Trudeau and Chretien.

This column was to be the second part of a look at a book called Life is a Miracle. Alas, earthly inevitability intervened. Pierre Trudeau died. As a result, Prime Minister Chretien plunged Canadians into a federal election. Deeper inspection of the beauty of Kentucky farmer, poet and scholar Wendell Berry's newest book must await a future opening. The Trudeau legacy, and its embodiment in Chretien's politics, needs attention now.

An assertion that the prime minister called the election because his colleague and mentor died in early October requires explanation. When Chretien himself made the connection, his musing was greeted as almost macabre. After all, the funeral cortege had barely pulled away from Montreal's Notre Dame basilica before the PM seemed to be exploiting the occasion for the most vulgar of political purposes.

In the aftermath, if a pesky reporter had asked about the presence of Trudeau's ghost on the campaign trail, Chretien would doubtless have performed one of his tortured tongue waggles and denied everything. It is true he largely resisted the urge to invoke the memory of the sainted Pierre while on the hustings, or play too heavily on the polite expressions of respect Canadians paid their late former leader. He didn't need to. The spirit of PET infused the entire five-week exercise.

It was present in the indescribable arrogance of Chretien plunging Canadians into a pointless, mightily expensive election purely to catch the nascent Canadian Alliance unprepared. It was there in the prime minister's shameless intention to use any means necessary to sustain the stranglehold of his Liberal party (as opposed to, say, Paul Martin's Liberal party) on power.

If Pierre Trudeau taught Jean Chretien any one thing, it was that democratic politics are merely a means. Pure power is the end. As the great American journalist H.L. Mencken said of Theodore Roosevelt, "he didn't believe in democracy; he believed simply in government." Post mortem lionizing of Trudeau as the great Canadian intellectual adventurer devoted to freedom of ideas and ideals is simply not borne out by the facts.

A man does not, at age 50, turn from being the champion of liberty and the rule of law to an icon of steely-eyed authoritarianism as Trudeau did in the two years between his election in 1968 and the onset of the October Crisis in 1970. What emerged was bred in the bone. It was the will to power. It was evident in gestures small and large throughout the man's life and career.

Perhaps it was most visible, though utterly unnoticed by his devotees, in the open contempt Trudeau showed for all whose ideas opposed his own. We were told repeatedly by his host of media apologists this showed he did not suffer fools gladly. In fact, it inaugurated the current painful atmosphere in which real discussion on matters of genuine substance is virtually impossible.

To dissent from the ideas that Trudeau pushed ruthlessly forward is to face silencing scorn at best, sneered accusations of fascism at worst. These twin faces of malevolence were precisely what Alliance leader Stockwell Day faced from the moment the election was called--indeed, from the instant he declared his intention to take charge of the new party.

Chretien surpassed the master in the black art of shutting down debate through smear-and-fear tactics. They worked. Day, branded a "scary extremist" for supporting policies that were mainstream Canadian beliefs before the advent of Pierre Trudeau, was left stumbling about denying his own policies and principles. Despite his denials, he was repeatedly accused of having a "hidden agenda" on abortion, gun control and similar social issues--a charge that was simultaneously absurd and true.

It was absurd because the Alliance leader had always been as open on such matters as he was public about his deep evangelical Christian faith. Yet it was true because the Trudeau legacy that still grips Jean Chretien's Canada forced Day to seek to hide his honestly held beliefs.

Thus even in death was Pierre Trudeau able to mould yet another Canadian election campaign. Even from the grave was his hand able to stifle the free range of political thought and debate in this country.

It may take the miracle of a lifetime to release us.

Peter Stockland is editor in chief of the Montreal Gazette and a columnist for Catholic Insight every other month.