Margaret Trudeau
Margaret Joan Trudeau (née Sinclair, formerly Kemper; born September 10, 1948) is a Canadian activist.[1] She married Pierre Trudeau, the 15th prime minister of Canada, in 1971, three years after he became prime minister. They divorced in 1984, during his final months in office. She is the mother of Justin Trudeau, the 23rd and current prime minister of Canada, of the journalist and author Alexandre "Sacha" Trudeau,[2] and of Michel Trudeau (now deceased). She is the first woman in Canadian history to have been both the wife and the mother of prime ministers. Trudeau is an advocate for people with bipolar disorder, with which she has been diagnosed.
Margaret Trudeau
Early years[edit]
Trudeau was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the daughter of Scottish-born James "Jimmy" Sinclair, a former Liberal member of the Parliament of Canada and Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, and Doris Kathleen (Bernard) Sinclair.[3] Her grandmother, Rose Edith (Ivens) Bernard, with whom she had an especially close relationship, lived in Roberts Creek, British Columbia, in later life, and was from Virden, Manitoba.[4] Her grandfather, Thomas Kirkpatrick Bernard, was born in Makassar, Dutch Celebes, now in Sulawesi, Indonesia, and immigrated in 1906 at age 15 with his family to Penticton, British Columbia, eventually working as a payroll clerk for Canadian Pacific Railway.[5]
The Bernards were the descendants of colonists in the Straits Settlements, the Dutch East Indies, and British Malaya, nowadays respectively Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia, including Francis James Bernard, a London, England-born Anglo-Irishman whose great-grandfather, Arthur Bernard, was a member of the Irish House of Commons for Bandonbridge, and brother of Francis Bernard, Solicitor-General for Ireland, and ancestor of the Earls of Bandon.[6][7] Francis James Bernard was the founder of the Singapore Police Force in 1819, The Singapore Chronicle, the first newspaper in Singapore, was established with Bernard as owner, publisher, and editor in 1824[8] and he opened up Katong, now a densely populated-residential enclave, the first to cultivate a coconut estate there in 1823. In 1818, Bernard married Margaret Trudeau's 3rd great-grandmother, Esther Farquhar. She was the eldest daughter of Scotsman William Farquhar, a colonial leader in the founding of modern Singapore, by Farquhar's first wife, Antoinette "Nonio" Clement, who was the daughter of a French father and an ethnic Malaccan mother.[9][10]
Another great-grandmother, Cornelia Louisa Intveld, married in 1822 to Royal Navy officer and merchant, William Purvis, from Dalgety Bay, Scotland, and a first cousin of American abolitionist Robert Purvis; a noted fine soprano and a beauty of her era.[11] Upon glimpsing her across the auditorium at the opera in London, England, British King William IV sent his equerry to invite her to his box. After she refused, the King sent the equerry back just to ask her name.[12] Intveld was born in Padang, present-day West Sumatra, Indonesia. At the time of Intveld's birth, Padang was in the territory of the Pagaruyung Kingdom, where her father, who came from humble beginnings in Hellevoetsluis, South Holland, rose up through the Dutch East India Company to become the Dutch Resident of Padang. Her maternal grandmother was an Ono Niha ranee (a term covering every rank from chieftain's daughter to princess) married a prominent Dutch colonial official and merchant.[13] Acclaimed British harpsichordist, Violet Gordon-Woodhouse, and Hawaiian settler, Edward William Purvis, according to popular belief, was the namesake of the ukulele, are Margaret Trudeau's first cousins, three times-removed.[12] Trudeau explored her mother's family's roots in Singapore during an episode of Who Do You Think You Are?.
Trudeau's family moved to a large house in Rockcliffe Park, Ontario, in 1952 after her father was appointed to the Cabinet, and she attended Rockcliffe Park Public School[14] although they returned to North Vancouver after he lost his re-election bid in 1958. She attended Hamilton Junior Secondary School and Delbrook Senior Secondary School in North Vancouver. Trudeau graduated in 1969 from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology.[15]
Divorce and second marriage[edit]
Margaret Trudeau filed for a no-fault divorce at the Ontario Supreme Court on November 16, 1983,[32] which was finalized on April 2, 1984. On April 18, 1984, with her three sons attending, she married Ottawa real-estate developer Fried Kemper in a civil ceremony in the chambers of Judge Hugh Poulin. She had two children with him: son Kyle (born 1984), and daughter Alicia (born 1988).[33][34][30]
Later life[edit]
In November 1998, the Trudeaus' youngest son, Michel, an avid outdoorsman, was killed when an avalanche swept him to the bottom of British Columbia's Kokanee Lake. The loss of her son was devastating.[35]
When Pierre Trudeau died in 2000, Margaret was at his bedside with their surviving sons Justin and Alexandre.[36] Speaking in 2010 about her marriage to Trudeau, she said: "Just because our marriage ended didn't mean the love stopped."[37]
On October 19, 2015, her eldest son, Justin Trudeau, led the Liberal Party to a majority government, becoming the 23rd Prime Minister of Canada. During the campaign, she was involved, but avoided campaigning in public as the Conservative campaign's main attack line against Justin was "Just Not Ready" and feared they would suggest her son was "so unready he needs his mummy."[38]
On April 27, 2020, Trudeau was hospitalized with smoke inhalation after a fire broke out in her apartment building.[39]
Award[edit]
In 2013, Trudeau received an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Western Ontario in recognition of her work to combat mental illness.[48]
While still married to Pierre Trudeau, Margaret Trudeau had a brief acting career, appearing in two Canadian-produced films: