He Daunts Us Still

In the world of Canadian political commentary, unvarnished critiques are relatively rare. Bob Plamondon is forthright about what prompted his in The Truth about Trudeau. “This book was born at the Politics and the Pen dinner in 2009,” he says, “just after John English, a member of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, was given the Shaughnessy Cohen Award for the best political book of the year for the second volume of his Trudeau biography. Lawrence Martin cornered me that night and said that enough was enough and that the record was just as important as the man.”

And what a record. As one of the country’s longest serving prime ministers (third, behind William Lyon Mackenzie King and Sir John A. Macdonald), Trudeau governed the country at what was arguably the most pivotal point in the entire post-war period. Plamondon’s j’accuse covers the full waterfront...