Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Trudeau, Margaret
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
10 Sep. 1948 -
History
Born Margaret Joan Sinclair, Margaret Trudeau is the former wife of the late Pierre Trudeau. She was born in Vancouver, British Columbia to Doris Kathleen and James Sinclair, who was a former Liberal member of the Parliament of Canada, and worked as Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.
She attended Simon Fraser University (SFU), where she pursued studies in English Literature. When she was eighteen and vacationing in Hawaii she met Pierre, who was then Minister of Justice. He was taken with her, and began to pursue her.
After being elected Prime Minister in 1968, he astonished the county by marrying Margaret on March 4th, 1971, when she was only twenty-two years old. She converted to Roman Catholicism since Pierre was a Catholic. The couple proceeded to have three children: Justin, Alexandre and Michel.
Due to Pierre's constant work-related absences, their marriage began to deteriorate, and Margaret separated from Pierre in 1977. They officially divorced in 1984, and shortly after Margaret went on to marry Ottawa real-estate developer Fred Kemper, with whom she had two more children: Kyle and Alicia.
In 1998, her youngest son by Pierre, Michel, was killed in an avalanche at Kokanee Lake. Margaret suffered a mental breakdown which led to her second divorce. In 2000, when Pierre passed away, Margaret was at his bedside.
In 2006, Margaret announced that she suffers from Bipolar Disorder and that she will write a book on the subject, to be published in 2010.