Until lately. English says last year’s market meltdown, and the resulting rediscovery of the benefits of regulation, cast a new light on Trudeau’s resistance of the Thatcher-Reagan revolution. “Now he seems more prescient,” English says, “and some of his reservations seem to have been accurate.”
Trudeau tried to seal off politics from the realm of the personal. Of course, that was as impossible then as it is today. So if his economic instincts are looking plausible again in 2009, perhaps his romantic foibles are also due for a sympathetic reappraisal—not a dilettante’s foolishness, but a prime example of an intensely self-aware man’s quest for fulfillment in every compartment of his complex life.
EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT
As the bachelor Trudeau neared mid-century, he began to date with the energy of a sixties teenager, and as Kissinger aptly said, “power is the greatest aphrodisiac.” Although some of his interests—classical music, philosophy, and political theory—were not those of most young people, he possessed a youthful flair, a romantic attachment to the wilderness, a chiselled body, a sharp wit, and, of course, power.
In the later sixties his mood shifted, and he spoke surprisingly freely about wanting to abandon his bachelorhood. Perhaps it was the commitment to pursuing the leadership that had prompted such thoughts: his hope for a family was certainly an issue that had weighed on him when he’d embarked on the leadership quest and even caused him to consider turning down the historic opportunity. Later, after he became prime minister, reporters quizzed Trudeau at the Ottawa airport about rumours that he had been married during his trip to the North in July 1968. He denied the suppositions but then replied, surprisingly: “I’m constantly thinking of marriage.” To a CBC reporter in a 1968 year-end interview, he responded that instead of making a resolution to remain a bachelor, he was “rather despondent that leap year should have passed by without my really having had time to make the kind of deal I would have liked. But, never mind,” he said. “This year I’ll be taking initiatives!” And he did.
Margaret Sinclair remained very much in his mind and was often by his side after Trudeau wooed her following their encounter at the leadership convention. By Christmas 1969, Trudeau and Margaret “were confessing to each other that [they] were unmistakably in love.” Certainly, there were doubts: he was too old and she too young and different. They saw each other secretly in the fall of 1969 and spent weekends at Harrington Lake, where they rumpled the beds in the other rooms to deceive the staff into believing that others had been there. There were only two public occasions in 1970: once at the National Gallery, when Margaret dressed for a costume ball as a “hippie” Juliet, and once at a dinner party at the home of Wendy and Tim Porteous. At the gallery, groups froze when they came near, and Margaret, surprised by the coolness of her welcome, sobbed uncontrollably after they left. At the Porteous home, everyone spoke French, which Margaret did not understand. For a brief time in the winter of 1970 the two broke up. Margaret began dating a divinity student, and Trudeau and Streisand had their fling.
But then, at Easter, shortly after Pierre and Barbra had gone their separate ways, Pierre and Jean Marchand spent a ski holiday at Whistler, and Margaret met up with Trudeau there. Romance blossomed again, and Margaret decided to enrol at the University of Ottawa for the fall term in the department of psychology. As she warmed to Pierre, he, not surprisingly, pulled back, telling her she was “too young and too romantic.” They broke up once more and Margaret returned to British Columbia, but then he called during a visit to Vancouver in early summer 1970 and asked her to go scuba diving with him in the Caribbean. “What for?” she fumed. “More pain? I can’t go on playing this sort of life.” He begged for patience and asked her to fly back to Ottawa with him.
She then spent a weekend with him at Harrington Lake, and one summer afternoon beside the shimmering water, Trudeau, entranced, murmured that they should talk about marriage. It was not a proposal, he said later, but Margaret thought it was. As one of Trudeau’s closest friends remarked, Pierre was playing dangerously in those times. Margaret jumped to her feet, flung her arms around him, and exclaimed, “When? Tomorrow?” A startled Trudeau replied, “Let’s take it easy,” but Margaret jumped into the lake and swam around in circles “like a frenzied dolphin.” When she finally emerged from the water, Pierre set out some conditions: she should be “a good faithful wife to him, give up drugs, and stop being so flighty.” He warned her that he was 50 years old and “extremely solitary by nature.” Trudeau was troubled. Had he gone too far? As Margaret wrote later: “This period was the closest I ever came to seeing Pierre out of full control in all our time together.” While becoming “most attentive and loving,” he believed, in Margaret’s words, “that he must convince himself that it would work.”
Trudeau decided to take a break in the month of August, in the Caribbean with Margaret and the noted ocean scientist Dr. Joe MacInnis and his wife, Debby. He then vacationed alone that summer at the Aga Khan’s home in Sardinia and on a yacht in the Mediterranean. He also decided to speak with his long-time friend Carroll Guérin. Carroll had spent much of her time in Europe and England in recent years and had been on a spiritual quest, including a period in a monastery. For these reasons, she had seen Trudeau only intermittently since he had entered politics, although she remained emotionally committed and dated no others until the late sixties.
Strikingly beautiful, Catholic, liberal, fluently trilingual, independently wealthy, and knowledgeable about the arts, Carroll was not in awe of Trudeau, and their relationship was full of respect and playfulness. Over the years, he had raised the question of marriage, to the point where he began one conversation with the disclaimer: “Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to marry me today.” Now he told her he was seriously contemplating marriage (to Margaret Sinclair), and referring to their discussions of the past brought the topic up one last time, but Carroll quickly turned it away. “No,” she replied. She did not think Trudeau could share the spiritual life she was devoted to and told him that, because they “could not meet at that level of togetherness which would come from Grace,” marriage was not a good idea. She also knew that he wanted children, and her health might make that difficult. She has a letter thanking her for her thoughtfulness and for considering his proposal.
Trudeau then flew to Nassau with Margaret, Joe and Debby MacInnis, and other friends and booked in at the Small Hope Bay Lodge on the little island of Andros in the Bahamas. Trudeau’s aides warned MacInnis that scuba diving was “a hobby, not a passion” for the prime minister. The aides seem to have completely misunderstood their boss’s nature. He was never a man of “hobbies” in anything that he undertook. MacInnis would eventually take Trudeau on dives of remarkable depth, including one of 250 feet. He later said that Trudeau was always “curious about the natural world and his place in it.”
