A well-written and unique biography, compared to his memoirs and earlier works by Richard Gwyn, the Nemnis, and John English. Unlike the "Extraordinary Canadians" for Pearson, this one was written by Ricci for Canadians, not at them.

"Pierre Elliott Trudeau" by Nino Ricci is another volume in the excellent Extraordinary Canadians series edited by John Ralston Saul. The purpose of this series, as Saul says in his Introduction, is to give the latest generation of Canadians a chance to understand the nation’s past in their own way, the sort of project that needs to be redone every couple of generations.

But even Saul admits that Pierre Trudeau is one of the most difficult “extraordinary Canadians” to write about, partly because he has so recently died (2000), but mostly because he himself - his life, intellect, emotions, and political thought - was so complex. Ricci, a novelist who reveals “the complexities of the human heart,” was chosen to create a psychological and intellectual portrait of the former Canadian prime minister, rather than a detailed history.

This turns out to have been both a benefit and a drawback. Given the short length of the books in this series, Ricci could hardly write an in-depth, detailed chronology of Trudeau’s life, say along the lines of Stephen Clarkson’s and Christina McCall’s two-volume set, Trudeau and Our Times. But while Ricci’s “portrait” is well done on the whole, occasionally it suffers for being unable to go into a lot of detail.

Take Trudeau’s marriage to Margaret Sinclair, for example. While the author could cover the man’s general relationships to women, and discuss the role both his mother and his ambitions and philosophy played in their development and frequent demise, Ricci didn’t have the time or space to discuss this one crucial relationship in enough detail. He did as well as he could, but it still felt like he had to skimp. Hardly had he mentioned the surprise marriage before he was starting to analyze its failure.

I felt this lack of space affected other parts of the narrative as well. Those who have read Clarkson and McCall will know that there was a lot more detail and explanation behind many of Trudeau’s actions as prime minister than Ricci was able to include. The result of the exclusions, however, is to make Trudeau appear much less successful than he actually was. And sometimes the lack of background detail made me think that people who hadn’t lived through these times might have trouble understanding what was going on. It felt that there was a bit too much “filling in the blanks” required, especially in the chapter about Trudeau’s swift rise to the Liberal party leadership and then the prime ministership itself.

Yet where Ricci really succeeds is in the chapters examining Trudeau’s early intellectual development. He covered these years very well, showing the evolution of Trudeau’s thought from an early, quite disturbing fascist (and racist) Quebec nationalism, to the final liberalism of a “citizen of the world.”

And Ricci’s coverage of the patriation of the Constitution from Britain was also very good. That whole process was so complex that it would almost take a miracle-worker to sum it up in one relatively short chapter, but Ricci did a good job.

I was a bit surprised, though, that Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed got nary a mention in that chapter. He was no negligible voice among the Gang of Eight premiers, after all. I confess to a twinge of irritation (at Ricci’s “Easterner” viewpoint?), and the thought, “Yep, the West gets shafted again.”

Explanatory note: I’m originally from Alberta, and my whole family was cheering for Lougheed at the time. I understand the extremely valuable role that Ontario Premier Bill Davis played, but we in the West regarded Lougheed as the one who would “save us” from Trudeau. So this book, purporting to help a generation of Canadians - even those, presumably, west of Ontario - understand Trudeau, tries to do it without mentioning Lougheed at all? When Lougheed was our champion through the National Energy Policy and the Constitutional talks? Not good.

However, I’ve softened the views I held in the 1980s about Trudeau, and now admire him very much. So in that spirit, I still enjoyed this book. I feel, given its length, that Nino Ricci did a good job of creating the “portrait” of Pierre Trudeau, even if he couldn’t go into all the complexities of Trudeau’s work. ( )