[Read: In Canada, Covering the Trudeau News With an ‘Orchestra’]
Two years later, I got a personal demonstration of that star power.
I interviewed Mr. Trudeau at his constituency office in Montreal for a profile that would appear just after he became Liberal leader in 2013. The office was above a drugstore, and it looked as though the furniture had been left behind by a previous tenant.
We met in a dark boardroom. When we started discussing the death of his father, former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and the crowds that lined the route of his funeral train from Ottawa to Montreal, Mr. Trudeau briefly lost his composure and had to get a box of tissues. I had never seen anything like it during an interview with a politician, and have yet to see it since.
After the interview was over, we walked in the same direction down the busy road in front of the office. It was another bone-chilling day. A man ran toward us from across the street, zigzagging through traffic. In African-accented French, he said that all he wanted was to shake Mr. Trudeau’s hand.
[From Opinion: Justin Trudeau Was His Own Worst Enemy]
[From Opinion: Saying au Revoir to a Trudeau. For Now.]
