Two Funerals and a Honeymoon

“...a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and health care of his island nation.” 

In 2016, Fidel Castro died and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made this statement about him. He had planned to travel to Cuba for the funeral, but canceled the trip after the public outcry over his statement. For a skillful politician like Justin Trudeau, this was more than a little odd, like watching Olympic athletes purposefully losing: there is more to the story. 

Why did Justin Trudeau whitewash a murderous dictator’s legacy?

The Other Funeral

In 2000, Justin’s father Pierre died at the age of 80. Prime Minister of Canada from 1968-1979, his funeral was the end of a long and eventful life. Shocking observers was one of the honorary pallbearers.

It was Fidel Castro.

This was a man that rarely went outside of Cuba. Dictators stay where it’s safe because they’re paranoid about assassination attempts. Yet here he was, exposing himself to pay respects to his friend, almost like a pilgrimage. Once again, there is more to the story.

Why did Fidel Castro attend Pierre Trudeau’s funeral? 

The Honeymoon

It was something of a scandal, that the bachelor prime minister had married. This was 1971, well before TMZ, so the public had no idea that Pierre Trudeau was even dating. He had been courting Margaret Sinclair for the previous 18 months and there she was, his 22-year old bride. 

He was 30 years her senior and had been enjoying his bachelor lifestyle. The year before, he appeared in public with Barbara Streisand. Yes, he was dating Barbara Streisand publicly, while dating Margaret privately. He was an alpha male and the normal rules didn’t apply to him.

Pierre slept with many women including Liona Boyd (classical guitarist), Margot Kidder (actress), Gale Zoë Garnett (author) and Kim Cattrall (of Sex and the City fame). He dated multiple women at once and oftentimes would invite them to the same party. So when this lifelong bachelor got married, the public was shocked, as if a previously terrible baseball player suddenly won MVP.

Pierre and Margaret went to the Caribbean for their honeymoon. It was at this time that they went to an undisclosed island in the Caribbean. To quote The Ottawa Journal from April 13th, 1971:

“Barbados – Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his wife Margaret left here by chartered plane on a quick side-trip to an unidentified nearby island.” 

The press revealed every other island that they had traveled to: Barbados, Tobago, Trinidad and St. Vincent. This is like showing your browsing history, but not revealing one particular website. There is more to the story.

Why would they not reveal this island?

Pierre

The only politically problematic Caribbean island to visit at the time was Cuba, a communist state and ally of the USSR. It’s possible that the press didn’t want to name another island for some reason, but it’s hard to imagine why.

Why would Pierre Trudeau want to visit Cuba? Pierre Trudeau and Fidel Castro had dealt with each other months earlier during the October Crisis in Montreal. Quebec nationalists (FLQ) kidnapped British Diplomat James Cross and held him for 59 days. The kidnappers eventually agreed to release the diplomat in return for safe passage to Cuba but there was one problem: Cuba had to agree to take them.

Pierre Trudeau called Castro and Castro agreed to take the kidnappers. The crisis was resolved. Trudeau afterwards sent a private letter expressing his heartfelt gratitude.

It’s hard to overstate what a big deal this was at the time. Trudeau had to resolve this crisis to stay in power. The solution of sending the kidnappers to Cuba was a godsend and the gratitude he felt was genuine. It’s hard to believe that a politically isolated dictator like Castro would save another world leader’s hide without asking for something in return, but that’s the story sold to the press. This would be like getting a favor from a mobster: completely out of character and hard to believe that there isn’t more to the story.

After this political crisis, wouldn’t they have needed or even wanted to meet each other? 

Castro at the time was the target of many CIA assassination attempts, and he wasn’t leaving Cuba. Trudeau also couldn’t go to Cuba since that would anger the US, a valuable ally. The US had gone through the Cuban Missile Crisis just 8 years earlier and were actively at war with Communists in Vietnam. Like a Shakespearan tragedy, the only way for Trudeau and Castro to meet would be to do so in private.

