This is an accepted version of this page
Margaret Trudeau | |
|---|---|
 Trudeau in 2014 | |
| Born | Margaret Joan Sinclair (1948-09-10)September 10, 1948 (age 77) West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
| Known for | Spouse of the Prime Minister of Canada |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 5, includingJustin,Alexandre, andMichel |
| Parent(s) | James Sinclair Kathleen Bernard |
Margaret Joan Trudeau (néeSinclair; born September 10, 1948) is a Canadian activist and the mother ofJustin Trudeau, the 23rdprime minister of Canada.[1] She marriedPierre Trudeau, the 15th prime minister of Canada, in 1971, three years after he became prime minister. They divorced in 1984, during his final months in office. She is also the mother of the journalist and authorAlexandre "Sacha" Trudeau,[2] andMichel Trudeau (now deceased) with Trudeau, and of son Kyle (born 1984), and daughter Alicia (born 1988), with Ottawa real-estate developer Fried Kemper. She is the first woman in Canadian history to have been both the wife and the mother of prime ministers. Trudeau is an advocate for people withbipolar disorder, with which she has been diagnosed.
Trudeau was born inNorth Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada,[3] the daughter of Scottish-bornJames "Jimmy" Sinclair, a former Liberal member of theParliament of Canada andMinister of Fisheries and Oceans, and Doris Kathleen (née Bernard) Sinclair.[4] Her grandmother, Rose Edith (née Ivens) Bernard, with whom she had an especially close relationship, lived inRoberts Creek, British Columbia, in later life, and was fromVirden, Manitoba.[5] Her grandfather, Thomas Kirkpatrick Bernard, was born inMakassar,Dutch Celebes, now in Sulawesi, Indonesia, and immigrated in 1906 at age 15 with his family toPenticton, British Columbia, eventually working as a payroll clerk forCanadian Pacific Railway.[6]
The Bernards were the descendants of colonists in theStraits Settlements, theDutch East Indies, andBritish Malaya, nowadays respectivelySingapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia, includingFrancis James Bernard, aLondon, England-bornAnglo-Irishman whose great-grandfather, Arthur Bernard, was a member of theIrish House of Commons forBandonbridge, and brother ofFrancis Bernard,Solicitor-General for Ireland, and ancestor of theEarls of Bandon.[7][8] Francis James Bernard was the founder of theSingapore Police Force in 1819,The Singapore Chronicle, the first newspaper in Singapore, was established with Bernard as owner, publisher, and editor in 1824[9] and he opened upKatong, now a densely populated-residential enclave, the first to cultivate acoconut estate there in 1823. In 1818, Bernard married Margaret Trudeau's 3rd great-grandmother, Esther Farquhar. She was the eldest daughter of ScotsmanWilliam Farquhar, a colonial leader in thefounding of modern Singapore, by Farquhar's first wife, Antoinette "Nonio" Clement, who was the daughter of a French father and anethnic Malaccan mother.[10][11]
Another great-grandmother, Cornelia Louisa Intveld, married in 1822 toRoyal Navy officer and merchant, William Purvis, fromDalgety Bay, Scotland, and a first cousin of American abolitionistRobert Purvis; she was a noted finesoprano and a beauty of her era.[12] Upon glimpsing her across the auditorium at the opera inLondon, England,British King William IV sent his equerry to invite her to his box. After she refused, the King sent the equerry back just to ask her name.[13] Intveld was born inPadang, present-day West Sumatra, Indonesia. At the time of Intveld's birth, Padang was in the territory of thePagaruyung Kingdom, where her father, who came from humble beginnings inHellevoetsluis, South Holland, rose up through theDutch East India Company to become the Dutch Resident of Padang. Her maternal grandmother was anOno Niharanee (a term covering every rank from chieftain's daughter to princess) who married a prominent Dutch colonial official and merchant.[14] Acclaimed BritishharpsichordistViolet Gordon-Woodhouse, and Hawaiian settlerEdward William Purvis, according to popular belief, was the namesake of theukulele, are Margaret Trudeau's first cousins, three times removed.[13] Trudeau explored her mother's family's roots inSingapore during an episode ofWho Do You Think You Are?
