Changing My Mind Read online

  “Are you all right?” he asked me when I was wheeled out of the delivery room. So loud was my scream that he had thought I was dying.

  At first, Pierre and I had trouble choosing a name for the new baby. Then the Italian film director Sergio Leone, who was an old friend of Pierre’s, came to dinner, and when I brought the new baby downstairs to feed, Sergio suggested that we should give him the name of one of the angels, since he had been born on the feast day of the angels. Neither Rafael nor Gabriel much appealed to us, but Michael was a definite possibility.

  We were just considering it when a few days later I was with Mamie Angus, a friend of Russian descent. While cuddling the baby, she called him “Micha.” I instantly rang Pierre, but his aide informed me he was in a cabinet meeting. “Call him to the phone,” I said, something I rarely did. Pierre agreed it was the perfect solution. So Micha he became (though formally, his name was Michel), with Charles-Émile as a second name, after Pierre’s father.

  We had several good times in the months following Michel’s birth. Some years earlier, King Hussein and his wife, Queen Alia, had invited us to their summer house in Jordan. A stretch of highway near the palace had just been completed but not yet opened, and after dinner the king took us to the garage and told Pierre to choose his own Harley-Davidson. Queen Alia climbed onto her pink Vespa and I was put on the back of King Hussein’s own Harley, and off we went into the starry night. I had never been on a motorcycle before and am normally terrified of such things, but it was extremely exhilarating. I clung to King Hussein’s back and we raced, Pierre doing about two hundred kilometres an hour through the silent darkness, laughing and calling out to each other. During this visit, Alia and I became friends, and once we returned to Canada, we often talked on the phone. She was troubled too, but she was stronger than me.

  While I was pregnant with Michel, they had come on a state visit and presented me with professional camera equipment (a Nikon camera and lenses, several thousand dollars’ worth) as a birthday gift. This was just what I needed. I went to a local college and took a course in photography and darkroom techniques. I discovered that by looking through the lens I could find another escape path, another way of looking at the world.

  I could zoom in on the specific details of beautiful things and become an eyewitness to events. That act of generosity on the part of King Hussein and Queen Alia was a turning point in my life. I cannot remember getting a gift that pleased me more, because the camera opened doors I thought I would never be able to open again. Pierre had tried to talk to me about getting a hobby, but when you are depressed you see no point in doing anything and cannot imagine how you could ever feel connected to anything again.

  Being given this fine camera, being taught how to use it and being allowed to go to school—because Pierre now agreed that I could do so—allowed me my first feelings of independence. Here was my first chance at becoming somebody other than the wife of Pierre Trudeau and the mother of his children. For the next two years, I pursued my photography, and Pierre and I struggled to be good parents and to be nice to one another.

  One important official trip, though, made it plain how rocky my judgment could be. Pierre made plans to go to Latin America in January of 1976—a major three-week trip to Mexico, Cuba and Venezuela, all the more crucial because the visit was the fruit of Pierre’s efforts to expand Canada’s ties with the Third World. The visit was doubly important because the United States was still entirely cut off diplomatically from Cuba.

  Michel was still only four months old and I didn’t want to be separated from him, so I had assumed that I would not be going on this trip. But once again, as with Justin and Sacha, my doctor assured me that Michel could come to no harm. I asked Diane Lavergne, the most easygoing and informal of our staff, to come along with me as nanny.

  We flew to Mexico and I immediately took pleasure in all the vibrant colours, the southern light, the smells of the markets. During one of the state dinners, I was presented with beautiful presents from Señora Echeverría, the wife of Mexican president Luis Echeverría. All I had to give María in return was a maple leaf. I was so embarrassed that I gave her the brooch I was wearing—of a killer whale, made by British Columbia artist and goldsmith Bill Reid. Pierre saw my stress. The brooch was worth a great deal of money and had sentimental attachment, but I felt I had no choice.

  From that day, I insisted on overseeing the choosing of gifts to be presented on these state visits or when dignitaries visited Ottawa. (I remember, for example, giving to the king and queen of Luxembourg beautiful ladybug pins made of platinum by the distinguished Montreal jeweller Gabriel Lucas.)

