Unlike the United States, with its generalissimo politics-Washington, Jackson, Grant, Eisehower- the martial arts have been conspicuously absent from Canadian politics. But there in one exception: in 1968 Pierre Elliot Trudeau became the first Canadian leader to bring the gunslinger-Lone Ranger ethos to Canadian politics. Trudeau introduced to Canada the refined art of single combat; it was the politics of “Doing It My Way”-the politics of going my way or being left behind. Single-combat confrontation implied much mor than the loner or renegade in power, and far far less than the shaman black tricks of Mackenzie
King. Trudeau was always far more the solo Philosopher King engaged in intellectual trial by combat than the Magus Merlin conjuring up solutions by puffs of smoke, sleight of hand or divine intervention. Ouijaboard politics was the occult domain of Mackenzie King, a man virtually devoid of policy, a political palm reader forever checking the whims and moods of his powerful baronial-Ralston Howe, St. Laurent-and sometimes Byronian colleagues to see how best he could placate them, or calm them, or Heap his beatitudes upon them. Trudeau, from day one , was always more samurai than shaman.
Even in is pre-leadership days, Trudeau’s love of trial by combat was predominant. Mackenzie King would have never touched the unholy trinity of divorce, abortion and homosexuality: each one of these issues is a sleeping dog best left to lie; each could only infuriate conservative Canada from coast to coast. Since King dared not touch them seriatim he certainly would not have touched them together-in an omnibus bill. This, Trudeau did joyously. The myths-makers have it at this was Trudeau’s first deliberated joust, the kingship being the final prize.
But Trudeau had no leadership aspirations at the time; all that he had, still as, was the love of combat for the sake of combat and religious scruples be damned. Trudeau the Catholic zealot tackle divorce, abortion and homosexuality active Prime Minister in this country’s history, liberated the homosexual practitioners of black acts totally abhorrent to him; ironically, in the process, Trudeau gave irrational Canada a pretext for branding him a homosexual too. P. E. T. has always hated the consensus building of Mackenzie King; even the populist following of a Diefenbaker was an anathema to Trudeau.
The single-combat warrior “doing it my way” is always alone; he leads the people ut is not of them; like the prophet he wanders either in dessert or lush green pastures and often, like the prophet, he watches his people march into the Promised Land without him. For Trudeau, being alone is to be free; victory is a consequence of solitude; companionship an act of weakness, cronyism even wise. It is ironic that Trudeau, a devout Jansenist Roman Catholic, emotionally and philosophically opposed to both divorce and abortion, should grant Canadians greatly expanded divorce rights and their first right to legale abortion.
Trudeau took the unholy trinity then disturbing the bedrooms of the ation because all three were trial combat, all three required one strong man to push them through. In this minefield Canada’s political loner had walked alone and apparently loved it. Canada’s other solo flyer, John Diefenbaker, may or may not have been a renegade in power, but the input his holitics received from Senate cronies and Kitchen cabinets was enormous. The letters and advice that daily poured in to the chief were a populist input that Diefenbaker slavishly adhered to.
Trudeau was no Diefenbaker; he was neither a populist nor a renegade. Trudeau was simply a man who brilliantly massaged and manipulated others so hat his single will appeared to be the will of many, so that his will be always done. The theme of my-way politics sheds much light on the vrai Trudeau, the Trudeau that is, rather than the Trudeau people think there is. Trudeau has never been the privacy-demanding recluse, the reluctant leader that herdsmen of Canadian journalism insist he is.
In secular life Trudeau is no trinitarian; he has chosen his oneness because, from the earliest politics, oneness worked for him so spectacular. Trudeau’s personal handling of the constriction crisis was a “my way” all the way. Trudeau, the self-proclaimed socialist prophet of his people, waxed ever so eloquently against the sins of conscription, and yet Trudeau seemingly could not see in War measures that potential greater evil of a Canadian fascism that surly meant permanent conscription and enslavement of all.
Equally puzzling is the referral of Trudeau’s nationalist compatriots and colleagues in the years since to give him any credit for fighting in 1942 a good nationalist fight on behalf of the anti-conscription, quasi-separatist candidacy of Jean Drapeau; not so puzzling in the refusal of Angelo Saxon atriots to give Trudeau any credit at all for joining a reserve regiment before the war. There was both a typical Trudeau “a plague on both your houses” in all this, and even more of the gunslinger spraying bullets on both side of the saloon bar.
The style of the lone gunslinger was already apperant in Trudeau’s early radical posture. Cite libre was a radical editorial collective run completely by Trudeau. Trudeau the then internationalist and socialist shared ideological bed and board with David Lewis, Frank Scott, Eugene Forsey and Theresa Casgrain, but only Trudeau’s CCF and NDP membership cards ysteriously do not exist today. Even that minor bit of collectivist discipline, the proud possession of a party card, was abhorrent to the free- wheeling independent Trudeau.
The ideologically committed gunslinger found little in the democratic process to nourish him. The social democratic Trudeau first entered the electoral lists only only in the safest Liberal seat in the country. Trudeau knew that group dynamic, group participation, in not ideologically and politically effective as when the few shape the many. This single-warrior syndrome explains many shifts and patterns in the Trudeau character.
Diefenbaker revelled in the democratic panorama; Diefenbaker failed to keep urban Canada aboard his carousel and never really got french Canada aboard in the first place, but the Chief’s strengths and weakness flowed from the ordinary people who loved him and the sophisticates and big city people who hated him. P. E. T. never did deal in democratic norms; instead, the elitist Trudeau gave Quebec’s elitists the first crack at the bilingual club and transformed the federal bureaucracy, at least on its highest levels, to be a bilingual workplace in which the frankphone would be supreme.