Justin Trudeau takes up father's torch for Canada's Liberal party
There are few equivalents to the political power and promise associated with membership of the storied Kennedy clan. But in Canada, being the eldest son of former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau comes close.
Pierre Trudeau led the country through the years of counterculture, disco and the hottest days of the cold war, with a soft spot for socialist policies and swooning young women who often gathered for kisses and autographs. Under his watch, Canada decriminalised homosexuality, repatriated the constitution, enacted martial law to beat back a separatist terror cell in French-speaking Quebec, and took steps towards building what Trudeau envisioned as a "just society".
Now, more than a decade after Trudeau's death, his first-born son, Justin, has taken up his father's torch. An MP since 2008, he was elected leader of the Liberal party last weekend with an overwhelming 80% of votes cast. So dominant was the Trudeau campaign that a field made up of a former justice minister, the country's first female air force commander, an astronaut and a constitutional scholar (who happens to be the mother of Pierre Trudeau's child) was reduced to a pack of also-rans.
Now Trudeau, 41, has a task more daunting than living up to his famous name. His challenge leading up to the next federal election in 2015 is to return the once dominant Liberal party to power. It is no easy job given that the Liberals, who made up the government in 2006, are now in greatly diminished third place in the House of Commons.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/17/trudeau-son-canada
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