flagrant misrepresentation of Robert Stanfield’s constitutional position during the 1968 campaign.
Wright rightly challenges the myth that Trudeau’s rise stemmed from the euphoria of Canada’s 1967 Centennial celebrations, reminding us instead of the “bleak chill” hanging over Canada as 1968 arrived. He also parts company with the late Christina McCall-Newman, whose influential book, Grits, suggested that Trudeau’s conquest of Canada was a carefully planned ascent, achieved by cunning and charisma.
“Almost nothing in the public record or Trudeau’s private papers supports this claim,” Wright says testily. “Far from it. What emerges instead is a picture of a man painfully ambivalent about seeking the nation’s top office.”
It’s unfortunate that Wright appears to approach this enthralling story from a mainly central Canadian perspective. There are times when Wright, an Ontario academic, gives the impression that the views of The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star are his main sources of media enlightenment.
Meanwhile, we continue to be seduced by the book’s succession of memorable snapshots reminding us of the real Pierre Trudeau. Who cannot relish the moment when, still reluctant to seek the Liberal leadership, he issues this warning: “If people think I would be a good choice for PM because I would be hard on Quebec, they’d better not vote for me.” Then, asked how badly he wanted to be PM, a quote from Plato: “A man who wants very badly to be head of the country should not be trusted.” No sunny ways here. For Postmedia News