Canada’s Trudeau tries to contain brownface photo furor

TORONTO — Confessing a “massive blind spot” in his thinking, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau moved to contain a growing furor Thursday after a photo surfaced of him in brownface at a 2001 “Arabian Nights” costume party and two other similar incidents came to light.

With Election Day just a month away in his bid for another term, the 47-year-old Trudeau begged forgiveness from the people of Canada.

“Darkening your face regardless of the context or the circumstances is always unacceptable because of the racist history of blackface,” he said. “I should have understood that then, and I never should have done it.”

Time magazine published the photo on Wednesday, saying it was taken from the yearbook from the West Point Grey Academy, a private school in British Columbia where Trudeau taught before going into politics. It shows the then-29year-old Trudeau in a turban and robe with dark makeup on his hands, face and neck.

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, who is mounting a serious challenge to the prime minister in the Oct. 21 vote, reacted by declaring Trudeau “not fit to govern this country.”

The prime minister, though, gave no sign at all that he might resign, and there were no immediate calls from within his Liberal Party to step down. Instead, many Liberals, some of them minorities, rallied around him.

Trudeau has long championed multiculturalism and immigration. Half of Trudeau’s Cabinet is made up of women, four are Sikhs, and his immigration minister is a Somali-born refugee.