Harbourfront Centre - Fresh Ground new works

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Pierre Elliott Trudeau has been analyzed, criticized, and celebrated as a statesman, a believer in federalism, and a champion of bilingualism and multiculturalism. But he was also iconic — the closest figure to a pop star/cult object that Canada has thus far generated. Even those who distrust his politics and hate his vision, agree, with poet Irving Layton, that Trudeau was the first Canadian politician worth assassinating.

But all of the bios and editorials and scholarly essays and movies miss—always miss—one essential aspect of the man: his internationalism, his cosmopolitanism, his refusal to restrict his ideas and energies to either Canada or Québec.

"In Trudeau: Long March/Shining Path, I want to stage the multicultural Trudeau, the man who declared himself a citoyen du monde, who broke bread with Mao Zedong, who shouted "Viva, Castro!", who hung out with Norman Manley, and who lived out the multicultural dream he loved in Montreal.

This Trudeau is the one who appealed to—appeals to—the 'third force' in Canadian life, the ethnocultural and/or 'visible' Canadians, and this Trudeau is the one I want to hear singing jazz tunes inflected with Chinese, Latin, Québecois, Jamaican, African, and South Asian flourishes...

I want us to see an Andy Warhol-coloured Trudeau — vivid, vibrant, vivacious."

— George Elliott Clarke

The Collaborators

George Elliott Clarke, Project Lead : librettist
D. D. Jackson: Composer
Graham Cozzubbo: Director

Commissioned in 2006

Presented as part of World Stage 07
April 14, 2007

To date, a generous group of visionary donors have supported the creation of 19 new commissions. We would like to thank the following supporters of the Fresh Ground new works commissioning programme for their leadership and continued support of artists: Peter Allen, William J. S. Boyle, Lionel F. Conacher and Joan Dea, Margaret and Jim Fleck, Michael and Sonja Koerner, Judy and Wil Matthews, George E. Myhal, Sonja Smits and Seaton McLean; and grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the J.P. Bickell Foundation.