NOTE ON SOURCES

The source for this volume is the remarkable collection of personal papers that has been transferred from the Trudeau home in Montreal to Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. These papers were assembled in minute detail by Grace Trudeau and by Trudeau himself.

The most interesting item in the preserved papers is the Gouin-Trudeau correspondence of the mid-1940s. When the relationship between Thérèse Gouin and Trudeau ended, she returned his letters. They later discussed the correspondence, and he promised it would not be released in her lifetime—although he mentioned to Madame Gouin Décarie that he had recently read the letters once again. Having now been privileged to read the correspondence myself, I can understand Trudeau’s wish that the letters be kept complete. They are remarkable and, eventually, when they are published, they will take their place among the most illuminating and important exchanges in Canadian letters.

Although Trudeau made little apparent use of his papers for his memoirs, there is considerable indication he read much of the collection later in his life. There are notations, question marks, and identification of individuals whose full names are not given in the originals. His papers also contain the excellent interviews conducted for the memoirs by Ron Graham and Jean Lépine, as well as some interviews with family members and others as diverse as Michael Ignatieff and Camille Laurin. Again, very little use was made of this material for the memoirs. We now know that Trudeau’s memoirs concealed much of his private thoughts and activities, but he did maintain the integrity of his papers, which fully disclose them all. We can only speculate on his reasons, but there is evidence in the Trudeau papers that, as early as 1939, he expected that he would, one day, have a biographer. Moreover, he admired confessional literature, from Saint Augustine through to Proust. Ultimately, he has allowed others to bare the soul that he so carefully concealed in his lifetime, and he apparently did so deliberately.

Some documents seem to be missing in his papers. For example, there are almost no letters from Father Marie d’Anjou or François Lessard, although we know that both corresponded frequently with Trudeau about nationalist and religious matters in the forties. There are also few letters from Jean Marchand and Gérard Pelletier, and none of substance from Trudeau in their papers—all of which suggests (especially in the case of Pelletier) that the correspondence relating to their political and literary work in the fifties and sixties is either lost or in some abandoned filing cabinet. Still, Trudeau’s private papers are an exceptionally rich lode for a biographer to mine, and valuable nuggets appear in virtually every box.

This book has full endnotes indicating primary sources and secondary works. The majority of the secondary works dealing with Trudeau will be relevant for the second volume of the biography, which will deal with his political career and its aftermath. It is impossible to separate the sources for the two volumes because interviews relating to his later life, for instance, can also be relevant in discussing his earlier years. A full bibliography, including manuscript sources and interviews, will be available on the web at www.theigloo.org after the publication of this volume, and it will grow as I write Volume Two. The site will also provide an opportunity for others—students, scholars, and all interested readers—to offer their own information that might be relevant for Trudeau’s later life.