PIERRE ELLIOTT TRUDEAU

Trudeau was skinny as a child, but made up for it later in life by becoming very athletic. He had a brown belt in judo, practiced yoga and enjoyed scuba diving, skiing, swimming and, most of all, canoeing. Trudeau enjoyed taking lengthy, treacherous canoe trips in northern Quebec and once remarked "Paddling a canoe is a source of enrichment and inner renewal." Trudeau was posthumously given the Bill Mason Award for outstanding contributions to canoeing heritage.

While he was still an MP (1965-6), Trudeau often upset members of the House of Commons with his casual style of dress. He was once taken to task by John Diefenbaker for wearing an ascot. Trudeau replied that he believed "People are more interested in ideas than dress."

Trudeaumania: In their book Mondo Canuck, authors Geoff Pevere and Greig Dymond refer to as "the greatest pop star this country has ever produced." In his heyday, Trudeau was chased across Parliament Hill lawns by mobs of screaming, tearful teenage girls. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary defines Trudeaumania as "widespread popularity and fascination" with Trudeau that reached a peak "during the election campaign of 1968." Trudeaumania came to an end when the prime minister married Margaret Sinclair in 1971.

When he was elected as prime minister in 1968, Trudeau remarked that 24 Sussex Drive looked like a good place to throw parties.

Throughout his career, Trudeau had a reputation as a ladies' man. He dated many beautiful celebrities, including Barbra Streisand, Margot Kidder, Kim Cattrall and classical guitarist Liona Boyd. In her autobiography, Boyd revealed that Trudeau was fond of moonlit skinny-dipping.

One of Trudeau's aides claims that the prime ministers now infamous pirouette behind the Queen's back at Buckingham Palace (1977) was actually a move Trudeau rehearsed in advance.

Trudeau's motto "Reason Over Passion" was stitched into a Joyce Weiland quilt, which hung at 24 Sussex Drive. It is rumoured that during an argument, the always-passionate Margaret Trudeau attempted to tear the quilt from the wall.

On the Trudeaus' sixth wedding anniversary in 1977, Margaret ran away to see a Rolling Stones concert. The band performed at a Toronto club, the El Mocambo. The incident sparked rumours of Margaret's sexual escapades with the band. She insisted nothing (except drug use) went on, and she left for New York the next day, where she reportedly partied at Studio 54 with Jack Nicholson, Ryan O'Neal and Ted Kennedy. Meanwhile, back in Toronto, Keith Richards was charged with heroin possession.

While visiting Canada in 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono requested a meeting with Prime Minister Trudeau. He was one of the few politicians to support their peace campaign, and when they met on December 23, the couple described the leader as "beautiful." Lennon said, "If all politicians were like Mr. Trudeau there would be world peace." Years later, in 1983, Trudeau would launch his own peace mission.

Trudeau had detractors as well. The Watergate tapes revealed that Richard Nixon had always referred to Trudeau as "that a--hole." Similarly, after Trudeau meets with U.S. president Ronald Reagan in 1983 to discuss world peace, Lawrence Eagleburger, the third-ranking U.S. foreign affairs officer, referred to the peace crusade as the pot-induced behaviour of an erratic leftist.

One of Trudeau's favourite passages in literature, "I'll climb, not high perhaps, but all alone!," was from Cyrano de Bergerac. He later told his biographer that the line was "an expression of who I was and what I wanted to be."

Trudeau was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

In addition to his three sons, Trudeau fathered a fourth child in 1991, a daughter named Sarah Elisabeth, with Deborah Coyne.

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