Margaret Joan Sinclair Trudeau

Our new Prime Minister - Justin Trudeau - has a Vancouver connection. His mother, Margaret Joan Sinclair Trudeau, was born here on September 10, 1948.

Margaret's parents were Doris Kathleen (nee Bernard) and James Sinclair. James was a former liberal member of the Parliament of Canada and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.In 1952, the family moved to Ottawa but returned to North Vancouver in 1958 when James lost his re-election bid.

Margaret graduated from Simon Fraser University in 1969 with a bachelor of arts in sociology.

At the age of 18, Margaret was on vacation in Tahiti with her family when she met the man who was to create her destiny - the Minister of Justice, Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Margaret didn't recognize him and thought little of the meeting. Pierre, however, was smitten with the flower child that was thirty years younger than him, and began to pursue her.

Trudeau was still a bachelor when he was appointed Prime Minister in 1968 and he and Margaret kept their romance hidden. That is until the country was shocked when 51-year-old Pierre married the 22-year-old Margaret in a private ceremony in North Vancouver. Due to the age difference, some eyebrows rose, and tongues were wagging but it seemed to fit with the Prime Minister's progressive views and youthful vigor.

Pierre was Catholic when he and Margaret wed so she converted to Roman Catholicism. Later in life, she studied Buddhism though now she considers herself to be Anglican.  When asked about her role in a marriage to the Prime Minister, Margaret stated, "I want to be more than a rose in my husband's lapel."

Apparently, Mrs. Trudeau had some difficulty adjusting to her new role. "From the day I became Mrs. Pierre Elliott Trudeau," she writes in her memoirs, "a glass panel was gently lowered into place around me, like a patient in a mental hospital who is no longer considered able to make decisions and who cannot be exposed to a harsh light." 

The couple had three children: Justin (born December 25, 1971), Alexandre (Sacha) (born December 25, 1973), and Michel (October 2, 1975 – November 13, 1998).

Pierre and Margaret appeared to have a very close and loving relationship at first. But the marriage soon began to fall apart. Margaret resented being left alone to basically raise three boys on her own while Pierre was away on work-related absences. Her high profile position brought extensive publicity but Mrs. Trudeau created her own episodes.

Margaret smuggled drugs in the prime minister's luggage, made scantily clad appearances at Studio 54, and tore apart a quilt work made by Canadian conceptual artist Joyce Wieland that hung on the wall in the prime minister's official residence in Ottawa because it celebrated "reason over passion".

Thanks to Wikipedia for the above information. Wednesday, I will tell you more about this lady who was also known as 'Canada's Wild Child'.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Karen Magill

Wrapping up 49

December 23, Vancouver's Seaforth Highlanders held a farewell parade for their retiring commanding officer, Lt-Col D.M. Clark. Part of the ceremony included an inspection by Brig. J.M. Rockingham of the Seaforth's ski company. These special troops would train on Mount Seymour.

On December 29, 1949, a strange thing happened. The leaders of the Polar Bear swim club put out a box called 'The Thing' in English Bay. On January 1, 1951, it was brought to shore - during the annual Polar Bear swim - and opened. Inside was an effigy of Stalin, which was ceremoniously burned.

1949 had other things occur.

The radio station, CKNW moved from 1230 on the dial to 1320.

The 1949 thriller, Johnny Stool Pigeon, starring Howard Duff, Shelley Winters, Dan Duryea and Tony Curtis, among others, told of international drug dealers tracked to their downtown Vancouver lair by a heroic U.S. Treasury agent. One of the few American movies that used Vancouver as a backdrop and set the story to actually take place here.

One of the big hit songs of 1949, There's A Bluebird on Your Windowsill was written by a Vancouver nurse, Elizabeth Clarke. It became the first song written by a Canadian to sell a million copies.  This was also an "indie" recording - Mrs. Clarke spent $600 of her own money to record the song.

In 1949, S.V. Smith became president of the Vancouver Real Estate Board.

1949 was also the year Charles Edwin Thompson became mayor of Vancouver. Thompson was born on May 17, 1890 in Grey County, Ontario.