  Pierre and I stayed in a luxurious hotel in the centre of Mexico City where the butter was brought to our table moulded in the shape of a bouquet of roses. The things we did, the people we met, the places we went to, the warmth and hospitality we encountered everywhere made me feel excited in a way I hadn’t felt for a very long time. Michel stayed in our suite with Diane, and I popped in and out to see him. So good did I feel that any caution began melting in the sun.

  I had been reading Carlos Castaneda, so Mexican shamans were in my head as Pierre and I toured Mayan ruins near Mexico City. He and I were so athletic in those days that we ran up the entire face of the ruin. The view from the top was so exquisitely beautiful, but both of us ran right back down when we saw that our nanny had parked baby Michel on the sacrificial altar. Bad karma, we both agreed.

  Two young Canadian hippies, who had heard about the official visit, somehow managed to break through the tight security when we were exploring the Mayan ruins in the jungle. I was surprised but didn’t protest when one of them whispered in my ear, “We’ve got something for you.” I casually left my bag on the ground near the car, where the nanny sat holding Michel, while I went to the ruins. When I got back, a security officer came over to me.

  “I think you should know, Mrs. Trudeau,” he said, “that Canadian girl slipped something into your bag.”

  “Thank you so much,” I replied. “They must be the cookies she told me about.” Opening the bag, I ostentatiously took out a packet of cookies I had brought with me. What the officer didn’t realize was that tucked underneath in the bag was a little plastic sack of peyote. That night, at Cancun, I allowed myself a secret taste, one that made me look forward to more.

  From Mexico, we flew on to Cuba. My plan had been to land in full regalia: a beautiful silk dress I had bought in Rome, with matching shoes, hat and handbag. Just before we landed I went over to change Michel’s diaper. I was just fastening it with the safety pin when the plane lurched and the pin embedded itself in my finger. A drop of bright red blood landed on the front of my dress. Since by now the plane was taxiing down the runway, I had no time to change. Another gaffe: here comes Mrs. Trudeau, on the first official Canadian state visit to Cuba, with blood on her clothes.

  When the plane doors were pushed back, a great blanket of steamy heat hit us in the face. Fidel Castro was standing waiting on the runway. I was immediately mesmerized by what I saw: a tall man in green army fatigues immaculately cut and pressed, with incredibly beautiful eyes and a wild, almost fanatical look, which made him physically very attractive. In a voice deep and gruff, he poured out a stream of heavily accented but flowery and romantic English. He quickly endeared himself to me by his attitude towards Michel. He called him “Miche” and carried him around with him. He even procured a special badge that read “Miche Trudeau. VIP Official visitor of the Canadian delegation.” From then on, everyone in the family called him Miche (pronounced Meesh), rather than Micha (pronounced Meesha), but to everyone else he was still Michel.

  Pierre, Michel, Diane and I were staying in a charming guest house in Havana, built of wood and stone and kept cool by rivulets of water that ran along channels in the slate floor of the house; we crossed rooms by stepping on huge, flat stones. Every window in the house looked out on tropical gardens. So long steeped in the staid, conservative political world of Ottawa, I was
soon engulfed in memories of my hippie days. If this is revolution, I thought, then bring it on. Once convinced that Cuba could do no wrong, I found my enthusiasm confirmed everywhere I went. The Cubans struck me as happy people; we took in spectacular entertainments, water displays, gymnastics. I visited daycare centres where I saw the most contented children. The days passed by all too quickly: never had an official visit seemed so enjoyable, or so totally devoid of all stuffiness.

  I look back on this trip—taken when I was twenty-seven years old and Ottawa was in the grip of winter—and I fully understand how my depression lifted in the warm sun. Though I love to ski, snowshoe and hike in the snow, winter is hard for me. Seasonal affective disorder is very real, and I now use an artificial light in winter and take vitamin D. When it’s grey, cold and dreary, the mood of a depression-prone person can reflect the weather. Small wonder that the Cuban sun put a smile on my face.

