Just Watch/Read/Download Me! Pierre Trudeau on e-books and downloadable video

Trudeau: the man, the myth, the movie by Pirouette Productions, 2011

This award-winning drama, starring Colm Feore, explores 15 turbulent years, from the 1968 Liberal leadership victory to the 1982 Constitutional Conference, in the political and personal life of Pierre Trudeau, one of the most enigmatic and respected prime ministers in Canadian history. It focuses on a man who came to power reluctantly, an intellectual who had to learn to be a politician, a private man who favoured reason over passion. Yet passion was the hallmark of his marriage, and his passionate commitment to individual rights as the cornerstone of democracy dominated his political agenda. DVD special features include a making-of featurette, deleted scenes and two CBC News profiles — The Many Lives of Pierre Trudeau (30:00) and The Style is the Man Himself (88:00).

Citizen of the World : the life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Volume one, 1919-1968 by John English

One of the most important, exciting biographies of our time: the definitive, major two-volume biography of Pierre Elliott Trudeau -- written with unprecedented, complete access to Trudeau's enormous cache of private letters and papers.

Bestselling biographer John English gets behind the public record and existing glancing portraits of Trudeau to reveal the real man and the multiple influences that shaped his life, providing the full context lacking in all previous biographies to-date.

As prime minister between 1968 and 1984, Trudeau, the brilliant, controversial figure, intrigued Canadians and attracted international attention as no other Canadian leader has ever done. Volume One takes us from his birth in 1919 to his election as leader in 1968.

Just Watch Me : the life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Volume two, 1968-2000 by John English

This magnificent second volume, written with exclusive access to Trudeau's private papers and letters, completes what the Globe and Mail called "the most illuminating Trudeau portrait yet written" -- sweeping us from sixties' Trudeaumania to his final days when he debated his faith.


Young Trudeau : son of Quebec, father of Canada, 1919-1944 by Max and Monique Nemni ; translated by William Johnson

This book shines a light of devastating clarity on French-Canadian society in the 1930s and 1940s, when young elites were raised to be pro-fascist, and democratic and liberal were terms of criticism. The model leaders to be admired were good Catholic dictators like Mussolini, Salazar in Portugal, Franco in Spain, and especially Pétain, collaborator with the Nazis in Vichy France. There were even demonstrations against Jews who were demonstrating against what the Nazis were doing in Germany.

Trudeau, far from being the rebel that other biographers have claimed, embraced this ideology. At his elite school, Brébeuf, he was a model student, the editor of the school magazine, and admired by the staff and his fellow students. But the fascist ideas and the people he admired -- even when the war was going on, as late as 1944 -- included extremists so terrible that at the war's end they were shot. And then there's his manifesto and his plan to stage a revolution against les Anglais.

This is astonishing material -- and it's all demonstrably true -- based on personal papers of Trudeau that the authors were allowed to access after his death.What they have found has astounded and distressed them, but they both agree that the truth must be published.

Trudeau Transformed, 1944-1965 : the shaping of a statesman by Max and Monique Nemni ; translated by George Tombs

This groundbreaking biography continues the story begun in Young Trudeau, taking Canada's legendary Prime Minister from his pro-fascist youth all the way to his entry into federal politics as a crusading Liberal democrat.

When he went to Harvard in 1944, Pierre Trudeau was twenty-five, a recent graduate of the University of Montreal Law School; true to his elite Catholic-French education, he had been till recently pro-fascist, and he disliked democracy. Years of graduate study at Harvard, then the Sorbonne, then the London School of Economics exposed him to new ideas, as did his hitchhiking travels around the world. Returned to Quebec as a new man, he engaged in educating workers and other jobs that made him a famous defender of federal democracy. He entered Parliament in 1965, within three years of rocketing, Obama-like, to the very top.

The Last Act : Pierre Trudeau, the gang of eight, and the fight for Canada by Ron Graham

Between the evening of November 3 and the morning of November 4, 1981, critical decisions were made that led to the repatriation of the Constitution and the Charter of Rights.

The "Night of the Long Knives," as it has become known, was the culmination of more than a decade of constitutional debates triggered in large measure by the advent of Quebec nationalism, the electoral triumph of the Parti Québécois, and the first referendum. It also coincided with the rise of some of the most powerful premiers in Canadian history, formidable men who were pressing for a more decentralized federation. And, of course, it is about the struggle between them and Pierre Trudeau. 

Pierre Elliott Trudeau (Penguin's Extraordinary Canadians series) by Nino Ricci

Love him or hate him, Pierre Trudeau has marked us all. The man whose motto was "reason over passion" managed to arouse in Canadians the fiercest of passions of every hue, ones that even today cloud our view of him and of his place in history. Acclaimed novelist Nino Ricci takes as his starting point the crucial role Trudeau played in the formation of his own sense of identity to look at how Trudeau expanded us as a people, not in spite of his contradictions but because of them. 


Pierre: colleagues and friends talk about the Trudeau they knew by Nancy Southam

When Pierre Elliott Trudeau died in 2000, the outpouring of emotion was extraordinary. Thousands of people across Canada -- and all over the world -- mourned the loss of one of our greatest prime ministers, a man who touched the hearts and challenged the minds of a nation. In this book, Trudeau's close friend Nancy Southam has gathered more than 140 reminiscences and anecdotal narratives from journalists, former world leaders, politicians who battled and debated him, his sons' friends, RCMP bodyguards, girlfriends, canoeing buddies, and household staff.