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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
A generally well-meaning head of state finds himself increasingly unpopular and under pressure to resign and let someone else take the wheel before an upcoming election so as to not become the latest progressive western government to pull a death drop when goose-stepping is the new dance craze sweeping the United Nations.
There’s a last-minute scramble to find a replacement to turn the sinking ship around but whoever gets the gig is more likely to end up like Kim Campbell, Canada’s first and only female female prime minister. Campbell, a Conservative who took office after Brian Mulroney skedaddled ahead of schedule, was also the country’s first female justice minister but only lasted roughly a dozen Scaramuccis at the new job before leading the party into such a resounding clobbering in the 1993 election, the surviving Cons could’ve carpooled in a convertible to commute to the House of Commons.
But at least probable PM Pierre Poilievre seems unlikely to start sabre-rattling about seizing the wee specks of technically France off the coast of Newfoundland or turning Turks and Caicos into our own private Hawaii. Or to rage-tweet at Santa Claus for not pulling his economic weight on Arctic sovereignty despite his long history of giving better Christmas presents to the one percent.
You’ve probably heard by now Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced last week he’s stepping down. On January 6 no less, which is becoming a bit of a portentous date for significant North American political developments.
“My friends, as you all know, I’m a fighter,” said a sad-looking Trudeau while announcing he was hanging up his gloves. “Every bone in my body has told me to fight because I care deeply about Canadians. I care deeply about this country, and I will always be motivated by what is in the best interest of Canadians. And the fact is, despite best efforts to work through it, Parliament has been paralyzed for months after what has been the longest session of a minority Parliament in Canadian history. […] This country deserves a real choice in the next election, and it has become clear to me that if I’m having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election.”
Hell of a way to pass the baton to Chrystia Freeland whoever becomes the next Liberal leader by setting them up for failure thanks to in-house dysfunction! Not that he’s going away right away. Governor-General Mary Simon agreed to prorogue Parliament until March 24 to give the Grits time to get their shit together and pick a new boss, meaning the federal government will essentially be AWOL when the world collectively steps into the Twilight Zone on January 20 thanks to America’s stupidest citizens.
Which is not great, Bob!
Pierre Elliott Trudeau famously made his own decision to step down after taking “a walk in the snow.” (I was a kid at the time and thought the prime minister had actually gone missing, which is not unprecedented for a Commonwealth nation given Australia lost one of their own either through drowning or being eaten by a shark.) His son made the same call after taking a walk in the snow of his own after going on a ski vacation with his family (including his estranged wife), which made international headlines after he was ambushed by an anti-LGBTQ dumb-dumb named Emily Duggan who urged him to “please get the fuck out of B.C.”
Canadians are so stereotypically polite we say “please” even when cussing people out in front of their children. Trudeau usually hits the slopes at flashier Whistler, a two-hour drive from Vancouver, but opted instead to reflect on his situation at remote Red Mountain in the Tory-held southern Kootenays, where his younger brother Michel worked as a liftie when he was killed in an avalanche while backcountry skiing 27 years ago. His body was never recovered, and this is the closest thing the family has to visiting his grave. Not that the haters would care about that sort of thing.
I remember doing a little happy dance in my apartment when Trudeau was first elected PM, out of relief the icy reign of Stephen Harper — who totally would’ve sent Canadian armed forces on Dubya’s snipe hunt for weapons of mass destruction if he’d been in charge instead of Jean Chrétien back in 2003 — had finally come to an end. I’ve never voted for him though because that’s not how it works in Canada; people vote for a Member of Parliament to represent them in Ottawa, and my home electoral district has been a commie NDP stronghold with only minor blips for nearly a century. The two major parties usually only run randos in Vancouver East — known for being the poorest riding in the country despite its sky-high rents — as cannon fodder to prove their loyalty for next time instead of actual contenders, and I once tried and failed to prove the existence of an alleged Conservative candidate seeking my vote.
I never had a crush on the handsome fella unlike some other Wonkette writers I could mention, but I’ve always wished him the best as the alternatives have invariably been worse. It was a bummer when he reneged on the promise to abolish the first-past-the-post electoral system in favor of proportional representation, but at least we got slightly cheaper daycare out of him. The repeated blackface eruptions were embarrassing AF but, like a lot of white people, I was willing to hold my nose and look the other way after Barack Obama gave us his permission. The SNC-Lavalin affair was a doozy, where he shitcanned the country’s first Indigenous justice minister because she wouldn’t give Liberal corporate donors a break with corruption charges and lied after the Globe & Mail reported on it, but we still got legalized weed. Even if it’s much cheaper, stronger and without all the stoner-proof packaging when bought off the street. The Mr. Dressup-on-safari bit was super cringe but then again people around the planet knew the leader of Canada’s name for the first time since, well, Pierre Trudeau.
Plus he got us through the plague in reasonably decent shape and did as well as could be hoped when dealing with That Awful Man the first time around.
My skepticism probably stems from reading his memoir and being weirded out by the uncanny amount of things we have in common. Not just garden variety stuff like having good hair or being the same age and height but also attending the same university at the same time while earning degrees from the same department along with a similar early squirrelly job history involving stints as whitewater guides and nightclub doormen at the same ski town. It’s a lot.
Bouncers and river rats don’t typically go on to become world leaders but then again neither do peanut farmers. Although journalists sometimes do.
His brother Sacha always seemed like the bright one, and I found it hard to imagine how a guy with similar passions — snowboarding, combat sports, the dramatic arts, making fun of the Right — could be well-suited to running a G7 country, but he was smart enough to surround himself with much smarter people. (His first transportation minister was a frickin astronaut.) I even wrote about this unexpected development because I’d just lost my job and was hoping to capitalize on Trudeaumania 2.0 to find a new one by pointing out the similarities.
But he was also was kind of a dick to me once.
This was the early aughts, and I’d rounded a corner in downtown Vancouver to suddenly find myself standing face-to-face with him. “Hey, Justin Trudeau,” I blurted in surprise. He looked me in the eye, sneered, turned his back and walked away.
To be fair, he wasn’t a politician yet and obliged to reflexively turn on the charm. I only happened to recognize him because it was shortly after he delivered a moving eulogy at his father’s televised funeral, which was essentially his big debut on the world stage as an adult. He was probably still getting used to being recognized in public or just having a bad day. Or simply didn’t like the look of me. But it’s not like I asked for an autograph or selfie, and this was long before strangers started telling him to go fuck himself on the regular.
(Fun fact: Trudeau began his career in Vancouver’s public education system as a substitute high school teacher, and the timeline makes it possible if unlikely that he once taught a young woman named Claire Boucher, better known today by her stage name Grimes, a musician who went on to become a successful early prototype for disseminating President Musk’s DNA. If so, let’s hope it wasn’t history class as she apparently missed the important lesson it’s never a good idea to get into bed with a megalomaniac.)
But politeness is kind of Canada’s main jam, and he couldn’t even manage basic courtesy like his papa did when our paths crossed a decade earlier. (No, really.) I was walking to class through Montreal’s Mount Royal park one winter day when I noticed an elderly man wearing a cape and a beret slowly making his way towards me. Is that..? It was. Trudeau Sr. surely saw the recognition on my face as we passed along the boot path through the snow, and we exchanged nods and a cheerful “salut.”
Which is a boring story I might’ve also shared with his son if he hadn’t looked at me like I was wearing an upsidedown maple leaf on my chest.
[Tourism Saint-Pierre and Miquelon / Policy Magazine / ConvoyWatch / Salon / Ici Ciel Bleu]
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