Trudeau's family moved to a large house inRockcliffe Park, Ontario, in 1952 after her father was appointed to the Cabinet, and she attendedRockcliffe Park Public School[15] although they returned to North Vancouver after he lost his re-election bid in 1958. She attended Hamilton Junior Secondary School andDelbrook Senior Secondary School in North Vancouver. Trudeau graduated in 1969 fromSimon Fraser University inBurnaby, British Columbia with aBachelor of Arts insociology.[16][better source needed]
Sinclair metPierre Trudeau, who was then Minister of Justice, while vacationing inTahiti with her family when she was 18. Sinclair did not recognize him, and she in fact thought little of their encounter, but Trudeau, then 47, was captivated by the carefree "flower child" and began to pursue her.[citation needed]
Pierre Trudeau was a bachelor before he became Prime Minister in 1968. They kept their romance private, so Canadians were shocked after theCanadian Broadcasting Corporation led its morning radio broadcast[17] about Prime Minister Trudeauhoneymooning atAlta Lake, British Columbia, at the foot ofWhistler BlackcombSki Resort[18][19] the day after a surprise wedding inNorth Vancouver, British Columbia, on March 4, 1971.[20] Although she had accompanied Pierre Trudeau in public a year before toice skate and dance at an event atRideau Hall, official residence ofCanada's Governor General,[17] it was a complete secret except to immediate family members and close friends that she was in a romantic relationship, then in a six-month engagement to the Prime Minister.[17][20]
As Pierre Trudeau was aCatholic, she converted to theCatholic Church for their marriage. When asked about her role in a marriage to the prime minister, Trudeau said, "I want to be more than a rose in my husband's lapel."[citation needed]
In 1971, the Trudeaus took a second honeymoon in theCaribbean toBarbados and an unidentified nearby island[21] thenTobago, then toSaint Vincent and the Grenadines (including bothBequia andSt. Vincent) with Pierre taking a side-trip toTrinidad while Margaret stayed in Tobago.[22]
After Pierre Trudeau's government's neardefeat in 1972 (Margaret herself was uninvolved in the campaign), she decided to become much more active for the1974 federal election.[citation needed] At a rally in Vancouver, she told a crowd of 2,000 her husband taught her "a lot about loving."[citation needed] The remark was wildly mocked and dismissed in public during the campaign by members of the press gallery as well as by her husband's main political rivalsProgressive Conservative Party of Canada leaderRobert Stanfield andNew Democratic Party leaderDavid Lewis.[citation needed]
Liberal party organizers considered her a top campaign asset, and sent her off alone to help local candidates in hotly contested ridings while, as critics noted, the wives of Stanfield and Lewis were on the campaign trail but rarely spoke and stood behind their husbands at events.[citation needed] Political observers also found Pierre Trudeau noticeably more relaxed at events while Margaret came along. Initially, she brought her six-month-old son Sacha on the trail with her, and one veteran reporter said, "It's the first campaign plane for the first thing off is a crib and a diaper bag."[citation needed] Later, she left her sons with her parents inNorth Vancouver while campaigning. Asked at the time if she thought her campaigning was helping Pierre Trudeau pick up votes, she replied, "I won't know until July 8th. But 52 per cent of the voters in this country are women...an awful lot ..."[23] Her husband's party returned to a majority-government.
.jpg)
"From the day I became Mrs. Pierre Elliott Trudeau," she writes in her memoirs, "a glass panel was gently lowered into place around me, like a patient in a mental hospital no longer considered able to make decisions and cannot be exposed to a harsh light."[24] The couple had three children:Justin (born December 25, 1971),Alexandre (Sacha) (born December 25, 1973), andMichel (October 2, 1975 – November 13, 1998).
