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Ontario History

Trudeaumania by Paul Litt Andrew Parnaby

Volume 109, Number 2, Fall 2017

URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1041291ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1041291ar

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Publisher(s) The Ontario Historical Society

ISSN 0030-2953 (print) 2371-4654 (digital)

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Cite this review Parnaby, A. (2017). Review of [ by Paul Litt]. Ontario History, 109(2), 272–273. https://doi.org/10.7202/1041291ar

Copyright © The Ontario Historical Society, 2017 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/

This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ 272 ONTARIO HISTORY

Trudeaumania by Paul Litt

Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2016. 412 pages. ISBN 978-0-7748-3404-9

here is an the federal Liberal Party, and the broader Timage of contours of Canadian politics in the post- war era, especially uebec’s quiet revolu- that has been tion. Litt seeks to understand the triumph with me my en- of Trudeau from a dierent vantage point: tire life. It was the media. He begins with a broad intro- taken in 1971 at duction to the 1960s, teasing out the vari- a Liberal Party ous ways in which the “consensus culture” Christmas func- of the previous decade cracked under the tion in Ottawa, heavy pressures of generational change, where my father worked as a radio report- intellectual and political dissent, and “life- er. Dressed in a sport jacket and ascot, Tru- style liberations” of all kinds (14). At the deau is standing in the centre of the frame same time, Litt illustrates, a nascent Ca- in prole, while Margaret, his new bride, nadian nationalism emerged, anchoring stands just behind him. His smile is as wide a “decolonization project” that sought to as his sideburns are long. Moving his way end the country’s historic subordination to through the crowd, the prime minister is Britain while dening a new collective sen- extending his right hand to my father —or sibility grounded in pluralism, liberalism, at least it looks that way—while his le has and anti-Americanism (41). come to rest on the small of my mother’s Into this maelstrom stepped Trudeau, back. My mother, a young woman at the the perfect avatar of change. His image as a time, looks like she has just met a pop star. A non-conformist and “rugged individualist” faded inscription in the bottom right hand aligned with prevailing countercultural corner of the picture reads: “Love Pierre.” sensibilities, while his views on multicul- Displayed prominently in my childhood turalism, “participatory democracy,” and a home, this image was part of my family “” chimed with the youthful yen history—our Ottawa years. But aer read- for a new denition of . He was, in ing Paul Litt’s fascinating new book, I can’t other words, a mod man for mod times, an help but see it as a rather precise expression “action hero” in an “old folks’ home” (266, of “Trudeaumania”—that heady combina- 159). And the media, Litt asserts, was tion of youth, image, and celebrity “sizzle” critical to all of this. Across its many plat- that captured Canadian politics in the late forms—radio, print, and especially televi- ’60s and early ’70s. sion—it constructed and circulated an im- Trudeau’s rise to power has been stud- age of Trudeau that became more powerful ied extensively. Historians, political scien- than Trudeau himself. The end result was tists, and literary biographers have probed an eervescent, simulated sense of na- his intellectual formation, the dynamics of tionhood—a “simunation”—that pro-

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pelled the swinging, style-conscious, ath- to “Go, Go with Trudeau.” A highly pub- letic, media-savvy bachelor all the way to licized stando with uebec nationalists 24 Sussex Drive in 1968. during the Saint-Jean-Baptiste parade that Litt explores the conguration of the spring cemented the candidate’s reputa- Canadian “media complex” in depth, pay- tion as a defender of the national interest. ing particular attention to the broad homo- When the ballots were nally counted, the geneity of its personnel: they tended to be mod man had secured a majority govern- university-educated and urban, and were ment. sympathetic to Canadian nationalism and But by historical standards it was no of a “modern mindset” (148, 90, 172). Men landslide. Nor was it rock solid. When Tru- like my father, who came from small towns, deau went back to the polls four years later, and “Jimmy Olsen-like… got their start on the Liberals were cut back to 109 seats and the police beat, and moved up the ladder by minority status. Where, one might ask, dint of native ability, gumption, and street had “Trudeaumania” gone? smarts,” were few and far between as jour- Litt takes up this question in the nal nalism became professionalized (90). is chapters of the book by clarifying what he crowd, Litt argues, wrote the script for Tru- means by “mania.” e scale of the “conta- deau’s rise. And the audience – increasingly gion,” he writes, matters less than its abil- from the same, broad socio-economic back- ity to motivate particular groups of people ground as the media—was more than will- in a powerful way: “ ose who liked Tru- ing to play its part. ey watched the news deau liked him a lot” (315). On its own, coverage, bought the t-shirts and posters, this claim is not especially satisfying for a and chased the chosen one for autographs number of reasons, not least is that it high- and pictures. Such sizzling sex-tinged spec- lights the very limits of elite opinion mak- tacles then became fodder for additional ers, the resilience of the “limited identities” media coverage, producing a self-reinforc- of region, and the persistence of conserva- ing loop of celebrity, politics, and popular tive values in a liberal age—perspective participation that drove “Trudeaumania” that challenges the book’s very thesis. Litt forward. e book’s well-chosen images ac- is more persuasive when he turns his sharp centuate this point. eye to the decades that followed Trudeau’s By the time of the federal election rise to power. Over time, he suggests, “Tru- campaign in 1968, Litt writes, Trudeauma- deaumania” tumbled forward and became nia was in full ower. Drawing on lessons part of the generational consciousness of learned at the leadership contest the year the baby boomers as a whole. An expres- before, the Liberals’ backroom worked sion of “peak” Canadian nationalism in assiduously to present Trudeau as a man the tumultuous sixties, it shaped the very on the move and in tune with the chang- discursive terrain upon which this genera- ing times. e media, Litt observes, was tion would think about its personal and more than happy to play along. Images of political selves and debate what it meant to Trudeau swimming, dancing, and waving be Canadian. In short, the kiss of the mod to adoring crowds proliferated; so too did man would linger. My mother, I suspect, blunt contrasts with Robert Staneld and would agree. , now cast as yesterday’s men. Other media spectacles added ad- Andrew Parnaby ditional momentum to the public’s desire Cape Breton University

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