OTTAWA — Even on the playground of the Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf, circa 1984, Justin Trudeau was a polarizing figure.
This was Montreal, after all, at the tail end of his father’s prime ministership. Strong feelings clung to the family name, residue of the federalist victory in Quebec’s first failed referendum on separation and the constitutional dramas that encircled it. And boys at the prestigious Jesuit school were fully apprised of the sharpest polemical takes.
“I guess kids that age are the reflection of their parents’ talk at home,” said Marc Miller, who befriended the young Trudeau when they met in advanced English at Brébeuf that year.
