Pierre Elliott Trudeau By: J. L. Granatstein

When Pierre Elliott Trudeau died on September 28, 2000, the public response in Canada was unprecedented. No other politician, not even Macdonald or Laurier, had ever received such accolades, such a nationalistic outpouring of grief, though, in truth, it was much more pronounced outside Québec. For a politician and thinker whose stock-in-trade was anti-nationalism, this was surely extraordinary.

Trudeau deeply mistrusted Québec nationalisme, and the separatists and intellectuals there in turn hated him. He also worried about the excesses of English-Canadian nationalism, but he curtailed foreign investment, for example, which only fed it. Above all, Trudeau feared that nationalism could override individual freedoms, and after a long struggle he managed to entrench the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms into the Constitution that he patriated in 1982. Ironically, many commentators on both the left and right dislike his Charter, seeing it as fostering judge-made law and, helping to Americanize Canada. Far more people, however, applaud its tough protection of individual freedoms.

A controversial lawyer and academic, Trudeau entered politics in 1965 to help counter the rise of separatism in Québec. Three years later, he was a charismatic prime minister, riding a nationalist wave. But in October 1970, Trudeau, the civil libertarian, used the army to crush Québec terrorism, and some of the glow disappeared. Nor was he a good manager, his free-spending governments racking up huge deficits while starving the military. He fought with American administrations about Cuba and Cold War policy, and he cozied up to the Soviets. His critics forgive him none of these things.

Yet Trudeau, perfectly bilingual, debonair, and highly intelligent, embodied the characteristics to which Canadians aspired. He had style and exuded sex appeal, and his intellect enabled him to make a mark on the global stage. Historians do not (yet) rank him among the great prime ministers for his almost sixteen years in power. Canadians, without doubt, do.