How dating celebrities became a Trudeau family tradition

Telegraph

2 days ago

Of all the many rumours and conspiracy theories surrounding the former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, perhaps the most outlandish argues that he is the illegitimate son of late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. The thinking, if you can call it that, is this: Trudeau's father Pierre, who also served as Canadian prime minister, visited Cuba with his wife, Margaret, in early 1971, and Margaret and Castro supposedly had a brief, short-lived affair. The end result, the cranks falsely claim, was the birth of Justin, Christ-like, on December 25 that year.
This titillating falsehood has been enthusiastically taken up by many of Trudeau's detractors (including Donald Trump), who were incensed by Trudeau's warm words after Castro's death in November 2016. However, this ignores many basic chronological facts, not least that there is no official record of Pierre and Margaret visiting Cuba that year, or indeed Pierre meeting Castro until 1976. The Canadian government at one point became so sick of the story that in 2018 it was forced to issue a denial.
Margaret Trudeau's romantic life has long been a subject of fascination; Robin Williams even made a quip about 'Margaret Trudeau's friendly thighs' as he performed the South Park song Blame Canada at the Oscars in 2000. Yet it was her former husband, Pierre, who had a far wider reputation as a womaniser and ladies' man, with a string of conquests that included A-list actors, singers and musicians. By comparison, their son Justin has been seen as little more than a shiny nepo baby politician, boringly right-on to a point that even his own country tired of him. (Never mind his habit of wearing blackface as a younger man.)
Now, however, Trudeau is back in the headlines for wholly different reasons. He was spotted in the audience at a Katy Perry gig, and was later seen having what looked like a romantic dinner with the singer, who separated from her partner Orlando Bloom earlier this year. Although both Perry and Trudeau have denied rumours that they are romantically involved – the politician split from his wife Sophie Grégoire in 2023 – he was nonetheless seen singing along to Perry's song Dark Horse at her concert.
If we ignore the age gap (he is 53 to her 40) and the slight sense of second-hand goods that Trudeau might convey, the romance buzz might not do either of their somewhat tainted public reputations any harm. Perry, like Trudeau, is coming off a steep decline in public popularity, not helped by her much-mocked decision to travel into space with Jeff Bezos's wife, Lauren Sánchez, and the dismal sales of her latest album.
Yet in Trudeau's case, association with an A-list celebrity may suggest that the apple has not fallen too far from the tree. As a nepo baby politician, he knew all too well that his father, who served as the 15th prime minister of Canada, was a legendary figure in his country. Pierre Trudeau was a rock star among his fellow politicians, and regarded as a hipster long before that term came into use; he certainly did not object to the media's suggestion that he was a 'hip and happening person', even a swinger. Had the byzantine complexities of his romantic life at the time been better known, there may have been other, unkinder terms used.
Shortly after he became prime minister, Pierre embarked upon a relationship with Barbra Streisand, who was then coming off the success of her musical and film Funny Girl. When she first read about him, she supposedly remarked to a friend: 'That's the kind of man I'd like to date.' As luck would have it, the opportunity swiftly presented itself. Streisand rhapsodised in her recent memoir, My Name is Barbra, that Pierre was 'very dapper, intelligent, intense … kind of a combination of Albert Einstein and Napoleon (only taller). And he was doing important work. I was dazzled'.
Although there was again a significant age gap between politician and singer – she was 27, he was 50 – Pierre was enraptured by the star, too. When she was seated in the visitors' gallery during a session of the Canadian parliament, having travelled to see her idol, another politician remarked: 'I should like to ask a question of the prime minister – if he can take his eyes and mind off the visitors' gallery long enough to answer it.' Streisand wrote that she 'blushed and laughed' at the obviousness of the politician's interest in her.
