Changing My Mind Read online

  After we got back to 24 Sussex, the owner sent the bill. I went to Pierre with it. He told me to pay it myself.

  “But how can I?” I asked.

  “You should have thought of that first,” was all he said. Though he did, of course, pay it in the end, I was humiliated and embarrassed. This felt like a slap in the face, particularly when I had tried so hard to help him win the election. He was treating me like a naughty daughter.

  In hindsight, the election trail had been a time of elation but the joy was artificial. The invariable depression now followed hard on its heels, only there were no baby blues to account for it. Buffeted by highs and lows and what I now recognize as rocketing brain chemistry, I told Pierre that I needed a holiday. He readily agreed and I took off for Montreal, where I went on a shopping spree—the elation kicking in again—and from there I caught a plane to Paris.

  In my distraction I had forgotten to take with me a passport, but I argued my way onto a plane—a measure of the times and the fact that I was the PM’s wife. When I reached Paris, I went to our embassy and got myself issued with a new passport. By now I was flying, my mind out of control, convinced that I hadn’t been appreciated and that I was on some sort of mission of discovery. What I now know is that when Sacha was weaned, overnight, at six months of age, my hormones went awry and so did my brain chemistry. For Pierre and me, this was the beginning of the end.

  From Paris I went to Crete, where I spent the days wandering, visiting old churches, believing myself to be on a pilgrimage. A state of manic excitement was building up again, and I had managed to convince myself that these wonderful three weeks were time off for good behaviour. I knew that the children would be fine. Pierre was a wonderful father and it was, I argued to myself, his turn. He also had the nanny and staff to help him. I had not, in fact, told him where I was going. He could have traced me if he had really wanted to, but it says much about the state of our relationship then that he didn’t choose to find me and I didn’t choose to tell him where I was.

  That trip opened my eyes. Because I had suddenly been involved with real life, meeting ordinary Canadians all across the country, having a role to play, I felt alive again. I had been a prime minister’s wife for four years and a mother for three, but I was still only twenty-six years old: I realized that what I had been missing was my generation, and the songs we played.

  Pierre was playing a different song, one that was more staid, more gradual, more stodgy, and never had that song seemed to me so dull as after the excitement of the election campaign. Pierre was widely seen by the rest of the world as a man who did pirouettes. But what he really did was work—hour after hour. Unless it was an official occasion, we never went to the ballet or the theatre. For him, this life was perfect: focus on work and the children. For me, it wasn’t enough; I wanted, I needed, to play.

  When, three weeks later, I got back to Paris, I called him. He was angry but determined to be pleasant. He reminded me that we were expected in New York, as guests of the Kennedys at the Robert Kennedy celebrity tennis tournament, and he told me to meet him there. Our first encounter was difficult. Pierre was understandably reproachful, but I had nothing coherent to say. Ethel Kennedy kindly sent her maid to iron my dress for the ball in the evening, which was to take place at the fabled Starlight Roof, a nightclub and restaurant in the Waldorf-Astoria in mid-town Manhattan.

  Both Pierre and I were soon swept up in the glamour of the occasion, the blinding flashes of the photographers’ cameras at the entrance to the building. I was momentarily thrown by it all, but then a strong hand, Teddy Kennedy’s hand, reached out and grabbed hold of mine. I spent the whole evening flirting and dancing with him. I found him charming, seductive and warm. He seemed to “get me” and he understood all my confusion about my role as a politician’s wife. And because I was in a manic phase, and feeling confident and beautiful, sparkling and vivacious, he was drawn to me.

  Teddy introduced me to other people, and I watched how sympathetic and gregarious his manners were. I was swept off my feet. Teddy was then forty-three, recently separated from his wife, Joan, but the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick still haunted him, and he had not long before had to cope with his son Edward’s losing a leg to cancer. There was something irresistible about Teddy’s humour and attentiveness, but I was not the only woman to see it.

  Ted Kennedy seemed much younger than his years, full of fun and good humour, and there was something attractive about his slight air of recklessness. For four years, I had sorely missed the companionship of a large family, and the Kennedys reminded me of my own, able to have open-hearted fun. That’s what I was missing, that sense of fun, of being alive, of everything not being so rational, so sensible all the time. Looking back on it, I was manic, desperately in need of help, and should probably have been in hospital. The few moments I spent with Pierre were grim.

  “We need to talk about this, but not now” was all he said.

  When we got back to 24 Sussex, the atmosphere was rank. On my way upstairs, I grabbed a bottle of vodka, drinking it straight from the bottle as I made my way to the top floor. That evening, Pierre demanded that we talk. My confession was incoherent and desperate. I raved and ranted; Pierre was icy cold and furious.

  He accused me of having no self-discipline, of not knowing how to rein in my emotions, of clinging to hippie fantasies. He insisted that I must be in love with someone. I told him that I was—I fancied myself already in love with Teddy Kennedy—that I didn’t love him anymore and that I wanted out. Teddy was my means of escape.

