Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Ramsay Cook were friends for nearly four decades. A passion for the intellectual life drew them together but their friendship focused more on politics once Trudeau became prime minister. In The Teeth of Time Cook reflects on his relationship with Trudeau and the tensions created when one friend achieves political power and the other struggles to find the balance among his roles as detached scholar and teacher, involved citizen, and personal friend.
Trudeau, the most intellectual of Canadian prime ministers, turned to Cook, an illustrious historian and a speech-writer during the 1968 election campaign, for his trusted views. Cook's revealing memoir also traces how public affairs and the central political themes of Trudeau's reign – nationalism, federalism, and constitutional reform – continued to drive their relationship after Trudeau's resignation in 1984.
"The Teeth of Time: is taken from "The New Faces" by W.B. Yeats, a poem that is a declaration of abiding friendship:
Where we wrought that shall break the teeth of Time ...
Our shadows rove the garden gravel still,
The living seem more shadowy than they.
In a friendship that bridged the world of politics and the intellectual world of academia, what Cook and Trudeau wrought will outlast the teeth of time.
Review quotes
“a fascinating exploration of the careers of two men who sought to explain Quebec to English-speaking Canada, one as historian, one as politician, and both as public intellectuals.”
Matthew Hayday, University of Guelph
" Their [Cook and Trudeau’s] intellectual friendship grew out of cerebral telepathy, a shared view of their country as both bicultural and united, which saw no contradiction between duality and strength...The Cook-Trudeau entente was long lasting and based on shared ideas.” - Ged Martin, National University of Ireland, The Round Table
Ramsay Cook was awarded the 2005 Canada Council Molson Prize in the Social Sciences and Humanities. He is the author of Watching Quebec and general editor of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography/Dictionnaire biographique du Canada. He is adjunct professor, history, University of Toronto, and professor emeritus, York University.
