Canadian DUers. Who was Canada's greatest Prime Minister?

[Cascadian]

Poll question: Canadian DUers. Who was Canada's greatest Prime Minister?

I was planning on posting this and then I saw the Canadian Party affiliation poll, I decided to post this poll anyway!

Who is your pick for Canada's greatest Prime Minister?

[SeveneightyWhoa]

1. You forgot Brian Mulroney!!

Haha, I kid.

[Cascadian]

2. I suppose I could have posted his name up for comic relief.

But I chose Jean Chretien instead! Kidding!


John

[Lisa]

30. Bahahaha!

Our local golf course still has a "Brian" cutout target on their driving range for people to aim at!

[Hand]

33. Har!

Anybody remember the CBC broadcast on Mulroney's birthday back in 1992 or so:

"And now, a special rendition of 'Happy Birthday to You' to Prime Minister Mulroney, sung by all of his supporters..."

(Ten seconds of dead silence)

For the life of me I have yet to meet anyone who'll admit to voting for him!

:hippie:

[Minstrel Boy]

3. Trudeau for me

Never progressive enough for my liking, but the only PM during my lifetime of whom I've been proud.

Some of the best government Canada's ever had, IMHO, was the '72-'74 Liberal-NDP minority. But it was only during his final term, with Mulroney in the wings, that I thought about the Trudeau years enjoy it while it lasts; it's going to get much, much worse.

[Cascadian]

6. I have read Trudeau's memoirs.

It was a very insightful book and showed what a dynamic and intelligent leader Canada had. The most memorable paragraph was when Trudeau met with Ronald Reagan and French President Francois Mitterand and Reagan at a 1981 economic summit. Reagan was telling them a story about a priest who was in Hollywood in the 1940's that allegedly was a KGB trained spy sent infiltrate the actors of the Actors Equity. A union that Reagan was president of. After the conversation, Mitterand turned to Trudeau and asked "What planet is that man living on?" (page 332)
It was very amusing to say the least. I am certain some of the world leaders view Bush in the same way these days!


John

[glarius]

4. Trudeau for me too...remember the hordes of people who waited all along

the railroad tracks for hours to see his funeral train with his sons accompanying his body?....And when his body lay in state in Ottawa people were there around the clock....He was greatly respected.

[Minstrel Boy]

7. And the fact that his honorary pallbearers included

Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro and Leonard Cohen.... Well, what does that say about the man?

[Screaming Lord Byron]

5. There's always a massive Trudeau landslide to this question, don'tchaknow?

I always try to be awkward and pick Laurier, but who am I kidding? It's Trudeau.

[Holly]

8. Trudeau for me

or as my 94 year old grandmother still refers to him...my PET.

[glarius]

22. My elderly mother was proud of the fact she kissed him when he came

to our town. Trudeau was ahead of his time.Back in the '70s, Trudeau warned us that if we, the prosperous nations didn't do something to help the disadvantaged countries, we would live to regret it...He also went to China first, before Nixon and paved the way for detente.....He was a man of vision and even though he was impatient with the media and they gave him a hard time, the people of Canada (except for the right wingnuts) loved him.....:)

[Jackpine Radical]

9. You guys got no sense of history.

Hadda be MacKenzie King.

[iverglas]

27. William Lyon MacKenzie King ...

... Sat in the corner and played with string
And loved his mother like anything.
William Lyon MacKenzie King.


And, for the non-Canadians not in the know, held séances where he talked to her and his dead dog. Or else his new dog was the reincarnation of his old dog ... I forget the details. This, during WWII. Of course, he also had the last Canadian word on the boatload of Jews looking for someplace to go; it was "no".


Can I stray from the track, and nominate Viscount Monck, the Governor General at the time of Confederation? Otherwise ... hell, it's Pierre Trudeau, I guess.

.

[CHIMO]

10. Pearson

Brought in the three wise men!
Maybe he saw the future and or was using a long leverage with time.

[gator_in_Ontario]

11. I'm new to Canadian politics

but I love the great fat finger PM "Poutine" sent to *

[Minstrel Boy]

12. Not only was Trudeau the greatest, but more importantly,

he was the coolest.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

13. I'd go further. Coolest World Leader ever.

The only others in his league are Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa and Winston Churchill, for panache.

[Cascadian]

14. Imagine if Bobby Kennedy were president.

...and together, they could have made a great team in U.S.-Canadian relations. He would have been the closest thing to Trudeau. Had he not been assassinatred, I am convinced Bobby Kennedy would have won. But one could wonder what might have been.


John

[Minstrel Boy]

21. Trudeau and RFK / Trudeau and Nixon

That would have been something to see, wouldn't it? What would North America look like today? Instead, we got



It's funny reading Nixon's thoughts on Trudeau, captured in his tapes. For instance:

"That Trudeau, he's a clever son of a bitch. You see, he's on that side of that Canada liberation movement," he tells Haldeman. "He's trying to play both sides so he has them out there and he sort of tries to give us a little colour guard. But after the way we treated the son of a bitch...."

...

"You've got to put it to these people for kicking the U.S. around after what we did for that lousy son of bitch (Trudeau), wasting three days up there."

