HUMBLE ABODE

24 Sussex’s strange effect on its inhabitants.

24 Sussex Drive, the official residence of the prime minister, is no ordinary address in Canada.

And yet the stately stone manor somehow manages to cast a spell of ordinariness over the people who live there.

Successively through the years, its inhabitants have tried to persuade Canadians that the fancy address hasn’t turned them into fancy people. The most obvious example these days is new Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, who spent the first 13 years of his life at 24 Sussex Drive, until 1984, when his prime minister father Pierre Trudeau stepped down and moved the family to Montreal.

Trudeau doesn’t hide the fact he grew up in an official residence. But consistently, despite that background, Trudeau has framed himself as an outsideOttawa politician — in his leadership campaign, and now, in his new job.

Just this week, when Trudeau unveiled his reply to Conservative attack ads, he perched himself on the edge of a desk in a classroom — a very non-political setting — and talked about his allegiance with Canadians outside the capital, who are fed up with business as usual here. “The one thing I’ve heard across the country is Canadians are tired of negativity, of cynicism, of attacks,” Trudeau explained to reporters after the ads were launched.

Many of Trudeau’s questions in the Commons, too, are also cast as messages from a world far away from 24 Sussex Drive and Ottawa.

But he’s not the only person to proclaim humble roots from the prime-ministerial home.

One of the current residents of 24 Sussex, Laureen Harper, went to some lengths this week, too, to talk about how she didn’t really move in exclusive circles, despite her exclusive address.

In an interview with The Canadian Press, Harper argued that she probably has no lessons to give Trudeau’s wife, Sophie Grégoire, about managing political life and family. In fact, Harper said, Grégoire is already more famous than the woman who currently lives at 24 Sussex. “She would walk down the street and people know her. I walk down the street and nobody would know me,” Harper said.

Harper told the Canadian Press that she flies so far under the public radar that some people don’t even know that they’re standing near the wife of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. She said it happened at a recent volleyball tournament.

“I could hear people talking, and I’m standing right beside them and they had no idea that it was me standing right there,” she said.

So what is it about 24 Sussex that makes its residents insist they are ordinary folks? Is it something they pump through the radiators?

Trudeau’s mother, Margaret, famously disliked the residence, and wrote in her 2010 book, Changing My Mind, about how she came to see 24 Sussex as a “jail, the jewel in the crown of Canada’s penitentiary system, in which I was the sole prisoner.” Brian and Mila Mulroney, meanwhile, didn’t complain too much about living there and also raised their own young family at 24 Sussex. But I do recall attending a garden party at 24 Sussex years ago, in which Mulroney was discussing how he’d paid for the roof repairs with his own money. Just an average homeowner, keeping up the maintenance duties like the rest of the guys in the neighbourhood.

Paul Martin also pulled the handyman-prime-minister routine when he moved into 24 Sussex in late 2003 — though in his case, it was just for laughs.

Comedian Rick Mercer paid a call on 24 Sussex while Martin briefly lived there and was shown the famously chilly sunroom around the back of the house.

“It gets a little drafty here in the wintertime,” Martin said.

“We have to fix this right now,” Mercer said. The two men then set out on a shopping excursion to Canadian Tire, where they picked up some window-insulation film, which Mercer and Martin then installed themselves with hair dryers.

All of these just plain folks from 24 Sussex are playing to a long-running national narrative, which has little tolerance for “elites” and requires occupants of top jobs to make ritual assurances to us about their humility.

In this culture, if you do strike it lucky enough to live in a state-subsidized stone mansion on the banks of the Ottawa River, you have to talk a lot about hard work.

And speaking of work, apparently 24 Sussex is in “urgent” need of some renovation and maintenance. But the Harpers, in keeping with our demand for the residents to stay humble, have consistently balked at money being spent to improve their living conditions. So it’s going to take a while for the contractors to get in there and fix what needs fixing at one of Canada’s most exclusive properties.

When they do, they might want to check out what it is about the home that makes its inhabitants eager to tell us they don’t really belong there. sdelacourt@thestar.ca

Paul Martin played home handyman when visited at the manor by comedian Rick Mercer