Canadians can be a very small people sometimes, particularly when it comes to honouring and celebrating our past leaders. Which brings me to today entry on Art’s History. It is, of course, the 26th anniversary of the death of Pierre Trudeau. On September 28, 2000 the nation was plunged into mourning when the news came from Montreal that the 15th Prime Minister had passed into history. A non-partisan spirit – something we need more of today – filled the air and even Mr. Trudeau’s fiercest opponents paused to celebrate the man’s public service and historic premiership. Perhaps the greatest tribute was delivered in the Commons by one of the fallen PMs greatest opponents (and the only party leader to ever beat him), the Rt. Hon. Joe Clark.
“In that famous 1968 election I was on the other side with Robert Stanfield,” Clark graciously told a hushed House of Commons. “I will never forget the eloquence with which Pierre Trudeau invoked and mobilized the spirit of this country in that first campaign, but he moved beyond eloquence to action, bold action. Like our first controversial Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, Pierre Trudeau would have built the railway.”
So, with Mr. Clark’s words in mind, is it not time that a statue was raised on Parliament Hill in honour of Pierre Trudeau? A quarter century has now passed, the partisan guns have now gone silent and with our very nationhood under threat from down south, it is high time we gathered as one and celebrated an important past leader.
Now, you could agree with Pierre Trudeau, or you could disagree with him, but what you couldn’t do was ignore him. His Charter of Rights has played a great role (for good or ill) in defining Canada up until this very day, and his policy of Official Bilingualism has survived him and is now a fact of life within the federal government.
I could go on.
Whenever the issue of raising a PM’s statue on the Hill comes up, bureaucrats and politicians of all stripes run for cover and offer up excuse after excuse for not doing so. Having been one of Canadians those calling for statues to all our fallen PMs for many years, I can tell you that the issue of statues is the greatest “process story” in recent Canadian political history.
So once again, I call upon our leaders to put petty partisanship aside, overrule the bureaucrats and honour Mr. Trudeau Sr. If anyone is worried that by doing so the PMs of both parties are not being honoured equally, this would be an opportune time to correct a shameful historical slight and also raise a statue on the Hill to majority Prime Minister R.B. Bennet of the Conservatives at the same time.
Finally, would it not be fitting if past Prime Ministers Mr. Clark and Mr. Chrétien, now getting on in years, also have their statues raised while they are still with us? Both men devoted their lives to Canada. They deserve recognition and the praise of a grateful nation in their golden years.
Let’s get over ourselves and do the right thing. Over to you Prime Minister Carney and the other national party leaders. Grow up.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.