Sex and the Trudeaus: The Bachelor Canada

Sex and the Single Prime Minister
Michael Cowley
[Don Mills, ON]: Greywood, 1968

The Naked Prime Minister
Michael Cowley
[Don Mills, ON]: Greywood, 1969

Ezra Levant soiled himself last month. That in itself isn't noteworthy, except that this ended up being another of those times in which his employers had to come in for emergency clean-up.

What happened was this:  On 12 September, Justin Trudeau was meeting at the Markham Hilton when he came upon a wedding party. The groom asked if he'd agree to have photos taken with the bride and bridesmaids. Someone yelled out that Trudeau should give the bride a kiss on the cheek. The Liberal leader asked the newlyweds for their okay, then did just that.

“Look at the photo," Levant shrilled, "a young, beautiful bride half Trudeau’s age – he turns 43 this year. She’s dressed in white, it’s her special day – hers and her groom’s – and Trudeau kisses her. That’s what he does.”

For God's sake, Justin, she's dressed in white! C'mon, man.

"I suppose what you think of this photo depends in part on what you think of weddings and marriages and fidelity and faithfulness," said the twice-married Levant. "If they're no big deal to you, this photo is no big deal, right? The idea of the nobleman of the estate, riding through like in medieval times to deflower whatever maidens he wanted, that's still there in Trudeau."

Never mind that the medieval droit du seigneur is a myth – Levant isn't much good when it comes to history – the man is trying to make a point. The point is this: Justin Trudeau is a son of privilege. He is his father's son. He is his mother's son.

“Both Pierre Trudeau and Margaret Trudeau were promiscuous, and publicized how many conquests they had. They didn’t even pretend to keep their oaths to each other,” said Levant. Justin Trudeau's father "banged anything. He was a slut.” Mom "didn't wear panties."

Watching Levant rant, you'd think we're a land of looney eunuchs. We're not, nor are we nearly so puritanical as the pundit. I think most Canadians would agree that the media have no business in the bedrooms of the nation. Norm Spector will confirm. This is what makes Michael Cowley's Sex and the Single Prime Minister and The Naked Prime Minister so unusual.  The 'sixties had something to do with it, I suppose, as did the sudden elevation of a charismatic. single man to the office of prime minister. Images like this attract:

Barbra Streisand doesn't figure in either book, though The Naked Prime Minister does include a rather flattering photo of Her Majesty the Queen.

(cliquez pour agrandir)

I've written about this sort of thing before in reviewing I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, which was also published by Greywood. I noted then that the format owes something to Private Eye; I note now that the word balloons aren't quite so clever.

Here are seven more examples, beginning with a nice shot of the space now occupied by Stephen Harper, and ending with a botched reference to Stephen Vizinczey's In Praise of Older Women.

Ribald? You bet!

Trudeau, père, took Cowley's captions in stride, even going so far as to write the author a polite note of acknowledgement. Trudeau, fils, reacted to Levant's tirade in an entirely different way by boycotting Sun News.

It's perfectly understandable.

Levant has been trying to take down for Trudeau for years. That he's proved himself impotent must surely grate. Given the pundit's history, it comes as no surprise that he'd spread a lie or two about a man's family – or even a couple on their wedding day:

I’m pretty sure I can guess what her groom would say, or her groom’s family, or her own father and mother. Justin Trudeau thinks he’s in the movie Wedding Crashers, that sex comedy where slutty men go to weddings uninvited to bed the maids of honour, but even they had enough class to give the bride herself a pass. I’m not saying Trudeau got sexual with this bride. I’m just saying he invaded a personal intimate day.

Of course, Justin Trudeau did nothing of the kind. The person who invaded the couple's "personal intimate day" was Ezra Levant.

Covered in his own filth, the Sun News Network's loudest voice has yet to apologize to anyone... not even the young bride dressed in white.

Bonus:

Emperor Haute Couture, Margaret Sullivan, 2011

The naked prime minister (no sex).

Objects and Access: Surprisingly sturdy staple-bound books, 64 pages in length, I bought both last year from a London bookseller. Price: $3.00 each.

Several copies of Sex and the Single Prime Minister and The Naked Prime Minister are listed for sale online. They range in price from US$3.83 to US$29.95. Condition is not a factor.

As might be expected, few Canadian libraries hold copies. Sex and the Single Prime Minister can be found in the Parliamentary Library.

Related posts:

Sex and the Trudeaus: Son and Hair

Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Ladies Man

Margaret's Marriage in Mass Market

On Pearson's Pennant and Ezra Levant's Fiction

"…a distinctive flag which will say to the future: I Stand for
     Canada!"
L.B. Pearson
Ottawa: Liberal Federation of Canada, [1964]

I saw Lester Pearson once. This was in front of the Parliament Buildings on the sunny Saturday the country celebrated its centenary. Look carefully and you'll find me there in the crowd, along with my mum, my dad and Prince Philip. His wife has just taken a knife to that great big birthday cake. Balloons!

