A rchive Date
[ 07-10-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[Trudeau is just a name to my generation
By RACHEL SA -- Toronto Sun
October 7, 2000
I was sitting in my study doing something or other for school when I read the news over CANOE that former prime minister Pierre Trudeau had died. I'm sure I will always remember where I was.
Many people have been equating hearing the news to a "Diana" or "JFK" sort of experience, where the memory of where you were is forever imprinted in your mind. I think I have that. The only difference is, I'm not quite sure why I should be remembering this.
Certainly, I felt saddened by the news. But if you had asked me at the time, I wouldn't have been able to articulate those feelings. I knew, of course, that Trudeau's death would be a significant event for many Canadians - but not really for me.
I must confess to having no independent memories of the former prime minister. After all, I was barely 3 years old when he resigned.
I never got to see him in action - never got a first-hand look at all the charm, charisma and arrogance people have been telling me about this week. And except for a few minutes in my Grade 10 history class when we glossed over the October Crisis (hey, isn't that the festival where they serve all the sausages and beer?) I was never taught a word about Pierre Elliott Trudeau in high school.
The day after Trudeau's death, some friends and I got to talking about what it meant to us. I know you've probably heard many a shocked boomer decrying today's young people for not even knowing who Pierre Trudeau was. I'm happy to report my friends and I weren't nearly that far gone. We all understood this was a momentous event in Canadian history - heck, you don't see that Americanesque type of rabid media coverage when just any old Canadian politician dies.
Yet all of us felt like we were on the outside looking in.
It's not just that we didn't experience this colourful time in Canadian history that has our parents all misty-eyed, it's that we haven't even been taught about it.
What I know of Pierre Trudeau I gleaned from the mass media. Up until last week, the only time I'd ever heard his voice was listening to a sound clip of his famous "Just watch me" comment about the FLQ crisis.
I'll be formally taught about Trudeau's accomplishments as PM for the first time in the coming weeks when my politics class at U of T begins studying the Constitution.
It was interesting that even a bunch of my learned fellow undergraduates seemed at a loss when the professor asked us to share our impressions of Trudeau in lecture hall last Monday. Of course, many hands went up, but for the most part students only related the same old cliches.
"He pirouetted behind the Queen! I can't believe that!"
"He flipped someone the bird!"
"Fuddle duddle!"
"The red rose!"
The girls seemed to be particularly intrigued by Tudeaumania and the thought of Trudeau as a sex symbol. (A sexy politician? And we missed it?)
Still, I wondered if even those cliches would have been known to much of the class were it not for the media coverage on Trudeau's life, accomplishments and antics that seemed to run 'round the clock immediately after his death.
Is it any wonder our nationalism seems to be so fragile?
How can we expect young people - or any people for that matter - to have a strong sense of who we are as Canadians if they don't know about the events and people that shaped us as a nation? How will the next generation learn to love something it knows nothing about?
And that's when it hit me. That's when I understood the real reason why I'm saddened by Trudeau's death.
I'm mourning for a generation being raised without a sense of its history.
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]]
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