Memoirs

Graeme S. Mount is a history professor at Laurentian University and
author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable Kingdom.

Despite negative comments this book has received, it has merit. Only
weeks before reading it, this reviewer happened to be at the Gerald Ford
Archives, where documents indicated that America’s 38th president had
almost no time for Canada or Canadians. Trudeau creates a different
impression, by attributing to Ford responsibility “for one of the
greatest achievements in Canadian foreign policy” namely, an
invitation to join the G–7.

Trudeau provides insights into other world leaders whom he met as prime
minister—Lenoid Brezhnev, Mao Zedong, Chou Enlai, Fidel Castro, Indira
Gandhi, Menachem Begin, and Presidents Nixon, Carter, and Reagan. He
describes meetings with successive British prime ministers, including
Margaret Thatcher (they disagreed on policy matters but were personally
friendly). Pages 202–28 should be required reading for scholars of
Canadian foreign relations between 1968 and 1984.

Trudeau also spends time defending his economic record, and expresses
his views on other famous people, from Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark,
Robert Bourassa, John Turner, and Brian Mulroney to Barbra Streisand and
Elizabeth Taylor.