Justin Trudeau has this party trick and, as with most things about him, he maintains that it's wildly misunderstood.
The prank involves hurtling himself headfirst down a flight of stairs. He has pulled it at Rosedale house parties, his own wedding reception and on a busy Ottawa street in front of a fast-moving car to impress Sophie Grégoire on one of their first dates.
It's a stage fall, totally harmless and taught to him by his father, but, invariably, it shocks.
Is it a pathetic cry for attention? A lame attempt to copy his father's famous pirouette behind the back of the Queen?
Or is it a clever way to poke fun at himself in the face of an establishment that can't seem to decide whether to embrace him as the second coming or dismiss him as a charlatan who invokes his family name to trade up?
“I remember I was chatting with various folks and I said, ‘What this party needs is a little bit of a shake-up,'” Mr. Trudeau recalled the other day. “And I said, ‘Just watch me.'”
It was an unconscious reference to Pierre Trudeau's famous response to a reporter's question on how far he dared to go in the suspension of civil liberties during the October Crisis.
For most of his life, Justin Trudeau has danced with another dare: to follow in his father's footsteps.
Ten years ago, he delivered a spine-tingling eulogy at his father's funeral that thrust him onto the national stage.
But the former drama teacher retreated to the wings, determined to prove himself before running for office by “writing a few books, or running a school or starting an NGO or being a CEO … so I could build my own legitimacy outside of politics.”
And yet, here we are, sitting in the unimpressive office at the end of a long, dim hallway that he has earned as Liberal MP for Papineau without his having achieved any of that.
He's dressed in black pants and a navy shirt unbuttoned at the collar; his curly hair frames an unlined face. He is 38 years old. He appears immensely comfortable, immensely pleased. He seems full of confidence.
Shockingly, there is nothing off limits in a discussion with him: His mother's bipolar disorder, his past difficulties with women, his vanity and, yes, his ambition to one day become Canada's prime minister.
“Do I hope my path takes me in that direction? Absolutely,” he says. “But nobody ever asks me do I ever want to be minister of fisheries, like my grandfather,” he sighs. (He is referring to his maternal grandfather, James Sinclair, who served in that office in the 1950s.)
Truth be told, he says, the 10th anniversary of his father's death on Tuesday didn't mean much to him. “I don't really celebrate this day,” he says.
He spent the anniversary in Saskatoon, talking to a group of teenagers about the importance of “changing the world.”
The phrase seems slightly ridiculous for anyone approaching a 40th birthday to say without a hint of irony, yet Mr. Trudeau does, again and again.
When someone asked why he didn't take the day off, he replied: “Because I'm doing my job, making a difference, trying to change the world.” Really?
Still, there's something kind of adorable about the fact that he claims to spend most mornings talking with Sophie about whether “we are making the best difference in the world” instead of figuring out who will pick up the kids from school or making dinner, like the rest of us.
