If you’re wondering whether the tableau of blue-jeaned rakes at right are the latest ensemble indie rock band, we’d forgive you. In fact, the picture reveals two men who want to be your next Prime Minister back when they were students. In ’68, Michael Ignatieff (the confident-looking guy staring at the camera) and Bob Rae (avec pipe) were editors of this newspaper. In their Varsity days, they protested ‘Nam, argued about Trudeau, and penned some killer book reviews. Inside, we reprint some embarrassing excerpts from their youthful scribblings and talk to former co-editors about what Iggy and Rae were really like…

Michael Ignatieff: “the revolutionary”

“The 20th century will not salvage itself.
…
If the present administrative system of our society is incapable of salvaging the century, then we must have political and social revolution, a revolution shaped not by an ideology but shaped by the problems we must face. A re-organization of society to snuff out the population bomb, to rebuild the cities, to halt our ecological rape.
Revolution may be impossible within the system. Revolution occurs (here I am more than usually derivative) when elements of the administrative system become demonstrably dysfunctional to the people at large. Thus, the question of whether a revolution in Canada is possible is not answered by saying that radicals across the country are busy outlining an ideology and a strategy for that revolution. Revolution will become possible when ordinary people decide that the system is not realizing the goals that it has set out for itself.”
Source: The Varsity Review, Sept. 22, 1968

“My trouble is that I’m tired of talking about Trudeau but can’t seem to stop.
…
The Americans have always had such a figure at the heart of their mythology and at the centre of their institutions. Now we’ve got one, and our frustrations and our aspirations about our country are thrust upon him in anger and in hope. Whether he does anything or not does not alter the fact that his presence as an extraordinary object of mystery, interest, hatred and awe will irrevocably change the nature of the P.M.-ship and our political character as a country.
And I’m damned if I know what this means for us.”
Source: The Varsity Review, Oct. 18, 1968

“Dear Bob:
If you decide the political system is irrevocably condemned by human weakness and by its own procedures to irrelevant flutterings of reform, then Trudeau doesn’t matter much. He becomes only the most brilliant of a series of pragmatist-conservative politicians.
…
If one accepts the system then one can decide whether to work with him or to seek others. I haven’t made up my mind. But don’t worry. Until I do, you won’t let me sleep.”
Source: The Varsity Review, Oct. 25, 1968 [in response to an article about Trudeau by Rae]

Bob Rae: the bridge-builder?

“With brilliant diplomacy, Rae presented the motion in such a way as to offend only the most reactionary conservatives … Rae made what was essentially a radical motion acceptable to the moderates.”
Source: The Varsity, Sept. 20, 1968

“The 1968 Liberal campaign, as all the Conservatives and the New Democrats claimed, was a campaign without issues. The Liberal party had found what they knew to be an unbeatable vote-getter [Trudeau]; they saw no reason to worry too much about a platform.
…
But the victory of style has been an empty, if not totally disillusioning one. The conservatism and legalism of this swinging new government have become an almost unbearable reality.”
Source: The Varsity Review, Oct. 18, 1968

“Holidays are essentially hypocritical, in that we feel and say and do friendly things that we hate doing the rest of the year. Freud has said that tribal holidays represented an institutionalized form of de-repression. In other words you could make love to your neighbour’s wife one day a year, but never on any other day. Hence the mistletoe. A pretty unsatisfactory replacement, I’d say.”
Source: The Varsity Review, Dec. 18, 1968

Former colleagues say:

“Ignatieff always talked as if he were addressing a public meeting. He assailed people good-naturedly and his head swivelled constantly. Even on those rare occasions that we were alone together, I never felt that I had his undivided attention.
Rae was quiet and, I thought, diffident toward Ignatieff; definitely the sidekick. He seemed to lack the gift of small talk, the common touch, and it didn’t surprise me that he became a New Democrat.
I once cured a persistent nosebleed of Rae’s and thereafter he avoided me, as if the memory of his brief, pale-faced vulnerability embarrassed him.”
-Mike Kesterton, The Globe and Mail (formerly Arts review editor for The Varsity Review)

“They used to be good friends, and I don’t know what’s happened to that. The friendship’s in rough shape. Rae can be pretty tough. He’s really going after Ignatieff, and Ignatieff seems pretty wounded by it. I don’t think working together is on the horizon.
Guys like Rae and Igantieff would want to have their stuff in The Varsity because it was a going concern on campus, it was a big deal to have been an editor of The Varsity. They were different from us just because of their backgrounds. They came from private schools and all that, they were different, but we all hung out, we all went to parties and such.”
-Rod Mickleburgh, The Globe and Mail (formerly Sports editor and associate Arts editor for The Varsity)