Thanks, Andre. His Nibs grew up in Westmount, in Montreal, surrounded by gazillions of bourgeois, so that was probably his reference. I thought he was being a bit harsh on cycling, but I cut him some slack to let him make his point about paddling; and was tickled to see that a politician would write about things like exhaustion, fulfilment & ascetics (even if he wasn't a politician at the time.)
He wasn't above stoking his own image--I thought the fringed buckskin shirt was a bit tacky, for example, esp for someone who'd paddled the Nahanni (very serious cred among canoeists, esp before there were guided tours). But then, he was a politician, and I guess his handlers told him that more people know about buckskin shirts than know about the Nahanni.
He really was his own bloke, though: used to drive around town in a 300SLR roadster (when he was in town--I think that, even as Prime Minister, he used to dash back to Montreal as often as he could.) Nice touch at the very end, too: three of his 6 pallbearers were Leonard Cohen, Jimmy Carter, and Fidel. A few years ago, I went with my daughter, when she was about 20, to the War Museum, which has a video clip of Trudeau talking with a CBC reporter at the time of the FLQ/War Measures Act crisis in 1971. It's a famous interview: the reporter says, "Just how far would you go, Mr Prime Minister?" Trudeau says, barely suppressing a shrug, "Just watch me." Meg turned to me & said, "He was some dude, eh, Dad?"
J.
