The Trudeau family was hit by an insurmountable tragedy in 1998 when Michel Truedau, the younger son of Canada’s former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, died in an avalanche. Michael was only 23 at that time. On November 13, 1998, Michel went on a skiing trip in the Kokanee Glacier Park, BC, with his friends. The avalanche separated the group and Michel was swept away. His friends were aliveHis body was never found. A memorial service was held a week later in Quebec.Nearly 10 months after Michel’s death, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police made an attempt to search again for the body and they sent a dive team in Kokanee Lake, but they were not successful even after a month of endless searching. They said before starting the search that it was possible that his body might never be found because divers could only go down to a depth of 30 meters but the lake was 91 meters deep at the center.Trudeau’s family called off the search and erected a chalet nearby as a memorial to Michel. The family said he was destined to rest ar Kokanee Lake.His mother Margaret Trudeau and brother Justin Trudeau started working towards raising awareness about avalanche safety.
‘My father was never the same man’
In 2014, when Justin Trudeau was at the peak of his political career but not the Prime Minister yet, he published his memoir ‘Common Ground’ where he relived the pain that the Trudeaus went through when Michel died. He wrote that he felt guilt the day his brother died because at that time, he was living in BC, working as a substitute teacher at Pinetree Secondary School. On Friday the 13th, he finished his work, came to his apartment, had dinner and went to bed unaware that his brother had died. The next morning, he received a call from his mother and immediately knew it was about one of his brothers. Justin has another younger brother, Alexandre Trudeau.“I went numb, my heart sank, and my blood ran cold,” he wrote in his memoir. He added that Pierre Trudeau was never the same man after Michel’s death and his mother endured horrific, debilitating grief. “A few years before his death, Michel had been idly watching a TV documentary about burial rites in Asia when he stated, matter-of-factly, ‘When it’s my turn, just leave me down at the mountain where I lie’,” Justin Trudeau narrated the prophetic words that Michel said to him. “His comments proved to be prescient: divers would never find his body, and he is there to this day.”Justin Trudeau was born in 1971, Alexandre in 1973 and Michel in 1975. Michel was given his nickname Miche by Fidel Castro during Pierre and Margaret’s official visit to Cuba in 1976.
