Correcting the rough draft of history

Is Pierre Trudeau’s famous comeback line what was actually said?

What did former prime minister Pierre Trudeau actually say to Richard Nixon upon learning that the president had called him an “a------” in his private tapes?

The media, historians and, certainly, the Internet have reported the PM’s retort as one of the all-time best comeback lines, telling us that Trudeau said: “I’ve been called worse things by better people.”

Is that a fact, or rather, now, some four decades after the event, a widely accepted, best-available version of the truth?

Certainly the Star has reported these words as fact numerous times in recent years, most recently in my “You be the Editor” column in which I referred to Ottawa columnist Tim Harper’s reference to the iconic quote in his column about the outlook for Canada-U.S. relations under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Given the widespread reporting of that quote, Harper and I were somewhat taken aback when presented with new information challenging this version.

Moreover, the source who challenged us is one we both regard as highly reliable: the Star’s (now retired) former managing editor and editorial page editor, Ian Urquhart, who was the Star reporter travelling through Europe with Trudeau in the fall of 1974 when the Nixon revelations became public.

“He did not say that. He said: ‘I’ve been called worse things by WORSE people,’ ” Urquhart told us. “I know. I was there. Indeed, I asked him the question.”

But, I told Urquhart, challenging his recollection: In his 1993 Memoirs, Trudeau himself said of Nixon’s slur, “My only response was that I had been called worse things by better people.”

Certainly this would seem to indicate that Trudeau himself, in looking back on his political life, had believed he had stated the iconic words as they have long been reported and shared online.

But, is this the most reliable version of this history?

The interests of both Canadian history and the Star’s journalism demanded more research. I called on the Star’s librarians to search through our “Pages of the Past” — or, “history as it happened.” Eventually, we found the Star’s first published report of Trudeau’s comments about Nixon’s slur.

That report was in line with Urquhart’s version of this history, although his recollection was not entirely right, either. Here’s what the Star reported on Oct. 25, 1974, in a brief report from Brussels:

“I have been called worse things by worse men, Trudeau told a press conference.”

Searching further, the library found the Globe and Mail had reported the same words: “Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said yesterday that he had been called ‘worse things by worse men’ in reference to former president Richard Nixon’s reported description of him as an a------.”

As a student of Canadian history, I’ve long been intrigued by the connection between history and journalism, that “first rough draft of history.” I know well that both — especially journalism — can be imperfect records of what happened and as new facts emerge, neither has a permanent hold on “truth.”

So, is this now the final draft of history? Did Trudeau’s words morph through the years from those first reports from an overseas press scrum of him referring to “worse things by worse men” to the now-iconic “worse things by better people.”

Certainly, “better people” has more bite and is in line with what we can envision Trudeau saying of Nixon. We want to believe it’s true. But is it fact?

To make sense of this I turned to an expert, renowned Canadian historian John English (no relation as far as we can ascertain), the author of two volumes of Trudeau’s biography. In his work, he also referred to the “better people” version of Trudeau’s quote. But, he said, his reference was an article published in the Star in 2008.

On learning about Urquhart’s recollection of reporting on Trudeau in 1974, and the original news reports from the Star and the Globe, English told me he would now be inclined to conclude it is “more likely” Trudeau had indeed referred to “worse men” some 40 years ago.

“Trudeau’s memory in his memoirs is not perfect,” English said, adding that political memoirs seldom line up perfectly with primary historical evidence. “A historian would consider Ian Urquhart’s direct experience and the two contemporaneous newspaper reports as primary sources and regard that as the likely account.

“Though Trudeau himself referred to the ‘better people’ version, that actually doesn’t ring true with what we later learned of his relations with Nixon,” English said, referring to a warm and supportive phone call from Trudeau to Nixon in May, 1973, during the Watergate scandal that came to light only in 2013.

English assured me it is never too late for historians to consider new evidence that alters the historical record. “I think it is important to get it right,” he said. Indeed, that’s a fact in the first draft of history, too. publiced@thestar.ca