Changing My Mind Read online

  We now settled into a domestic routine. At five to eight, a maid would knock on the door and come in to draw our curtains. If Sacha awoke in the night, the baby monitor would alert us and Pierre would leap out of bed and change his son’s diapers and, when I was still breastfeeding Sacha, bring him to me. Pierre may have been the prime minister, but he could not wait to get to his son; it was a source of great joy for him to attend to his infant’s needs. The baby would come to me muffled up in many layers of shawls and a wool hat. That was because Pierre was a fresh-air fanatic who insisted on keeping the windows of our bedroom open, no matter the weather or the season. Sometimes, the water in the glass by our bed—from the Constance Cox Brass Bed Company—froze solid. Heavy feather duvets were not the style then as they are now, but in our bedroom the duvet was part of winter survival gear.

  By the time I got up, Pierre had already left for the office. Between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m. I read the newspapers, discussed menus and household matters with the staff and planned my day.

  Then I telephoned my assistant and together we organized the day’s schedule: who needed to be contacted, who invited to this dinner or that reception. Lunch I insisted on making for myself, despite the protestation of the cooks. I would drift into the kitchen around one o’clock, look in the refrigerator and make myself a toasted sandwich of crab, tuna or salmon. During the afternoon, while the babies slept, I wrote thank-you letters, sorted out gifts and dreamed up menus.

  We now had a nanny at home, for all the times that I would need to attend an event or a function. This was the early 1970s, the boys were still very small, and whenever I was at home, I looked after them myself. Sometimes, when I was dressing to go somewhere, I would hear the nanny making a plan for some wonderful activity that I longed to be sharing in.

  If the children and I were at home, the evenings unfolded with military precision. Punctually at 6:45 p.m., Pierre’s chauffeur would bring him to the house. “Salut, les enfants!” he would say to the boys and embrace each of them before going straight out jogging. Later we added an indoor swimming pool. (Paid for by private donations, and a great gift to the prime minister’s residence, the pool was housed in a separate building, with a tunnel leading to the house.) Pierre would do laps—forty-four, no more, no less. That took about seventeen minutes, and when the children were old enough they would join him in the pool for another fifteen minutes.

  The nanny left at 7:00 p.m., so the evening was our time with the children. Justin would sit at the table while we ate, and I often had Sacha on my knee as well, a napkin laid on the top of his bald head so that I wouldn’t burn him if I spilled food over him. Dinner was at eight, on the dot.

  Obsessively health conscious, Pierre refused to do anything for three-quarters of an hour after a proper meal—the food, he believed, needed time to “digest.” So we spent that time listening to music or doing odd light chores. The forty-five minutes up, Pierre returned to work; I was absolutely forbidden to interrupt him unless the circumstance was dire. I was like a faucet, to be turned on and off at will. I learned to adapt, and I had enormous respect for the amount of work he did and for his discipline; I’ve never met anyone who worked as hard as he did. Often I was with him in the sitting room as he worked, me reading or watching television—with headphones on so the sound would not distract Pierre.

  Then we would put the boys to bed, but not before Pierre had read to them—children’s stories such as Goodnight Moon, a book by Margaret Wise Brown first published in 1947. Dr. Seuss was a favourite, as was Richard Scarry. When the boys got older, Pierre read them Jack London, Alexandre Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and the Bible. Much later, it was Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Sartre. The reading over, Pierre and his sons would get down on their knees and pray together at the side of the bed before he tucked them in.

  Pierre would then work until midnight, and typically he worked about sixty-two hours a week. Pierre’s focus on his work was total. He would wade through his vertical brown boxes—government-issue, leather-bound carrying cases for cabinet documents. When he had gone through the last box, his work was done, but it almost never was.

  Now and again, he would break his adherence to his strict weeknight work schedule and we would go out for a Lebanese meal (his preference) or Japanese food (mine), though both cuisines appealed. Insomuch as he wanted to be distracted, it had to be in his time, when he wished it, preferably over dinner or on weekends. That had been fine when we were dating and I saw plays, talked to friends, went to exhibitions—when I could regale him with stories about the outside world.

