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On these days John and Yoko travelled to Montreal, where they gave a press conference, and to Ottawa, where they met Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. The Ono Lennons were taken with the PM, then a youthful 50, and afterward John said:
We spent about 50 minutes together, which was longer than he had spent with any head of state. If all politicians were like Mr. Trudeau there would be world peace.
Trudeau was sort of the Canadian equivalent of JFK, a glamorous enough figure to have once had a serious relationship with Barbra Streisand. But the woman he married, Margaret, was not exactly Jackie O; she cracked a bit under the pressures of public life. Says Wikipedia,
[Margaret] Trudeau smuggled drugs in the prime minister’s luggage, made scantily-clad appearances at Studio 54, and tore apart a quilt made by Canadian conceptual artist Joyce Wieland on the wall in the prime-minister’s official residence in Ottawa because it celebrated “reason over passion.” (Her husband’s personal motto was “Reason before passion.”)
Over time, the marriage disintegrated to the point, as recounted in her book, Trudeau had an affair with US Senator Ted Kennedy. She was also associated with members of the Rolling Stones, including Ronnie Wood and, according to Keith Richards’s autobiography, Life, Mick Jagger.
At the time of this writing, Pierre and Margaret’s son Justin is himself prime minister — that’s him in the middle above. A few years ago, rumors that Justin is actually the son of Fidel Castro — supposedly another of his mother’s paramours — were persistent enough that the government was moved to officially deny them. Snopes.com pours icy cold Canadian water on this idea, pointing out that Castro never visited Canada and the Trudeaus didn’t go to Cuba until several years after Justin was born. But it does offer this composite picture, which oddly enough ends up looking exactly like Klay Thompson:
And I’m realizing that we’ve wandered pretty far afield from anything having to do with The Beatles, so ta-ta for now. Happy Festivus, everybody.