JUSTIN TRUDEAU ON HIS EARLY INFLUENCES

FATHER

Pierre Trudeau

“From my first memories of my father to my last, his love for us was clear,” Justin Trudeau wrote in his autobiography, Common Ground. “That fact, more than any others, is the anchor of my childhood.”

MOTHER

Margaret Trudeau

“We didn’t really know it, or certainly didn’t label it at the time, but my mum was very much struggling with depression, with bipolarity through those years,” Trudeau said in an interview. “On kids, especially, it demands a level of care-of-parent that is perhaps not usually part of a childhood. I don’t look at it as particularly traumatic or difficult ... Part of loving my mother with everything that I had was accepting that sometimes there were tough moments.”

MATERNAL GRANDFATHER

Jimmy Sinclair

Whenever the Trudeaus were in B.C., their Grampa Sinclair played cards with them, spun war stories and in the Sinclair garden had named landmarks after the boys — Justin’s Path, Sacha’s Rock, Michel’s Lookout. After he became a politician, Trudeau said, he began to realize how influential his grandfather had been. “It wasn’t until my Aunt Heather, … my mum’s older sister, sort of pointed out to me and said, ‘Justin, as a politician, you’re not your dad; you’re your grandfather.’”

STEPFATHER

Fried Kemper

“Fried just knew he could never try to compete for fatherly affection, nor really did he want to. But he found himself a really important role in my life, particularly in Michel’s life (the youngest Trudeau brother, who died in a 1998 skiing accident) ... as a father figure that was more approachable on many levels than my father was. I mean, if we were going to talk about girls, or be teased about girls in the family, it never happened from my dad. It would always happen from Fried.”