Book Study: Pierre Elliott Trudeau by Nino Ricci

I think that this series of books called Extraordinary Canadians is going to be really interesting. It is a series edited by John Ralston Saul in 18 volumes. The first one I read was the one about Pierre Trudeau. I saw it on the shelf at the library and picked it right up. Having come from the US, I didn’t know much about Trudeau except for the fact that a lot of people near where I live don’t think very highly of him. Actually that is a bit of an understatement. J But I picked up the book because I wanted to read more about this iconic character.

The book actually turned out to be really helpful in highlighting many of the internal debates about what it means to be a Canadian, because if there was one person in the middle of the debates it was Trudeau. In this look I am not so much interested in looking at Trudeau as I am at trying to understand two defining Canadian issues that Trudeau was at the heart of: multiculturalism and federalism.

1) Multiculturalism: to help get ready for my citizenship test I have a little booklet entitled Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship. It is a document that goes through Canadian history, geography and values. One of the central values of Canada the booklet tells us is Multiculturalism: “A fundamental characteristic of the Canadian heritage and identity. Canadians celebrate the gift of one another’s presence and work hard to respect pluralism and live in harmony.” These values are, of course, enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the document which was the passion of Trudeau and which he worked so hard to put into the constitution when he had it repatriated in 1982.

Looking at Canada’s history, this actually would not be an obvious value. At best, most of the emphasis seems to be on biculturalism. At the beginning of the book, the author, who is of Italian origin, reflects that when he thought of Canada as a child, it meant something to do with being English which he was not a part of. Or for a French Canadian it had to do with French heritage. And it is worth noting that the Aboriginal identity of Canada did not seem to be taken seriously before the 1960’s.

Trudeau expanded this into multiculturalism, but for paradoxical reasons. Usually when we think of cultural identity, we think of shared history and blood, and loyalty to a particular place and time. But Trudeau was suspicious about such bonds. From his experience in Quebec, he felt that this kind of nationalistic tie was ultimately destructive and parochial. He was more interested in universal values that would trump local identity. His real desire seemed to be to become a citizen of the world and to create Canada something along those lines. The Charter was the grand piece moving toward this goal. As Ricci reflects, “However much a charter would protect the right to difference, it would ultimately be assimilationist in its emphasis on universality and on the individual…”

Was Trudeau successful? It is hard to tell. On one level it is clear that Canada is very multicultural in a profoundly interesting way. One of my favourite festivals here in Edmonton is Heritage Days, which is a three day celebration of culture, food, arts and dance.  I love every minute. To me it seems that the trends is that, as people become Canadian, they are not throwing off their cultural heritage and becoming universal people. I have my suspicions that it is difficult or impossible to be a universal person cut off from shared history and story. But on the other hand, people from differing parts of the world that I have spoken to love being Canadian. Perhaps not in every case, but it seems to me that on the whole they embrace their Canadian citizenship as compatible with their various cultural inheritances. At the very least Trudeau was successful in changing the landscape. I don’t think Canada could ever go back to a pure emphasis on Englishness or even biculturalism.  Canada has changed.

2) Federalism: If Trudeau had an overriding passion it was for federalism. I was not sure what he meant by it until I read about the mockery with which he treated Joe Clark’s definition of Canada as “a community of communities.” Trudeau joked that this meant that Canada would just become a community of different shopping centres. But jokes aside, it points to an important issue of identity.  It is clear that a common identity has not come easy to Canadians. From the beginning, Canada was at least two European heritage nations and several Aboriginal nations brought together under a single government but not a central identity.  This shared identity then had to be hammered out. And of course for many Canadians there is a strong attachment and loyalty to region rather than country. And so there does seem to be a lot to say for Clark’s assessment of Canada. At its heart, Canada is a group of communities that choose to stay together.

But this wasn’t enough for Trudeau. He thought that there had to be more to being a Canadian. There was more than just regional identity; there was such a thing as Canadian identity. He found this in the universal ideals mentioned earlier and in federalism. Trudeau wrote this about federalism:

Federalism has all along been a product of reason in politics. It was born of a decision by pragmatic politicians to face facts as they are, particularly by the fact of the heterogeneity of the world’s population.  It is an attempt to find a rational compromise between the divergent interest groups which history has thrown together; but it is a compromise based on the will of the people.

For Trudeau, Canadian identity could not be about ethnicity or common history. If it was, then the Canadian experiment would fail along ethnic and linguistic lines. He was convinced that there had to be something stronger and more universal which would hold the differing groups together. This was at the heart of his appeal to federalism and a much stronger central government than many were comfortable with. Was he successful? Again, it is hard to tell. The government is definitely more centralized. And it does seem to me in talking to people that they do think that there is such a thing as a Canadian identity. However, there are often a lot of laughs as people try to figure out exactly what that is.