Against the Current: Selected Writings 1939-1996: Pierre Elliott Trudeau

D.M.L. Farr is professor emeritus of history at Carleton University in
Ottawa and the editor of Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

Recently there has been a spate of books about Pierre Elliott Trudeau: a
collection of essays, a memoir, a defence of his foreign policy. Against
the Current joins this group. It is a collection of Trudeau’s
writings, beginning during his student days in 1939 and continuing until
he comes the elder statesman denouncing separatist Lucien Bouchard in
1996. The selection was made by Gérard Pelletier, Trudeau’s longtime
associate, who also contributes brief introductions to most of the
entries. Some of the excerpts, such as Trudeau’s part in a collective
work on the Quebec asbestos strike that appeared in 1956, are lengthy.
During the years 1965 through 1984, when Trudeau was active in politics,
he wrote nothing on his own. Thus the items representing his thought
over these years are merely snippets drawn from his public statements.
They range from remarks on who should sell the prairie farmers’ wheat
to the value of the frank dialogue that occurs at the meetings of the
Commonwealth.

It must be said that readers who are attempting to understand the
evolution of Trudeau’s thinking will not find Pelletier’s
introductions very helpful. This is particularly apparent in the
excerpts from the early 1950s, when Trudeau was vigorously attacking
what he condemned as the reactionary politics of Maurice Duplessis and
the Union Nationale government. The reader would like a fuller
explanation of what set off those obscure quarrels in a Quebec that
seems hardly recognizable now. Much later, Trudeau provides a long
critique of Chief Justice Bora Laskin’s dissent in the Supreme Court
in the reference on the patriation of the Constitution in 1981.
Pelletier simply mentions the occasion for this commentary, when in fact
an explanation of Laskin’s dissent is necessary to being able to
understand Trudeau’s disagreement with it. Pelletier has done a
service in assembling this collection but a minimum as its editor (and
there is little in the way of notes to support the text). With a more
diligent compiler, Against the Current would have been a more
satisfactory reflection of Trudeau’s legacy.

That said, one must admit that the range and acuity of Pierre
Trudeau’s thought are well represented. If some of his writings on
forgotten Quebec quarrels seem dated, his attacks on ethnic nationalism,
on the shallow thinking of the separatists, on the Meech Lake Accord, on
the perils of nuclear weapons, and on the plight of the Third World have
a resonance today that cannot be ignored. Trudeau may have had his
failings as prime minister, but his stimulating and clear-headed
analyses of 20th-century political and social problems mark him as the
only “intellectual” yet to have held the office. Against the Current
is a good introduction to the thinking, over almost 60 years, of this
remarkable figure.