Defeating the son of Pierre Trudeau would have been a metaphysical vindication for Harper. For the past decade, Harper did all he could to undo the legacy of the older Trudeau, internationally, domestically and symbolically. In defense of ‘‘old stock’’ white Canada, Harper denigrated the United Nations, made the modest attire of Muslim women a political issue and recast Canada’s role in the world as part of a grand alliance to defend Western civilization.
.. After the boy’s death, Harper’s government continued to inveigh against Muslim ‘‘jihadi’’ immigration in a way that struck me and many others as astoundingly un-Canadian, at least in a historical sense. But the nation’s self-image was precisely what the Conservatives were determined to remake.
.. Depending on whom you ask, he was either the personification of a sophisticated and ambitious Canada or a socialist wastrel libertine. Pierre’s father made a fortune in gas stations, netting $1.2 million in 1932, which freed his son from the need to work — just as Justin never had to make a living. As a young man, Pierre traveled to Africa and Asia, studied at Harvard and the London School of Economics and socialized with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in Paris.
.. During his time as prime minister from 1968 to 1979 and again from 1980 to 1984, the Montreal-born boulevardier was despised in western Canada for an energy policy that enriched the eastern provinces. He was also hated by separatists in Quebec, who saw him as a quisling for Anglo elitists. Yet in many ways he was a visionary. At the time, Canada’s Constitution could be changed only with the approval of Britain’s Parliament, a colonial vestige. In 1982, this provision was done away with, and Trudeau in effect became a Canadian founding father. An intellectual who approached issues with an analytical and a creative mind, he fashioned a constitutional legal landscape midway between America’s rights-based rules and the unwritten and informal British approach.
.. Everyone expected Trudeau to receive a royal beating, including his wife. Brazeau had a black belt in karate and a military background, and he grew up on hardscrabble First Nations reservations; his bar brawler’s physique, tattoos and trash-talking bravado made him the three-to-one favorite by fight night.
.. Slipping through the streets of Ottawa on Nov. 10, six days after his swearing-in, I sat with Trudeau in a motorcade that was comically polite. His peloton of four black S.U.V.s stopped at lights, signaled respectfully, followed the speed limit and used no sirens or police escort. It was like a skit satirizing Canadian manners.
.. I asked the prime minister if the fight with Brass Knuckles Brazeau had been part of a larger plan — a piece of agitprop aimed at turning around his political fortunes, and with them the nation’s. Trudeau gazed out the window for a moment, contemplating, then turned to me and offered a clipped nod and a sly smile. He knew perfectly well the power of symbols and had intended to exploit that power.
Justin Trudeau and Liberal Party Prevail With Stunning Rout in Canada
The Conservatives were reduced to 99 seats from 159 in the last Parliament, according to preliminary results.
.. The election became something of a referendum on Mr. Harper’s approach to government, which, in the view of his critics, has often focused on issues important to core Conservative supporters, mostly in the West, rather than to much of the population.
.. And Mr. Harper won the three previous elections without ever exceeding 40 percent of the popular vote.