The Outsider
Michel Vastel
Macmillan
266 pages
Despite the circus antics in the senate, the long shadow of the GST, this summer’s gripping battles for native sovereignty and justice, and the images of Canadian war vessels in the Persian Gulf, the present mob of politicians running the show in this country still somehow manage to be some of the most boring figures in our short history. With the prospect of three more years before any hope of change on the federal scene, it is no wonder that we have been flooded lately with retrospectives of our more compelling past (witness the recent Maclean’s magazine cover story on the October Crisis of 1970.
Within this torrent of political nostalgia have come several new books examining the life and ideas of one Pierre Elliott Trudeau. The Outsider, an unofficial biography of our 15th Prime Minister by Quebecois journalist Michel Vastel, is a decidedly one-sided look at the man who captivated and amused so many of his fellow citizens, and insulted and angered perhaps an equal number. Vastel approaches Trudeau’s life and political career from the limited perspective of a single unyielding premise that he was, for the most part, an unwilling member of the francophone minority, and that his intellectual stubbornness in the face of Quebec nationalism decided the course of his entire life in politics.
It is a seductive argument, and one which is competently presented, but too often the author indulges himself in pseudo-Freudian analyses of Trudeau’s personal and professional relationships, and works too hard at making past evidence fit into the mould of his preconceived conclusions. At one point he writes, “Trudeau found in [senior aides Michael] Pitfield and [Marc] Lalonde the rich son that he could have been, and the father he would like to have had.
Despite such unnecessary intrusions, Vastel is to be praised for his attention to Trudeau’s early political theorizing, especially as found in his writings for school papers and Cite Libre. And he does manage to bring a welcome freshness to some of the more over-reported incidents in Trudeau’s career: the profanity in parliament, the one-fingered salute, and the confrontation with national protesters as the 1968 St. Jean Baptiste Day parade in Montreal. These anecdotes are all colourfully documented and thankfully not overplayed, as they often were during their time.
Unfortunately, though, when Vastel reaches the two “greatest” moments in Trudeau’s long reign (the FLQ crisis and the constitutional debate), he adopt an annoying Mickey Spillane-style tone (seen elsewhere in his habit of describing women by the colour of their hair and the length of their legs) and tired metaphors of espionage and warfare in an attempt to raise his subject matter into some realm of proud Canadian mythology.
Admittedly, the October Crisis was a tense and violent series of events, and the signing of the constitution capped some pretty fierce closed-door dealings and misalliances, but in the end, it was just politics, after all. Trudeau the person is far more interesting than Trudeau the federal policy. It is himself, and not the events he directed, that deserve to rise out of the tainted arena.
When Lyin’ Brian has long since faded from the national consciousness like the remnants of a bad dream, the compelling image of our philosopher king will continue to fascinate and haunt us. A straight, unmythological account of Trudeau’s personality and ideas would be an interesting story indeed. Such an account is not to be found here.
