Law Professor Enters Politics
An associate professor of law at the Université de Montréal from 1961 to 1965, Trudeau's views evolved towards a liberal position in favour of individual rights counter to the state and made him an opponent of Quebec nationalism. In economic theory he was influenced by professors Joseph Schumpeter and John Kenneth Galbraith while he was at Harvard. Trudeau criticized the Liberal Party of Lester Pearson when it supported arming Bomarc missiles in Canada with nuclear warheads. Nevertheless, he was persuaded to join the party in 1965, together with his friends Gérard Pelletier and Jean Marchand. These "three wise men" ran successfully for the Liberals in the 1965 election. Trudeau himself was elected in the safe Liberal riding of Mount Royal, in western Montreal, succeeding House Speaker Alan Macnaughton. He would hold this seat until his retirement from politics in 1984, winning each election with large majorities.
Upon arrival in Ottawa, Trudeau was appointed as Prime Minister Lester Pearson's parliamentary secretary, and spent much of the next year travelling abroad, representing Canada at international meetings and events, including the UN. In 1967, he was appointed to Pearson's cabinet as Minister of Justice.
Read more about this topic: Pierre Trudeau
Famous quotes containing the words law, professor, enters and/or politics:
“It grieves me to think how far more profound and reverent a respect the law would have for literature if a body could only get drunk on it.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Dr. Scofield’s equipment, which you have just seen, radiated waves direct to Professor Houghland’s laboratory. When these waves came in contact with those the professor’s equipment was radiating, they created the interstellar frequency, which is the death ray.”
—Joseph O’Donnell, and Clifford Sanforth. Arthur Perry (Bela Lugosi)
“Beside all the moral benefit which we may expect from the farmer’s profession, when a man enters it considerately, this promised the conquering of the soil, plenty, and beyond this, the adorning of the country with every advantage and ornament which labor, ingenuity, and affection for a man’s home, could suggest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.”
—George Washington (1732–1799)