Please don't blame me, I didn't have anything to do with it.
Sure, I voted for his MPs a couple of times. Sure, I knew he was either loved or hated in life and it seems the same in death.I liked his intellect, his passion and the way he changed things...remember Pearson and Diefenbaker...sorry I fell asleep for a minute there.
"One of Our Best and Brightest"
thanks to - Martin O'Malley CBC NEWS ONLINE
In December 1999, Pierre Elliott Trudeau was
named top Canadian newsmaker of the 20th
century. He finished ahead of prime ministers
Mackenzie King, Lester Pearson, Wilfrid Laurier and Brian Mulroney, all of whom made the top ten.
Think what you will of the century-ending poll, but no one will ever remember the man as Pierre Who.
In his prime, Trudeau was exciting, charismatic,sexy. He drove sports cars, wore capes, ascots and floppy hats, and always the signature red rose in his lapel. He slid down bannisters, canoed in white-water rapids, did pirouettes behind the Queen's back at Buckingham Palace. He made politics fashionable for the upbeat Sixties generation that emerged from the sleepy 1950s.He dated some of the most interesting women in the world singer Barbra Streisand, movie star Margot Kidder, classical guitarist Liona Boyd. At the age of 52, he married Margaret Sinclair, the beautiful 22-year-old he had met while vacationing in Tahiti.
He seemed to come from out of nowhere in the
1960s, saying things like, "The state has no
business in the nation's bedrooms." It might have appeared he came out of nowhere, but in Quebec, where he was born
on October 18, 1919,Trudeau had been a formidable presence. His father was a wealthy Quebecois, his mother was of Scottish descent. Trudeau's given names thus captured the bilingual, bicultural personality of
Canada, the federalism the man dedicated his
political life to preserving and enhancing. The Trudeau family often went on extensive European tours, allowing young Pierre to develop what would become an unquenchable taste for faraway places and adventure.
He studied at Jean de Brebeuf College, a Jesuit institution where doubtless he acquired his lifelong belief in reason (as in "reason over passion," which became his motto). He earned a law degree at the
University of Montreal, a master's degree in
political economy at Harvard University, then
studied at Ecole des sciences politiques in Paris in 1946-47, followed by an academic year at the London School of Economics in 1947-48.
After a year backpacking throughout Eastern
Europe, the Middle East and Far East, Trudeau
returned to Canada where he worked in Ottawa as an advisor to the Privy Council. Soon he returned to Montreal where he worked with labour unions, championing the rights of workers during the violent Asbestos Strike in Quebec and attacking the repressive regime of the Union Nationale under Premier Maurice Duplessis. What he is best remembered for from this period is his work with Cite Libre, a journal of ideas he founded with other
Quebec intellectuals when he taught law at the University of Montreal.
In 1965, the federal Liberal party was looking for candidates from Quebec. Trudeau and two friends, Jean Marchand and Gerard Pelletier, were invited to run in the federal election that year. Trudeau was the least known of the group that quickly became known as "the three wise men." This soon would change.
Trudeaumania sweeps Canada
Marchand, Pelletier and Trudeau all won
their seats in the 1965 federal election.
Trudeau, as Justice Minister, worked
closely with Prime Minister Lester
Pearson, who appeared to take a fatherly interest in the bright young man from Quebec.
When Pearson resigned as prime minister in 1968, Trudeau signed on as a candidate for the leadership of the Liberal party. At the beginning of the leadership contest, he was no shoo-in, but his personality and style suited the times that were a-changin' and by the spring of 1968 a wave of "Trudeaumania" swept Canada and Trudeau
became a star. He hit all the demographic buttons old and young, male and female, French and English, East and West. In their book Mondo Canuck, authors Geoff Pevere and Greig Dymond describe him as "the greatest pop star this country has ever produced."
Soon after winning the leadership of the Liberal Party in April 1968, Trudeau called an election, and trounced the opposition.
It is no coincidence that Trudeau and media guru Marshall McLuhan became cohorts in the 1960s and maintained a creative relationship throughout the 1970s. Trudeau could have been the model for what McLuhan meant when he coined the phrase "the medium is the message." It wasn't what the man said, but how he said it style over substance. That creased, angular, Gallic face worked marvelously on television, providing
traction for the camera. Until the 1960s John F.Kennedy first demonstrated it with his win over an earnest but sweaty Richard Nixon politics was perceived as exclusionary, or as McLuhan might have said, "hot." Trudeau instantly made dull Canadian politics accessible and exciting. Trudeau was "cool."
But it was not that he lacked substance, far
from it. During his 16 years as prime
minister he championed seminal changes in the
Canadian political landscape, among them:
Official Languages Act, 1969
Implementation of War Measure Act, 1970
("Just watch me
")
Wage and Price Controls
Appointed Jeanne Sauve first woman Speaker of House of Commons, 1980
Canadian Charter of Rights, 1982
Patriation of Canadian Constitution, 1982
Appointed Jeanne Sauve first woman
Governor-General, 1984
He didn't do things on the cheap. Over 16 years with Trudeau as prime minister, Canada's national debt skyrocketed by 1,200 per cent, from $17 billion to more than $200 billion.
When he turned 80 on October 18, 1999, he
was still cool. The Toronto Star noted in
an editorial:
"
for those of us who were there when
Pierre Trudeau was prime minister it was the
magic of the man that is etched and cherished in the mind's eye. We embraced his diamond-sharp intellect, his irreverence, and the style of his leadership and life.
"For the better he changed us as a nation."
[This message has been edited by Rollingthunder (edited 06 October 2000).]