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With support from President Obama and the legacy of his father on his side, Justin Trudeau sets out to redefine what it means to be Canadian. nytimes.com/2015/12/13/magazine/trudeaus-canada-again.html By GUY LAWSON December 8, 2015 On Tuesday, Nov. 10, six days after Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party, was sworn in as prime minister of Canada, I was shown into his office on the third floor of the Parliament building in Ottawa. A dark oak-paneled room, it contained a jumble of outsize furniture chosen by the previous occupant, Stephen Harper, whose Conservative Party was in power for a decade. The office had the air of a recently abandoned bunker — shelves bare, curtains drawn, personal effects hastily removed. Trudeau’s father, Pierre, occupied the same office for 16 years during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, and the new prime minister would shortly install his father’s old desk, a symbol of restoration but also an emphatic rejection of his predecessor. The squat, bulldoglike bureau left by the departing prime minister, Trudeau implied, was a reflection of Harper’s autocratic manner. ‘‘We’re going to move this place around,’’ Trudeau said. ‘‘This is very much the last guy’s style, not mine. I’ll have a smaller desk in the corner and a bigger couch so we can sit down and actually have discussions. I’ll put a reclining seat over there, for me to read.’’ He smiled as he mentally redecorated the space, the Canadian version of the Oval Office. ‘‘It’s a different approach.’’ There is virtually no transition period in Canadian politics, and it was clear that the electoral win on Oct. 19 had caught Trudeau, his staff and the country by surprise. During his first days in office, his small, overworked campaign team tried to cope with the unexpected demands of governing. With so many positions to fill, they had issued a call for résumés on social media and received 22,000. Trudeau, who is 43, was still working on getting his staff to call him ‘‘Prime Minister.’’ For years, he was ‘‘Justin,’’ and staff members often still referred to him that way. ‘‘It’s like your really smart friend suddenly became prime minister,’’ Kate Purchase, his communications director, told me. ‘‘People in the street will either call me ‘Prime Minister’ or ‘Justin,’ ’’ Trudeau said. ‘‘We’ll see how that goes. But when I’m working, when I’m with my staff in public, I’m ‘Prime Minister.’ I say that if we’re drinking beer out of a bottle, and you can see my tattoos, you should be comfortable calling me ‘Justin.’ ’’ In person, Trudeau was as upbeat and friendly — as nice — as might be expected of a politician with a campaign mantra of ‘‘Sunny Ways,’’ a reference to the optimistic adage of Wilfrid Laurier, a Liberal prime minister at the turn of the 20th century. Trudeau is 6-foot-2 and 1/10 has an athletic build, his hair neatly trimmed after years experimenting with a variety of shaggy manes. There was little of the pomp of the powerful — just an aide named Tommy, who brought him half a tuna sandwich and a cup of chicken-noodle soup for lunch from the cafeteria downstairs. This was the first print interview Trudeau had granted since taking office, and in his presence there was a palpable sense that he was still figuring out exactly how to play this new role — how to talk, how to gesture, how to adopt the mien of a world leader. Despite his studied manner, he was prone to providing glimpses of his unguarded self. ‘‘It’s very, very cool to have the president call up, and I say, ‘Hello, Mr. President.’ I’ve never met him,’’ Trudeau said. He dropped his voice an octave to imitate President Obama: ‘‘Justin, I like to think of myself as a young politician. The gray hair caught up with me, and it’ll catch up with you. But calling me ‘Sir’ makes me feel old. Call me ‘Barack.’ ’’ Trudeau shook his head, amazed. ‘‘That’s going to take some getting used to.’’ One week later, a new geopolitical relationship between America and Canada would begin in a conference room in Manila at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting, when Trudeau and Obama sat down for the first time to talk. In an age of a rising China, Middle Eastern chaos and Russian belligerence, it may sound strange to say, but the United States has no relationship more important than the one with Canada. The country is one of America’s largest trading partners (on par with China), a peaceful neighbor and a crucial ally in global affairs — when the relationship is functional, as it hasn’t been in recent years. Harper’s hawkish foreign policy put him at odds with Obama on the Iran