As Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and wife Sophie call it quits after 18 years of marriage, TOM LEONARD asks: Why have the planet’s most annoying couple decided to part?
Sporting a plaster on his forehead, Justin Trudeau was not quite his usual pristine self when he appeared at a news conference on Monday. A spokesman explained that the Canadian prime minister had bumped his head while playing with his three children.
The matter seemed of little importance until Wednesday night when Trudeau sensationally announced that his 18-year marriage to Sophie — a glamorous, if infuriatingly sanctimonious, union — was over.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, 48, had already moved out of the PM’s residence of Rideau Cottage in the capital Ottawa, leaving her husband with their three children.
In a joint statement, the couple said that ‘after many meaningful and difficult conversations, we have made the decision to separate’.
As a stunned country tried to digest the news, some wondered if that bump was in any way relevant. Could it have been suffered not during horseplay with the children but in one of those ‘meaningful and difficult conversations’ with his wife?
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau sensationally announced on Wednesday that his 18-year marriage to Sophie was over
Although they will share custody, the children — Xavier, 15, Ella-Grace, 14, and Hadrien, nine — will stay with their father, while Sophie will live nearby.
‘We remain a close family with deep love and respect for each other and everything we have built,’ the prime minister said on Instagram. And the Trudeaus will still go on holiday together as a family.
Justin Trudeau has the distinction of becoming the second Canadian prime minister to separate in office —after his father Pierre did the same thing almost four decades ago.
The latter’s colourful marriage to troubled bohemian Margaret spectacularly disintegrated in 1977 and she later had affairs with the likes of Jack Nicholson and Ryan O’Neal and hung out with The Rolling Stones.
The latest Trudeaus to find marriage unsustainable have not yet offered any clues as to the reason for their shock split and, having asked for privacy, look unlikely to do so.
In truth, however, there have been whispers for years that the marriage was on the rocks. Sophie made ever fewer public appearances and, when she did, seemed to repel her husband’s attempts at affection.
When she tested positive for Covid in 2020 and he didn’t, many assumed they couldn’t have been sleeping together.
Both have alluded to difficulties. In a TV interview nine years ago, Mr Trudeau admitted ‘there are times when [Sophie] hates my job and she hates me for loving my job’.
The latest Trudeaus to find marriage unsustainable have not yet offered any clues as to the reason for their shock split and, having asked for privacy
Of course, there has been speculation as to the cause. Hours after Wednesday’s separation announcement, a columnist in Canadian newspaper the Toronto Sun referred to ‘persistent rumours that the PM is or has been involved with other people’.
There is no evidence of either party being unfaithful and Mr Trudeau has firmly denied having affairs in the past. In that same 2014 interview, he was asked whether either of them had cheated.
‘Our marriage isn’t perfect, and we have had difficult ups and downs, yet Sophie remains my best friend, my partner, my love,’ he replied. ‘We are honest with each other, even when it hurts.’
When his interviewer asked if ‘ups and downs’ was code for ‘extramarital affairs’, he responded: ‘No.’
In a separate interview the following year, Sophie gave a far more ambiguous answer when asked about an affair.
‘Ask if whatever happened in our lives — I’m not saying it did or didn’t — as if we would answer that,’ she said evasively to The Globe And Mail newspaper.
‘I can tell you right away that no marriage is easy. I’m almost kind of proud of the fact that we’ve had hardship, yes, because we want authenticity. We want truth.’
The high-minded Canadian media and political establishment have this week claimed they’re not in the business of prying into politicians’ private lives — that sort of prurience is for the Americans, sniffed one.
Sophie Trudeau is a good friend of the Duchess of Sussex (pictured: right), who filmed her TV series Suits in Toronto and has close connections to Canada
But some commentators were quick to point out that an exception should be made for Trudeau, who has often put his family front and centre of his political life, regularly wheeling out his photogenic clan to help promote his image as the devoted and conscientious family man.
Now, with the benefit of hindsight, that endless smooching in public and those gooey exchanges of mutual love look somewhat fake.
But, far from being just lovers, they wanted the world to know they were a pair of courageous woke warriors. (Sophie has described herself as a ‘gentle warrior’.)
Having previously been an entertainment TV presenter and personal shopper, Sophie was not a particularly political animal before she married Justin but she certainly rose to the occasion.
Growing up in Montreal, she had been a friend and classmate of Justin’s younger brother Michel, who died in an avalanche in 1998 aged 23.
She and Justin met again at a charity event in 2003. They were clearly made for each other — at least initially. ‘I’m a dreamer and a romantic,’ she said, recalling their first date. ‘And at the end of dinner, he said, “I’m 31 years old, and I’ve been waiting for you for 31 years”. And we both cried like babies.’
They married in 2005 — ten years before Trudeau became prime minister, aged just 43, and soon became the world’s indisputable First Couple of Woke.
Sophie Trudeau, of course, is a good friend of the Duchess of Sussex, who filmed her TV series Suits in Toronto and has close connections to Canada.
