Just Watch Me, many Canadians might agree, is the perfect title for a biography of the elusive prime minister many did, indeed, love to watch.
Whether admiring or disparaging of the country’s once-leading politician, most Canadians found Pierre Trudeau fascinating, and his time in office one of ferment.
It is a ferment John English, a professor of history at the University of Waterloo, captures ably in his well-researched life of Trudeau, who died in Montreal in 2000 at age 80.
English’s second volume follows his Citizen of the World 1919-1968, published in 2006, which brought the young Trudeau to the threshold of power and to the beginning of a political career that would run the gamut from high achievement to political disaster, from style to substance and back to style.
It all hinged on a leader of intelligence and energy and on one who harboured, as well, an overweening hubris that was to bring him low.
In this second volume, English takes Trudeau through the paces of his exhilarating career in government, his disastrous marriage, his political demise and resurrection, to his gradual change from haughty recluse to revered elder statesman.
English, who was asked to write Trudeau’s biography, was allowed full access to letters and private papers previously considered out of bounds.
Although this unexpected treasure trove may label English’s account of Trudeau’s life definitive, it tends, at times, to slow the narrative. In a sense, English seems burdened with an excess of information and unravelling his subject’s quixotic life can prove daunting.
Still, English has the material to set in motion the “just watch me” years that are the centrepiece of his absorbing book. He begins his chronicle in April 1968, when, on a wave of what became known as Trudeaumania, a 48-year-old, left-leaning justice minister was acclaimed leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. A June election followed and Trudeau became prime minister of a country eager to follow where he might lead.
Once equipped with the levers of power, Trudeau acted on the political persona he had created, one English describes as “candid, fresh and alive with the spirit of the ’60s.”
One of the most interesting sections of English’s book is his account of the FLQ crisis of 1970, when a seedy gang of separatist radicals kidnapped British diplomat James Cross, and then Quebec labour minister Pierre Laporte.
When Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act, Laporte was murdered and the prime minister had established himself as a man to be reckoned with: An electrifying leader ready to act against what he considered treason.
Just Watch Me offers a fine balance between the triumphs and failures of a volatile political career and the peevishly private, often tortured events of his personal life.
Much attention is paid to his turbulent marriage to beautiful but unstable Margaret Sinclair. English tackles, too, the raft of glamorous women in Trudeau’s life and the romantic affairs that punctuated his time in office.
After some initial success, there was much political bungling in Trudeau’s career. The free market system has been seen not to work, he told Canadians, a view that took him to a bare minority government after a lacklustre performance in the election campaign of 1972.
When Trudeau returned to full power in 1980, he was coping with the spectre of Quebec Premier Rene Levesque’s campaign for separation. Trudeau defeated Levesque’s referendum on sovereignty-association with the rest of Canada. In 1982, he patriated the Canadian Constitution from Britain and made certain it was entrenched with a newly devised Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
English’s scholarly, well-written account of the second half of Trudeau’s crowded life is, despite its 638 pages, a fast read, a political page-turner of uncommon interest. It is a thoughtful evaluation of Trudeau’s character and is without the hagiography often noted in an authorized biography.
Books in brief
Evidence
By Jonathan Kellerman
Jonathan Kellerman’s new Dr. Alex Delaware novel is a timely thriller about domestic terrorism, again set in his native Los Angeles. Delaware and his police detective friend Milo Sturgis are called to investigate the murder of a young couple caught en flagrante in a half-built monster house in one of the city’s most exclusive neighbourhoods. The man’s body is that of an eco-friendly architect and serial womanizer called Desmond Backer, but the woman’s identity remains unknown. The list of suspects grows — Backer’s boss, an ice-cold Swiss woman called Helga, an elusive far-eastern prince with a taste for American women, and an eccentric aristocratic woman with an axe to grind with her crippled cuckold husband. Kellerman’s 24th novel in this long-running series is as absorbing as ever. (Random House)
