Wright, Robert: Trudeaumania

Bestselling, award-winning author Robert Wright sets the record straight nearly twenty years after the death of Pierre Elliott Trudeau

The Globe and Mail praises Trudeaumania as “[f]ascinating. More than any other, this aspect of Trudeau’s story requires a historical passport, and Wright provides one.” Trudeaumania is about Pierre Trudeau’s rise to power in 1968. This is a story we thought we knew—the epic saga of the hip Montrealer who drove up to Ottawa in his Mercedes in 1965, wowed the country with his dictum that “the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation,” rocked the new medium of television like no one since JFK, and in scant months rode the crest of Canadians’ Centennial-era euphoria into power. This is Canada’s own Camelot myth. It embodies the quirkiness, the passion and the youthful exuberance we ascribe to the 1960s even now. Many of us cherish it. Unfortunately, it is almost entirely wrong. In 1968 Trudeau put forward his vision for Canada’s second century, without guile, without dissembling and without a hard sell. Take it or leave it, he told Canadians. If you do not like my ideas, vote for someone else. We took it.

Trudeaumania illuminates this important part of our history and shines a light on our future.