  But now, when I went nowhere and did nothing, there was not much for me to entertain him with, especially on demand. I was very conscious that he wanted me in his life only during prescribed times, and that he abhorred any kind of spontaneity. This confining atmosphere reached its most absurd point when he informed me that we could make love on the weekend, and, if need be, on Tuesdays, but Wednesdays, when there was a cabinet meeting to prepare, were absolutely out of the question.

  I felt alone, and most acutely so in a crowd. There was a kind of idolatry at work, a disconnect and distancing by people around me because I was somebody. But I was nobody. My husband was somebody; I was just me. I had come from a family background of friendliness, and I was always amazed at how hard I had to work to fight the assumption that I was stuck up. I was not a fancy pants, and that’s why Pierre loved me.

  Pierre and I and the babies: we had extraordinary happiness. We were a happy, intimate family—when we were allowed to be. On weekends, when we went up to Harrington Lake, we often went on our own, taking no one with us (excepting, of course, the RCMP officers shadowing us). Just occasionally one of the maids came up for a couple of hours, to lend a hand, but I infinitely preferred the total privacy of being alone. I would often spend whole summers at Harrington Lake, my warm and happy place.

  I will always associate that big, rambling wooden house with two things: utter tranquility and the unmistakable fragrances of the countryside. No noise, no cook pestering me with menus, no formalities to follow, no people to please.

  The simplicity of the place lay at the heart of its appeal. The house at Harrington Lake was all wood: the walls of wood panelling painted white, the wide pine floors, the kitchen cupboards. The house was set in the middle of a wildlife sanctuary, and was therefore surrounded by forest. Peace was guaranteed, as was privacy. Glass doors separated the living and dining rooms, and in summer we kept them open all the time, accentuating the openness of the place.

  I converted the servants’ quarters into a children’s playroom, which doubled as a sitting room should a nanny or maid come with us. But in the early days, that seldom happened. Here, happily, I was head cook and bottle washer in a kitchen I could finally call my own.

  The kitchen at Harrington Lake was huge and old-fashioned, with a butler’s pantry—a separate room off the kitchen with a couch. In old Europe, such rooms were used for storage, but some butlers actually slept in them since one of their jobs was to keep the silver under lock and key. The light poured into the kitchen at Harrington Lake, and the cupboards were ample and fronted in glass. Wood panelling and wainscotting defined the place.

  I had had shipped from Vancouver all my old kitchen utensils and pots—brightly coloured cooking equipment that I stored in a work table on wheels, dishes I had bought in Morocco that were displayed on shelves, plus baskets with spices. I introduced natural wood to the kitchen, a butcher’s block on a wheeled stainless-steel cart and a huge pine table where we ate all our meals. The result was a kitchen that was warm and open and romantic, and very much my domain.

  I would often shop at the local market and buy ingredients for the Japanese and Chinese cuisine that we all loved. The children would help me stuff the wontons with meat and spices at the kitchen table. Around this time, Chatelaine magazine asked me to write an article about my life and I chose to describe summers at Harrington Lake and how I grew
our own vegetables and shopped and cooked for the family. After the piece was published, several readers wrote letters expressing doubt that the prime minister’s wife was cook and gardener.

  But it was true. On a patch of land that a local farmer had used to grow turnips for his cows, I had planted a huge organic garden with every kind of fruit and vegetable, from wild strawberry to marrow, from raspberries to corn. We would play a game with the children: the aim was to pick cobs of corn, husk them, race into the kitchen, boil the corn and eat it all in one fell swoop.

  We had high chicken-wire fencing installed to protect the garden from marauding racoons and deer. In the fall, I would gather the harvest and freeze it. I once had a photo taken of us perched on a rock with that fall’s harvest, and what an impressive sight it was. Elsewhere in North America, a so-called back-to-the-land movement was underway, and gardening was a vital part of that thrust towards self-sufficiency. For me, though, gardening was bred in the bone. My grandmother was a keen gardener, as my mother was, and I followed in their footsteps.

