In a ski chalet during a heavy snowstorm, Margaret Trudeau spoke out yesterday about her grief over Michel's sudden death more than a year ago after an avalanche swept her 23-year-old son into an icy B.C. mountain lake.
Ms. Trudeau, 51, appeared a bit fragile as she talked to a crunch of reporters about events on the day of the avalanche and the anguish the family has felt.
Her biggest challenge of the past year, she said later in a brief interview, has been just "surviving."
Maintaining a positive attitude and not becoming bitter was hard, she said. She added she is "filled with fear," but did not elaborate.
The youngest son of Ms. Trudeau and former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, Michel was caught by the avalanche on Nov. 13, 1998, when he and three friends were returning from a two-day, back-country ski trip.
The avalanche pushed him into the Kokanee Lake in eastern British Columbia. Weighed down with skis and hiking equipment, Mr. Trudeau was unable to make it back to shore and his friends were unable to save him. A search last summer after the ice melted failed to find his body.
Accompanied yesterday by her 28-year-old son, Justin, Ms. Trudeau stepped back into the spotlight this week to urge better awareness of the dangers posed by avalanches. In response to numerous requests for interviews, the Trudeaus offered access for three minutes to each media outlet.
The news conference was to draw greater attention to avalanche hazards. Ms. Trudeau told reporters her work with the Canadian Avalanche Association as a fundraiser has helped her deal with Michel's death.
Confronting the mortality of her child was a journey, she said, and by working on behalf of her child, she is giving some significance to his death.
She hoped her work would save at least one family from having to mourn a family member killed in an avalanche. "As a mother, I just want to stop one mother from going through what I went through, what our family went through."
Yet she indicated she had no regrets over Michel being on the mountain slopes on the day of the avalanche. "I'm the mommy who sent him the videos. His dad and I got him the most sophisticated equipment," she said. "These boys were prepared. They knew the risks they were taking."
Michel wanted to be a mountaineer, she also said, but that was not his destiny. Instead, he is "in Paradise, where I feel he has a far greater role than we can imagine."
Justin said he spoke to Michel a week before his death. To ask him not to go out would have been to deny the life he had chosen to lead, he said. It would have been wrong to ask him not go.
In a taped interview with television host Vicky Gabereau, which aired yesterday, Ms. Trudeau appeared much more comfortable. Justin's close relationship with his mother was obvious throughout the interview, as she grabbed his hand and held on.
The two appeared nervous at the beginning of the hour-long show, taped before a studio audience of about 40 people that included Justin's grandmother, an aunt and other relatives, according to an observer in the television studio.
But Ms. Trudeau quickly settled down, talking easily about the circumstances of Michel's death, as recounted to her by his friends.
Michel, a microbiologist who was working as a ski-lift attendant at nearby Red Mountain Ski Resort, did not suffer, she said. "Micha just actually put his head on his shoulder and fell asleep," she said.
Justin maintained that the avalanche, by itself, would not have been fatal. If not for the water, his brother would have survived.
They revealed that the coroner was more anxious than the family to find Michel after the avalanche swept him into Kokanee Lake. "We all wanted him not to be found. We knew that is his grave," she said.
Ms. Trudeau said she went to the isolated mountain spot after his death and saw "this great shaft of light . . . that seemed to me to be taking his spirit out of the lake."
Justin said the lake is "glorious. It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.
"That's where he was destined to be."
As a son, as a brother, Michel was seen from two different perspectives. At a memorial service shortly after his death, Michel was remembered as the son who incarnated his father's love of adventure. Ms. Trudeau, however, did not see her son as a risk taker, although Justin did.
The pair also talked briefly about Mr. Trudeau, but they did not touch on Ms. Trudeau's recent separation from Fried Kemper.
An Ottawa Citizen report before Christmas quoted Ms. Trudeau as saying her grief over the death of Michel has been too much for her relationship with Mr. Kemper. Since the separation, she has reverted to the use of the Trudeau name.
She and Mr. Trudeau separated in 1977.
Justin said his father was involved in the decision to support the avalanche association. "We discussed it as a family."