When the first batch of tapes made public years ago recorded Nixon referring to Trudeau as an "asshole," the former prime minister reacted with Gallic indifference and a characteristic shrug of the shoulders:

"I've been called worse things by better people."

http://pub42.ezboard.com/fcafeurbanitefrm4.showMessage?topicID=123.topic

[iverglas]

28. presidents and prime ministers

The CBC has a fun page looking back at what various of them had to say about each other: http://www.cbc.ca/canadaus/pms_presidents1.html

1962 - Prime Minister John Diefenbaker on President John F. Kennedy: "He's a hothead. He's a fool - too young, too brash, too inexperienced, and a boastful son of a bitch!"

1965 - at the height of the Vietnam War, Prime Minister Lester Pearson visited President Lyndon Johnson at the White House. Pearson gave a scathing speech one night about the war, then appeared at the White House the next day to confront a livid Johnson. As Martin describes it, LBJ grabbed Pearson by the shirt collar, lifted the prime minister off the floor and shouted, "You pissed on my rug!"

Pearson takes at least honourable mention in the PM sweepstakes.

And then there were Reagan and Mulroney, crooning together on stage ...

.

[Cascadian]

19. Trudeau. A great leader and an example of North American leadership.

At it's best. Is it unusual for an American like myself to admire Trudeau? More Americans should know about this man and what he stood for! I even bought his memoirs and the CBC miniseries on video about him. This man was an inspiration!!

[ironflange]

15. Mackenzie King

Though he was crazier than a shithouse rat. Not stupid, just crazy.

To tell the truth, I just wanted to say "crazier than a shithouse rat." My vote goes to Trudeau.

[Cascadian]

18. I read a bit of his biography.

He never married but he had a faithful dog with him. I cannot remember that dog's name. He was also friends with FDR as well. He must have been a great PM for Canada. He would inspire men like Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau.

John

[bubblesby2002]

16. remember "fuddle duddle"

What other world leader would ever tell anyone to f__k off?

So its Trudeau in a landslide. He was a pretty good Prime Minister too.

[Cascadian]

17. He also flipped off some of his opponents too!

I would love it if Shrub had the balls to do that. At least it would show he was honest about it.


John

[Cascadian]

20. I am going to kick this up!

Why?

1. I just got home from a night of music and drinking and I am drunk!

2. I think more Americans should know more about Canada and the great Prime Ministers they had!

3. I love Canada and Canadians!


John

[Screaming Lord Byron]

24. He gave an entire town the finger.

[Lisa]

31. it's the new digital technology!

Pierre was just a bit ahead of his time, with the "Salmon Arm Salute"

[SidDithers]

23. Yeah, I had to go with Trudeau too...

"Government has no business in the bedrooms of the nation" is a philosophy we should all live by.

Sid

[Bush loves Jiang]

25. Trudeau...

But I'm scared he'd be a Taiwan-hater today...lol

[TheDonkey]

26. Help Canadian DUers! Who is Trudeau?

Sadly in America we don't get to hear much about what happens up north. But who is this PM Trudeau and why is he so well liked. Tell me all you know to free me from the ignorance!

Thanks.

[iverglas]

29. number one on the Google hit list

... for "Pierre Trudeau": http://www.clevernet.on.ca/pierre_trudeau/

What youngsters don't know, sometimes, is that back in the day, we lefties hated him. The economy did not interest him, and his economic policies (which at one time included the wage and price controls ... which of course meant "wage controls" ... that he had ridiculed the Conservatives for proposing, and then imposed after winning the election) were not what you'd call progressive.

But then, when you are the papa of your country's new constitution (1981), the one that is used by countries around the world as their model in the modern world, things like economic policy tend to get blurred in memory.

His decision to impose martial law (the War Measures Act) in 1971, in response to what we'd now call "terrorism" (years of sporadic bombings, for instance, culminating in the kidnapping of two prominent persons and death of one of them) by a small group of Quebec nationalists using violence to bring about political change, did not endear him to civil libertarians. It can be hard to reconcile with his image, and the facts, i.e. that he rewrote the Canadian constitution to include the entrenched rights and freedoms that are now the basis for things like abortion rights and same-sex marriage rights.

His approach to the self-determination rights of the French-Canadian community (not just Quebec) was to strengthen the original (1867) constitutional bargain that granted the two language communities collective rights (language, religion, education, etc.) by expanding them, thus undermining Quebec nationalist sentiment.

Was Diefenbaker in that original list? He should have been -- a real Tory Canadian nationalist. Bob Bossin of Stringband wrote a song in about 1974 called "Dief will be the Chief again" --
http://www.island.net/~oldfolk/dief.htm

Durn, the lyrics don't seem to be anywhere on the net anymore ... but what he had to say about Trudeau in the song, from memory, was:

Now we got a man up in Ottawa
Got ice water in his veins.
You know that he don't give a shit about us
and he don't hear when we complain.
But Dief came out of Prince Albert
He was raised in the prairie grain.
And he always had a hand
For the working man
And Dief will be the Chief again.

.

[canuckagainstBush]

32. .

It's too bad Trudeau isn't around to say he'd be an NDPer now.