Triumphant Justin pays tribute to father's legacy
ELIZABETH THOMPSON,
The Gazette
Published: Monday, April 30, 2007Justin
Trudeau took a first step toward the House of Commons yesterday,
scoring a first-ballot victory to become the Liberal candidate in the
north-end Montreal riding of Papineau.
"Wow. If you saw what I
see," an overwhelmed Trudeau told hundreds of Liberal supporters. "The
Liberals of this riding are energized, present and in the process of
telling the Bloc (Quebecois) and the Conservatives (that) the Liberals
are coming in Papineau," he said.
Now Trudeau, 35, moves on to
his next challenge - prying the working-class riding out of Bloc hands
and dealing with the double-edged sword of being the son of late prime
minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
While
Trudeau won the nomination by a comfortable margin of 54.5 per cent,
the Liberal Party membership does not mirror the riding's population.
Basilio Giordano, who finished third with 17 per cent of the vote,
pointed out that of more than 3,444 party members in the riding, only
an estimated 250 of them are of French Canadian origins.
That is
well below the percentage of French Canadians in the riding, Giordano
said. If the Liberals are to win back the riding they have held for
much of the last century, they have to do a better job of winning over
that part of the electorate.
Asked about the impact of his father's name, Trudeau bristled.
"I
am carrying the Trudeau name, yes. I am also carrying my own name. I
think what was achieved here in this process was to demonstrate that
I'm not just a last name. I'm someone who has a first name and who is
willing and able to reach out and represent people."
That is a group for whom Pierre Trudeau's legacy can be more negative than positive,
admitted Giordano, who pledged to help Trudeau.
"For some people and some
areas, yes (it is a problem)."
Asked how well he is received by Quebecers, Trudeau said that is the next challenge.
"I
feel extremely well-received by the Liberals of this riding and for me
it was a first challenge. ... Quebec is a next step but it looks very
good."
However, that was far from the minds of Liberal supporters
yesterday as they gathered at the north-end Andre Grasset CEGEP to
choose a candidate to succeed former international affairs minister
Pierre Pettigrew. He left politics after he was defeated by Bloc
candidate Vivian Barbot by a slender margin of 900 votes in the January
2006 federal election.
Party officials had barely finished
announcing the results for Giordano and popular city councillor Mary
Deros, who came in second with 28 per cent of the vote, when Trudeau's
supporters cheered loudly, drowning out the announcer.
While Liberal leader Stephane Dion did not attend the meeting, he was quick to call to congratulate Trudeau.
Few
observers expected Trudeau to win the contest on the first ballot.
Heading into the race, he had a slight edge in selling new memberships
to the party, but the three candidates were believed to be roughly even
in support.
Moreover, there was talk that if the race went to a
second ballot, the two other candidates were prepared to pool their
forces to allow one to triumph.
However, both candidates
appear
to have lost some of their voters. Giordano, for example, said he
brought 750 people to the meeting, only to end up with 220 votes.
"I don't know what happened. Maybe some people didn't want to wait to vote and they left," he said.
The
Trudeau family was out in force as Justin Trudeau made his bid to
follow in the footsteps that eventually led his father to the prime
ministership of Canada.
Trudeau was flanked by his wife, Sophie
Gregoire, now visibly pregnant with their first child; his mother,
Margaret, who appeared radiantly happy; and his brother, Alexandre,
holding his first-born son, Pierre-Emmanuel.
Close supporters of
his father were also on hand, including Senator Joyce Fairbairn, former
Liberal cabinet minister Marc Lalonde and former senator Jacques
Hebert, who has also worked with Justin Trudeau on the Katimavik youth
program.
Trudeau's mother, who pitched in to help her son campaign, was thrilled by the victory.
"It has been his dream to enter politics and I'm glad today," she said.
"I certainly think that he showed the strength that we need in a young politician.
''What
I'm most hopeful for is that he will inspire other young people, young
Canadians who have been well-educated in Canada and healthy and ready
to make a difference, that he will inspire them to get into politics or
at least get engaged," she said.
His brother, Alexandre, said a new Trudeau in politics is "a good thing," and his father would have been proud.
"He
would have said be careful about politics, there is good and bad in
politics, but he would have been proud of his son - I'm sure."
While
Justin Trudeau at times has been irked at being judged by his father's
reputation, it was he who brought up his father's legacy yesterday as
he addressed the packed room.
In his speech to riding members,
Trudeau pointed out that the Park Extension portion of the riding was
once in the riding of Mount Royal and helped send his father - who like
Justin Trudeau, listed his occupation as teacher - to Ottawa.
Trudeau
also paid tribute to his father's introduction of the Charter of Rights
and Freedoms, pointing out "we are all children of the charter."
While
the challenge yesterday was to defeat their Liberal opponents, all
three candidates made it clear that their real adversary was the Bloc.
Trudeau
spoke of the need to "unblock" the riding and reject the Conservatives'
vision on social justice and the environment, saying their stand on the
environment was threatening the future of children and of his unborn
child.
Deros said it was the Bloc's win last year that prompted her to seek the Liberal nomination in Papineau.
"We
will remind the citizens of Papineau why this riding is at its core
Liberal," she told the crowd. "No other party has represented them
better in the past and no other party can represent them today and in
the future."
ethompson@thegazette.canwest.com
- - -
He made headlines the day he was born
Justin Trudeau, son of former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, first came into national prominence the day he was born.
On
Christmas Day 1971, Trudeau became the first child born to a sitting
prime minister since John A. Macdonald's youngest daughter.
His first home was 24 Sussex Drive.
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2007
Justin Trudeau was only the second child in Canadian history to be born during a father's term as Prime Minister; he was preceded by John A. Macdonald's youngest daughter Margaret Mary Macdonald.
The second of three children born to Pierre and Margaret Trudeau during Pierre's term in office, Sacha Trudeau was a media sensation, just like his brothers, when he was born. However, Pierre and Margaret tried as much as possible to protect their children from the public eye, and after Pierre retired as Prime Minister in 1984, he raised them in relative privacy in Montreal. He graduated with a philosophy degree from McGill University.
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