Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stepped out of the official residence to announce his resignation on Monday, wearing light wool trousers, dress shoes and a partially open overcoat, the bare minimum of clothing for the -13 degree weather. It was.
Mr. Ignatieff wore a Team Canada hockey jersey (conveniently liberal red) and went skating with other parliamentarians and senators from his party, mainly for the benefit of TV cameras and photographers. .
I went ahead of them and randomly stopped other skaters and asked them if they recognized Mr. Ignatieff. Few did. No one waved or paid any attention to Mr. Ignatieff.
But as Mr. Ignatieff sat down on the bench to take off his skates, I heard a commotion on the ice behind me. Mr. Trudeau arrived and was quickly swarmed.
[Read: In Canada, Covering the Trudeau News With an ‘Orchestra’]
Two years later, I was able to personally demonstrate that star power.
I interviewed Trudeau at his constituency office in Montreal for a profile published shortly after he became Liberal leader in 2013. The office was above a drug store, and the furniture looked like it had been left behind by the previous tenant.
We met in a dark boardroom. As we began to talk about the death of his father, former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and the crowds that had gathered along the route of his funeral train from Ottawa to Montreal, Mr. Trudeau momentarily lost his composure, clutching a box of tissues. I had to put it in. I had never seen anything like that in an interview with a politician, and I haven’t seen it since.
After the interview, we walked in the same direction on the busy road in front of the office. Today was another bone-chilling day. A man came running toward us from across the road, zigzagging through the traffic. Speaking in French with an African accent, he said he just wanted to shake Trudeau’s hand.
[From Opinion: Justin Trudeau Was His Own Worst Enemy]
[From Opinion: Saying au Revoir to a Trudeau. For Now.]
Mr. Trudeau’s popularity waned in the years that followed, but the crowds never waned. There was also no obvious desire on his part to meet people.
Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whom Mr. Trudeau succeeded in 2015, favored tightly controlled events with select audiences. By contrast, Mr. Trudeau has kept City Hall open without registration for non-campaign events, often drawing overflow crowds even after moving to a larger venue.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trudeau didn’t just stop for selfies and handshakes, he took action immediately. If people had questions, he listened and had a conversation, usually to the dismay of his staff who tried to keep things on schedule.
This approach sometimes led him to work without a net. In 2017, just as his image began to deteriorate, I attended a town hall in Peterborough, Ont., on another cold day. Although it was clear that Mr. Trudeau’s fans were in the crowd, the rally was noisy.
The Ontario government’s electricity companies had introduced steep rate increases. One woman handed over a monthly bill of more than CAD 1,000 to the prime minister. Mr. Trudeau became the target of public anger, even though the utility was not under federal control at all.
After he became prime minister, his interviews were no longer as frank as before. His response was carefully considered.
Indeed, he never again said anything like his response in the boardroom about why he had exposed himself to the kind of vitriol his father had received as prime minister.
“Am I going to make mistakes? There are a lot,” he told me in 2013. But I trust my core, I trust my values, I trust Canadians. And if I fail, it will really be because I am not up to the task. ”
Ian Austin He reports on Canada for The Times and is based in Ottawa. The Windsor, Ont., native has been reporting on the country for 20 years, covering Canadian politics, culture and people.
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