Seldom has there been a political leader so complex, so impossible to predict, so difficult to understand, so private and yet so public, as Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Canada's Prime Minister from 1968 to 1979, and again from 1980 to 1984. "Canadians came to embrace him as they had no other leader since Wilfrid Laurier, Prime Minister from 1896 until 1911," writes Richard Gwyn, one of this country's most widely read and respected journalists. By the time of his death (September 28, 2000) the achievements Trudeau had established for Canada - the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, multiculturalism, a tolerance of differences, bilingualism, equality of the provinces with no special status for Quebec, an international policy of peacekeeping and "human security" - had become an inseparable part of the country. It is more interesting, the author notes, that when high-school students, all born after Trudeau had left office in 1984, were asked by pollsters to name their Canadian heros, they placed Trudeau at the very top of their lists alongside Wayne Gretzky.
This is Book 1 in the Canadians S. Series. See all Canadians S. books here.
See More History & the past: general interest
No one has written a review for 'Pierre Elliot Trudeau'
Why not be the first to share your opinion?
RICHARD GWYN, who is one of Canada's most highly-regarded and widely-read columnists, is best-known as the author of the best selling "The Northern Magus," the first major biography of Pierre Trudeau. He has written four other books, including the high-praised "The Unlikely Revolutionary," a biography of Newfoundland Premier Joseph Smallwood, Gwyn writes a b
More about Richard Gwyn
