Welcome to the Party

From backyard barbecues with Marlon Brando to lunch at the Ritz-Carlton with Pierre Trudeau, Salah Bachir recounts some of his most memorable friendships

- Salah Bachir

My Lunch Pal, Pierre Trudeau

My father always worried that I would be the one child out of five who would have trouble "making it," and not just because I was gay or a rabble-rouser at university. He thought I wore my heart on my sleeve and cared too much.

Perhaps he finally thought I would make it after all when, in 1994, I told him I was going to have lunch with the person he admired most, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. And not just anywhere but at the Ritz-Carlton in Montreal.

I was going to figure out a way to make Trudeau pay for it, too. After all, our slogan at university was "Make the rich pay." Long before Justin Trudeau became Canada's 23rd prime minister in 2015, there was his father, the charismatic 15th prime minister, from 1968 to 1979 and 1980 to 1984.

The elder Trudeau introduced an omnibus bill that allowed abortion under certain conditions, decriminalized the sale of contraceptives, tightened gun laws and decriminalized homosexual acts performed in private. Although I demonstrated against some of Trudeau's other policies in a civil society, you discuss and debate your points of departure-I had long admired his intelligence, vision and quick wit.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau put Canada on the world stage. On my trips to Lebanon or China or even Albania, when I would say I was from Canada, everyone would smile and say "Trudeau." Yes, that one. The sexy prime minister who drove people wild and inspired Trudeaumania. The one whose attempt to create a just society put him on United States president Richard Nixon's bad side.

Trudeau was incredibly fun to watch, like the time a photographer snapped him at Buckingham Palace at the G7 Summit in 1977 while doing an impromptu pirouette behind the Queen's back. England had Thatcher, the U.S. had Nixon and we had Trudeau. The contrast could not have been more pronounced.