Last Tuesday evening I had dinner with Margaret Trudeau who spoke at our Bottom Line Conference on Wednesday. There were 7 of us and I sat right across from Ms. Trudeau.

I didn’t quite know what to think. I remember pictures of her wedding and how she seemed to be an aging flower child – by aging, I mean over 18 and how photogenic she was. She was drop dead gorgeous but I tended to think she was empty headed. Like all of us, I suppose, I knew about the break-up of the Trudeau marriage, how Margaret had married again, had two more children and divorced again. I remember her grief at the loss of her son Michel and her grief again when Pierre Trudeau died. I wondered just what the conference had got for the speech and the luncheon called, I’m very proud to say, the Rafe Mair luncheon.

I met a truly remarkable woman. Still strikingly beautiful at 59 she is also intelligent, extremely well spoken and very witty. At the luncheon she told us about how much she loved Pierre and how much she hated living in 24 Sussex Drive. There she was 22, married to a man of 50 who was seldom home. Margaret tells of wanting to scream “I want to iron something … or cook something … or buy the groceries!” She had no help for her duties as “First Lady and had to deal with thousands of letters and faxes.

She spoke of her breakdown and the breakup of her marriage and she, with considerable humour, related her problems with drugs and alcohol.

It was an unusual speech because it had no real beginning nor discernible ending but in a metaphoric way, that describes Margaret Trudeau. She now has a full speaking diary, many for the Canadian Mental Health Association.

I now know what I think of her – a gutsy woman whose peccadilloes were front page, first on the evening news, and who now, having been through the hoops of care, medicines, compulsory hospital and conflicts with the law, who has matured into a superb asset for the mental health community.

Our conference could have done no better.