Charles-Émile Trudeau

Life and career[edit]

Charles-Émile Trudeau was born on his family's farm in Saint-Michel-de-Napierville, Quebec, the son of Joseph-Louis Trudeau (1848–1919),^[1] a semi-literate farmer, and Malvina Cardinal (1849–1931), whose own father was Solime Cardinal (1815–1897), mayor of Saint-Constant, Quebec. Malvina insisted that her sons be given a strong education; her husband agreed to send them to College Sainte-Marie. Trudeau later studied law at the Laval University's campus in Montreal, which in 1919 became the University of Montreal. After a ten-year courtship, he married Grace Elliott (1890–1973), the daughter of a prominent Scots-Quebecer entrepreneur, Philip Armstrong Elliott (1859–1936), and his wife Sarah Sauvé (1857–1899), on May 11, 1915, in Montreal at the original Saint-Louis-de-France Roman Catholic Church on Roy Street at Laval Avenue, which was later destroyed by fire in 1933. They had four children, their first child dying at birth.^[2] Charles-Émile Trudeau was considered gregarious, boisterous, and extravagant.


Trudeau, a lawyer by training, practised for 10 years with Ernest Bertrand, at that time the senior Crown prosecutor, as well as with Charles E. Guérin. Trudeau accumulated a fortune by building gas stations around the Montreal area and a loyalty program known as the Automobile Owners' Association, which by 1932 had 15,000 members patronizing Trudeau's 30 stations.^[3] He sold his business to Champlain Oil Products Limited for $1 million, while remaining with Champlain as general manager for that subsidiary.^[4] Among his other investments, Trudeau had interests in mining companies. He was a noted baseball enthusiast: he was the largest shareholder and member of the board of directors of the Montreal Royals baseball team, and the team's vice-president at the time of his death.^[2][5] He was also vice president of Montreal's Belmont Park and a prominent philanthropist, including as a benefactor of the Hôpital Sainte-Jeanne d'Arc, for which he also served as director at the time of his death.^[4][6][7]


Politically, Trudeau was a strong supporter of the Conservative Party, as opposed to Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, the longtime leader of the Liberal Party.^[8] Pierre Trudeau recalled that "political arguments never lacked liveliness" between Charles and his friends.^[9]