Lucky biographer. Pierre Trudeau, the subject of Waterloo University historian John English's two-volume study, was the most provocative, controversial, flamboyant and yet intellectually profound prime minister in Canada's history.
He saved the country from Quebec's secession. He rewrote and patriated the Constitution, vesting in Canada a logic that withstood all attempts to inflect it with the vision he had fought and vanquished, that of “two founding peoples.”
As a bonus, Trudeau's mother, then Pierre himself, collected every personal scrap of paper that ever left his hand. English obtained full access to the treasure trove when he was approved as official biographer by Trudeau's trustees. He had proved his competence in his award-winning biography of Lester Pearson. A Liberal since student days, he served in Parliament from 1993 to 1997. Jean Chrétien made him minister of intergovernmental affairs. No ivory tower academic, he.
Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau 1968–2000, by John English, Knopf Canada, 789 pages, $39.95
English takes a broad approach, devoting nearly as much scrutiny to Trudeau's personal life as to his political one. He examines Trudeau's close relationship to his mother, Grace Elliott, and his tempestuous marriage to Margaret Sinclair.
And did I mention the love letters? They provide the most striking revelation of this second volume, which takes Trudeau from his capture of the Liberal leadership on April 6, 1968, to his funeral in October, 2000.
Trudeau had remained a virgin until his mid-20s, inhibited by his eight years of indoctrination as a student of the Jesuits. But when he broke free, how he made up for lost time.
We glimpse what is to come on the very evening of Trudeau's convention victory. “Before long, Trudeau spotted Bob Rae's striking young sister, Jennifer, across the room, and fastening his penetrating blues eyes on her, he came close and whispered, ‘Will you go out with me some time?' She later did, but he also remembered the fetching teenager [Margaret Sinclair] who had spurned him in Tahiti the previous December but had willingly accepted his eager kiss that afternoon as he left the convention floor.”
Unlike John Kennedy, he pursued more than a quick fix, engaging deeply with his conquests
Trudeau would appear in public sporting stunning young women on his arm. We didn't know that his secret life, with the connivance of his RCMP guards, included clandestine trysts with a series of women at 24 Sussex and Harrington Lake.
Unlike John Kennedy, he pursued more than a quick fix, engaging deeply with his conquests, sometimes over many years. It seems that only with women – first his mother, then all the others – could he truly reveal himself unguarded. He exchanged letters with his lovers, actually proposed to Carroll Guérin while he was courting Margaret and, after the breakup, to Barbra Streisand.
Trudeau's first election campaign was truly a love affair with Canada. After the dreary Diefenbaker and Pearson years of quarrels and scandals, suddenly politics came alive, glamorous – and mattered. Canada seemed poised for a golden age. The youth responded with Trudeaumania.
English spins well the tale of that enchanted season, and the torrent of lows and highs that cascaded afterward. He did due diligence, interviewing the story's principal characters and guiding his students' research on Trudeau. From both private and published sources, he culled anecdotes that spice the account and relieve sometimes dry explanations of policy.
John English
