From Pierre to Pierrot

Canada's fifteenth prime minister, with its future twenty-third prime minister (at left) and his younger brothers on Remembrance Day in Ottawa. The topper is a quintessentially Trudeau touch: When Ministers of the Crown still wore Court dress, he didn't; when ministers ceased to wear Court dress, he dusted his off.

On the weekend before Election Day, Canadians are observing the hundredth birthday of the alleged Father of Our Country - Pierre Elliott Trudeau, born in Montreal on October 18th 1919. Those of a suspicious bent will feel vaguely that the climax of the son's re-election campaign and the centennial celebrations of his dad are not a mere coincidence of the calendar.

When the blackface dauphin ascended to the throne in 2015, many of us assumed the restoration would condemn us to live forever in the vast engulfing shadow of the Father of Trudeaupia. Yet the opposite has happened: The mammy singer has diminished his pappy - and the centenary observances this weekend are far more muted than if they had occurred under Stephen Harper or Jean Chrétien.The vanity and exhibitionism and general modish twerpery of the son were certainly present in the father, but it wasn't the whole story. The Liberals, in passing the crown to a clown, have shrunk their own myth.

I've written on the great man over the years. This piece appeared in Maclean's thirteen years ago, during one of many occasional spates of hagiographies. You will note that Trudeau père, like Trudeau fils, had his share of "youthful indiscretions"...

I bet Steyn thanks his lucky stars he is now an American citizen.

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