1. Margaret Joan Trudeau is a Canadian activist and the mother of Justin Trudeau, the 23rd prime minister of Canada.
27 Facts About Margaret Trudeau
1. 2.
Margaret Trudeau married Pierre Trudeau, the 15th prime minister of Canada, in 1971, three years after he became prime minister.
3.
Margaret Trudeau is the first woman in Canadian history to have been both the wife and the mother of prime ministers.
4.
Margaret Trudeau was born at West Vancouver General Hospital in West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the daughter of Scottish-born James "Jimmy" Sinclair, a former Liberal member of the Parliament of Canada and Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, and Doris Kathleen Sinclair.
5.
Margaret Trudeau's grandmother, Rose Edith Bernard, with whom she had an especially close relationship, lived in Roberts Creek, British Columbia, in later life, and was from Virden, Manitoba.
6.
Margaret Trudeau's grandfather, Thomas Kirkpatrick Bernard, was born in Makassar, Dutch Celebes, now in Sulawesi, Indonesia, and immigrated in 1906 at age 15 with his family to Penticton, British Columbia, eventually working as a payroll clerk for Canadian Pacific Railway.
7.
Margaret Trudeau was the eldest daughter of Scotsman William Farquhar, a colonial leader in the founding of modern Singapore, by Farquhar's first wife, Antoinette "Nonio" Clement, who was the daughter of a French father and an ethnic Malaccan mother.
8.
Margaret Trudeau's maternal grandmother was an Ono Niha ranee who married a prominent Dutch colonial official and merchant.
9.
Margaret Trudeau's family moved to a large house in Rockcliffe Park, Ontario, in 1952 after her father was appointed to the Cabinet, and she attended Rockcliffe Park Public School although they returned to North Vancouver after he lost his re-election bid in 1958.
10.
Margaret Trudeau attended Hamilton Junior Secondary School and Delbrook Senior Secondary School in North Vancouver.
11.
Margaret Trudeau graduated in 1969 from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia with a Bachelor of Arts in sociology.
12.
Sinclair met Pierre Margaret Trudeau, who was then Minister of Justice, while vacationing in Tahiti with her family when she was 18.
13.
Pierre Margaret Trudeau was a bachelor before he became Prime Minister in 1968.
14.
In 1971, the Trudeaus took a second honeymoon in the Caribbean to Barbados and an unidentified nearby island then Tobago, then to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines with Pierre taking a side-trip to Trinidad while Margaret stayed in Tobago.
15.
Margaret Trudeau tore apart a quilt made by Canadian conceptual artist Joyce Wieland on the wall in the prime-minister's official residence in Ottawa because it celebrated "reason over passion".
16.
Over time, the marriage disintegrated to the point where, as recounted in her 1982 book Consequences, Margaret Trudeau had affairs with Jack Nicholson, Ryan O'Neal, Lou Rawls, and a friendship with US Senator Ted Kennedy.
17.
Margaret Trudeau was associated with members of the Rolling Stones, including Ronnie Wood and, according to Keith Richards' autobiography, Life, Mick Jagger.
18.
Pierre Margaret Trudeau won custody of the children and did not pay spousal support.
19.
Margaret Trudeau had a difficult time earning a living after her marriage.
20.
Margaret Trudeau wrote the 1979 book Beyond Reason about her marriage.
21.
Margaret Trudeau filed for a no-fault divorce at the Ontario Supreme Court on November 16,1983, which was finalized on April 2,1984.
22.
When Pierre Trudeau died in 2000, Margaret was at his bedside with their surviving sons Justin and Alexandre.
23.
On October 19,2015, her eldest son, Justin Margaret Trudeau, led the Liberal Party to a majority government, becoming the 23rd Prime Minister of Canada.
24.
From 2002 to 2017, Margaret Trudeau was the honorary president of WaterAid Canada, an Ottawa-based organization dedicated to helping the poorest communities in developing countries build sustainable water supply and sanitation services.
25.
On May 5,2006, Margaret Trudeau announced she has bipolar disorder.
26.
Margaret Trudeau is an honorary patron of the Canadian Mental Health Association.
27.
In 2013, Margaret Trudeau received an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Western Ontario in recognition of her work to combat mental illness.