McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 2011
544 pp., $32.99 hardcover
This new book by Max and Monique Nemni is the second volume of a trilogy, Trudeau, Son of Quebec, Father of Canada, that began with the award-winning Young Trudeau. In the first volume, the Nemnis shocked many readers by demonstrating that long-time Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had, in his youth, been a strong believer in the corporatist, authoritarian, ultramontane nationalist credo then in vogue among the French-Canadian elite. Now, in their second volume, they show us Trudeau’s conversion to democratic, anti-nationalist, and leftist ideas as well as his becoming a leading figure in the defence of federalism in Quebec before finally making the jump to federal politics in 1965.
We see the young French-Canadian make a radical about-face in the 1940s, when, at Harvard, he discovers thinkers and ideas — such as constitutionalism (today we would say liberal democracy) — that he had never considered before. According to the authors, this goes a long way toward explaining why Trudeau’s grades in politics courses were much lower than those he received in economics: He struggled painfully with new concepts that stood in opposition to all the beliefs he previously held.
The core of the book’s argument is that Trudeau, after seeing the light, started to prepare himself for the role of statesman, and that all his actions, however reckless or carefree they may seem, must be seen and understood in this context.
All in all, Trudeau Transformed is very well documented, and at times it is downright fascinating. The biggest surprise was to discover Trudeau’s religiosity. I knew that he was a Catholic who took religion seriously, but I never suspected that he bowed to Church authority “to the point of seeking permission to read prohibited books on the Index (Index Librorum Prohibitorum).” The authors note that at the age of thirty-one, while working for the Privy Council, “he sought permission from Mon-signor Vachon, Archbishop of Ottawa, to read various prohibited publications: ‘I trust that the state of grace will help protect me from the dangers denounced by the Holy Father and the Sacred Congregation of the Index....’”
Actions such as this — from a Quebecker who grew up with and after the Quiet Revolution and who saw the Church slip into irrelevancy — make Trudeau a very exotic creature. They are also a reminder that he grew up in a Quebec that was very different from what we know today. The past is, indeed, a foreign country, yet the authors seem not to see any contradiction between such unconditional subservience to the Vatican’s rules and their hero’s lifelong insistence on personal freedom, about which they write extensively.
And this is the rub: Under the authors’ pen, Pierre Elliott Trudeau is nothing short of a messianic figure. He can never be wrong, do wrong, or think wrong, and those who disagreed with or criticized him on anything were either separatists (there were many), prejudiced (journalist and politician André Laurendeau), blinded by personal antipathy (journalist and future Quebec Liberal Party Leader Claude Ryan) or “obsessive hatred” (historian Michel Brunet), held a personal grudge (feminist and Senator Thérèse Casgrain), or were mentally disturbed (author Hubert Aquin).
And, of course, the hero plays an important role in everything that matters. For instance, it is usually believed that a skiing injury kept Trudeau from being part of the Radio-Canada strike of 1958. But, according to the Nemnis, Trudeau was involved — he attended a concert for the strikers and, on another occasion, partied with them until six in the morning ... and then he left to visit Asia. To what extent is that involvement?
Trudeau Transformed makes for great reading about a major historical figure, but it doesn’t always avoid the blandness of hagiography.
— André Pelchat (Read bio)
André Pelchat is a freelance writer and lecturer in L’Avenir, Quebec.