  The highlight of our visit was a trip out to a remote military installation at Cayo Largo, where a comfortable bungalow had been set aside for us. In the late afternoon, Pierre and Fidel went out to catch dinner. Pierre was a pacifist and would kill nothing, but Castro took a spear gun and the two men swam off in search of fish. They returned with a splendid haul, Castro clutching a large lobster. Under my astonished gaze, he ripped a claw off the still wriggling creature and asked me, “Do you like your lobster with or without lime?” I hesitated, not only because the leg still felt alive but because I had been warned never to eat shellfish raw, other than oysters. But the raw lobster was delicious.

  Late that night Diane and I wandered down to the seashore. Soon we were joined by Fidel and one of his aides. It was as well that we were not alone, for he immediately began to pay me a series of outrageous compliments.

  “You know my eyes are not very strong,” he told me, “so every day to make them stronger I force myself to look at the sun. I find it very hard. But do you know what I find harder? That is to look into the blue of your eyes.”

  I was sad when the Cuba visit ended, and I was conscious that my time there had shown up very sharply the contradictions between what I felt happy doing and what I was actually expected to do. On our last evening, we ate with Castro, and soon all at the table were clapping their hands and tapping their feet to the loud music that accompanied the meal. When the moment came to leave, weighed down with gifts of three matching chairs for the little boys, I was tearful. Pierre uttered a clever tease.

  “I’m glad you’re coming with us,” he told me. “I thought you might ask for asylum.”

  Our last stop was Venezuela. Patricia Schwarzmann, our ambassador’s wife, had sent me briefing notes on First Lady Blanca Pérez’s work with daycare programs, and I was all set to like her. Soon after reaching Caracas, she asked me whether I would like to go with her to one of her centres in the city’s slums, where she worked every day with some of the poorer, sicker children.

  We set off in a private coach, Blanca Pérez in a simple white dress and sturdy shoes, me in a safari suit with cameras slung over my shoulders. We took Michel with us. At one point, I looked back and saw Madame Pérez’s entourage and various diplomatic ladies, all with identical expressions of dismay and distaste on their faces. In their high-heeled crocodile shoes, silk Pucci dresses and heavy gold jewellery, they seemed too terrified even to get off the buses. I liked Madame Pérez all the more. When I got back to our embassy, I felt overwhelmed with admiration for her.

  That night, our last in Venezuela, we were to host a dinner for Madame Pérez and her husband. That afternoon, I had been nibbling on some of the peyote given to me by the hippies back in Mexico. Bad decision. Bad judgment. The peyote kicked in as I was dressing for dinner and took me on quite a trip. I was so taken with Madame Pérez—and so high—that I decided to compose a poem to her and recite it aloud over dinner. By now, I believed that I was Eva Perón and Gabriel García Márquez rolled into one.

  Mine was a deeply unwise decision, particularly as the nature of the dinner had changed—from small and intimate to vast and formal. The whole of grand Caracas was present. As the meal ended, I rose boldly to my feet and began to sing. The drug was doing its work, and I could pick out every detail in the room, every sparkling petal on every rose.

  “Señora Pérez,” I announced, “I would like to sing to you a song of love.” And my warbling began:

  Señora Pérez, I would like to thank you,

  I would like to sing to you

  To sing a song of love

  For I have watched you

  With my eyes wide open,

  I have watched you with learning eyes …

  I will spare you the rest. Even in my addled state, I could sense the acute embarrassment I had caused. The Pérezes could not have been more charming, but the Canadian press had a field day. My previous bouts of erratic behaviour had not gone unnoticed in Canada, and next morning the Canadian public opened their newspapers to a feast of scandalous stories about the disgraceful antics of Pierre Trudeau’s mad, exhibitionist wife. I wince when I look back at this really stupid, shameful behaviour.