  Pierre kept saying that he didn’t understand, that he assumed I had gone to Europe with another man, that he didn’t know what was happening to me. Nor, of course, did I. The words I kept repeating were not so peculiar; what was new was the vehemence and incoherence with which I uttered them. Mania was taking hold. And soon Pierre recognized it. He realized that what I was saying was absurd, that I was simply no longer making sense and that something in me had snapped. I needed a doctor.

  CHAPTER 5

  DOCTOR, DIAGNOSIS, DENIAL

  “Dear Mrs. Trudeau, I saw you and listened to you … on television and I was deeply moved … I also had the impression that … you were not talking for yourself alone but on behalf of all women, … all more or less enchained. Because the moment we love, do we not fall into a sort of slavery?”

  A 1974 LETTER FROM THE NOVELIST GABRIELLE ROY, 1909–1983

  Clearly, something very wrong had been building up in me for a long time. That it was visible to others, too, was brought home to me when Pierre called me to his office one day to tell me that he had received a letter from Stuart Smith, the head of the Ontario Liberal Party—who happened also to be both a friend and a psychiatrist.

  In the letter, Dr. Smith said that he had observed me for some time, how my moods swung about so violently. He feared that I might be manic depressive, and if so, there were treatments to help me. I remember feeling a mixture of amusement and relief: someone, at last, was worried about me. But I also felt that the whole thing was absurd. I wasn’t going up and down, rising to highs and sinking to lows: my life was the problem—isolated and with nothing to do one minute, the next dancing with Prince Charles or flirting with Teddy Kennedy. Who, I reasoned, wouldn’t have wild fluctuations in moods?

  We arranged that I should meet Dr. Smith at the house of Ruth Macdonald, whose husband, Donald, was in Pierre’s cabinet (he was then government leader in the House of Commons). On this beautiful day, we sat out in the backyard and talked. The fact that the location had to be somewhere very private, away from all public gaze, says much about the way that mental problems of all kinds were viewed in the 1970s: for the wife of Canada’s prime minister to be suffering from depression and mania was not something that could be tolerated.

  The trouble was this: I am an actress, and when I have to, I perform. That day, I shone. I gave the best performance of my life. I was graceful, dignified, extremely rational. I talked about the
pressures I was living under and the way I was coping with them. Dr. Smith said little, but went away with no further suggestions and no prescription for any medicine. What I would learn only painfully and much later was that denial is simply one stage in the bipolar process, the one that comes before the bargaining begins. I was simply not yet ready to accept the diagnosis.

  But by the the fall of 1974, I knew instinctively that I needed help, even if I didn’t know what I needed it for. I was miserable, confused, hearing myself say things that made no sense, even to me, and blaming all those around me for my state of mind. Even Pierre now understood that something in my mind was deeply troubled. I needed proper help. There was no alternative to a hospital.

  To avoid all publicity, we decided that I would go back to Montreal and that a girlfriend would take me to the Royal Victoria Hospital. This part was all completely surreal. We had lunch at the Ritz on the way, as if this were just one more jolly day of going to Montreal for shopping with friends, which I did quite often. We ate and chatted, and then she took me over to the hospital. On the surface, I appeared bubbly and confident; underneath, I was absolutely terrified.

  I was as skinny as a twelve-year-old boy. My breasts had disappeared. I couldn’t sleep, I was never hungry and I couldn’t swallow food. Nor could I stop talking. Everything was racing. All I could think was that I wanted help, that I desperately wanted to be back inside myself and not in the mind of this wild and terrifying stranger.

  At this stage no one was yet talking about manic depression, as bipolar illness was then called. Doctors in the hospital talked to me, then put me on some kind of medication that quickly numbed my mind. My tongue seemed to swell up inside my mouth, one side of which began to droop alarmingly. Part of my terror was a feeling of being totally alone. I knew almost no one in Montreal and there was nobody with me, no member of my family, no friends. I was alone in every way. The drugs I was given seemed to take away all my ability to express myself. I don’t remember what medicine I was given, but this reaction of numbness filled me with horror. I felt completely blank, empty, sedated.

  To avoid publicity, I was put not in a psychiatric ward but in an executive suite for men with prostate problems or erectile dysfunction. Only in hindsight can I appreciate the darkly comic side of my situation; there was nothing funny about it then. I had a grey room, a sort of suite, with a little kitchen, and here I felt even more isolated. I was twenty-six years old and felt utterly forsaken.

  I didn’t know what was happening to me, and no one told me. Had I been put into a psychiatric ward, I probably would have had a better chance of accepting the treatment. I would have seen that there were others in precisely the same condition, with the same problems, and that I was not the only person in the world to possess this apparently rare form of madness. That Pierre, his advisers and the doctors felt this need to protect us all from exposure says much about the way that mental illness was regarded in the 1970s. Looking back, I see a connection between what happened to me and a movie that came out one year later—One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which would win five Academy Awards.

  The novel that the film was based on was written by American author Ken Kesey, who had worked for a time as an orderly in a California mental health facility. The title derives from an old nursery rhyme:

  Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,

  Apple seed and apple thorn,

  Wire, briar, limber lock

  Three geese in a flock

  One flew East

  One flew West

  And one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.

