Unlike Father, Unlike Son

Justin Trudeau announced his decision to step down as Canada’s 23rd Prime Minister. With slightly more than 9 years in that office he is № 7 in the national list of longest serving PMs.

The eldest son of Pierre Trudeau, on November 4, 2015 he became the second-youngest government leader in Canadian history and the first to be the child of a previous prime minister.

Thus, it makes sense to compare Justin Trudeau to his father who served as PM in two non-consecutive terms for a total of 15 years and a half, from 1968 to 1979 and from 1980 to 1984.

As a foreign journalist stationed firstly in Ottawa and later in Washington since 1973, I had a chance to watch Pierre Trudeau closely and I concur with those who give him full credit for his personality and achievements that prompted Canadians to name him the most outstanding national leader in the 20th century.

Justin Trudeau’s father was an exceptionally bright man which was noticeable to any fair observer. No wonder that at the beginning of his political career on federal level he enjoyed an unprecedented wave of personal popularity called Trudeaumania. His vision inspired Canadians to reexamine their national character and reinvent their government.

Like no one else, Pierre Trudeau contributed to the growth of national self-awareness, making an invaluable contribution to strengthening the unity of Canada as a bilingual state and proclaiming an independent foreign policy course. Justin Trudeau’s service record pales in comparison.

When he passed away in 2000, Barbra Streisand, Hollywood “star” who knew Pierre Trudeau very well, quite justifiably called him a man far ahead of his time.

“The forces of change that he set in motion continue to shape the soul of his people,” Jean Chretien, who headed the Canadian government from 1993 to 2003, said on the same occasion. “On the international stage, he gave us a profile and stature well beyond our size and power.”

In 1969 Pierre Trudeau became the first world leader to meet John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono on their “tour for world peace”. After talking with him for about an hour, Lennon said, “if all politicians were like Pierre Trudeau, there would be world peace”.

The same year Pierre Trudeau travelled to Washington to meet with President Richard Nixon and with his typical wit coined a phrase that has come to define relations between Canada and the U.S.: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

Wearing the mask of a playboy and bon vivant, Pierre Trudeau was a workaholic and an intellectual of the highest caliber, distinguished by his broad outlook and rebellious nature.

In 1950s, he was banned from entering the United States for several years, while the FBI opened a file on him, characterizing Canada’s future PM as a “radical socialist” and “Canadian Castro.”

Many years later, in 1976, Pierre Trudeau met Fidel on an official visit to Havana where, to quote Canada’s ambassador to Cuba, he “found an intellectually kindred spirit” in the leader of the Cuban revolution, with whom he became friends for the rest of his life.

Five years earlier, Pierre Trudeau paid a similar visit to Moscow and established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China.

This was followed by an official visit to Beijing, where he met with Mao Zedong. At that time, Washington believed that only Taiwan had the right to represent China’s interests on the world stage, and demanded the same from its allies.

No wonder that Richard Nixon in an exchange with Henry Kissinger called Canada’s defiant Prime Minister “a pompous Egghead” and an “asshole”. A black belt in judo, Pierre Trudeau did not mince words either. His immediate reaction was, “I’ve been called worse things by better people.”

Curiously, the same Richard Nixon on an official visit to Ottawa in April of 1972, four months after Justin Trudeau was born, made a prophetic statement, “I’d like to toast the future prime minister of Canada, to Justin Trudeau”. At that moment hardly anybody could have imagined that the U.S.

President’s innocent joke would come true 43 years later. And while Pierre Trudeau, among many other exceptional qualities, became known as a sharp tongued, self-esteemed person, his eldest son earned the dubious reputation of man with a loose tongue.

A video of China’s Chairman Xi Jinping scolding him for that like a child was viewed by millions of people around the world in late 2022.

And quite recently U. S. President-elect Donald Trump made things no better for Justin Trudeau when he trolled him by suggesting that Canada, which is larger than the United States, should join its southern neighbor as the 51st state.

The Canadian Prime Minister’s reaction? A sheepish smile and a belated response on X: “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.” Which prompted Elon Musk’s scornful remark: “Girl, you’re not the governor of Canada anymore, so doesn’t matter what you say.”

Obviously, nobody knows now how Pierre Trudeau would have behaved if he wore his eldest son’s shoes today. However, I can’t imagine Canada’s late 15th PM joining a standing ovation, like Justin Trudeau did, when Yaroslav Hunka, a veteran of SS Division Galicia, was invited to the House of Commons in September 2023.