Trudeau, Pierre

Teeth of Time: Remembering Pierre Elliott Trudeau (Footprints Series)

Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Ramsay Cook were friends for nearly four decades. A passion for the intellectual life drew them together but their friendship focused more on politics once Trudeau became prime minister. In The Teeth of Time Cook reflects on his relationship with Trudeau and the tensions created when one friend achieves political power and the other struggles to find the balance among his roles as detached scholar and teacher, involved citizen, and personal friend. Trudeau, the most intellectual of Canadian prime ministers, turned to Cook, an illustrious historian and a speech-writer during the 1968 election campaign, for his trusted views. Cook’s revealing memoir also traces how public affairs and the central political themes of Trudeau’s reign – nationalism, federalism, and constitutional reform – continued to drive their relationship after Trudeau’s resignation in 1984. "The Teeth of Time: is taken from "The New Faces" by W.B. Yeats, a poem that is a declaration of abiding friendship: Where we wrought that shall break the teeth of Time ... Our shadows rove the garden gravel still, The living seem more shadowy than they. In a friendship that bridged the world of politics and the intellectual world of academia, what Cook and Trudeau wrought will outlast the teeth of time.

The Essential Trudeau

Pierre Elliott Trudeau always opposed the dominant ideology and what passed for conventional wisdom. This was true when he spoke out against the oppressive rule of Maurice Duplessis in Quebec. It was true in his years in Ottawa, as justice minister and prime minister, when he introduced controversial measures ranging from wage-and-price controls and restrictions on foreign investments, to expanded rights for homosexuals. It remained true in the years after his retirement, particularly when he has took issue with the more provocative expressions of Quebec nationalism and with federal initiatives such as Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accord.

Now neo-conservative ideas have taken over. Virtually every level of government in Canada is competing with the others to reduce the role of the state and eliminate constraints on business. Less government has come to mean a smaller role especially for the federal government. And the increased powers taken on by the provinces are being used, increasingly, to substitute private interests for the public good. The Canada that promoted equality, justice, and opportunity for all is under sustained attack. Never has the need for a clear statement of liberal principles been greater.

In this volume, Ron Graham brought together a selection of excerpts from Trudeau’s writings, speeches, and interviews – many of them never before published in book form – to make a highly readable, lucid, and compelling summary of Trudeau’s political beliefs. To each chapter in this selection Trudeau provided an introduction and to many of the excerpts he added a new commentary. The result is a book of remarkable power: rational, timely, and eloquent.

Citizen of the World: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Volume One: 1919-1968

One of the most important, exciting biographies of our time: the definitive, major two-volume biography of Pierre Elliott Trudeau – written with unprecedented, complete access to Trudeau’s enormous cache of private letters and papers.

Bestselling biographer John English gets behind the public record and existing glancing portraits of Trudeau to reveal the real man and the multiple influences that shaped his life, providing the full context lacking in all previous biographies to-date.

As prime minister between 1968 and 1984, Trudeau, the brilliant, controversial figure, intrigued Canadians and attracted international attention as no other Canadian leader has ever done. Volume One takes us from his birth in 1919 to his election as leader in 1968.

Born into a wealthy family in Montreal, Trudeau excelled at the best schools, graduating as a lawyer with conservative, nationalist and traditional Catholic views. But always conscious of his French-English heritage, desperate to know the outside world, and an adventurer to boot, he embarked on a pilgrimage of discovery – first to Harvard and the Sorbonne, then to the London School of Economics and, finally, on a trip through Europe, the Middle East, India and China. He was a changed man when he returned – socialist in his politics, sympathetic to labour, a friend to activists and writers in radical causes. Suddenly and surprisingly, he went to Ottawa for two mostly unhappy years as a public servant in the Privy Council Office. He frequently shocked his colleagues when, on the brink of a Quebec election, for example, he departed for New York or Europe on an extended tour. Yet in the 1950s and 60s, he wrote the most important articles outlining his political philosophy.

And there were the remarkable relationships with friends, women and especially his mother (whom he lived with until he was middle-aged). He wrote to them always, exchanging ideas with the men, intimacies with the women, especially in these early years, and lively descriptions of his life. He even recorded his in-depth psychoanalysis in Paris. This personal side of Trudeau has never been revealed before – and it sheds light on the politician and statesman he became.

Volume One ends with his entry into politics, his appointment as Minister of Justice, his meeting Margaret and his election as leader of the Liberal Party and Prime Minister of Canada. There, his genius and charisma, his ambition and intellectual prowess, his ruthlessness and emotional character and his deliberate shaping of himself for leadership played out on the national stage and, when Lester B. Pearson announced his retirement as prime minister in 1968, there was but one obvious man for the job: Pierre Trudeau.

In 1938 Trudeau began a diary, which he continued for over two years. It is detailed, frank, and extraordinarily revealing. It is the only diary in Trudeau’s papers, apart from less personal travel diaries and an agenda for 1937 that contains some commentary. His diary expresses Trudeau’s own need to chronicle the moments of late adolescence as he tried to find his identity. It begins on New Year’s Day 1938 with the intriguing advice: “If you want to know my thoughts, read between the lines!”
–from Citizen of the World

Memoirs

The fifteenth Canadian Prime Minister describes his efforts to break down the Cold War mentality, his rapport with such leaders as Fidel Castro and Jimmy Carter, and his life from his childhood in Montreal to the present.

Memoirs of a Very Civil Servant: Mackenzie King to Pierre Trudeau

Born in Saskatchewan in 1917, Gordon Robertson worked at the centre of government power from 1945 until his retirement in 1979. He worked directly with Prime Ministers King, St-Laurent, Pearson, and Trudeau, serving as senior advisor to the latter two. Commissioner of the Northwest Territories from 1953 to 1963, he also became the first Deputy Minister of the new Department of Northern Affairs under Jean Lesage. In this memoir he presents a first-hand account of the events and personalities that shaped Canada during the critical post-war period.

Robertson tells of Canada's development from colony to nation and the prime ministers who presided over the process. He provides an assessment of each prime minister in action: how they organized the cabinets, what their qualities were and how these related to their failures and successes. Himself influential in many areas of government, Robertson played a key role in the long debate on constitutional reform and national unity. Even after his retirement, he remained active as an unofficial contitutional networker.

Gordon Robertson has written no ordinary memoir. Along with the key events and personalities of his day he describes the development of his own ideas about the nature of Canada and its constitutional future. The result is a significant historical document, one that brings much insight to the history of post-war Canada.

Consequences

Trudeau ("A Signet book.")

Remembering an Icon

Outsider the Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau

Our Last Farewell