The couple married in 2005 — ten years before Trudeau became prime minister, aged just 43, and soon became the world’s indisputable First Couple of Woke
Sophie and Justin met again at a charity event in 2003 and were clearly made for each other — at least initially
The Trudeaus made a formidable team, especially on social media where his dreamboat looks and their shared aptitude for meaningless but feel-good blather about progressive values earned them a devoted following.
Others mercilessly mocked the pair — who have been attacked for employing an army of nannies and staff despite claiming to be down-to-earth — as narcissistic clowns who shamelessly egged each other on to ever more ridiculous acts of wokery.
It didn’t hurt either that both are passionate yoga nuts who need no encouragement to show off their prowess. A photo of Justin doing a complicated pose on his desk in 2013 went viral. She went one better by performing yoga poses on stage at an annual parliamentary press dinner.
Still, she can hardly compete with her poseur husband, who famously did press-ups while announcing Canada was ready to compete in the Invictus Games and who, in 2011, raised over £1,000 by performing a partial striptease in front of a whooping audience at a charity gala.
In 2015, U.S. Vogue included him in a list of the ten sexiest men alive, gushing that he is ‘a feminist and capable of balancing a baby on one hand’.
Sophie has said she likes to begin her mornings early by lighting a candle and turning on music, a practice which she describes as ‘a dedication to gratitude for another day on Earth’.
And she doesn’t like to be called ‘Madam’, she told her chum Meghan on the latter’s podcast Archetypes last year. ‘It just — my ears screech every time. I’m like, “Oh, I’m not a madam”,’ she said. And just like her equally ‘down-to-earth’ pal Meghan, she’s written a children’s book.
Unlike other Canadian PMs’ wives, who ran a mile from ever doing anything that would lead to them being compared to a U.S.-style First Lady, Sophie spoke at her husband’s Liberal Party conventions and championed her own causes such as mental health and — of course — gender equality.
In 2015, U.S. Vogue included Justin in a list of the ten sexiest men alive, gushing that he is ‘a feminist and capable of balancing a baby on one hand’
The Trudeaus made a formidable team, especially on social media where his dreamboat looks and their shared aptitude for progressive values earned them a devoted following
Most agree she reached a nadir of self-absorption in 2016 when, after unconvincingly announcing, ‘This is not planned — trust me’, she suddenly and inexplicably started warbling a song she’d written about her daughter while addressing a tribute event for Martin Luther King, Jr.
But there have been other equally cringe-making faux-pas. Two years later, the Trudeau family were all pictured in lavish traditional local costumes during a state visit to India.
Indian media mocked their attempts to identify with their hosts, with one, Outlook India, dubbing their looks ‘too Indian, even for an Indian’.
‘Some senior Liberals back in Ottawa lifted their heads from their hands long enough to point the finger of blame at Sophie for ordering the over-elaborate costumes and persuading the whole family to wear them,’ wrote a biographer of her husband.
In 2019, even Justin tried to row back on one of his more egregious wokeism blunders when he corrected a female member of the audience who’d used the word ‘mankind’ at a political meeting of young people. ‘We like to say “peoplekind” not necessarily “mankind”,’ he corrected her. ‘It’s more inclusive.’ He later claimed he’d been joking but, with his form, few seemed to believe him.
He also supported a Canadian Senate bill to make the country’s national anthem gender neutral by removing the word ‘sons’, and has written earnest essays for women’s magazines on how he will turn his two sons into sexism-fighting feminists. Earlier this year, in an attempt to curry favour with his indigenous countrymen, he said he was open to changing the Canadian National Anthem from ‘home and native land’ to ‘home on Native land’.
But consistency has never been a Trudeau strong point. Aside from the terrible scandal that erupted in 2019 when it emerged he had worn ‘blackface’ at least three times when he was younger, Trudeau’s image has been tarnished by a succession of blunders that have left him open to the charge of hypocrisy on woke issues such as the environment, world peace and human rights.
The Trudeau family were all pictured in lavish traditional local costumes during a state visit to India
These included his approval in 2019 of the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion, connecting Alberta’s oil sands to British Columbia. Oil is extracted from the sands using one of the most environmentally-damaging techniques known to man.
Feminists also accused him of treachery by demanding the government rewrite ‘Discover Canada’, the citizenship guide given to all immigrants before they take a citizenship test.
Trudeau wanted to remove a line saying Canada doesn’t tolerate barbaric cultural practices on the grounds that condemning female genital mutilation discriminates against Muslims.
Trudeau’s popularity is now firmly on the decline. Even Left-wingers are dismayed by apparent double standards and his government’s involvement in scandals involving corruption and cronyism.
Yet pollsters say Trudeau’s ultra-progressive image has been a crucial factor in the Liberal Party’s electoral success to date, so his split with Sophie — who played such a key role in nurturing that image — will hardly help his chances.
Justin’s mother, Margaret, was a rebellious flower child in the 1960s who once said: ‘I don’t intend to be just a rose in my husband’s lapel’. Has his wife now reached the same conclusion?
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