If you believe everything that you read on ‘Twittersphere’, Canada has just elected a boxing bouncer with boyish good looks as its new prime minister. Even London’s salaciously famous tabloids got into the act, with the Mirror running a piece headlined: ‘Is Justin Trudeau the sexiest politician in the world?’
And for many, they’re pleasantly surprised with the 43-year-old Trudeau’s physical appearance — muscles, abs and tattoos. It’s a Twitter theme that has followed around Trudeau since he first ran for the Ottawa parliament in 2008. And during the two-month election campaign, even the Conservatives seemed to get into the act, with campaign ads that remarked on Trudeau’s “nice hair”.
Nice hair or not, he has been the heir apparent to the legacy of his father, Canada’s most Liberal of prime ministers, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who led Canada for 15 years with wit, charm and divisive panache. That Justin is now ensconced in that nice bit of neo-Victorian architecture at 24, Sussex Drive — that is the official residence of Canada’s prime ministers — should be no surprise. When little Justin was just four months old — and doing what little four-month old’s do — United States president Richard Nixon came up for dinner. At the time, Tricky Dicky was trying to extract his troops from Vietnam — and Liberal Pierre was offering political asylum to any American who wanted to dodge the draft to avoid fighting in the jungles teeming with Viet Cong. And sure, he had masterminded that burglary of the Democratic offices in the Water Gate building, but Pierre had managed to single-handedly invoke the War Measures Act, putting paid to Quebec’s brief dalliance with political violence in the name of independence.
But Nixon nailed it on the head that evening, raising a toast to little Justin, who, the Republican president predicted, would one day become prime minister of Canada. Canada doesn’t have a presidential system, but it had a presidential-style prime minister in Harper that any Republican from centre to Tea Party would raise a toast to.
Harper is a westerner, an Albertan, an oil man and hates everything about Ottawa. Indeed, he’s planning to build a retirement house in the foothills outside Calgary and move there just as soon as his youngest child finishes high school in the official capital. After Monday’s election result, his retirement has now officially started. That Ottawa he so despises had been so shaped by the era of Trudeau the elder: Its bilingualism; its metric measures; its ideals of a caring Canada; pluralistic; wishy washy on the world stage; friendly to all; polite; public servants who questioned rather than obeyed without question. And single-handedly he set out to shape it in his manner — political, pointed and poisoned by small-mindedness.
For everything that he had built, Justin was an antithesis.
Sure, the early years, growing up in that official residence on Sussex Drive, little Justin was in the public eye, along with brothers Michel and Sasha. Their mother, actress Margaret Trudeau, was 22 years younger than Pierre. Her depression was deep set and she danced with the jet set, having an affair with Mick Jagger and boogying the nights away at New York night clubs when the marriage inevitably fell apart. Pierre raised the boys. Michel later died in an avalanche in the Canadian Rockies.
Justin made the headlines as a bouncer, a snowboard instructor — how very Canadian — a bartender, and finally gained respectability as a schoolteacher.
And when his father died, Canada offered a state funeral. It was there, with the eyes of a mostly mourning nation — Pierre was still disliked out in Alberta — that Justin gave an eulogy. He finished it with the words, uttered in French, “I love you, Papa”. There wasn’t a dry eye anywhere in the house, church, cathedral or Canada — a first and lasting impression of a young man in grief, but greatly aware of the power of his actions. Pierre would have looked down — Albertans hoped he would have looked up — and been proud of the political theatre.
Harper’s Conservatives had routed the Liberal party in the 2011 election, turning what was considered to be Canada’s natural ruling party in a distant third place behind the New Democratic Party, then led by Jack Layton. That the highly popular Layton died of cancer and was replaced by the smart but stiff Thomas Mulcair seemed a gift to Harper, who was seeking a fourth term in power. And that the Liberals replaced their stiff and smart then leader Michael Ignatieff with a young untried and untested Justin Trudeau, had Conservative party planners positively gleeful.
“Nice hair” their election ads ridiculed the wonder kid. But Jusyin was always the heir apparent.
That it was Justin, a 43-year-old who grew up in the very corridors of power, scuffing his toy cars off the floors in 24 Sussex Drive, who thoroughly trounced Harper and scuppered his plans for a de-Trudeau-ised Canada, is so beautifully ironic. Canada doesn’t have a presidential system — right now, the House of Trudeau rules in the House of Commons.
