He was almost a decade away from becoming prime minister but the two RCMP constables on surveillance duty that January night seemed to have no difficulty recognizing Pierre Trudeau, even if they misspelled his name. The Mounties in the shadows diligently noted he was among eight people who entered a Montreal home in the early evening 60 years ago from Jan. 16. A four-page RCMP memo says Pierre Elliot Trudeau (the constable who wrote up the report omitted the second ’t' in Elliott) arrived at the home of artist Jean Palardy, who lived in an apartment not far from Mount Royal. The declassified, though still heavily censored, memo provides a glimpse into the workings of the national police force’s attentive Cold War security apparatus.
OTTAWA—He was almost a decade away from becoming prime minister but the two RCMP constables on surveillance duty that January night seemed to have no difficulty recognizing Pierre Trudeau, even if they misspelled his name.
The Mounties in the shadows diligently noted he was among eight people who entered a Montreal home in the early evening 60 years ago from Jan. 16.
