Huguette Young - Justin Trudeau : The Natural Heir

On October 3, 2000, close to 3,000 people poured into Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal to pay their last respects to Pierre Elliott Trudeau, an extraordinary Quebecker who had dominated the Canadian political scene for more than fifteen years. The former Canadian prime minister had died of prostate cancer five days earlier at the age of eighty.

Many dignitaries took their places in the majestic church: Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrtien was there, as well as his predecessors Brian Mulroney, John Turner, Joe Clark, and Kim Campbell; former American president Jimmy Carter; Prince Andrew; former French prime minister Raymond Barre; Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard; the leader of the Quebec Liberal Party Jean Charest; and many others. Actress Margot Kidder, who had often been seen at Prime Minister Trudeaus side, attended the funeral bearing a bouquet of white roses. Sarah, the daughter Trudeau had had nine years before with his lover Deborah Coyne, sat in the same pew as the prime ministers former wife Margaret Trudeau and their son Alexandre. Cuban President Fidel Castro, a friend of the family, seemed conspicuously out of place.

Beneath the blue vault of the church, everyone listened with bated breath to the eulogy delivered by Pierre Elliott Trudeaus son Justin, who had dropped out of sight several years before after moving to Vancouver.

Tall, with wavy, short black hair and wearing a blue-grey suit, Justin wore a red rose on his lapel, just the way his father had often done. He seemed younger than his twenty-eight years.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, Justin began, with the hint of a smile on his lips. By quoting Mark Antonys funeral oration from Shakespeares Julius Caesar , he captivated his audience. All eyes were riveted on him.

With a theatrical air, Justin began the eulogy by recalling how he had met Santa Claus at the age of six during an expedition to the North Pole with his father and grandfather, James Sinclair. The little boy did not understand the goal of this top-secret mission to the ends of the Earth. A Jeep dropped them at Alert, a scientific and military outpost in the Canadian High Arctic. He could make out someone working away inside a red building. He started crunching across the snow and headed for the front door. But his father pointed him to the window.

So I clambered over the snowbank, boosted up to the window, rubbed my sleeve across the frosty glass to see inside, the young Trudeau continued. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw a figure, hunched over one of many worktables that seemed very cluttered. He was wearing a red suit with a furry white trim. And thats when I understood, Justin added, his eyes brimming with tears, just how powerful and wonderful my father was.

A ripple of shy laughter washed across the crowd, then a wave of emotion and a burst of applause. Justin continued his story with that eloquence for which he is now widely known. He described how Pierre Elliott Trudeau had pushed his sons to test their limits, to challenge anything and anyone standing in their path. He spoke of his fathers unflinching principles and of his genuine and deep respect for each and every human being, notwithstanding their thoughts, their values, their beliefs, their origins.

By way of illustration, Justin told of a misadventure in the parliamentary restaurant in Ottawa when he was eight years old. His father reproached him for making a joke about Joe Clark, the Conservative leader he had succeeded in 1980, after a short and turbulent reign lasting nine months. Justin, we never attack the individual, his father said, bringing him over to meet Joe Clark and his daughter, Catherine Clark. We can be in total disagreement with someone, without denigrating them.

The grieving son added that his fathers fundamental belief in the sanctity of the individual was not taken out of some textbook. It stemmed from his deep love for and faith in all Canadians.