In November 1998, I spent a week as a
substitute teacher at Pinetree Secondary School in Coquitlam, about a
half-hour’s drive east of Vancouver. The class had been a good group of
kids, and by week’s end I was sorry to leave them. After saying my
goodbyes on Friday the 13th, I drove back to my apartment, had dinner,
and went to bed. I fell to sleep unaware that earlier that day, I had
lost my little brother Michel.
Part of me was certain that Michel was still alive. I just couldn’t conceive of a world in which he wasn’t.
I felt a spasm of guilt. What was Michel doing
out on that glacier? Why hadn’t I, as his older brother, found some way
to protect him? We lived in the same province. I should have visited
him more, called him more, watched over him more, done something to keep
him from danger.
...
I had spoken to him on Monday of the week he
died, a telephone call I made partly out of guilt. I had been kicking
myself for not calling on his birthday in early October when a friend
reminded me that, when it comes to family, it’s never too late to
connect. She was right, of course, and I called him later that very day.
We had a good talk about many things, the usual back-and-forth chatter
between siblings. The subject that I remember most clearly was his plan
to spend three days later in the week up on Kokanee Glacier.
“It’s early in the season,” he said, “so we have to be careful.”
I replied in the assertive tone of a concerned
parent or older sibling: “Yes, you must be especially careful at this
point in the season.” He burst out laughing. He knew that I knew little
about avalanche dangers and the steps that need to be taken to avoid
them. I knew only that mountain skiing in that region of B.C. always
brought the risk of avalanches. I learned so much more when, after
Michel’s death, I became a director of the Canadian Avalanche Foundation
and pushed for increased funding to support avalanche awareness.
When word of Michel’s disappearance spread
later that day, the national news media flooded Rossland, eager to get a
quote from anyone who knew Michel. All the comments were the same — he
was a happy-go-lucky young guy they knew only as Mike, popular with
everyone who met him, a bon vivant type with a quick smile. They were
all surprised to learn that this well-liked fellow who had no
pretensions and intensely loved exploring the wilderness on skis was the
son of a former prime minister.
Michel had built so much of his life around
the snow and the air and the mountains and the people around him. He was
a free spirit, enamoured of the aboriginal culture that flourishes in
Canada’s most beautiful places, a guy utterly at peace with himself in a
way that had so far eluded both Sacha and me.
After booking an early flight to Montreal, I
called my father to let him know I was coming and to ask if he had any
news. My father had never been given to hopeful self-delusion, and he
wasn’t now. “No,” he told me sadly, “and there won’t be any news because
Michel is gone. The only question now is whether or not they find the
body.”
Michel had ventured to Kokanee because the
area held all the attractions he valued in life: a remote wilderness
location, stunning scenery, challenging skiing, and the kind of
stillness that is so rare in our hectic world. Skiing on the glacier
above the shore of Kokanee Lake on a perfect sunny day was close to
paradise for Miche. Kokanee Lake itself is an alpine jewel about a
kilometre long, four hundred metres wide and very deep, surrounded by
cliffs and precipitous rock slides. I understand why Michel would be
drawn to it and how he probably weighed the risk of an early-season
thaw, despite his laughter at my concern. The danger was not really an
impediment. If he wanted badly enough to challenge his skill and satisfy
his need for adventure, he would have gone under almost any
circumstances. And he did.
He had probably long before come to terms with
the risks faced by adventurers in the rugged parts of Canada where he
most felt at home. A few years before his death, Michel had been idly
watching a TV documentary about burial rites in Asia when he stated,
matter-of-factly, “When it’s my turn, just leave me down at the bottom
of the mountain where I lie.”
Kokanee Lake was at the bottom of the
mountain, and the early-season avalanche knocked him off the path and
into the depths of the lake. Had it been later in the year, the ice
would have been frozen, and he and his buddies would have simply watched
from the safety of the track in the centre of the lake as the small
slide came down. His comment proved prescient: divers would never find
his body, and he is there to this day.
Michel had carved his own route through life.
While Sacha and I attended McGill, close to Dad, Michel chose to head
east, to Dalhousie University in Halifax, where he studied microbiology.
From there he went west for a life in which he wouldn’t have to think
about the expectations others might have of him.
...
I still miss him. I will always miss him.
Michel was just 23 when he died, but he had already found his calm zone,
a private place that eludes many of us throughout our lives.
If Michel
were alive today, I believe he would be the father of teenage children,
and that Sophie and I and our kids would visit him and his family each
Christmas. Perhaps Michel would have launched his own ski tourism
operation; he loved the sport, and I believe he had a knack for
business. In his spare time, he would have found a way to bring out his
creativity through painting or writing. Whatever he chose to do, I know
he would have been happy doing it. That was his gift.
...