  In the movie, a Native American who goes by the name of “Chief” reveals that his grandmother sang this song to him when he was a child. A mental asylum is coyly referred to as a “cuckoo’s nest,” and a mentally unstable person is sometimes referred to as “cuckoo.” To fly over a cuckoo’s nest is to go too far, to land yourself in trouble. And that I was in.

  After I had been in hospital a few days, Pierre and the two boys came down to Montreal by helicopter to take me out for the day. Justin was now three and a half, Sacha one and a half: for them the day was a wonderful adventure, and seeing them again lifted my spirits. Even at my lowest, I found them comforting and loving, and with them I was at my best. We went off to see an old girlfriend of Pierre’s. Though I was frail and vulnerable and confused, I still had the sense to know that visiting one of the great loves of Pierre’s life was maybe not the wisest choice. This was a bad decision on his part. His idea was that her place was a safe place.

  On the other hand, going there got me out of the hospital for the day. The girlfriend was obviously shocked by my appearance. Even Pierre thought I was completely altered; my voice sounded strange and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I stumbled vacantly around, quiet and isolated.

  As the days in hospital passed and I seemed to make little progress, Pierre decided that I would do better at home. He came to rescue me and took me back to Ottawa.

  All I could think—dimly, through the haze of medication—was that the isolation of 24 Sussex was my real problem. I was isolated from my family, from Pierre. Some of this sense of isolation was, of course, real. Pierre was a very private man. He didn’t really have friends, and he certainly didn’t see the need for socialization. In any case, the social relationships open to a prime minister are for the most part extremely formal. Pierre would say, “What does it matter what kind of people they are, intelligent or inane? The fact is that you wouldn’t get the chance to find out. So why spend time meeting them?”

  Before leaving hospital, it was decided that I should hold a small press conference. Keeping a lid on circumstances had failed; there had been endless speculation in the newspapers about what was wrong with me. As I stood up I felt like a terrified deer in the headlights. I explained that I had been ill, that I had been suffering from a mild form of mental illness, but that I was now well on the road to total recovery.

  It says much about the climate of public opinion in the 1970s that the reaction was one of slight mockery and derision, even if, in the pages of the Toronto Star, a psychiatrist praised me warmly for having been so honest. Jokes were made about the prime minister’s mad wife. The stigma surrounding any kind of mental illness was at its height, and I felt reluctant afterwards ever to be so candid again. Only much later would I learn that the dangerous candour of which I was accused is, in fact, a crucial first stage in getting help.

  I had left the hospital without a clear understanding of what was wrong with me. Pierre thought it best to bring me home and have me well fed by the staff and let me sleep and hold my babies and for him to take care of me. He was at least partly right. Because that was exactly what I needed. I had to choose to become well, choose not to be sick, and also to fight back myself, though without a good psychiatrist and proper medication it was a lot to ask.

  But I did fight back; and gradually I did get a bit better. Somewhere deep inside me I must instinctively have known that choosing to fight was an option. In our new family room at the top of the house at 24 Sussex, with a little kitchen nearby, I was able to prepare meals for the boys, which made me feel more ordinary, more normal.

  I was also very lucky in having two friends who now did all they could to help me. One was Nancy Pitfield, who had been at my side so often before and who now listened to me talk and lightened my mood whenever she could. Nancy had been a psychiatric nurse and had a good idea of what I had been through. I spent many afternoons with the boys at her house, which seemed to have all the coziness and safety and lack of pretentiousness so lacking in my own. And there was Heather Gillin, another good friend, the wife of a local businessman. Heather, who lived nearby and who had children of her own much the same age, became a sort of second mother to the boys.

  I also received a wonderful letter, from a complete stranger, which made me feel that I had not made a mistake in speaking out about my depression. It came from the novelist Gabrielle Roy.

  Dear Mrs. Trudeau,


  I saw you and listened to you … on television and I was deeply moved by the note of sincerity that rang through all your comments. Television has not accustomed us to such frank and soul-baring remarks.

  I also had the impression that you were not talking for yourself alone but on behalf of all women, that you were speaking for each one of us, all more or less enchained. Because the moment we love, do we not fall into a sort of slavery? Doubtless men do, too—who is truly free? but less perhaps than women for whom love is the centre of life and who are thus the most vulnerable of creatures.

  I was far from the perfect wife that Pierre had imagined and, as with all who suffer from depression, my desire for sexual relations had vanished. My goal—to get back to my husband, to be a responsive and loving wife and a good mother, not someone filled with sadness, despondency and despair alternating with flights of euphoria and craziness—seemed increasingly inconceivable.

  And what neither Pierre nor I seemed able or willing to address was the question of the man I believed myself to be in love with—Teddy Kennedy. I felt that I had fallen so much in love with an extraordinary man. Looking back, I think I did love him. The physical attraction was such a small part of the connection. Ted Kennedy was a compassionate man who really wanted to help me, and I fondly remember his support and reassurance. When he died in August of 2009, I felt a great sadness for him and for his family. Like me, he had done things he regretted and that caused grief and heartache, but he was also a kind man who became one of the great advocates for health care and the patriarch of that huge Kennedy clan.