Canada's Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who is a skier, scuba diver and judo expert, has added a new item to his list of athletic achievements. While attending a Liberal Party picnic in Vancouver, the P.M. spotted a trampoline, hopped aboard and executed a series of jumps that seemed practiced, if not exactly perfect. One knowledgeable spectator, Canadian Trampolinist Bob Scott, observed that Trudeau has "a lot of air sense--knowing where you are when you're upside down." That evaluation will doubtless be exploited by Trudeau's political opponents when Parliament reconvenes later this month.

Chomping a fat cigar and wearing an authentic-looking paunch, Actor Richard Burton has been rehearsing for his Hallmark Hall of Fame role as Sir Winston Churchill, which will be televised in November. A devoted Churchill fan, Burton owns a pair of Winnie's cuff links and has a framed telegram from him on his wall. In the past year alone, he has read a score of books and articles on his idol. Burton's assessment: "He was the best actor of our times --playing himself, of course."

For a moment, one of Pope Paul Vl's usually sedate audiences became a papal powwow. Among a group of 250 Gaylord, Mich., Catholics visiting the Pontiff at his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo last week were four Ottawa Indians outfitted in full tribal regalia. The four presented Paul with an Ottawa war bonnet, which he obligingly put on. Then one of the Indians, Alvina Anderson, proposed a quid pro quo. "I asked the Pope to pray for peace be tween the U.S. and the Indians," she said later. "I told him that the U.S. had not honored a lot of our treaties." Paul's reply went unrecorded.

Perhaps hedging against another gas shortage, Race Car Driver AJ. Foyt has been quietly putting his winnings into a lower octane brand of racing. Last week the three-time Indianapolis 500 champion laid down $21,500 for two thoroughbred colts at the Keeneland, Ky., fall yearling sale. The new additions to Foyt's stable of quarter and show horses in Magnolia, Texas, will be out on the tracks next year sporting A.J.'s red and white colors. "I can't race all my life," says Foyt. "Probably I'll race another three or four years and then own cars, but I'd like to maybe be in two phases of racing." While Foyt's new oat-burners were shipped off to Texas, the ace driver himself headed for a 250-mile auto race in Michigan. Drawled Foyt: "I've got to pay for those horses."

Just two months after leaving a Connecticut sanitarium for treatment of psychiatric problems, Joan Kennedy, 38, wife of Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, has checked into a private clinic at Capistrano by the Sea, Calif, that specializes in megavitamin therapy. Joan is known to have been suffering from stress since her son Teddy's leg amputation for bone cancer last November. According to friends who saw her at a recent Kennedy family-sponsored tennis benefit in New York she was "a nervous wreck" despite a restful summer of sailing and sunning at Hyannis Port.

In the nine months since he left office, former New York Mayor John Lindsay has visited the Caribbean, toured Europe and appeared in an Otto Preminger movie. While traveling, he also found time to bat out the first draft of a novel. The main character is a handsome California Congressman who battles evil politicians and braves a confrontation with militarists. "There's no doubt that it's worth putting more time into the manuscript," says Lindsay's agent, Owen Laster, who is showing the book to New York publishers. Evidently the ex-mayor has a deft touch when it comes to mixing passion and politics. "There's a nice massage scene," reports one reader of Lindsay's draft.

"The professorial life has a much more leisurely pace than the diplomatic," says former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban. "Also," he says, "there is less trivia." He should know, having taught classics and Oriental languages at Cambridge before entering Israeli politics nearly three decades ago. Last week the mellifluous-voiced ex-minister was back in class again, this time as a visiting professor at Columbia University's School of International Affairs. Eban has had time on his hands since he was shuffled out of the Israeli Cabinet in a governmental shake-up last May. But he will return to Israel to take his seat in the Knesset in December, with no fears that his academic interlude might weaken his appeal. "In politics," he says, "a discreet measure of literacy is no longer a fatal handicap."

For svelte Septuagenarian Marlene Dietrich, the show must go on, if not the preshow party. Shoving aside a waiting wheelchair at London's Heathrow Airport, the statuesque star hobbled into England last week, still feeling the effects of a leg injury suffered earlier this year. Princess Margaret ordered up a royal reception at Grosvenor House, where Dietrich was scheduled to make her first West End cabaret appearance in almost 20 years. Despite a guest list that included Director Franco Zeffirelli and Actor Christopher Lee, the evening's main attraction canceled out by phone. "I haven't got a thing to wear," complained Dietrich. "Princess Margaret will be dressed like a lady in a gown. I don't have anything like that with me." Though the princess called off her party, she did join 800 other fans who paid $50 a seat to catch opening night.

The prospects of a slumping economy and rising taxes in Britain have led many Americans living there to consider packing for home. Now, one of England's richest resident expatriates, Oil Midas J. Paul Getty, 81, has announced plans to leave his 1,050-acre Surrey estate next March and move back to the U.S., where he has not been for some 20 years. Getty plans four weeks of travel by boat and car (he is frightened by flying) that will take him to Malibu, Calif, where he has a 65-acre estate and a newly completed $17 million museum, built to house his art collection.

When it was released in 1971, the savagely anti-Nixon film Millhouse: A White Comedy earned a notice on the White House enemies list for its Marxist director, Emile de Antonio. Last week Washington Columnist Jack Anderson added some new perspective to the film's history when he revealed that Millhouse was partly financed by three nieces of Vice President-designate Nelson Rockefeller. According to Anderson, Peggy and Abby, daughters of Chase Manhattan Bank Chairman David Rockefeller, and Laura, daughter of Philanthropist Laurance Rockefeller, together anted up $37,000 of the movie's $200,000 cost. A Rockefeller family spokesman confirmed that the women had indeed made an investment (though not as much as Anderson had reported), and pointed out that they are used to making their own financial and political decisions.

Prince Charles has a new bird. At the Yeovilton Naval Base last week, he boarded a Royal Navy helicopter and began what is to be a 3 1/2-month course in the fine points of chopper flying. Charles has already mastered jet fighters, and officers at Yeovilton say that he is a "natural pilot." But the navy is taking no chances: other pilots have been ordered to stay clear of the area whenever the prince is airborne.

While the crews of Courageous and Southern Cross battled for the America's Cup in Rhode Island Sound, members of the Newport Reading Room were embroiled in a teapot-sized tiff of their own. As a story by Reporter Sally Quinn in the Washington Post had it, New York Senator Jacob Javits, who is Jewish, and his wife Marion were all but tossed out of the tony old club when they arrived for a prerace dance as guests of Nuala and Claiborne Pell, Rhode Island's Democratic Senator. Quinn's intimations of anti-Semitism raised speedy protests from politicians and officials, who promised to investigate the club. As it turned out, the Javitses and the Pells had merely sat down at the wrong table--and were asked to find other seats when the member who had reserved it came along. Javits later said that he was unaware of any sharp words; Pell described stories of the incident as "vastly exaggerated." The waspiest thing about the Reading Room dance, evidently, was Quinn's account of it.

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