They embarked upon a relationship, and Streisand professed herself smitten by the 'captivating combination of contradictions … an elegant man who was still enough of a free spirit to wear sandals to parliament'. Yet she also had to admit, eventually, that 'there was something missing. My brain was in love, but not my body'. The two separated amicably, and remained friends until Pierre's death in 2000, upon which Streisand commented 'the world lost a great leader … and I lost a great friend'.
When Trudeau's father separated from Streisand, he did not spend his days gazing forlornly into the fire. Not only did he marry the considerably younger Margaret Sinclair in 1971 – he was 50 and she was 22 – but he used his charm and political standing alike to attract a string of younger, well-known mistresses, who included the actresses Margot Kidder and Kim Cattrall – Lois Lane and Sex and the City's Samantha – as well as the classical guitarist Liona Boyd and songwriter Gale Zoë Garnett.
He was very popular with these women, all of whom saw the frightened, hurt little boy underneath the swaggering carapace of success and fame. 'He was so incredibly sexy,' said Cattrall, 'he was very soft-spoken, incredibly smart, sensitive'. Kidder said of him, perceptively, that he was a man 'who lives trapped under layers of defences'.
However, Pierre also led a life like an old-fashioned Restoration rake. Not only did he demand discretion and silence from his various paramours, but he was open with the long-suffering Margaret about his liaisons. A 2009 biography of him, Just Watch Me, detailed how he would often invite two or three mistresses to the same public event, and took a kind of smug delight in exhibiting his prowess.
When Margaret, learning that Boyd had performed at a concert, asked him incredulously 'So you had a mistress play?', Pierre responded: 'Not one, but two.' Likewise, when she found a pile of photographs of various women he had been involved with – Streisand at the top – she asked him whether he had been ranking them. 'Maybe', he replied.
It was an unhappy, traumatic marriage. Not only did Pierre reportedly beat up his wife, but he was excessively mean about money. Margaret revealed in her tell-all 1982 memoir Consequences that every night for two years, she would whisper before bed 'Pierre, please give me a divorce.'
She also pursued her own string of relationships with well-known public figures, including the actor Ryan O'Neal, JFK's brother Ted Kennedy, the musician Tom Sullivan (to whom she was drawn, she wrote – in a clear dig at her older ex – because of his 'extreme youth') and the bottled water entrepreneur Bruce Nevins.
She separated from Pierre in 1977 and met Jack Nicholson shortly afterwards, describing him as 'the first real rival to Pierre'. The relationship did not last, because Nicholson was involved with Anjelica Huston, but Margaret at least got her money's worth while she was with him. The night before they parted, she wrote in her memoir, 'we made love all night'.
Margaret was also something of an Anglophile, and as she put it once, 'ran off' with the Rolling Stones. She enjoyed a fling with Ronnie Wood in the late Seventies, and was the subject of rumours involving Mick Jagger. 'We played dice until about five in the morning, in my hotel suite. Smoked some dope, talked,' she said in 2016. 'It was a good night, and it was my new world. But no one knew I was separated from my husband yet, and it brought a huge scandal.' Jagger himself mockingly alluded to the stories in 2024 when he quipped on stage in Canada: 'We love your Mr Trudeau. I mean, his family has always been such big fans of our band.'
Despite Pierre's appalling treatment of his wife and cavalier attitude towards fidelity, he was (and is) perceived in Canada as a great charmer and Romeo, the kind of man who, even in his late 70s, was still able to twinkle away at otherwise hard-bitten journalists and turn them into putty. The writer Margaret Wente observed, after he kissed her hand and said her name 'with exaggerated appreciation', that 'it was all I could do to keep from asking for his room number'.
He may not have charmed every single woman in his orbit; Margaret Thatcher, who had been warned about Pierre's 'complex personality' and 'unsound personal views' before meeting him in 1983, was entirely resistant to his charms. But the decidedly cordiale entente that he formed with many public figures – several of whom, such as Streisand, continued to extol his virtues long after his death – cannot simply be dismissed as political chicanery.
So it may yet prove with his son. Whether or not he is embroiled with the Firework songstress, Monsieur Trudeau can be sure of one thing. As Streisand wrote of Justin in her memoir: 'Pierre would have been so proud of him.'