Pierre Elliott Trudeau's Peace Initiative
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200906400417 |
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| Author | Brett Thompson |
| Subject Matter | Coming Attractions |
Brett Thompson recently completed his MA in history at the University of Toronto and is the
recipient of a 2007-08 graduate research award for disarmament, arms control and
nonproliferation from the Simons Foundation and the Department of Foreign Affairs and
International Trade international security research and outreach program. The author wishes
to thank Robert Bothwell and David Murray for their guidance, Rima Berns-McGown for
her patience and encouragement, and those who agreed to be interviewed, offered archival
expertise, and read various drafts.
1 “International security initiative by prime minister, meeting with prime minister, 21
September 1983, 1730-1900 hours,” RG 25, V. 25336, Library and Archives Canada.
It’s useful to express non-conventional truths about non-conventional
subjects. - Pierre Elliott Trudeau1
From politicians with the gifts necessary to inspire and mobilize others
behind causes, much is expected. In return, they receive little patience and
little understanding when, almost inevitably, results fall short. Former United
States Vice President Al Gore, not known for such gifts while in office, was
co-awarded the 2007 Nobel peace prize for his ability to draw attention to
COMING ATTRACTIONS
Brett Thompson
Pierre Elliott
Trudeau’s peace
initiative
25 years on
| International Journal | Autumn 2009 | 1117 |
| Brett Thompson |
| 1118 | Autumn 2009 | International Journal |
the inconvenient truth of climate change. If only, some critics said, he had
demonstrated such leadership on this issue while in office. During his last
term as prime minister of Canada from 1980 to 1984, Pierre Elliott Trudeau
vowed not to be a politician who waited until he was out office, as if planning
a retirement project, to speak out and act on what he deemed “non-
conventional,” inconvenient truths. With Québec’s sovereigntists in disarray
following a referendum and a charter of rights and freedoms enshrined but
also with significant national economic woes and tumbling popularity,
Trudeau turned the waning political capital of his last months in office to the
non-conventional: a personal initiative, intern ational in scope, focuse d on
nuclear nonproliferation.
The “Trudeau peace initiative,” as it came to be known, saw the prime
minister tour capitals, including Washington, London, and Moscow, to
encourage east-west dialogue when the threat of nuclear war seemed great.
In the history of Canadian foreign relations it made little splash, and it has
been treated—in the media and the history books alike—as an insignificant
and unimportant episode. That the protagonist—a man with a reputation
for demonstrating sporadic interest in foreign affairs, whom pundits
suggested was either grasping at legacy narratives while nearing retirement
or hoping for another term—was sinking in the polls had something to do
with the treatment, then and now.
According to one senior official who helped craft them, Trudeau’s five
disarmament proposals were a “dog’s breakfast” that muddied his message
and created a public checklist that was impossible to complete,2and the man
who wrote Trudeau’s house of commons speech said the mission “went on
past its best-by date.”3But Robert Fowler, who was Trudeau’s Privy Council
Office foreign and defence policy advisor, has a different perspective:
You know the old story of the Lunenburg fisherman who’s coming
up from the dock with two pails of lobsters, and he meets his buddy
on the way down, and they walk by each other and the buddy looks
down and shouts, ‘ Hey, watch it! Your lobsters ar e crawling
out…escaping!’ And the guy doesn’t even turn around—he just
shouts over his shoulder, ‘Don’t you worry about that, they’re
2 Louis Delvoie, interview with author, 27 March 2008.
3 Paul Heinbecker, interview with author, 5 March 2008.
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