  What a contrast Harrington Lake provided for my life in the city. There was something very cloistered, almost claustrophobic about my existence at 24 Sussex, particularly when Pierre was away on a trip and the chef, the only other man in the house, had gone home for the night. We were eight women and two small children, all of us retiring to our cells at night, like in a secluded convent. I sometimes felt more like a mother superior than a prime minister’s wife.

  Then, in June 1974, the election was called. Only eighteen months had transpired since the last one, but he had had such a close shave that time, with barely a working majority, that Pierre dared not wait any longer. It was now or never: a bid for a real Liberal victory. Pierre’s advisers felt that one of his strongest cards with the electorate was that he was now a family man, with concerns about children, eager to build Canada as a country for families.

  Initially, he was extremely reluctant to let me accompany him on the campaign trail, but it was clear to me that I did have a role to play, not least in showing him not as a cold and arrogant man—which was how he sometimes came across—but as one with real warmth. We decided that I would go with him on the election tour, taking Sacha with us, as I was still breastfeeding him, together with a nanny to help. Mary Alice Conlon, an ex-nun, was delighted to take the job.

  We set out in our campaign plane, the front part curtained off for us, the back full of Pierre’s aides and the press. The real daily, not to say hourly, dilemma was how to feed the baby discreetly, so that no one would be shocked. At the start of the campaign, I was extremely modest, retiring behind curtains, into restrooms, empty offices or halls where I could settle down with some degree of privacy. Later I threw all modesty to the winds and became skilled at giving Sacha snacks in improbable places and at odd times. So engrossed, in fact, did I become that I was soon wandering around with him at my breast, answering the telephone, talking, making plans.

  There was, however, one major problem. Smoking was then still permitted on planes, and reporters were serious smokers. Separated from them only by a thin curtain, I sat feeding Sacha in wafting smoke, growing more anxious day by day about the effect that this might have on the baby. Finally, with huge misgivings, we agreed that Sacha should stay behind with my family in Vancouver while I continued with Pierre. I hated giving up my baby.

  But I was soon caught up in the fever of the campaign. I convinced Pierre to speak from the heart, telling them what he really wanted for the future of all Canadians. I persuaded him that his audiences wanted to know him, hear his enthusiasm and his excitement.

  One day, in Humboldt, Saskatchewan, I saw Pierre clutching a folder of papers as he was about to address an outdoor rally. The audience, picnicking on the grass, were in a relaxed, informal mood. I asked Pierre what the papers were. “It’s our wheat policy,” he told me.

  “You’re going to give them that?” I asked incredulously. “Why?”

  “Well,” said Pierre, “the media needs it.” I took the papers from his hand. “Then give them the speech and you go out there and talk.” Pierre walked up onto the stage, put on his glasses and picked up his papers, but just as he began to read, he looked up, put the speech down and began: “My wife says that I must talk to you, not lecture you. So here goes.”

  I even took to the platform myself, to speak up on Pierre’s behalf. In a high school auditorium in British Columbia, I declared that the Pierre I knew was not a politician, but a loving human being “who has taught me in the three years we have been married, and in the few years before that, a lot about loving. Not just loving each other, which is pretty nice, but love for humanity—a tolerance for the individual which reaches out pretty far.”

  Some people thought he was arrogant, I told them, but the man I knew was not. For me, Pierre was shy and modest and “very, very kind.” Some might have thought that this was the politician’s wife talking, but I meant every word. The students in the audience cheered. Everywhere we went, the weather was terrible, the warmth of the crowds heartening. In Saskatchewan, when I still had Sacha with me, the crowds had shouted out, “Hurray for the baby!”

  Once Pierre freed himself from his written scripts, his whole personality changed, and the people loved it. One of the most serious issues of the election was the question of spiralling inflation, and Pierre chose to ridicule the Progressive Conservatives’ call for a ninety-day wage and price freeze with his catchphrase “Zap! You’re frozen!” That became the joke of the day.

