Marriage and Children
Late in life (1971), while Prime Minister, he quietly married Margaret Sinclair, a young woman thirty years his junior. They were incompatible, for her image of Trudeau-as-romantic-playboy was based entirely on false media hype; he was actually a workaholic and an intense intellectual with little time for family or fun, and she suffered from bipolar depression. After three children were born they separated in 1977 and were finally divorced in 1980. Their three children are Justin, Alexandre (Sacha), and Michel (1975–1998).
When his divorce was finalized in 1984, Trudeau became the first Canadian Prime Minister to become a single parent as the result of divorce. In 1991, Trudeau became a father again, with Deborah Coyne. This was his first and only daughter, named Sarah.
Read more about this topic: Pierre Trudeau
Famous quotes containing the words marriage and/or children:
“Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the art of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated. The whole of the mind must lie wide open if we are to get the sense that the writer is communicating his experience with perfect fullness.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“Numerous studies have shown that those adults who feel the most frustrated by children—and the least competent as parents—usually have one thing in common.... They don’t know what behaviors are normal and appropriate for children at different stages of development. This leads them to misinterpret their children’s natural behaviors and to have inappropriate expectations, both for their children and themselves.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)