After completing his studies and enjoying an extended trip around the world in the late 1940s, Trudeau returned to his native country to find the authoritarian regime of his childhood—Quebec was then led by Maurice Duplessis and the ecclesiastical establishment—still in power, much to his disappointment. Determined to bring about democratic change in Quebec society and politics, Trudeau helped found Cité Libre ("Free City"), an intellectual journal of opinion that became an articulate voice for the growing liberal movement in Quebec. In 1961, he became a law professor at

the University of Montreal, and in 1965, joined the Liberal Party and won election to the House of Commons.

From 1985 on, Trudeau was a senior consultant in the Montreal law firm of Heenan, Blaikie. He spent the rest of his life out of the public eye, avoiding interviews and public appearances. Trudeau was a man whose personal life had once provided fodder for international gossip columns—he dated celebrities such as Barbra Streisand and the actress Margot Kidder, and in 1971 married the rock photographer Margaret Sinclair. Thirty years her husband’s junior, Margaret Trudeau led a much-scrutinized life as the wife of the prime minister, a friend of Mick Jagger and other rock and pop celebrities, and a fixture at Studio 54, the notorious New York nightclub, during the 1970s. The couple had three sons, Justin, Sacha, and Michel, before divorcing in 1984. Trudeau later had a daughter, Sarah, with Deborah Coyne, an attorney. In 1998, Trudeau mourned the death of his youngest son, Michel, a microbiologist and ski instructor who died at the age of 23 in an avalanche in British Columbia.

Trudeau lost power for nine months in 1979 and early 1980 when Joe Clark, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, defeated him. He regained his seat as prime minister by March 1980, after René Lévesque, one of the foremost leaders of the separatist cause, organized a referendum on the issue of Quebec’s independence and unintentionally strengthened support for Trudeau among those Canadians who missed his strong voice against separatism and for nationalism.

In a Canadian Press-Broadcast News poll of news editors and broadcaster

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