Joseph Charles-Émile Trudeau

J.C.E. Trudeau was a Montreal lawyer and businessman. He became the vice-president and principal shareholder of the Montreal Royals Baseball Club. He was also the father of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau.

Joseph Charles-Émile Trudeau was a successful French Canadian entrepreneur, father of Pierre Trudeau, and grandfather of Justin Trudeau, both of whom later became Prime Minister of Canada.

Charles-Émile Trudeau was born in Saint-Michel-de-Napierville, Quebec, the son of Marie-Malvina Cardinal and Joseph-Louis Trudeau, a Quebec farmer. He married Grace Elliott, the daughter of a prominent entrepreneur, Phillip-Armstrong Elliott (1859–1936), and his wife Sarah-Rebecca Sauve (1857–1899), and had four children. Charles-Émile Trudeau was considered gregarious, boisterous and extravagant.

Charles-Émile Trudeau, a lawyer by training, accumulated a fortune by building a number of gas stations around the Montreal area. Among his investments, Trudeau had interests in mining companies and was a shareholder and a member of the Board of Directors of the Montreal Royals baseball team. He also had a financial interest in Montreal's Belmont Park.

He died in 1935 in Orlando, Florida. Due to Charles Trudeau's business, Pierre Trudeau himself inherited wealth. Charles Trudeau also served as a more personal inspiration to the Prime Minister. As Jim Coutts, Pierre Trudeau's aide, recalled, Pierre Trudeau "talked, at times, of his father, whom he greatly admired, but who was too busy to understand his son's interests or spend much time with him.

1. Memoirs, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1993
2. Jump up ^ Trudeaumania: A Swinger for Prime Minister | CBC Archives at archives.cbc.ca
3. Jump up ^ The General Star at www.jdgravenor.com
4. Jump up ^ Jim Coutts, "Trudeau in Power: A View from Inside the Prime Minister's Office," in Trudeau's Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, eds. Andrew Cohen and JL Granatstein, Vintage Canada, 1999, page 146.