Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Pierre Trudeau was prime minister of Canada for fifteen years and patriated its constitution. Born in Montreal in 1919 to a wealthy French-Canadian father and a Scottish-descended mother, he was educated at a Jesuit college, at Harvard, at Sciences Po and at the London School of Economics, and travelled through Asia and eastern Europe before returning to Quebec as a labour lawyer and an editor of a magazine attacking Duplessis's provincial regime. He entered federal politics at forty-five and became prime minister in 1968 amid a wave of enthusiasm the press called Trudeaumania. His central conviction was that Quebec's grievances should be answered by making the whole country genuinely bilingual rather than by separation, and the Official Languages Act of 1969 is the instrument. The October Crisis of 1970 tested it. The FLQ kidnapped a British diplomat and murdered a Quebec cabinet minister, and Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act, putting troops in the streets and suspending civil liberties; some 500 people were detained without charge, most released without charge. Asked how far he would go, he said just watch me. He fought and won the 1980 sovereignty referendum, having promised constitutional renewal. The Constitution Act of 1982 brought the constitution home from Westminster and added the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — agreed with nine provinces in an overnight negotiation Quebec was not in the room for, which it has never signed. He also introduced multiculturalism as policy and decriminalised homosexuality. He died in 2000. His son Justin was prime minister from 2015 to 2025.
- Lived: 1919 CE – 2000 CE
- Nationality: Canadian
- Roles: Prime Minister of Canada (1968-1979, 1980-1984)
