Passionate Unreasonableness

During the federal election of 1972 Pierre Elliot Trudeau issued a statement that seemed profound, though he could certainly be flippant when it suited his sense of irony; that statement, taken from the Desiderata: "the universe is unfolding as it should", cementing his growing reputation as a philosopher-muse, an intellectual, a politically clever prince, all Canada's own. He said and did other things at other times to reflect his occasional lapse into a sense of despair over the dullness of the Canadian electorate.

He was certainly not without his own sense of superior exceptionalism. He could be facile and crude at times; he was never averse to demonstrating all manner of facets of his personality. He did have character. And he disliked challenges to his authority. His acerbic responses gave him a certain air of notoriety. His oldest son appears to have inherited the propensity to verbal slap-shots, minus the academic resonance.

It seemed clear enough that father Pierre disliked indulging fools; he did not take stupidity lightly. That he seemed unable to see how he had surrendered this distaste for the fleeting, the surface, the cerebrally slender, in his choice of a life-mate, is explicable; when love, or passion strikes there is an emotional rise and reason tends to be smothered under the emotional high of giddy excitement. It faded soon enough.

Pierre Trudeau had a high appreciation of reason over passion. In the 1970s, Canadian artist Joyce Wieland produced a patchwork quilt. It was said by some in the know that she had been inspired by a quote from Mr. Trudeau. Ms. Wieland's quilt reflected that quote. And it and the quote became as famous as the previous quote from the Desiderata.

"Reason over Passion", seemed to exemplify Pierre Trudeau's intellectual persona. For a time Ms. Wieland's quilt, purchased by the prime minister, hung on the walls of 24 Sussex Drive.

Another rumour holds that during a quarrel that took place between Pierre Trudeau and his wife Margaret he ripped the quilt in a passion of anger, requiring that Ms. Wieland mount some repairs. There were other versions she produced of the quilt reading "Reason Over Passion", at least one of which was purchased by the National Gallery of Canada where it was hung to be appreciated by  gallery-goers and art enthusiasts. 


Joyce Wieland - Reason Over Passion - 1968.
Quilted cloth assemblage, 256.5 x 302.3 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa


Pierre Trudeau was an authentic original. Joyce Wieland, herself another original, recognized him as such. The oldest son of Pierre and Margaret Trudeau is not that much of an original, an eccentric, a brilliant intellectual; nothing approximating what his father represented. His father might have recognized in his son a bit of a dullard; his choice of vocation did not appear to be aimed particularly high. Yet he seems to feel entitled to aim as high as his father did in the political sphere.

Would his father have tolerated the spectacle of his cerebral-light-weight son aspiring to achieve the highest political office of the land? Blood being thicker than patriotism, perhaps so. But that doesn't mean that the electorate should, or will. Apart from the puzzling phenomenon of so many within the public appearing to goad him on to his egotistical excesses of belief in self. What it is based upon appears exceedingly slight; the inheritance of a recognizable name.

Oh yes, the aesthetic appearance of an enthusiastic and rather callow young man who is imbued with more than a simple measure of ambition. He leans heavily enough on his father's reputation to resurrect another one of his father's famous quotes: "Just watch me". We did, we watched and witnessed the October Crisis developing and the subsequent War Measures Act when Pierre Trudeau took the issue of violent insurrection very seriously.

Both came to an expeditious end, but not without their share of controversy and condemnation. At the present time we have controversy, but not any significant condemnation of the fact that the Liberal Party of Canada is obliviously heading itself toward complete oblivion. It is a well deserved fate. Whether it will rise again, with Justin Trudeau imagining himself the Phoenix rising from the ashes that his happy mentor Jean Chretien left it in, is a story for another day.