Pierre Trudeau — Canada's Visionary Prime Minister

Contemporary Review, Dec, 2000 by Habeeb Salloum

'MR. Prime Minister! How far will you go with the War Measures Act?' a reporter asked Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Prime Minister extraordinaire of Canada during a crisis in October 1970. Without a flip of an eye, Trudeau answered, 'Just watch me!'

Such encounters and remarks were common occurrences during the time Pierre Elliot Trudeau dominated Canadian politics in the 1970s and 1980s. Even though through utterances like these and his policies he made many enemies during his years in power, as a whole, his ideas and programmes for the country made most people proud of being Canadian.

Hence, it came as no surprise that at the beginning of last October from the Atlantic to the Pacific the vast majority of Canadians were united in grief as they bid adieu to Canada's most colourful Prime Minister. As thousands of Canadians from the rich and powerful to the poor and unimportant sat side by side in Montreal's Notre Dame Basilica during the funeral Mass, thousands of others watched the services from outside. All had come to give their farewells to one of the most important political figures in Canadian history.

Yet, even though the majority of Canadians had genuine sorrow in their hearts, a vocal minority stood aside, blaming him for leading Canada into an abyss with his establishment of a bilingual country and his flamboyant behaviour on both the national and international stage. However, their voices were virtually drowned out by the tributes of his admirers.

Unassuming, warm, compassionate and courteous, Pierre Elliot Trudeau's very name has become synonymous with Canada. Cordial, patient and polite, often people would stop him to shake his hand as he walked the streets. A man of many talents and seemingly having an unending charismatic appeal, his vision for the future of Canada drew people, especially the young, around him in a loving embrace. To them he was not only a Prime Minister but an admirable father and author, journalist, intellectual, lawyer, professor and statesman. His vision for Canada was that of a truly humanistic and bilingual land where everyone would be equal.

The words of Jeanne Bango, a Senegal immigrant, quoted in the 4 October 2000 issue of The Toronto Daily Star, as she watched Trudeau's funeral, describes this renowned Canadian well. 'Trudeau worked for justice. There's no big people, small people. There's no black, no white, no red, no blue people. For Mr. Trudeau everyone was a human being that God created and were all equal. Trudeau understood that'.

In the same issue, of the Star, the influence of Trudeau on Canadian society was reinforced by the words of another, Barb Blakemore. Watching the funeral in a Calgary government office with her eyes swelling with tears, she said: 'Through Pierre Trudeau's vision, I began to have an understanding of who we are and our need to embrace a multicultural society'.

Trudeau's personality and appreciation of other people was moulded by his background. His father, Charles Emile Trudeau, was a colourful and successful French-Canadian businessman. Grace Elliot Trudeau, his mother of Scottish ancestry, was a descendant of the United Empire Loyalists who fled New England during the American Revolution and settled in Quebec. Their Francophone and Anglophone backgrounds formed the bilingual basis on which Pierre Trudeau was to build his vision of Canada's future. Their influences -- his father teaching him to love sports and mathematics and his mother training him to appreciate the arts and music -- played a vital role in the development of his character.

As a youth he travelled the world and after returning to Canada in 1949, he tried to better the lot of the working man. This is best reflected in his support of the unions in the bitter 1949 Asbestos Strike. Subsequently, with other intellectuals, he agitated for political and social change, earning a reputation as a mild radical and socialist. During this era, Trudeau was moving toward the support of an independent Quebec but, by the 1960s when he was a law professor at the University of Montreal, there was a drastic change in his thinking. He became a biting critic of Quebec nationalism and reasoned for a Canadian federalism in which English and French Canada would be on an equal footing.

In 1965 Trudeau joined the Federal Liberal Party and was elected to Parliament and in 1967 he was named Minister of Justice by the then Prime Minister, Lester Pearson. His new post gave him the opportunity to establish a reputation as a fierce opponent of Quebec nationalism and an unabashed defender of a strong federal government. At the same time, among the young, he gained national attention by his reform of the Criminal Code, liberalizing the laws on abortion and homosexuality and by the introduction of divorce law reforms.

By 1968, when he was sworn in as the country's fifteenth Prime Minister, his flamboyant reputation had created among a majority of Canada's youth a phenomenon which came to be known as Trudeau-mania. With their support, he won a majority in Parliament and began his term in office which was to last longer than any other Prime Minister's except John A. MacDonald and Mackenzie King.