nuclear treaty, Israeli- Palestinian relations and Syrian refugees. In domestic affairs, Harper was strongly in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline, which Obama resisted; the president killed the project two weeks after the Conservatives lost. The discord may largely have ended with Trudeau’s election, though Canada will be less likely to participate in airstrikes against ISIS in the Middle East. The 45-minute session in Manila was casual and friendly; two of Obama’s campaign aides worked for Trudeau’s campaign, and the president followed the Canadian race and knew of the excitement the victory had generated around the world — much as his own triumph had in 2008. In a private conversation, the president advised Trudeau to be active early, but also to think about calibrating sky-high expectations with a long-term plan for governance. Obama shared his impressions of various world leaders, suggesting whom to build relationships with — and whom to steer clear of. Obama issued an invitation to Washington, and later to a state dinner to be held in the new year, the first honoring a Canadian prime minister in 19 years. The president went out of his way to make clear that he looked forward to spending personal time together, with their wives. ‘‘There was an air of mentorship but not in a paternalistic way,’’ Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said. ‘‘Trudeau’s going to be on the stage for a long time. He’s got a ton of talent.’’ 2/10 ‘‘It was nice to confirm in person how like-minded we are on so many issues,’’ Trudeau told me. ‘‘He said that seeing my family on TV on election night reminded him of his election in 2008 with his family. I’m looking forward to having a beer with him.’’ The election this fall was nothing less than an existential struggle over what it means to be Canadian. On one side, there was Harper’s vision of a nation in an age of terror, in a world afire with conflict. On the other was Trudeau’s moderate liberal belief that the world is not riven by an epic clash of civilizations, and that cultural and religious and linguistic differences and openness are Canada’s strength. What the world knows as a progressive modern Canada was created largely under the rule of the Liberal leader Lester Pearson and then Pierre Trudeau in the ’60s and ’70s, when the country began to sever its ties with Britain and assert its own identity. The country created a new flag, replacing the Union Jack with the Maple Leaf, and adopted a national anthem. Quintessential Canadian characteristics — universal medical care, bilingualism, multiculturalism, a strong voice for peace and development at the United Nations — were born during that era. The earliest major political initiative of Pierre Trudeau in the late ’60s was to decriminalize homosexuality. ‘‘The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation,’’ he said. In rapid succession, Trudeau legalized abortion, funded the arts and promoted a race- blind immigration policy, which over time would transform the great cities of the country into polyglot metropolises. Defeating the son of Pierre Trudeau would have been a metaphysical vindication for Harper. For the past decade, Harper did all he could to undo the legacy of the older Trudeau, internationally, domestically and symbolically. In defense of ‘‘old stock’’ white Canada, Harper denigrated the United Nations, made the modest attire of Muslim women a political issue and recast Canada’s role in the world as part of a grand alliance to defend Western civilization. Harper freely admitted to loathing the older Trudeau, despite an adolescent fascination, writing ungraciously after his death in 2000 about meeting him for the first time in the streets of Montreal. ‘‘There I came face to face with a living legend, someone who had provoked both the loves and hatreds of my political passion, all in the form of a tired-out, little old man.’’ Harper’s greatest ambition was to destroy Trudeau’s vision of the country: ‘‘He continues to define the myths that guide the Canadian psyche, but myths they are.’’ 3/10 Slide Show|5 Photos His Father’s Son His Father’s Son Bettman/Corbis As a Canadian expat living in America, I became acutely aware of the election’s symbolic importance in September, when the body of a little Syrian refugee boy washed up on the shores of Turkey. The child had relations in Canada who tried to help the family immigrate, but Harper had maintained a hard line on Syrian refugees, claiming national secur​ity was more important than the humanitarian crisis, and the family was forced to try to escape the war by sea.

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