Trudeau tore apart a quilt made by Canadian conceptual artistJoyce Wieland[25] on the wall in the prime-minister's official residence in Ottawa because it celebrated "reason over passion".[26] (Her husband's personal motto was "Reason before passion".)[27]
.jpg)
Over time, the marriage disintegrated[28] to the point where, as recounted in her 1982 bookConsequences, Trudeau had affairs withJack Nicholson,Ryan O'Neal,Lou Rawls, andUS SenatorTed Kennedy. She was also associated with members of theRolling Stones, includingRonnie Wood[29] and, according toKeith Richards' autobiography,Life,Mick Jagger.[29][30]
She separated from her husband in 1977.[31] Pierre Trudeau won custody of the children and did not pay spousal support. Margaret Trudeau had a difficult time earning a living after her marriage. She wrote the 1979 bookBeyond Reason about her marriage.[citation needed]
On the eve of the1979 election, in which Pierre Trudeau's party lost the majority of seats in the House of Commons, she was dancing atStudio 54 nightclub inNew York City. A photo of her at the disco was featured on many front pages across Canada.[32]
Margaret Trudeau filed for ano-fault divorce at theOntario Supreme Court on November 16, 1983,[33] which was finalized on April 2, 1984. On April 18, 1984, with her three sons attending, she married Ottawa real-estate developer Fried Kemper in a civil ceremony in the chambers of JudgeHugh Poulin. She had two children with him: son Kyle (born 1984), and daughter Alicia (born 1988), before divorcing in 1999.[34][35][31]
In November 1998, the Trudeaus' youngest son,Michel, an avid outdoorsman, was killed when an avalanche swept him to the bottom ofBritish Columbia'sKokanee Lake. The loss of her son was devastating.[36]
When Pierre Trudeau died in 2000, Margaret was at his bedside with their surviving sons Justin and Alexandre.[37] Speaking in 2010 about her marriage to Trudeau, she said: "Just because our marriage ended didn't mean the love stopped."[38]
On October 19, 2015, her eldest son,Justin Trudeau,led the Liberal Party to a majority government, becoming the 23rdPrime Minister of Canada. During the campaign, she was involved, but avoided campaigning in public as the Conservative campaign's main attack line against Justin was "Just Not Ready" and she feared they would suggest her son was "so unready he needs his mummy."[39]
On April 27, 2020, Trudeau was hospitalized withsmoke inhalation after a fire broke out in her apartment building.[40]
_(cropped).jpg)
From 2002 to 2017, Trudeau was the honorary president ofWaterAid Canada, an Ottawa-based organization dedicated to helping the poorest communities indeveloping countries buildsustainable water supply andsanitation services.[41][42] In 2014, she visitedMali as an ambassador of WaterAid Canada.[43]
On May 5, 2006, Trudeau announced she hasbipolar disorder.[31] Since then, she advocated for reducing the social-stigma of mental illness—bipolar disorder in particular—with speaking engagements across North America.[35][44] In May 2019, she presented the one-woman-showCertain Woman of an Age in Chicago as part of the city'sWellness Week.[45] She is an honorary patron of theCanadian Mental Health Association.[46] In July 2019, she attended an opening ceremony of WE College inNarok County (Kenya) with former Prime Minister of CanadaKim Campbell, Kenyan First LadyMargaret Kenyatta andCraig Kielburger, a co-founder ofWE Charity organization.[47]
In 2010, she authoredChanging My Mind, a book about her personal experience with bipolar disorder.[48]
In 2013, Trudeau received anhonorary degree ofDoctor of Laws from theUniversity of Western Ontario in recognition of her work to combat mental illness.[49]
While still married to Pierre Trudeau, Margaret Trudeau had a brief acting career, appearing in two Canadian-produced films:
Trudeau's mother, Margaret Trudeau, was an activist
...staying in their honeymoon residence – a condominium owned by Mrs. Trudeau's parents, Mr. and Mrs. James Sinclair of North Vancouver. The Trudeaus spent three days skiing Whistler last March after their surprise wedding
They surprised the media with their secret wedding in Vancouver, and, afterward, drove directly to Whistler for a three-day stay.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (UPI) – Prime Minister Trudeau and his wife left here Monday by chartered plane on a quick sidetrip to an unidentified nearby island. They arrived here Thursday on a brief "second honeymoon," and reportedly stayed at a private residence on the island's posh west coast.
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (Reuter) – Prime Minister Trudeau lunched privately-Thursday with Trinidad and Tobago's prime minister, Dr. Eric Williams. Trudeau flew in from Tobago, the sister island of Trinidad, where he was holidaying with his wife since Tuesday. Shortly after his luncheon engagement, Trudeau took a return plane to Tobago to rejoin his wife, Margaret. The Canadian high-commission said it was in not in a position to say when the prime minister and his wife would leave Tobago. "We know he has to be back in Ottawa on April 18," a commission spokesman said. The Trudeaus visited Barbados, and spent a day swimming off Bequia, a tiny island in the Grenadines, and nearby islets while they visited St. Vincent Monday.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
