Obama of the North
CHETWYND, LIONEL
Obama of the North The cautionary tale of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. BY LIONEL CHETWYND Chris Matthews tells us that Obama’s victory speech after the Potomac primaries he felt “this thrill going...
...He would serve as prime minister for 15 years (1968-79 and 1980-84...
...It appears the infection now loosed upon the land is rarer than any seen in 1960—more unusual even than the state of mind induced after 1963, when the masterminds of Camelot hawked their false memories...
...As a candidate in 1968, Trudeau was completely nonspecific, avoiding policy questions and depending entirely on style and panache...
...L?vesque, derisively called him “Elliott” (his Anglophone mother’s name), and the division became so bitter the Separatists soon captured both the provincial government in Quebec and the opposition in Ottawa...
...Even as Obamamania reaches new heights, those of us who were actually on hand for John Kennedy’s squeaker victory over the dour Richard Nixon in 1960 do not recall Kennedy’s evoking the deep, visceral excitement Obama summons...
...Emerging from World War II as a leading industrial power, it had devoted a vast part of its treasure to financing the Colombo Plan, “the Marshall Plan of Asia...
...His pet project, the “repatriation” from Britain of the Canadian constitution and the addition of a Charter of Rights, had the effect of handing the courts sway over virtually every aspect of Canadian life, while diminishing the power of the elected bodies...
...It was also, by any intelligent measure, a disaster, one Canadians are only now beginning to understand...
...Even those of us who held posts in his own Liberal party were powerless to thwart the mad embrace millions of Canadians threw around Pierre Elliott Trudeau, with his promise to reconcile the two founding peoples, to unite the English (more correctly, Scottish) heritage with the French legacy and take us forward into a brave new age...
...He promised, too, to reforge our relationship with “the elephant to our south” and to elevate Canada’s role in the world...
...Look no further than Chris Matthews to understand the uncritical devotion Trudeau summoned forth...
...Put away your troubles, said the silver-tongued candidate, and enraptured Canadians followed, without ever learning where he intended to lead...
...Parts of the infrastructure used to this day in Pakistan, India, and Lionel Chetwynd is an Oscar and Emmy Award-nominated fi lmmaker and documentarian...
...It seemed that Canada’s singular voice in the international arena was weakening, and even the prime minister—Lester Pearson, winner of a Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for engineering the U.N...
...Trudeaumania...
...True, many harbored a residual anger at America’s more than two-year delay in entering World War II, but that was a family squabble, easily put aside...
...Libre and studied his academic writings at the University of Montreal...
...Even after he was fi nally replaced, briefl y by the Liberal John Turner, then by the Tory Brian Mulroney, Trudeau was able to scuttle attempts to alter the Trudeau formula...
...Canada had raised the largest army in the world, per capita, to fight Hitler (1.4 million from a population of 11 million...
...BY LIONEL CHETWYND Chris Matthews tells us that Obama’s victory speech after the Potomac primaries he felt “this thrill going up my leg...
...Emergency Force that helped defuse the Suez crisis—could not arrest the trend...
...They had no laws barring or limiting the flow of American popular culture across the border...
...America was preoccupied in Southeast Asia...
...Back in the Canada of 1968, in the wake of “Beatlemania,” we called the malady “Trudeaumania,” deliberately invoking pop-idol glitter...
...We were wrong: His lack of specifi city was his strength...
...Those same Canadians generally viewed the United States with affection, even admiration...
...It is nevertheless history—a history that contains a cautionary tale...
...It devastated a country I loved, the place that had raised me and nurtured me...
...And out of party loyalty and civility, we held our tongues...
...Meantime, the delighted Englishlanguage media, at last presented with a French-speaking Canadian they could love, dubbed him “Canada’s JFK...
...Brit Hume runs a replay of an audience member at the same speech enjoying an almost orgasmic reaction...
...He was all things to all people...
...How was a strong and self-reliant people so easily led astray...
...What that actually meant or how it was to be achieved never seemed worth mentioning, as if the mere stating of the intention were equivalent to a result realized...
...He ran for offi ce at a time when nationalism, even Separatism, was taking on large dimensions in Quebec...
...A people once proud of their history would be weaned away from it and remade into a relativistic, postmodern nation...
...All this changed when Trudeau became prime minister, overwhelming more experienced candidates for the party leadership with his amazing style...
...The damage to what Canada had stood for would be staggering...
...South Asia were paid for by Canadians...
...This would surely undo him, or so we reassured ourselves, those of us who believed him to be a hard-line leftist because we’d read his essays in Cit...
...Trudeau destroyed the friendly relationship with the United States, inviting a trickle of draft evaders to turn into an onrush...
...For one thing, he tapped into Canadians’ apprehension at a world becoming diffi cult to fathom...
...In short, he succeeded in remaking the country in his own image...
...Vive le Qu?bec libre...
...Visiting Montreal for Expo ’67, President Charles de Gaulle of France had stood on the balcony at City Hall before a huge throng and proclaimed the Separatists’ slogan: “Vive le Qu?bec...
...Before Trudeau, Canada still basked in the glory of its own Greatest Generation...
...Trudeaumania was the elixir that blotted out a newly complex world...
...Rather than reconcile the two founding cultures, the new prime minister so alienated Quebec that Separatist terrorism in Montreal soon forced Trudeau to declare martial law...
...Again, someone mumbles the sainted Kennedy name...
...The world suddenly demanded a new thoughtfulness...
...It stressed multiculturalism rather than biculturalism, extolled diversity and “international consensus,” and cast the very existence of the United States as sinister while rushing to recognize Communist China and Cuba...
...To many Canadians, especially the huge number now on the left, the view of Trudeau offered here is heresy...
...That Canada’s moment of triumph came in the summer of 1967 with the hugely successful Montreal world’s fair known as Expo ’67...
...In private, the de facto Francophone leader, Ren...
...A brilliant and smiling Savile Row-suited orator, he spun webs around huge crowds, proposing big ideas in obscure terms, leaving listeners to discover in his speeches their own dreams...
...Frothing on, he invokes the last Democrat to carry Virginia, JFK...
...This revolution would remake Canada into something its prewar self would hardly recognize...
...The new Canadian identity—ardently embraced in the early Trudeau years—was equivocal...
...Yet, rare as it is, this virus is one I’ve seen before...
...Once in power, he led Canada down a radical new path, muddying what had been a clear sense of identity, deemphasizing the country’s Scottish-French roots in favor of a more ambiguous European model...
...The “old” way of doing things, cooed Trudeau, was so 1950s...
Vol. 13 • March 2008 • No. 24
