Justin Trudeau to Become Next Canadian PM
After starting the campaign a distant third, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals won a resounding victory at the ballot box on Monday.
By the end of the night, they were leading or elected in 184 seats, compared to 99 seats for the Conservatives, 44 seats for the New Democrats, 10 for the Bloc Quebecois and one lone seat for Green Party Leader Elizabeth May.
The last Liberal leader to come out of Quebec with a majority of the province’s seats before this election was . . . Trudeau’s father in 1980.
Ontario decisively broke the back of the Conservative bid for a fourth consecutive mandate. In Canada’s largest province, the Liberals won more than twice as many seats as the Conservatives.
Justin Pierre James Trudeau MP is a Canadian politician who is the Leader of the Liberal Party and the prime minister-designate of Canada. Trudeau is the eldest son of former Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Trudeau and Margaret Trudeau.
Born: December 25, 1971 (age 43), Ottawa
Height: 1.88 m
Spouse: Sophie Grégoire
Parents: Pierre Trudeau, Margaret Trudeau
Siblings: Alexandre Trudeau, Michel Trudeau, Alicia Kemper, Sarah Elisabeth Trudeau, Kyle Kemper
Education: University of British Columbia (1998), McGill University (1994), McGill University
Trudeau was born in Ottawa, Ontario, to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Margaret Trudeau (née Sinclair).[3] He is the second child in Canadian history to be born when one of his parents was prime minister; the first was John A. Macdonald's youngest daughter Margaret Mary Macdonald. Trudeau's younger brothers Alexandre (Sacha) (born December 25, 1973) and Michel (October 2, 1975 – November 13, 1998) were the third and fourth.[4][5] Trudeau's grandfathers were businessman Charles Trudeau and Scottish-born James Sinclair, who served as Minister of Fisheries in the cabinet of Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent.[6] He is mostly of French-Canadian, Scottish, and English descent. Some of his mother's British ancestors lived in Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia during colonial times, including William Farquhar, a noted colonial leader of Singapore; one of Trudeau's six times maternal great-grandmothers was an ethnic Malaysian.[7]
Trudeau's parents separated in 1977, when Trudeau was six years old, and his father retired as prime minister in 1984.[8] Of his mother and father's marriage, Trudeau said in 2009, "They loved each other incredibly, passionately, completely. But there was 30 years between them and my mom never was an equal partner in what encompassed my father's life, his duty, his country."[9] Trudeau has three half-siblings, Kyle and Alicia, from his mother's re-marriage, and Sarah, from his father's later relationship.
After leaving politics, Pierre Trudeau raised his children in relative privacy in Montreal. Trudeau attended Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf, his father's alma mater.[10] In 2008, Trudeau said that of all his early family outings he enjoyed camping with his father the most, because "that was where our father got to be just our father – a dad in the woods."[11] Trudeau, then 28, emerged as a prominent figure in October 2000, after delivering a eulogy at his father's state funeral.[12] The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) received numerous calls to rebroadcast the speech after its initial transmission, and leading Quebec politician Claude Ryan described it as "perhaps [...] the first manifestation of a dynasty."[13] A book issued by the CBC in 2003 included the speech in its list of significant Canadian events from the past fifty years.[14]
Trudeau has a Bachelor of Arts degree in literature from McGill University and a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of British Columbia. After graduation, he worked as a French and math teacher at West Point Grey Academy and Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School in Vancouver, British Columbia.[15][16] From 2002 to 2004, he studied engineering at the École Polytechnique de Montréal, a part of the Université de Montréal.[17] He also started a Master of Arts degree in Environmental Geography at McGill University before suspending his program to seek public office.[18]
In 2007, Trudeau starred in the two-part CBC miniseries The Great War, which gave an account of Canada's participation in the First World War. He portrayed Talbot Mercer Papineau, who was killed on October 30, 1917, during the Battle of Passchendaele.[19]
Trudeau is one of several children of former prime ministers who have become Canadian media personalities. The others are Ben Mulroney (son of Brian Mulroney), Catherine Clark (daughter of Joe Clark), and Trudeau's younger brother, Alexandre.[20] Ben Mulroney was a guest at Trudeau's wedding.[21]
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Sandra P. 10/20/2015 |
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