Donna Jean McKinnon writes Thompson “was a teacher, rancher, automotive dealer, and from 1945 to 1948 an alderman. His apparently contradictory combination of progressive and regressive policies make him a hard character to pin down. He felt that improvements to public transit, roadways and sewer lines and efforts to equalize civic taxes should be provided to law-abiding and politically correct citizens. However, civil liberties were impaired during his term through a policy requiring all civic employees to be screened for communist sympathies.”

I wrote on Thompson and his term as mayor in this 2011 blog entry if you want to read more.

Writer George Woodcock, was born in Winnipeg and moved to BC in 1949.  He first published a collection of poems in 1938 when he was 26 and his final book, published in 1994, was a history of B.C. Woodcock wrote a biography of George Orwell called The Crystal Spirit won the Governor General's Award for non-fiction in 1966. His writings on anarchism were well-received. In total, George Woodcock gave the world 120 books.

Clyde Gilmour was born in Calgary on June 8, 1912 and in 1949, he began writing film and music reviews for the Vancouver Sun, a position he had held with CBC radio in Vancouver since 1947. He stayed with both jobs until 1954 when he went East to earn national fame.

Thanks to The History of Metropolitan Vancouver website for the above information.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Karen Magill

49 Trudges Along

The date was November 9, 1949 and that morning, one of Vancouver's most sensationalized murders began. The body of single, 45-year-old Blanche Fisher was discovered in False Creek near the Kitsilano Trestle by a Woodward's employee. At first, authorities thought it was a suicide but it was discovered that Fisher wore no shoes, socks or underwear and her body was covered in bruises.

34-year-old Frederick Ducharme had a record of indecent exposure and bizarre behaviour. What that behaviour was, wasn't explaining in the strait laced newspaper reporting of the day and I don't know what it was. Anyway, Miss Fischer's umbrella was found in Ducharme's car and articles of her clothing in his run down False Creek shack. Ducharme was found guilty of murder and hanged July 14, 1950.

Kerrisdale arena was officially opened on November 11. Fred "Cyclone" Taylor - hockey legend and current president of the Point Grey Community Centre Association - was there. Park board chairman Bert Emery, acting mayor R.K. Gervin and Harry Duker, who managed the raising of funds for the building, were on hand too.

The Capilano River, swollen by a violent rainstorm, swept away a large section of Marine Drive. On November 27, 1949, when this happened, that was the only road link to West Vancouver.  Part of the bridge over the Capilano was also washed away. Army engineers from Sardis rushed in to build an emergency Bailey bridge, which was also washed away. West Vancouver remained cut off for 10 days.

On December 1, the Grouse Mountain chairlift opened. It was the world's first double chair lift and replaced the two to three hour hike from the skiers' bus stop at the base of the mountain.

There was exciting news on December 3. A photograph appeared in the Province newspaper showing the site for something called a 'shopping centre'. Park Royal, on the north shore, was to become Canada's first shopping centre.

In 1949, Dick Diespecker had a radio column in the Province. Diespecker followed local and international radio personalities the way we follow television and movie stars today. On December 4, 1949, Dick told his readers the "dynamic young sportscaster" Ray Perrault had left CJOR to join the radio department of the O'Brien Advertising Agency. Today, he’s Senator Ray Perrault.


Boxer Jimmy McLarnin laid the cornerstone for Sunset Memorial Centre on East 51st Avenue on Decmber 11. McLarnin had played a large part in the establishment of the Centre (which is now called the Sunset Community Centre.) When Stan Thomas, one of the people involved in the creation of the complex, went to Hollywood in 1947 it was McLarnin—whom Thomas knew—who introduced him to Bing Crosby, a friend of McLarnin’s. Bing agreed to come up to Vancouver and record his radio show here to kick off the Centre’s fund-raising campaign. Bing’s show was recorded at the Forum September 22, 1948, attended by 9,000 people.

Thanks to The History of Metropolitan Vancouver website for the above information.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Karen Magill