... Pierre: une nouvelle famille Canadienne ...

... "Trudeau was like havin' an extra uncle," comes the sound of social worker Gene's voice rising off-screen over grainy film images of metropolitan Toronto in the poignant Canadian feature-film A Winter Tale ...

... I play the character Gene in the scene which involves reminiscence of a time when Canada opened up to an immigration increase from hitherto non-traditional feeder regions, including the island nations of the West Indies ...

... these substantial waves of immigration are commonly attributed to the leadership and vision of the late Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who passed away a decade ago, leading many to pin the hot-button topic of Canadian multiculturalism squarely on his often rose-adorned lapel ...

... the movie scene unfolds and my voice-over segues seamlessly from Gene's wistful memoir into a rallying manifesto from the man himself ..."Canada must be one, Canada must be progressive, and Canada must be a just society!" ... that particular speech being only one of the many memorable legacies of Canada's fifteenth Prime Minister ...

... Canada first came into my Jamaican consciousness in 1967 when my irrepressibly itinerant maternal grandmother felt the urge to get a window on the world by visiting Expo'67 in Montreal ... from then on Canada was on my radar ...

... this timing coincided with the emergence of Trudeau in national politics and pre-figured that fascinating union with the junior Margaret who boosted his fame and bore him three sons ...














... throughout the seventies that same consciousness was fed by a relationship between Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley and Pierre Trudeau who had developed a mutual respect at the influential London School of Economics ...

... both charismatic leaders managed to stake out middle-ground in the Cold War and were less confrontational with Cuban jefe Fidel Castro than the regional giant U.S.A. tended to be ...














... Canada's sense-of-self as a nation has always been linked, like the tides are to the moon, to the prevailing winds in America ...

... there's inevitability to that for multiple reasons, but Trudeau always felt strongly that differences between the two close friends should be as honored as the similarities ...

... many of us who became (new) Canadians during Trudeau's tenure understood and agreed, especially when, at times, interests seemed to conflict ...














... one of the enduring/endearing attributes Trudeau radiated was his moral certitude, he could never be called directionless ...

... that spirit, needless to say, is priceless in a politician ...

... when John Lennon (who'd be seventy today) said, "if all politicians were like Pierre Trudeau there would be world peace," one could appreciate the thinking behind this admittedly utopian pronouncement from the peacenik crusader ...













... Lennon himself, famous Beatle that he was, had his moments of fun-loving frivolity while simultaneously harboring keen social conscience ... Pierre too could play court-jester, adding levity to his day job in the serious world ...

... pirhouetting behind the Queen of England, sliding down bannisters, flashing mischievous middle-fingers or coining phrases like "fuddle duddle" are but a few examples ...

... to her credit, that same English monarch, not readily associated with  shenanigans or even amusement, didn't take the Pierre pirhouette as any sort of slight when she inked what was Trudeau's piece de resistance - the hard-fought-for 1982 patriation of The Canadian Constitution ...

... from London to Ottawa, with love ...

... it must be noted in any retrospective on Trudeau that there are those who bristle at the very mention of his name ... as with any politico there's the factor of polarisation to consider ...

... throughout Western Canada for instance, where there is deep-seated resentment at federal expenditure required to maintain official bilingualism, it's easy to spark a barroom brawl by defending Trudeau-era liberalism, and even the concept of hyphenated-nationality and multiculturalism ...

... additionally, in some quarters of Quebec, there is lingering distrust of the part of the Trudeau bloodline that is Anglo ...

... hmmm, maybe there's a lesson in this for Barack Obama ...

... or perhaps the lesson is for eldest son Justin (b. Xmas Day, 1971) now carving his own path in the world of Party Politics ...

... today's landscape is different from his father's so he'll do well to recognize that Pierre-style insouciance may read differently to the contemporary electorate ...

... on the other hand, I suspect he'll also benefit from residual effects of name-association among those who thought fondly of his father and the generations of Canadian voters who are descended from them ...

... after all, if Pierre was like an "extra uncle," then by extension, that makes this guy "cousin" Justin ...

... Miss Ivy first son ... and grandson ...

