- Trudeau: Long March/Shining Path
- Gaspereau (2007)
[Editor's Note: Justin Trudeau surprised few on Sunday when he beat back two other candidates to capture the federal Liberal nomination in the Montreal riding of Papineau. The former school teacher and best looking living son of a former prime minister (sorry Geoffrey Pearson), may not be Ottawa bound quite yet, but he has already accomplished at least one first. Unlike the thousand odd other candidates for federal office, Trudeau does not have to rely on grainy old photos and fireside chats to learn how his parents met. With his win Sunday Trudeau became the first Canadian politician, aspiring or otherwise, to have his parents' courtship captured in verse.
George Elliot Clarke wrote the text of Trudeau: Long March/Shining Path as the libretto for an opera by Canadian jazz bigwig D.D. Jackson. The work was published earlier this year as a dramatic poem by Gaspereau Press. The opera follows the elder Trudeau's path to Ottawa through China, Paris and Havana, with appearances along the way from Fidel Castro, Mao and JFK. The third act finds Trudeau in Tahiti, where the middle-aged politician meets the young B.C. flower child who would eventually bear the Liberals' new Papineau candidate.]
ACT III
Freedom! Justice! Equality!
Thulani Davis, X
Scene i: Mooréa, Tahiti, 12 February, 1968
In a flower-print, Tahitian shirt, dark sunglasses (angled on his head), and trunks, Trudeau, 48, lounges on a chaise longue, reading Plato's Republic. Margaret, 20, in a flower-power bikini and a wrap as sheer and as frothing as champagne, approaches him. She wears a garland of Tahitian flowers.
MARGARET: Aren't you the Justice Minister?
TRUDEAU: Not so loud! I'm undercover.
MARGARET: That's why you're here in Tahiti?
TRUDEAU: No one here should recognize me.
MARGARET: I eyed you on television when you said Government has no business in my bed. You lassoed my vote -- just for that. [Aside.] At love, you unleash a wildcat?
Margaret snaps the elastic waistline of Trudeau's swim trunks.
TRUDEAU: Hey! Careful! I'd like children yet.
MARGARET: [Laughing.] Relax! Don't act a square! I've met Every living cabinet minister!
TRUDEAU: Otherwise would be sinister!
MARGARET: [Laughing.] I didn't mean it as it sounds! You're a screwy, soft egghead!
TRUDEAU: Zounds! You're Lolita -- gone Tahitian.
MARGARET: No, I'm a British Columbian: Margaret, daughter of Sincere, The ex-fisheries minister. I've been watching you dive. You're good! Whatcha doin with this old book?
Margaret pushes Trudeau, who drops the book. She runs. He chases and catches her, then holds her in his arms.
TRUDEAU: Like some Vandal or some beatnik, You've just trashed Plato's Republic!
MARGARET: Here, in green, perfumed Tahiti, His gospel's a musty ditty.
TRUDEAU: May I illuminate his plot, explain?
Trudeau tries to kiss Margaret, but she squirms away, teasingly.
MARGARET: Plato ain't simpatico (unlike champagne): His pizzazz fizzles out -- like tap water!
TRUDEAU: But you sizzle with dynamite hauteur -- That diamond patina of martinis.
MARGARET: You old boys lust to untie bikinis!
TRUDEAU: Your bikini mirrors that atoll Split in half by Yankee H-bombs.
Lights down: Spotlight on each as they move apart and speak separately.
MARGARET: [Aside.] My charts, soulful and astrological, Foresaw I'd meet a man mercurial, Venusian, earthy, saturnine, and martial: A carnal canticle.
TRUDEAU: [Aside.] Here she is -- so, so beautiful, So challenging, so pulsating! Rose? rapture excites turmoil -- Extra joy! My heart's gyrating!
Spotlight off as Margaret and Trudeau return to face-to-face conversation.
MARGARET: Hmm, I suspect you sport a roué aura ... [Aside.] Bwana wanna make fauna in my flora!
TRUDEAU: A drum and rum heat up music. You incarnate mana -- Polynesian magic.
MARGARET: You're not so old when you're excited!
TRUDEAU: What?
MARGARET: [Laughing.] Do I feel something rigid?
TRUDEAU: [Aside.] Now spring springs open every gate, This February 1968: I feel the future is being born! I'm embracing April in my autumn.
MARGARET: [Aside.] His stallion style kicks down each stall: Can my coy rose enmesh, enthrall -- Venusian, earthy, saturnine, and martial, This man canonical?
Trudeau kisses Margaret's brow lightly.
TRUDEAU: I hold a nymph, a sylph in silk, Rich chestnut-tressed, snow-fresh -- like milk. So pliable, mobile, and nubile -- Plato recast as the Kama Sutra.
MARGARET: You're alabaster-coated iron -- To wax metaphorical.
Trudeau and Margaret kiss.
TRUDEAU: You are so sinuously, Virtuoso beautiful -- A woman as much an earthquake As Josephine Baker when she shakes.
MARGARET: It takes moxie To be sexy.
TRUDEAU: [Aside.] God of poets, mix curses, sighs, If tears should e'er obscure her eyes.
Margaret takes Trudeau's hand in hers. They kiss again.
Duet: We'll touch, retouch, until, touche?, We marry poutine and sushi. Everything we do, we'll make news -- Our love will make history muse.
The lovers kiss.
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