INTRODUCTION

With Volume Three, we bring our biography of Pierre Elliott Trudeau to its long-intended conclusion. Trudeau’s life and thought had always had a purpose, a trajectory to which it was directed: namely, a life dedicated to the theory and practise of statesmanship. He answered its call in 1965, when at 46 years of age, joining hands with his friends Jean Marchand and Gérard Pelletier, he plunged into federal politics. The ‘three wise men’ were fervent Quebecers all, who had come to Ottawa in its moment of need to stave off a national crisis which they feared would break up the country. They were of and from Quebec to the depths of their souls. They would nonetheless be called vendus (sellouts) or traîtres (traitors) by their former friends and compatriots who had increasingly adopted Quebec independence as their new religion. Philosophically Trudeau was the best prepared of the three for this mighty task of statesmanship. As we have shown in Volumes One and Two, he had launched himself into rigorous intellectual preparation for public office. He read and thought deeply about questions of philosophy, politics, economy and law. Having lamented the poverty of political thought in Quebec, he had determined to remedy that defect by wholly dedicating himself to political philosophy as a foundation for politics and statesmanship. Highly idealistic and formally trained, he saw politics as a struggle over ideas, rights and constitutionalism. These constituted the very foundation of good governance which he sought to bring to his homeland of Quebec and to his country, Canada. After nearly a half century, he stood ready for public office, the political philosopher knocking on the door of political power. The question is: how would they receive him? Is an egghead the man for the times? Practical politicians had no patience for this question at all. Politics was no place for deep thinkers. What’s the point of theoretical political knowledge in the gritty world of politics? Dismissed as hopeless amateurs, such was so often the fate of political theorists. Such was the reaction of professional politicians to the arrival of Pierre Trudeau in politics. Yet they turned out to be wrong. Ideas matter. Political philosophy, it turned out, could guide and drive the real world of politics. Trudeau stood ready at last to be tested as a statesman. In this volume we see how far he was able to see his ideas prevail in the contested world of politics – in public debate and fierce negotiation, in elections, referendums, and crisis management. How did Trudeau make the leap from political thinker to political actor? What is his political legacy? We will explore these questions as they worked themselves out in the most central battles of his political career from 1965 to 1984 and for several years afterward. Over three decades he remained a towering political figure in Canada and a well known and respected statesman throughout the world. No ‘outsider’: He had lived the Quebec Question In our first volume we had shown Trudeau as a separatist and revolutionary in his youth. He knew what the politics of independence felt like from the inside, from the mind of the converted. He shared the conventional thinking of his generation, and he accepted the nationalist Quebec mantle of leadership that his Jesuit teachers urged upon their students at Jean-de-Brébeuf school. He was and remained a devout Catholic, complicit with the Vatican’s acceptance of fascist governments in much of pre-war Europe. After all, these were the regimes the Church urged Quebecers to admire – Mussolini, Franco, Pétain – not liberal democratic countries like Great Britain. Contrary to the myth of Trudeau always rowing against the tide of opinion as a contrarian or outsider, he thoroughly absorbed and accepted the prejudices of his place, time and culture. It was the same when he left Quebec and spent years abroad at Harvard University, at Sciences Po in Paris, and at the London School of Economics. Finding himself at last open to the wider world of ideas and postwar metropolitan life, he absorbed the latest thinking on modern political economy and philosophies of liberalism and socialism. As an active Catholic, Trudeau read Christian thinkers like Jacques Maritain and especially Nicolas Berdyaev, integrating spiritual values of Christianity like brotherly love into a philosophy of social justice. He read this literature carefully and critically while absorbing the main currents of thought undergirding the postwar liberal democratic world. Imbibing such ideas as readily as he had once fascist doctrines, he brought them back with him on his return to Quebec and Canada. In many ways, he turned out exactly as might be expected of a smart graduate student attending these prestigious universities, supplemented by extensive backpacking international travel. Hence, it is not Trudeau’s exceptionalism in opinion that should draw our attention, but rather his ready, adaptive response to the changes in the intellectual worlds around him and his ability to change his mind. A quick learner, brilliant, immensely disciplined, and serious in his ambition to build himself a foundation of knowledge for future statesmanship: these qualities set him apart. Once he felt he had built that intellectual foundation, it remained the job of the theorist to apply it as political actor. Then, in 1965, the door opened: the call to political office came, ironically from none other than the governing party operatives in Ottawa. The political thinker accepted, and the rest, as they say, is history. In two earlier substantial volumes, we have carefully laid out the evolution of Trudeau’s political philosophy up to the eve of his entry into politics and we do not intend to repeat that here. Instead, we will introduce his ideas in action, as they were worked out in the heat of political combat and in the context and choices of the time. Each chapter in this volume focuses on salient issues of importance to Canada and in each we take stock of Trudeau’s actual role and impact. In all of them, we examine how far Trudeau in office was able to convert political theory into successful political practise. Equally important, we note when politics itself limited, blocked or altered the scope of Trudeau’s aspirations and achievements. At last, we come to see and bear witness to ‘Trudeau the statesman.’