The resignation of Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister of Canada—or, at least, as the leader of the Liberal Party, until a new leader is chosen, which will amount to the same thing—took place this morning in front of the Prime Ministerial residence in Ottawa. It was a very Canadian setting, with the soon-departing figure of the still young Trudeau wearing an overcoat and gloves, and the smoky breath of winter rising from his mouth as he talked. He spoke in French and then in English and back again and, for Canadians abroad, there was something oddly moving in the easy bilingualism of the occasion. Taken as utterly normal in Canada, it still signals a remarkable and too easily taken for granted co-existence of two “founding peoples” that dates back to the early nineteenth century and the country’s beginnings. Canada, from far away, has always seemed the model liberal country, and this multiculturalism—extended since to the many ethnic tiles of the “Canadian mosaic”—is part of it.
