Mound, do you mean we should remember a man who was brilliant, courageous, independent, sophisticated and worldly? Should we remember him as a Prime Minister who was obsessed with creating a just society, who instigated the creation of our constitution, who stood up to the US and made sure that Canada had an independent foreign policy, whose focus was on Nation Building and whose behaviour especially on the world stage, made Canadians proud to be Canadian? A man with a heightened sense of being who people were drawn to where ever he went. Pierre Elliott Trudeau is the man you're saying we should remember and what we were as a nation when he was our Prime Minister, compared to the non-entity that sat in the PM's chair for the last 10yrs. The comparison is painful, because I do remember and still think of him often.
It was a powerfully formative time for Canada and our democracy, Pamela. There was nothing like it before and certainly nothing since. As I was coming to the age of majority Trudeau was entering the Pearson government. Talk about a kid getting swept up in the moment. It was enough that I remained a steadfast Liberal for forty years. It took an Ignatieff to make me turn away.
He shared with us a vision of a Canada that we all wanted. Even those who didn't vote for him wanted it and he delivered. 15 years in power is enough to guarantee a significant segment of the public will turn against you and that happened. Yet, even those who sharply criticized Trudeau still respected him. That might have been what vexed Mulroney more than anything else.
Mulroney sought his legacy in the deeply flawed Meech Lake agreement and the follow-on Charlottetown Accord only to see Trudeau return to energize the "No" campaign.
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Mound, do you mean we should remember a man who was brilliant, courageous, independent, sophisticated and worldly? Should we remember him as a Prime Minister who was obsessed with creating a just society, who instigated the creation of our constitution, who stood up to the US and made sure that Canada had an independent foreign policy, whose focus was on Nation Building and whose behaviour especially on the world stage, made Canadians proud to be Canadian? A man with a heightened sense of being who people were drawn to where ever he went. Pierre Elliott Trudeau is the man you're saying we should remember and what we were as a nation when he was our Prime Minister, compared to the non-entity that sat in the PM's chair for the last 10yrs. The comparison is painful, because I do remember and still think of him often.
It was a powerfully formative time for Canada and our democracy, Pamela. There was nothing like it before and certainly nothing since. As I was coming to the age of majority Trudeau was entering the Pearson government. Talk about a kid getting swept up in the moment. It was enough that I remained a steadfast Liberal for forty years. It took an Ignatieff to make me turn away.
He shared with us a vision of a Canada that we all wanted. Even those who didn't vote for him wanted it and he delivered. 15 years in power is enough to guarantee a significant segment of the public will turn against you and that happened. Yet, even those who sharply criticized Trudeau still respected him. That might have been what vexed Mulroney more than anything else.
Mulroney sought his legacy in the deeply flawed Meech Lake agreement and the follow-on Charlottetown Accord only to see Trudeau return to energize the "No" campaign.
It was a time.
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