... I carried the photo around with me the whole time we were filming Catwoman in Vancouver ... convinced I would get a chance to show it to Halle Berry who was in town taking her turn as the feline fury... she had not yet wedded her settlin' down man, which added a touch of spice to the possibility ...

... in the black and white posed shot was a boy, of around five, and his doe eyed mother ... looking at the image it strikes me that both of them have so much life ahead of them ... such is the benefit of hindsight ... the Jamaica this woman had returned to serve after post-graduate study abroad was embracing independence and had turned a page in the annals of its history as a jewel of the colonial British Empire ... for that boy it was the early stages of a journey through changing times ... a journey that now features his blogging in this space, almost half a century later, in honor of the woman who raised him ...

















... her face looks for all it's worth like Dorothy Dandridge, the American actress whose own browning black beauty represented a standard of the day ... inevitably portrayed by Halle ... our Miss Ivy was often mistaken for the screen idol around the Columbia University campus in 50's New York ... these were Pete Seeger times, Stokely Carmichael, Belafonte, Lena Horne and optimism ...

... back home, mento was giving way to ska, Oxford english was yielding to more dynamic patois and urban areas developed new ways to project their kinetic energies ... Kingston needed teachers, and with both parents in that profession it was unsurprising that this mother-of-two also taught ... a teacher of teachers at Mico College (est.1835), the oldest teacher-training institution in the Western Hemisphere ...

... Ivy-league you might say ...

... church and hospital committees, volunteer endeavours, raising two boys in a rapidly growing society .... wife, mother, daughter, sister, nation-builder ... complete the picture of selfless service to God, kin and country ...

... there are indelible memories of the heady Michael Manley era which transformed the minds of the nation before and after the landmark 1972 election ... the political maelstrom was at once exciting and promising as it was foreboding and fractious, resulting in new realities of greater self-awareness, devalued currency and passionate pride in the ever-expanding global footprint some now call Brand Jamaica ... warts and all ... the memories of the same period for Miss Ivy carry adjectives more suited to her perspective which by this point had become more focussed on futures for her sons than collective infrastructures ...














... by the time the seventies had blown by the photos were boasting color, bigger hair and our maturing-yet-ageless protagonists were on the move ... part of the destiny of a small place is to look beyond its borders and spread out ... this is not a phenomenon that can be linked solely to political weather or a single generation ... the common binding factor has to be a search for betterment, an umbrella phrase that encompasses all reasons for emigration ... and like her mother before her, another Miss Ivy, the Dominion of Canada, warts and all, was chosen as a new frontier with new opportunities ...












... how you approach challenges is part of the legacy you leave ... Ivy senior was as unflappable as the Dalai Lama and just as jovial ... while Ivy junior proved to be resilient, resourceful and intrepid enough to start anew as an overqualified clerical temp en-route to an almost year-long Swiss-appointed mental health consultancy in Namibia at the behest of the United Nations ...

... the countdown to the millenium was speeding up and no-one knew definitively what the year 2000 would look like ... Ivy senior went to meet her maker before the big party and the rest of us will forever be trying to match her spirit and sense of humor ... she herself, as a music fan and popular-culture afficionado, would have gotten a huge kick out of pre-eminent dancehall personality Rodney Price a.k.a. Bounty Killer, Warlord or ... Miss Ivy Last Son ... and his mother, you guessed it ... Miss Ivy ...

... for my mother the millennium brought a well earned retirement within which all her talents from classroom and workplace still work in tandem with her spiritual strength in service of community and her sons and their children ...

... in retrospect, this is the chat that would probably have spewed forth if I met Halle and she had seemed remotely interested ... the description of the matriarchy that nurtured me ... the tale of the Dandridge look-alike and her mother ... the men with whom they made homes ... the life stories that informed rock-solid faith, strength to raise families while aging gracefully and productively ... Halle might have called for security ...

... I can hear the mama-mantra ... "the Lord works in mysterious ways my son" ... perhaps it's a good thing I never met Halle Berry then, falling as I do, somewhere on the spectrum between her two ex-husbands in appearance ... our characters never crossed paths in the movie, I didn't even go to the wrap party when filming was over ... but if I meet her now, preferably on another project, I'd still show her the old photo and for added inspiration, update it with an image of a real superhero who continues to live the full life ...