Trudeau as Statesman

Pierre Elliott Trudeau takes on the Quebec Question with a bang, not a whimper.The man who would be statesman was granted his life's wish, in the third and final volume of Max Nemni's biography of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. In his fifteen years as prime minister of Canada, Trudeau oversaw the controversial White Paper of 1969 on Indigenous policy, the fateful October Crisis of 1970, and the repatriation of the Canadian Constitution together with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms.In retirement, he exercised immense influence over Canada's later constitutional politics, and was principally responsible for defeating both the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords of Brian Mulroney's government.Loved and hated in almost equal measure, Trudeau was an iconoclast shaking up Canada's two solitudes as no other prime minister would ever dare to do. In this meticulously researched and argued political biography, Pierre Trudeau is seen wrestling with the most difficult -- and momentous -- decisions of his career.