Coutts eye view: Diaries of principal secretary give glimpse of Trudeau in real time

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On the night of May 22, 1979, the prime minister of Canada was getting his three boys ready for bed. It was election day, and hours later Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s embattled Liberal government would fall to Joe Clark’s Tories — but at the moment family was priority.

Trudeau’s principal secretary Jim Coutts had arrived at 24 Sussex Drive at 7.30p.m. And it is from an entry in Coutts’s newly published diaries that we are able to relive that evening.

“PM was in blue jeans and T-shirt. He was busy putting the kids to bed. We talked for a while with his kids. Justin was quite nervous about the evening and he was upset that he forgot a joke that his father had taught him. He was clearly tense about the election results, but his father was terrific with him and said that he would wake him up and tell him what had happened.”

By the time that B.C. results started trickling in, it was clear to those assembled in the living room that the Liberals were out of power. “PM then got up from the sofa and said, ‘Turn that TV off so we can talk. Is there anyone here who doesn’t think that I should go down to the hotel and end this quickly?’”

That moment displayed Trudeau, who sometimes fell prey to indecision, at his most pragmatic. But it also ushered in a major chapter in Canadian history, a chapter of high-wire drama that would see a reluctant Trudeau remain as party leader and, in so doing, change the face of the country. And these long-suppressed diaries now provide a unique behind-the-scenes look at how it happened.

“I think Jim had a sense, almost of duty, of being a stenographer of history,” says award-winning journalist Ron Graham who has edited them for publication. “There’s the fact that he was doing them every night after these long horrendous days of meetings. They are very fluid, very intelligent and fair-minded. With the people he describes, he’s both pro and con — but accurate, I think, and that includes Trudeau.”

The name of Jim Coutts is almost forgotten today, but this disarming red-suspendered young Liberal from southern Alberta would become one of the most powerful men in Canada during his six years as Trudeau’s principal secretary. This new volume — The Coutts Diaries: Power, Politics and Pierre Trudeau 1973-1981 — shows why. He was both revered and reviled — “Machiavelli masquerading as a cherub” was the verdict of one journalist — but Coutts, revealed here as a gifted policy wonk, can tell us much about the nuts and bolts, the glories and the grievances, the egos and the rivalries — and the frequent messiness of governing Canada.

The Coutts Diaries
Edited by Ron Graham
Sutherland House

Historian Margaret Macmillan has noted that Coutts was in the room during some of Canada’s most consequential government decisions and calls his diaries “an indispensable resource.” When Coutts died in 2013, they were bequeathed to the University of Toronto’s Trinity College, with the proviso that they be closed to the public until Jan. 1, 2025.

Now, they are revealing in their portrait of a tired prime minister who had wanted to step down even before his 1979 election defeat. “I would like to spend more time with my boys,” he told Coutts in January. The aftermath of his divorce from Margaret was also taking its toll: he didn’t look forward to a campaign where he’d be “competing” with his ex-wife for headlines.

“I think Jim had a sense, almost of duty, of being a stenographer of history.”

Trudeau stayed on — and his party lost to the Conservatives. The life of the Joe Clark government proved short-lived, but whether Pierre Trudeau would continue as Liberal leader was again touch and go. He still wanted to leave.

“What the hell am I doing encouraging a man to do a job he really doesn’t want to do?” Coutts asked himself in September, 1979.

The evidence of the diaries suggests that it was an eleventh-hour intervention by Coutts that dramatically altered events. Trudeau was about to leave for a bridge-burning encounter with the media when Coutts showed up at Stornoway, the Opposition leader’s official residence.

Comments Graham: “The detail is astonishing with Jimmy running over there and convincing him to stay. Jimmy wasn’t sure which way Trudeau would go. He went upstairs and came back to say — OK, I’ll run again.”

“The consequences of that on our history are just enormous,” says Graham. Had Trudeau not stayed on, would there have been repatriation of the constitution, a Charter of Rights, or (divisive though it turned out to be), a National Energy Plan? And would a Clark government have been capable of mounting an effective campaign against a looming Quebec sovereignty referendum?

These were pivotal events in Canada’s story. They unrolled under Trudeau’s watch and — Graham suggests — because of Coutts. “Jimmy only succeeded in convincing Trudeau because he knew him so well at this point. Nobody else could have done it. Canada would probably be a different country if he hadn’t come back.”

Opinions from the front lines: Where the personal intersects with the political

Trudeau wants to step down in 1979:
“I would like to spend more time with my boys. I’m 60 — I’d like to teach them to ski and do other things before my legs give out and I get too old.”

Coutts in 1981 on U.S. President Ronald Reagan:
“He looked very much out of the past … He was full of stories and anecdotes …, I got the sinking feeling that the man is programmed to the eyebrows with short crisp notes … When he is programmed and when he can tell stories to show his program, he is in good shape. When he dives in alone on the subject, it is a disaster. It is quite a terrifying thing in many ways to see the presidency of the United States in the shape it’s in.”

Coutts on Jean Chretien in 1980:
“Jean is a decent man and a friend, but he has over the past three or four years allowed ambition and ego to overshadow some of his finer qualities of humanity, good spirit and team play.”

Trudeau tells his boys in December 1979 that he’s staying on as Liberal leader:
“He said, ‘Justin and Sacha, I am running.’
Michel said, ‘Running for what?’
‘Prime minister,’ PET said.
‘Get your running shoes on, dad,’ said Michel.”

Attending Pierre Trudeau’s funeral in 1980, Coutts had this to say about 28-year-old Justin’s eulogy:
“I questioned the political nature of Justin’s remarks. He has made himself a political figure in ten minutes. He will need a great deal of help.”