With Trudeau and his policies in the news these days, I have naturally been drawn to my past experience with Prime Minister Trudeau. Pierre Trudeau, that is. The real one.
This would be back in 1979, a distant historic era for today’s millennials, but often on my mind as we live under the reign of Trudeau Jr. I ran and lost federally, but the 1979 campaign was fun and memorable.
To recall this feat, I am reposting a 1988 piece from the First Person column of the Montreal Gazette that summed up that adventure:
Student’s campaign bid to unseat Trudeau falls short by 40,000 votes
By David Winch
Montreal Gazette, Nov. 20 1988
The campaign looked promising. We faced certain defeat.
But none of us was discouraged. Far from it, an air of giddiness engulfed us for much of the election.
Already my handlers – Harold, Alan, and Steven– and I were devising tongue-in-cheek, come-from-behind scenarios over grilled-cheese sandwiches in the McGill student union cafeteria. We had a glibness and cockiness that came from feeling that, as political-science and journalism specialists, we had already mastered the Higher Political Arts.
But this was the big time – a federal election – and by an odd set of circumstances I was suddenly, at 23, a candidate.
I had been briefed and de-briefed on all the Big Questions. The altogether scandalously high rate of unemployment. Canada’s role in the Third World. The urgent need to lower interest rates. No doubt as important, all of us had extended term-paper deadlines for the April-May election.
Still, I just knew there would be headaches and unexpected curves thrown at you in politics.
Unanticipated curve
Sure enough, at our final meeting in the student-union building there was a pause. We had wrapped up most of our business – but someone ventured a final question I hadn’t anticipated.
“David, you do own a suit, don’t you?”
I knew it. A curve. I mumbled something reassuring, and the meeting concluded. I had been prepped for the big questions; but, did I own a suit? Hmmm . . . Of course I did. It was in a closet at my parents’ place in Toronto. I phoned my mother.
The wool suit – fine for weddings and funerals, but rarely called into service otherwise – would have to do the job. She sent it the next day Bus Parcel Express.
I passed this first test at mumbling reassurances. It was a skill, I would learn, that – along with handshaking and airy gestures indicative of being on top of the issues – would come in very handy in the next six weeks.
I was running for the NDP – then neck-and-neck with the Rhinos in Quebec – in a deeply entrenched Liberal fortress. And not just any impregnable fortress, but Mount Royal riding. And against The Man, Pierre Trudeau.
In the spring of 1979, as we hastily cobbled together our jerry-rigged “campaign,” it felt like the locker-room of a college-frat hockey team lacing up against Guy Lafleur and les Canadiens. The whole adventure felt giddily unreal.
My friends and I went through the motions, in a small-scale version of a real campaign. Our inner-circle team was set: A campaign manager. A media manager. An operations director.
“Saturday, we’ll campaign in front of the Canadian Tire on Cote des Neiges,” Steven suggested. Harold agreed. Alan nodded. “And Sunday morning, we’ll go shmooze on the sidewalk in front of the Brown Derby.”
Shmooze? No political-science model mentioned shmoozing.
A political candidate, I would learn, is completely exposed. A sitting duck. Anyone can ask you anything at any time. And they do. Again I felt like the college goalie lacing up to face a Lafleur blast.
Saturday we unloaded in front of the Canadian Tire at noon. The four of us fanned out on the Cote des Neiges Plaza walkway, flagging down shoppers, looking for signs of interest and handing out our campaign literature.
This consisted mostly of smudgy photocopies with my picture and an odd-socks list of campaign promises, from supporting Quebec’s right to self-determination to no-nukes. That first morning we drew mostly too-busy looks and wary stares, as if we were somehow affiliated with Reverend Moon.
Finally, some interest. A retired gentleman approached me. He lit up his pipe and took the opportunity to recount at great length his experiences in the war. The epic tale finally wound down with his recent problems with the Veterans’ Affairs department. Grateful for this denouement, I shook his hand vigorously and mumbled something reassuring.
Other voters we met were often unclear about the differences between varying levels of government. One woman carrying shopping bags came up to me with a look of relief, laid down her bundles and started to outline in detail the problems with water pressure in her building.
Could I do anything about it?
I first tried to coolly point out this was a local government responsibility. But seeing my political-science lesson was lost on her, I shook her hand and mumbled something reassuring. But the next day, Sunday, I feared this defensive tactic would not serve me so well.
Sticky wicket
We were going to campaign in front of the Brown Derby restaurant. In a riding with one of the largest Jewish populations in the country, at least one – and maybe 20 – people might want my opinion on Conservative leader Joe Clark’s impulsive campaign idea to move the Canadian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. A very sticky wicket, that one.
I had no idea what my position was.
For a while that morning, hand-shaking and smiles did the job. But eventually one passerby pressed the point about the Jerusalem embassy question. He wouldn’t be deterred. Steven sensed a problem. He edged closer. Well, hello! Turned out my tormentor knew Steven’s uncle. The two struck up a conversation about family and old friends.
Relieved at this bit of spin control, I exited stage left. I put the morning’s campaigning to an end and we boarded our campaign bus, the 165 route up Cote des Neiges.
The weeks swept by, and our $121 campaign fund (duly registered with Elections Canada) was soon exhausted. And I never did meet Pierre.
The night of the election, Steven, Harold, Alan and I gathered in a Coloniale Ave. student hovel, watching the results. A Mount Royal result flashed by on TV. Trudeau had squeaked in with his usual 40,000-vote plurality. We toasted our chutzpah.
But the campaign was now behind us and the beer was running out. Besides, I had a paper due the next day.
© 1988 Postmedia Network Inc. All rights reserved.