  “Margaret Trudeau did it again,” The Globe and Mail trumpeted. I felt totally disgraced and ashamed at my appalling behaviour. Once home, I promptly compounded the damage. I awoke to hear comments on the radio about my performance, nearly all of them highly critical. Then the talk show host said, “Margaret Trudeau, why don’t you give us a call?” So I did. But that was a terrible mistake too, and I came out of it looking still more foolish. I was so lonely, so sad.

  The days and the months passed, and the boys continued to grow. Virtually as soon as they could walk, Pierre took them out on the ski slopes, where they soon became fearless, hurtling over the crests of the hills, flipping, falling over, bouncing back, so proficient that especially good skiers from the RCMP had to be found to keep pace with them. But something between myself and Pierre had shattered, and we couldn’t seem to put it right.

  In the summer of 1976, we were in Rome and had an audience with Pope Paul VI at his summer retreat at Castel Gandolfo. Pierre had suggested that I make a list of questions that I would like to ask him. Kneeling in front of him, greatly impressed and moved by his aura of holiness, I wanted to ask him all the questions that had been nagging me about Catholicism and that conversion had done nothing to assuage. What was a sin? Did thoughts count as well as deeds? (Surely God wouldn’t hold my private and inner wanderings against me?) And original sin—how could an innocent child (any of my three sons, for example) be born with the stain of sin on his soul? And where were the women? Why did the Catholic Church treat women so subserviently?

  Before I had a chance to ask a single question, the pope patted me on the head and told me that I was blessed among women for having three wonderful sons. Then he turned to Pierre and I was completely excluded from the more serious conversation.

  The audience ended with the pope asking Pierre whether he had any questions. Pierre, unlike me, didn’t seem to have any. I envied him his certainties. But I was also extremely angry. I left feeling distanced from the Catholic Church, which I felt was failing me as a woman.

  Pierre and I had long disagreed over religion. Every evening, when the boys went to bed, Pierre prayed with them. That was fine, and when we married, I had agreed that they should be raised as Catholics. However, I had a real problem with the idea of original sin, and couldn’t find any way of seeing sin in a small boy. And I had an even greater problem with the idea of an elderly priest absolving the so-called sins of a small boy, such as eating a chocolate bar before dinner. When I thought about it, I felt that my Anglican God was a gentler one than Pierre’s Catholic one.

  Some twenty-five years later, Sacha and I had an hour-long audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and it was completely the opposite. He included me in the discussion. The Dalai Lama held my hand to his face and said mothers were the strength and the power.

  Both holy men were talking of the grace of the mother, but the Dalai Lama saw me as a
person—and not one woman among many. The pope put me in my place; the Dalai Lama put me in the conversation.

  In the autumn of 1976 came one of the hardest official visits of my life with Pierre. Looking back on it, I see how tense I must have been. We were invited to Japan, and normally this would have filled me with delight, since I loved Japan and all things Japanese. We stayed in the magnificent Akasaka Palace and everything looked exquisite. However, we were accompanied by Pierre’s aide, Ivan Head, with whom I had long been on bad terms. I had the sense that he resented any contribution I might make to Pierre’s work. We had tried, but totally failed, to work together during the 1974 campaign, when I knew he had done all he could to keep me from taking part. I found him chauvinistic, and I hated his bureaucratic manner.

  From the first, I found the intense protocol of this Japanese visit extremely daunting (such a far cry from our relaxed and convivial time in Cuba). Each small gesture in Japan seemed to carry meaning. The best occasion was lunch with the emperor and the empress, when we talked about photography. Otherwise, one round of formality and starchiness followed another—with one exception. I can still laugh about this one. Pierre and I had gone up north to relax over the weekend in an inn. The charming server in traditional costume brought up steaming bowls of soup, but when I saw bony little fish floating at the top, I told Pierre that I couldn’t eat it. “I thought you were the great traveller,” he said, deeply patronizing. “You have to be open to new experiences, try things out, experiment.” And he set about eating the little fish. At that moment the server returned. She looked horrified. “No, no, no,” she said, “you mustn’t eat the little fish. They are just to flavour the soup.” With that, she scooped them all out with a little net.