Working the Dead Beat by Sandra Martin Page A

included Alberta and Quebec — resolved to fight it in the courts, in their legislatures, and in London.
    By April 1981, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia, the two provinces that had stayed on the sidelines, had aligned themselves with their disaffected counterparts to form a “Gang of Eight” in opposition to the prime minister. Then, in September, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Ottawa’s proposal, while legal, was unconstitutional because it violated traditional conventions. That forced Trudeau back to the negotiating table one more time, setting the scene for a High Noon confrontation with his old foe Lévesque and the Gang of Eight.
    The weary combatants met in Ottawa early in November. After two days of wrangling, a frustrated Trudeau offered to take the amending formula and the Charter in a referendum to the people. Lévesque broke from the Gang of Eight to accept the referendum, a compromise that he later realized was a tactical error. Later that same evening of Wednesday November 5, some provincial premiers and their bureaucrats got together to hammer out a compromise, in which they offered to accept Trudeau’s Charter with the inclusion of a notwithstanding clause in exchange for Ottawa accepting their amending formula. They presented this proposal to all the first ministers the following morning. With some modifications, Trudeau agreed, but Lévesque accused his fellow gang members of betrayal and stomped out. (This quickly gave rise to the myth of “The Night of the Long Knives,” which in turn prompted Brian Mulroney’s subsequent attempts to get Quebec’s signature through the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords.)
    Over the next weeks, all but Quebec made modifications to the patriation package, which was then sent to Westminster, where it was duly approved by the British Parliament. Later Trudeau wrote in his Memoirs : “I always said it was thanks to three women that we were eventually able to reform our Constitution. The Queen, who was favourable, Margaret Thatcher, who undertook to do everything that our Parliament asked of her, and Jean Wadds [a former Progressive Conservative MP who had been appointed High Commissioner to the United Kingdom by the government of Joe Clark in 1979], who represented the interests of Canada so well in London.”
    The Queen and Prince Philip travelled to Canada to sign the act into law on April 17, 1982. Wearing a teal-blue coat and matching hat with a jaunty tassel, she sat outdoors at a small wooden table on Parliament Hill for all her subjects to observe her signing the final act that would symbolize the independence and maturity of Canada as a sovereign nation. Trudeau, bare-headed and wearing a morning suit, sat at the head of the low table, holding down the parchment in a sudden gust as his sovereign picked up the pen and signed her name.
    â€œWhat we are celebrating today,” he told the crowd, “is not so much the completion of our task but the renewal of our hope, not so much an ending but a fresh beginning.” Of all the images of Trudeau the statesman, this is the one where he looks most carefree. There was no hint of a mocking pirouette, although he couldn’t resist executing one at the airport after the Queen’s plane rose into the sky for her return flight to London.
    The Prime Minister in Retirement
    AFTER TRUDEAU STEPPED down as prime minister on June 30, 1984, he returned to Montreal, the law, and private life. He emerged twice as the solitary warrior stalking the battlefield of constitutional wars.
    The first time, he sabotaged Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s attempt through the Meech Lake Accord — endorsed by ten provincial premiers on April 30, 1987 — to have Quebec belatedly sign on to the patriated constitution. The Accord offered Quebec status as a “distinct society” and a constitutional veto (a right also demanded by the other provinces), among other