  We did a whistle-stop journey by train across the country, and from time to time I, too, spoke, finding in myself a talent for public speaking and a real taste for performance. What I knew I could do well was listen to what people were saying and respond to their needs. I had studied political science, but at last I was discovering how politics worked, and it was a heady feeling. We were the golden couple, with golden children, and everyone seemed to love us. I had made Pierre’s aides let me in on strategy and planning meetings, and I put across views of my own. It was interesting to be part of the process, to hear about regional differences and try to match what people seemed be asking for and what Liberals were prepared to offer. I was touched and delighted when Pierre announced to a crowd, “I can tell you the secret of my new deal this time. I have a train, and I have Margaret.”

  When election day came, we got a landslide win and Pierre was back in power. The Liberal Party had won its first majority government since 1968, largely through the heavy support for Pierre across Quebec and Ontario.

  As Peter C. Newman would write many years later, “Never would there be a prime minister like that again. He magicked us. He was the dancing man, sliding down banisters, dodging picketers, pirouetting behind the Queen’s back, vaulting onto platforms.”

  The pirouette reference is to a defining photograph taken at a G7 summit conference at Buckingham Palace on May 7, 1977. The photographer Doug Ball caught Pierre spinning a pirouette as an oblivious queen and her entourage walked away. The move was rehearsed and was meant as a silent but playful protest against aristocratic pomp and protocol. Pierre very much liked the queen, but he couldn’t abide all the strict rules and regulations that governed any contact with her.

  Newman was right. What other Canadian prime minister earned a black belt in judo or went scuba diving? More critically, Newman would also say that there was always a shadow in Pierre’s makeup, and that was because he “had an icicle for a heart.” Yet that was to misunderstand him. Pierre prided himself on always coming across as rational, in control, governed by reason, but as his behaviour with his own children made clear, he had an exceptionally soft heart.

  I had not anticipated the sense of anticlimax that inevitably followed the election of 1974. Pierre returned to his offices, and I to 24 Sussex. Though my reunion with Sacha and Justin was wonderfully happy, I had never been more conscious of the silence and isolation around me. Now that the election was over, I had no further role to play.

  I neve
r believed that I had been properly thanked (real thanks would have meant a meaningful job), and I felt I had been used by the Liberal Party machine. Here I was, fresh out of university. I was adversarial, I knew how to question and I demanded the right to ask what was going on. I had all these tools, and nowhere to use them.

  I now returned to my place in the home. The staff were efficient, the security guards polite, the nannies competent. There was nothing for me to do except write letters to all the hundreds of people who had so kindly showered me with gifts for the children. For me, 24 Sussex was rapidly becoming a jail, the jewel in the crown of Canada’s penitentiary system, in which I was the sole prisoner. I didn’t think the way others around me thought, the way my husband thought, the way the press thought. I didn’t fit in. Mine was an unbalanced world. I was angry a lot of the time, and I was furious that this great political maw had chewed on me and then spat me out. One of my psychiatrists would later observe that depression is just suppressed anger—not being able to articulate your feelings and having no voice. That described me to a T.

  Pierre himself became the disciplined, hard-working, serious-minded companion he had always been, without the elation and high spirits of the campaign—very willing to have fun, but only at certain times and not very often. When I questioned him about our lives, when I suggested changes, the exchanges had the feel of a teenager giving her father lip. At twenty-five, I wanted more; I know I should not have expected it, but I did. I wanted a role of my own. Only much later, under Mila Mulroney, was the prime minister’s wife given some professional status of her own, with her own office and staff.

  Then there was a disconcerting episode with Pierre that reminded me all over again about his tightness with money. The owner of the department store Creeds had offered to help me put together a wardrobe for the election campaign. I consulted Pierre, who thought it was an excellent idea, and together we assembled a collection of clothes that were both practical and elegant. I spent about $3,000 and was delighted with the result—not haute couture, but good designers who made me feel at my best.