Trudeaumania will probably not repeat itself here
That’s me on the right. You’ll recognize the guy on the left.
Only time in my life I’ve ever hugged a politician. Journalists ought never to be so gushy or bedazzled by any elected personage. But I was merely a student and Pierre Elliott Trudeau was the Prime Minister of Canada.
It was 1976, the height of Trudeaumania. And moi, editor of The Ryersonian, was tasked with (nervously) thanking the PM for speaking at what was then called Ryerson Polytechnic Institute. Someone thought it would be nifty to give Trudeau a toque and scarf in the school’s colours, purple and gold. I stuck the former on his head and wrapped the latter around his neck. He went all PDA first.
A version of that photo op ran next day on the front page of the Toronto Star — my first Page 1 appearance! I was 19. Justin Trudeau was 5. One of us got old. The other got sucked into a time warp. Trudeaumania: The Sequel.
I’m not a political animal, ascribe to no ideology, have never voted — because I don’t think journalists should exercise their franchise. But, yes, I was star-struck by PET and, yes, never fell out of love with him.
Pierre made Canada cool and sexy. He put us on the map, with his flamboyant capes and his hippie sandals, roses and his (pre/post-Maggie) arm-candy. He was a rogue who twirled impishly behind the Queen. He rode motorcycles. He said fuddle-duddle in Parliament. Amidst the FLQ crisis, he proved fearless.
He drove the political right in Canada bonkers.
He gave us a kind of Camelot North, with the beautiful flowerchild wife and their three adorable kids, two born on Christmas Day.
Four decades on, it was Justin who had Toronto all gaga-silly when he descended Wednesday on city hall. The groupie shrieks sounded just as they had all those years earlier when the father went walkabout down Yonge St., the news coverage equally fawning and demagogical as Trudeau the Younger posed agreeably for selfies — one of the things he does best, pulling up a pant leg to cheekily show off his Montreal Canadiens socks, right here in the cradle of Maple Leafs country.
Oh, he is a charmer. And, as a onetime drama teacher — among the handful of grown-up jobs that apparently qualified him for a career in politics — he knows how to work a crowd, as effortlessly as Dad. Even if, in his T.O. cameo — “TOUR DE FORCE,” the Star headlined it Thursday — Trudeau was typically vague about specifics on how or when the feds will come across with money promised the city for urgently needed fixes to transit and social housing.
After winning a third election, Pierre Trudeau famously quoted Robert Frost: “I have promises to keep/and miles to go before I sleep.’’ At his 1980 funeral, Justin poignantly paraphrased: “He kept his promises and earned his sleep.’’
But what of Justin’s myriad prom- ises, some which have already been retracted or exposed as quixotic — the kindest assessment — if not simply rosy rhetoric babble-on-the-hustings?
I am not so over-the-top infatuated with the son. Don’t feel much one way or the other, except astonishment maybe at history repeating itself. How, I ask myself, did this man of immense charisma but little substance come to hold the highest office in Canada? Loathing (wellearned) of Stephen Harper and the Tories, of course. And a huge electoral shout-out from Toronto, where the Liberals swept all 25 seats, plus 24 out of 25 in Brampton and Mississauga. Can’t remember another time when Toronto and its un-kindred 905 cousins were on the same metaphysical wavelength.
Political demagoguery makes me wince. That leads to cultish devotion and, in its worst manifestation, to fascism. I understand these are honeymoon days and they will fade. But thus far Justin’s sunny ways have amounted to little more than a fetching axiom, a tone, like President Barack Obama’s failed proclamation of hope and change.
I was in Chicago the night Obama took the stage after winning his first White House term, sitting in the press room when the flower of American political media burst into applause as the results were announced. I thought: And you call yourselves journalists.
Journalistic hagiography makes me cringe. And that’s a non-partisan observation.
Let’s talk Bill C-51, the Tories’ deeply flawed anti-terrorism legislation Justin supported and then vowed to repeal. He hasn’t said boo about it yet.
Let’s talk Bill C-36, the draconian Act that further criminalized prostitution under the Conservatives after the existing law was struck down by the Supreme Court. Let’s talk about those multi-billion-dollar middleclass tax cuts which, it now appears, will not benefit the targeted group but, instead, upper-income earners making between $89,000 and $200,000.
Let’s talk about electoral reform (OK, let’s not; it’s an arcane subject). And let’s talk about the CF-18s Trudeau insisted he’d pull out of the military coalition effort in Iraq — a mission which was to have ended in March under Harper. Yup, they’re still there — a good thing, actually, but not what Trudeau had avowed.
He got a pass on the 25,000 Syrian refugee deadline missed, which was either well-intentioned overreach or political three-card-monte. But how many passes before Justin turns into just another old-hat pol?
Meanwhile, I’ll put this Pierre & Me photo back where it’s been hanging for the last 40 years: the bathroom wall. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
I was star-struck by Pierre Elliott Trudeau and never fell out of love with him. I’m not so over-the-top infatuated with the son. Justin’s “sunny ways” have amounted to little more than an axiom so far