Pearson is the first prime minister I remember, though I don't remember much. The man stepped down when I was in kindergarten and died when I was eight. He wasn't prime minister for five years – and never enjoyed a majority government – yet managed to usher in the Canadian Pension Plan, universal health care and, of course, the flag. This address, delivered fifty years ago today, might be seen as the official beginning of the great debate surrounding that last struggle, but in truth the bickering stretched back into the nineteenth century. The great Sanford Fleming proposed this:

The Week, 31 May 1895

Pearson would've argued against Fleming's flag for the very same reason he argued against the string of red ensigns, affixed with various coats of arms and stylistic elements, that had at one time or another stood as an unofficial Canadian flag:

The red ensign has served Canada honourably and well since it was designated for such service by order in council; but those who are in favour of retaining it and making it permanent and official by parliamentary action must surely realize that basically – this is certainly no disrespect to the red ensign – it is the flag of the British merchant marine and it is similar, except for a different coat of arms, to the flags of certain British colonies.

Pearson went so far as to propose that his own preferred design be accepted by Parliament:

The speech is both cautious and calculated; history weighs heavily. Claude Ryan was sold, as was Charles Lynch. Scott Young – Neil's dad – predicted success in words reproduced at the back of this booklet:

Of course, John Diefenbaker would have none of it. Since 1926, he'd been railing against changing the ever-changing red ensign. In 1964, as Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, he walked from farmhouse to outhouse, removed the stained wooden seat, and lowered himself into the pit with the insinuation that those who supported Pearson were being bought through bribery. That July, still waist-deep in excrement,  he soiled himself thoroughly by asking why the government insisted that Christian crosses be removed from the flag.

His followers' filibustered. So dull, dull, very dull were their words that in September 1964 Pearson agreed to convene a fourteen-member Flag Committee composed of members from all four parties in the House of Commons. The flag we know is their doing. Their work inspired this wonderful Rex Woods' cover for the 8 July 1964 edition of Maclean's:

Growing up I  never heard so much as a word against the flag. I took pride, cringing only once: in 1998, when Reform Party clowns hooted, hollered and honked about Parliament Hill for the right to display miniatures made in China on House of Commons desktops.

Today, members and defenders of the unholy party Reform spawned rank amongst the most vocal haters of that very same flag. 

Mark Steyn dismisses our flag as a propaganda tool. Kathy Shaidle looks at the centuries-old national symbol worn by my grandfather during the Great War and sees "a dead leaf – basically tree dandruff".

And then there's Ezra Levant, who is wont to go on about "the Liberal-red Pearson Pennant". Never one to be bound by fact, he refers to our flag as the "Pearson Pennant", the nickname of the rejected red, white and blue flag the prime minister proposed. Levant would also have you believe that it was "Lester Pearson's decision to change the Canadian flag to a pennant in Liberal colours".

 

Not so much a clown as the country's biggest boor, Levant long ago revealed himself as a man not to be taken seriously, but he does have his followers. Whether the topic is the restructuring of the armed forces or Thomas Mulcair's leadership of the NDP, Sun News junkies build on Levant's fantastical tale. Lester Pearson "decided to change our flag without even bothering to ask the nation's citizens", one sniffs in the comments section of a story about the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario.

Well, the 1963 Liberal platform did call for a new flag, as did those of the New Democrats and the Social Credit Party. Two-thirds of voters cast ballots in their favour. The flag flown today was supported by members of all four parties – Conservatives included – then sitting in the House of Commons.

Ah, but bastards will bastardize, trying to convince that the flag was forced upon the country. Whether it was rammed or shoved doesn't matter, the thing to take home is that it's in our throats and it's about time we cough it up. Visit the Sun News Network website – they'll appreciate the traffic – and descend into an alternate world every bit as imaginative as that of The Man in the High Castle. 

My favourite story is the one about a "flag that over 90% of Canadians wanted". Apparently, it was "designed by a young girl from Quebec – it had Three [sic] green maple leaves in the centre and sea blue borders."

Like most oft-told tales, it improves with each telling. My favourite version appeared on the site last December:

Ity [sic] was a school child [sic] a young girl from Quebec and her flag had three green real maple leaves and sea blue borders which was truly representative of our country and the most popular with the people. But the sneaky liberals [sic] under Pearson declared this was not a decision that required the full parliament [sic] and a few liberal [sic] MPs stayed behind on a Friday afternoon when parliament [sic] had supposed [sic] shut for Christmas and marked our country liberal [sic] red!"

Over to you, Ezra. You're sure to come up with something even more fanciful. 

Object and access: A twelve-page booklet with paper covers. My copy, salvaged sixteen years ago from the bin of a Toronto Goodwill, appears to have been distributed by Joseph Macaluso, Member of Parliament for Hamilton West (1963-68). A barrister, the late Mr Macaluso served as one of the fourteen members of the Flag Committee.

Just where this booklet might be found is difficult to determine; ephemera such as this isn't often recorded in library catalogues.Only two copies are listed on WorldCat, both at the University of Toronto. I can find no copies for sale online.