The Sydney Olympics were on TV in September of
2000 when my father died, and to this day, the mere memory of seeing
the Canadian flag at half-mast in the Olympic Athletes’ Village the day
after still causes me to blink back tears. IOC vice-president Dick Pound
said on air that his friend Pierre Trudeau “hadn’t been old long,” a
phrase that perfectly summed up the end of my father’s life.
Dad had
remained a great outdoorsman well into his mature years, able to
overcome almost any obstacle he faced. In his seventies he ripped his
knee by stepping into a hole while on a vacation in the Caribbean;
within a few years of the surgery, he was back skiing the black diamond
trails at Whistler. One of the jokes among our family was that whenever
Dad went to the movies he insisted on getting his senior citizen’s
discount. It was laughable to view him as a traditional senior citizen;
he was one of the most robust people I ever knew. Until, very suddenly,
he wasn’t.
Of all the memories I have of my father and of
our relationship, none is warmer and more poignant than what happened a
year before he died, when he came to visit me while I was teaching at
West Point Grey Academy in Vancouver. It was a quiet Friday lunchtime,
and he enjoyed meeting my teaching colleagues and touring the school
with me. It felt good to show him my home classroom and share what I was
doing with my professional life.
As we were about to leave the building, we
heard the scurry of running feet approaching from behind. We both turned
to see one of my students, almost out of breath from chasing after us.
As she approached, suddenly nervous, she said, “Mr. Trudeau . . .”
I had seen this sort of scene unfold thousands
of times. Everywhere I had gone with my father, star-struck children
and adults alike approached him to seek his autograph or shake his hand
or ask if he would pose for a picture with them. I would always stand
back smiling silently while my father politely indulged the request, and
I stood back now.
But this young woman, possibly born the very
year my father had taken his famous walk in the snow, didn’t even glance
at him. Instead she addressed me. “Mr. Trudeau, I just wanted to let
you know that I’ll be late for French class this afternoon because I
have to help out in the gym.” I nodded and thanked her; she turned and
trotted away without another word.
I felt a little embarrassed by the encounter.
This student was the child of immigrants, part of the wave of newcomers
who had come to this country and made a success of themselves thanks in
part to the open-minded policies my father had introduced as prime
minister. Now, he had been treated like some anonymous bystander, and I
cringed a little before turning to Dad, unsure what to say.
To my delight, he was wearing a broad smile.
After many years of receiving recognition and gratitude for so much that
he had done, he hardly needed one more gesture of acknowledgement from a
young Canadian. Instead, he had taken fatherly pride in seeing his son
maintaining our family’s legacy of service to Canada, this time as a
teacher of young people. Now I, not Pierre Elliott, was “Mr. Trudeau” to
a new generation of kids, and he was proud of me for that. It was a
lovely warm moment for both of us to share.
And it was one of the last. In the spring of
2000, as I was finishing my school year at West Point Grey Academy,
Sacha called to tell me our father was dying. He had been beset with
Parkinson’s disease and had already survived a bout of pneumonia. He
will get past this somehow, I assured myself. But while he was tough, my
father was not indestructible. Sacha revealed that Dad had been
diagnosed with prostate cancer some time ago and had decided not to
pursue treatment. The disease now seemed to be entering its terminal
phase.
“What the hell?” I almost shouted through the telephone. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sacha explained that it had been Dad’s orders
to keep me in the dark. My father knew I would drop everything I was
doing in Vancouver and return to Montreal the moment I heard about his
condition. He didn’t want to me to quit on my students before the school
year was over. I know my father had been trying to be considerate, but I
was angry anyway. Some irrational part of me thought that perhaps I
could have fixed the unfixable if I had known about it earlier. When I
settled down, I packed my bags and once again caught a long, sad flight
to Montreal, where I would spend the summer with my father, reading him
his favourite plays by Shakespeare, Racine, and Corneille, and just
sitting quietly with him.
Michel’s death had been sudden and shocking.
My father’s passing happened gradually, week by week, with Sach and me
by his side. By the end of September, on a quiet Friday afternoon, it
was time, and he let go.
...
Canada lost Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the
autumn of 2000. Sacha, Sarah, and I lost our dad. He prepared us well
for that eventuality, but you’re never really ready to lose a parent.
Nobody is. It’s one of the biggest changes life presents. Parents are
the centre of a person’s solar system, even as an adult. My dad had a
stronger gravitational pull than most, so his absence was bound to leave
a deep and lasting void.
...
I felt my father’s absence acutely. It was sad
and profound, but freeing at the same time. I said in my eulogy for him
that it was “up to us, all of us” to embody the values he stood for,
now that he was no longer with us. Looking back, that advice was for
myself as much as for anyone else . . ."
Excerpted from Common Ground by Justin Trudeau.
Published in the English language in Canada by HarperCollins Publishers
Ltd. Copyright 2014 by Justin Trudeau. All rights reserved.