What better way than to do so under the cover of a honeymoon?

Fidel

“Oh, what a charmer! You know why he’s in power, he’s got charisma coming out his ears.”

So said Margaret Trudeau about Fidel Castro during an interview. She also called him, “the sexiest man she had ever met” in her autobiography. In the video where she calls him a charmer, she gushes about him the same way a child does about Disneyland.

We all would like to think that dictators have horrible personalities since they do such horrendous acts, but this is rarely the case. Stalin had serious charisma, and even president Harry Truman said “I like that son of a bitch.” Hitler charmed little kids by giving them horsey rides. 

Fidel was a really attractive man. At 6’3” with the build of a football player, he was powerful, good looking and had many, many lovers. One report has him sleeping with 35,000 (!) women during his lifetime. Villains in real life have personalities less like Voldemort and more like Casanova.

We don’t know what happened during this trip or if the trip even happened at all, but if the Trudeaus did go to Cuba in 1971, it’s safe to say that Fidel Castro charmed them. What we do know is that the Trudeaus visited Cuba in 1976 and they were lifelong friends after that trip. 

Is a single trip enough to start a lifelong friendship? One that would result in being an honorary pallbearer and a politically risky eulogy?

Margaret

Margaret was 18 when she met Pierre Trudeau. He was justice minister at the time and she was a university student studying sociology. This was the late 60’s and she was a flower child. After graduating from university, she traveled the “hippie trail” in Europe and North Africa. She was an attractive young woman fully immersed in the ethic of free love, so her sexual mores were as non-traditional as Star Wars Day.

In her various autobiographies, she confesses to many affairs during her marriage. She admits to sleeping with Ted Kennedy, Jack Nicholson, Ryan O'Neal (Boxer), Lou Rawls (Singer) and Ronnie Wood (Rolling Stones) among others. She was also a heavy drug user, smoking pot in front of her security detail and partying at the notorious Studio 54. She was only 22 when she got married and she lived in the spotlight for the rest of her 20’s. She was more messed up than a college dorm room.

As mentioned above, Pierre’s sexual mores weren’t conventional either. He was sleeping with many beautiful women before his marriage. After 30 years of being a playboy, he was as likely to be a traditional husband as a Hollywood director.

Given Margaret’s assessment of Castro as sexy and having embraced the flower child/free love ethic of her years at university, is it crazy to think she would have slept with him?

Justin

Which brings us back to Justin Trudeau. He was born about 8.5 months after that possible April 13th, 1971 encounter, on December 25, 1971. The internet has noted his remarkable likeness to Fidel Castro, making us wonder whether the speculation has some truth.

Justin Trudeau today is the prime minister of Canada. We don’t know why he felt the need to exonerate a bloodthirsty dictator, but looking backward at the two funerals and a honeymoon, we have some clues as to why he might.

Napoleon once said that “History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.” History is full of official narratives that don’t match reality. We are left wondering at the accuracy of these stories given how little sense they make:

Did Pierre and Margaret have a normal marriage? Do powerful men like Pierre Trudeau and Fidel Castro and beautiful women like Margaret Trudeau observe traditional morality? Are world leaders like Pierre Trudeau and Fidel Castro always fully transparent? 

The agreed-upon “official” stories conveniently make the powerful look good and hide their degeneracy. These stories don’t add up because they never reveal the other side of the equation: the power games, the humiliations and the sheer human depravity.

We may not be certain about Justin Trudeau’s paternity, but we can be certain that there’s a lot missing in the story. There are too many explanations that don’t make sense. Too many justifications that are “just-so.” We are being told lies, and for that, we should be outraged.

This story of Justin Trudeau’s paternity is just one of the many stories that we are told every day. The Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theories are crazier, yet people are far more ready to believe that than the Justin Trudeau one. The difference is that the Jeffrey Epstein story is more recent and we have far more familiarity with the details. We can’t let the lack of public knowledge prevent us from closer examination.

Because there is more to the story.