RESIGNED: Justin Trudeau

Once favorite son

- BY STEPHEN MAHER

JUSTIN TRUDEAU HAD A SPE-cial bond with Canadians, who had known him since he was born, on Christmas Day in 1971, as the son of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

That bond helped him get his dad's old job. Trudeau had grown up in public, and he brought a welcome dose of glamour to the humdrum world of Canadian politics. With his election as Prime Minister in 2015 he managed to bring his Liberal Party a resounding mandate, an echo of the “Trudeaumania” that gripped the country when his father won government in 1968. It was a restoration of the elder Trudeau’s vision of Canada as a bilingual, multicultural northern social-welfare state—this time with more openness and fun.