A Man with "Miles to Go"

For use on election nights, Pierre Trudeau usually has an apt quote in his pocket from the popular homily Desiderata ("Go placidly among the noise and haste"). But for his moment of triumph last week he borrowed from Robert Frost. As the cheers welled around him, the once and future Prune Minister quoted from Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: "I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep."

Only last December, Trudeau had decided to retire from politics and keep a personal promise to his three boys, Justin, 8, Sacha, 6, and Michel, 4, to move from Ottawa to Montreal. "I wanted to have some time, before I become too decrepit, for leading a personal life and seeing my kids grow up," he explained, after announcing his intention to step down as leader of the Liberal Party. "And for three weeks," he added, "I'd begun enjoying my new life." He had received a number of job offers, including an $80,000-a-year lectureship in the U.S. And though his estranged wife Margaret, 31, had bought a house in Ottawa and looked after the children during the campaign, friends say that there is almost no chance of a reconciliation.

Then came the unexpected fall of Joe Clark's Tory government. The Liberals had already set a date for a leadership convention in March, but rather than cobble together a hurried convention to choose a new leader, the party caucus and national executive decided that they would be better off drafting Trudeau. Some viewed his decision to quit the leadership as only a feint designed to lull the Tories into a false sense of security. But one friend insists that "he very genuinely was out, and only with very great difficulty made up his mind to come back."

In announcing his decision to run again, Trudeau explained: "My duty is to accept the draft of my party. That duty was even stronger than my desire to re-enter private life." Among the personal tugs, presumably, was an understandable desire not to go into history as a loser but to seek vindication for last May's defeat.

Now 60, Trudeau still cuts a trim, athletic figure, bounding up the marble steps to his office in the Parliament buildings or skating with his boys on the Rideau Canal (though younger members of his staff have taken to referring to him --in private, anyway--as "the old man"). While there was no rekindling of the flames of "Trudeaumania" during the campaign, he racked up an impressive personal victory in his home district of Mount Royal in Montreal. He won a total of nearly 36,000, or 82% of the vote. Even before election day, his hapless Tory opponent, Harry Bloomfield, conceded: "Trudeau is brilliant and incredibly attractive. I don't expect to win. I'm not nuts."

Having led his party to power for the fourth time, Trudeau also reclaims his title as the elder statesman among Western leaders. He is expected to play a larger international role and give his ministers ample leeway in tackling the country's domestic problems. In accepting his party's bid, Trudeau did make one provision: he will step down well before the next election--meaning in two to three years, or as Trudeau put it, after "I change the flow of things."

Ambition, of course, could change his mind again. Just before Clark's government fell, a friend approached Trudeau and told him, "I think you're going to defeat the government and then win the election." Trudeau demurred that, no, he had made up his mind to quit. "But you know," he added, "Gladstone didn't quit until he was 84."

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