Margaret Trudeau
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Margaret Sinclair Trudeau Kemper (born September 10, 1948 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) is the former wife of the late Pierre Trudeau, the 15th Prime Minister of Canada.
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[edit] Early years and marriage
The daughter of Scottish-Canadian James Sinclair, a former Liberal member of the Parliament of Canada and Fisheries Minister, she attended Simon Fraser University where she studied English literature.
As an 18-year-old on vacation in Tahiti she met Pierre Trudeau, who was then Minister of Justice. Ms. Sinclair did not recognize him and she in fact thought little of their encounter but Trudeau was captivated by the carefree "flower child", thirty years younger than himself, and began to pursue her. As a devout Catholic, Trudeau did, however, require her to convert to Roman Catholicism for their marriage.
Trudeau was still a bachelor when elected Prime Minister of Canada in 1968. After keeping their romance private, the Prime Minister astonished the country by marrying the 22-year-old Sinclair on March 4, 1971, in a private ceremony. This raised some eyebrows among Canadians because of the age difference, but it was considered typical behavior for a vivacious prime minister who prided himself on his "progressive" views and youthful vigour.
Asked about her role in a marriage to the most famous man in the country, Margaret Trudeau said, "I want to be more than a rose in my husband's lapel."
The couple had three children: Justin (b. December 25, 1971), Alexandre (Sacha) (b. December 25, 1973), and Michel (October 2, 1975 - November 13, 1998).
Though the couple initially appeared to have a very close and loving relationship, the marriage soon began to fall apart. Margaret resented her husband's constant work-related absences and was forced to raise her three young sons largely by herself. Beyond the normal extensive publicity that her high-profile position brought, on a few instances she made her own headlines.
On one occasion, she was criticized for not wearing a conventional floor-length dress to an official White House dinner, and on another occasion she acted as Cuban president Fidel Castro's photographer-for-a-day and is plausibly reported to have had a closer relationship with him. It has been reported that she once launched into an impromptu poetry recital during a state dinner with the President of Venezuela.
Over time, the marriage disintegrated to the point that, as recounted in her book, Margaret had an affair with a U.S. Senator, believed by many to be Ted Kennedy, who had visited the Trudeaus in Ottawa. The American journalist Geraldo Rivera has also claimed to have been intimate with her, and for a time her alleged promiscuity became a national joke.
Suffering from stress and bouts of bipolar depression, she separated from her husband in 1977 and became a much talked about jet-setter. She gave many "tell-all" interviews to Canadian and American magazines and appeared in two motion pictures.
On the eve of the 1979 election, in which Trudeau was voted out of office, Margaret was dancing at Studio 54 nightclub in New York City. A photo of her there was featured on many front pages across the country. She was also associated with Rolling Stone Ron Wood. This added to the Canadian public's growing unease about "what would happen next".
[edit] Life after divorce
The Trudeaus officially divorced in 1984, and a short time later Margaret married Ottawa real-estate developer Fried Kemper, with whom she had two children. After her second marriage, Margaret virtually disappeared from the public eye.
Despite their divorce, and frequent bickering that got into the press, Margaret and Pierre Trudeau made the children their priority. In November of 1998, their youngest son Michel, an avid outdoorsman, was killed when an avalanche swept him to the bottom of British Columbia's Kokanee Lake. The loss of her son was devastating for the vulnerable mother and Margaret suffered another mental breakdown that led to her second divorce.
When Pierre Trudeau died in 2000, Margaret was at his bedside. Today, she is the honorary president of WaterCan, an Ottawa-based organization dedicated to helping the poorest communities in developing countries build sustainable water supply and sanitation services.
She was stopped by police on May 30, 2004, and charged with impaired driving. These charges were later thrown out by a judge who ruled that her rights had been violated by police who had no grounds to pull her over and denied her the right to counsel. She praised Pierre Trudeau's Charter of Rights and Freedoms for her success. The Crown has appealed this decision. [1]
On May 5, 2006, Margaret announced that she had been suffering from bipolar affective disorder.
[edit] Bibliography
- Trudeau, M. (1982), Consequences, Bantam Books, ISBN 0553017128
- Trudeau, M. (1979), Beyond Reason, Grosset & Dunlap, ISBN 0-448-23037-2
[edit] Filmography
[edit] External link
[edit] See also
| Preceded by Maryon Moody Pearson |
Spouse of the Prime Minister of Canada 1971-1977 |
Succeeded by Maureen McTeer |
