Why Fidel Castro is not Justin Trudeau's dad (even though he really, really looks like him)
Tristin Hopper: For one thing, Trudeau's not tremendously discreet mother probably would have told us about it by now
The events of Freedom Convoy focused American attention on Canadian politics to a near-unprecedented degree. And in so doing, many of those Americans happened to notice that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau really, really looks like late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Given that Trudeau’s mother Margaret was a personal friend of Castro, this has led to some very understandable speculation. But Trudeau is not the love-child of a Cuban dictator and we have the receipts to prove. Watch the Everything Should Be Better video or read the transcript below to learn more.
Justin Trudeau really, really, really looks like Fidel Castro. Justin Trudeau’s mother, Margaret, knew Castro personally and the Trudeau family has a pretty weird habit of constantly praising the Castros. So the very understandable rumour is that all these things might be related. But, first, let’s remember that Justin Trudeau’s father Pierre – also a Canadian prime minister – similarly looked a lot like Castro.
Secondly, Trudeau was born on Christmas Day, 1971, which means he was conceived just a few weeks after his parents got married (try not to picture that). The Trudeaus don’t meet Fidel until 1976, when Justin was five.
Last and most importantly, Margaret Trudeau is not known for keeping secrets. Her numerous autobiographical books are filled with super-personal sex stuff. So if she’d conceived a kid with Castro, that’s probably something she would have told us about.
In the darker corners of the internet dwells a theory as outlandish as it is compelling: That the real father of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. The theory falls apart after only a cursory look at the historical evidence, but it persists for one reason alone: Justin Trudeau’s appearance is strikingly similar to that of the late Cuban dictator.
“
Preposterous!” Canadian historian Robert Wright told the National Post. (He also requested that the word ‘preposterous’ be printed in bold and italic).
Wright’s 2007 book,
Three Nights in Havana, is an account of the relationship between Castro and Pierre Trudeau.
While the Trudeaus did indeed develop an unusually cozy relationship with the Cuban dictator, Justin Trudeau was already toilet-trained by the time his mother, Margaret Trudeau, first met Castro in 1976. “Their biographies just don’t intersect at all,” said Wright.
As has been
painstakingly pointed out by the fact-checking site Snopes.com, Trudeau’s December 25, 1971, birthday means that he would have been conceived between March 16 and April 22, 1971.
Margaret and Pierre were secretly married on March 4, 1971, after which Pierre spent March and April in Ottawa on official business.
Here, for instance, is Trudeau answering a House of Commons question about pipelines on the earliest possible day that Justin could have been conceived.
Meanwhile, any personal contact between Castro and the Trudeaus was still years away. By early 1971, the only real contact between the prime minister’s office and Cuba had been a 1970 exchange of letters during the October Crisis to arrange the exile of FLQ terrorists.
The spear-fishing trips, the “Viva Castro!” speeches, the glowing descriptions in Margaret and Pierre’s autobiographies; those would all come following Pierre and Margaret Trudeau’s first meeting with Castro in 1976.
Thus, the only feasible way Castro could have fathered Justin Trudeau is if a 22-year-old Margaret Trudeau slipped away from her new husband in order to stage an unprotected tryst with a random communist leader she had never met.
Advertisement 6
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
Article content
And keep in mind that Margaret Trudeau — the glamorous, surprise new wife of the prime minister — had suddenly become the most talked-about woman in Canada. In those first weeks, her every move was closely followed by the press. Any secret Cuban affairs would have required to evade both the most powerful man in the country and a media hungry for all things Margaret.
Meanwhile, a mere nine years since the Cuban missile crisis, it’s not like Castro lived a life free from outside scrutiny, either. The Castro/Trudeau conspiracy theory, which arose late last year, has been appearing mainly on right-wing and pro-Donald Trump internet forums. It’s become a kind of miniature version of the “birther” theory, the false (but popular) belief that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and thus ineligible for the presidency.
Advertisement 7
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
Article content
For those who already hate the Liberal leader, it appears to be somewhat comforting to think that his veins are coursing with the blood of an oppressive, communist demagogue. “So this is why I despise Trudeau so much. Guess my instincts are always on point,” wrote one enthusiastic endorsement of the theory on a Reddit forum.
It’s also offered by way of explaining the Trudeau family’s eerie closeness with Castro. Upon Castro’s death in November, Prime Minister Trudeau attracted international condemnation for issuing a glowing statement that
completely glossed over Cuban human rights abuses.
But it would not be the first time that Canada has had a prime minister who was the virtual doppelganger of another national leader.
Advertisement 8
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
Article content
Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, bore an uncanny resemblance to British Conservative politician Benjamin Disraeli, who became U.K. prime minister one year after the 1867 creation of Canada.
Macdonald on the left, Disraeli on the right. PHOTO BY POSTMEDIA FILE
Reportedly, Macdonald’s
attendance at Disraeli’s 1881 funeral even spooked fellow mourners.
And Pierre isn’t all that dissimilar-looking from Castro, either. While Fidel was spared Pierre Trudeau’s hair loss, early photos of the pair do indeed look like they could be brothers.
A young Pierre Trudeau on the left, a young Fidel Castro on the right. PHOTO BY FILE
But perhaps the most important factor in all this is that nobody has ever accused Margaret Trudeau of being discreet.
In various books and interviews following her 1977 separation from Trudeau, she’s freely revealed her own drug use, Pierre’s weird sexual habits and her dalliances with everyone from Jack Nicholson to Edward Kennedy.
“Unfortunately, when I look back on it now, I think I should have slept with every single one of them,” she
told a mental health conference in 2008 about her 1977 meeting with the Rolling Stones. “I should have had so much fun but I didn’t.”
If there was indeed some kind of secret, cross-border affair with an authoritarian Western pariah, it just seems like one of those things that she would have mentioned by now.
Tristin Hopper: For one thing, Trudeau's not tremendously discreet mother probably would have told us about it by now
nationalpost.com
