Connect with us

World

Canadian PM, Justin Trudeau, Wife, Sophie Announce Separation

Published

on

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, have decided to separate, according to statements posted online by both of them.

“Sophie and I would like to share the fact that after many meaningful and difficult conversations, we have made the decision to separate,” Trudeau wrote in a message posted to his Instagram account.

Trudeau, 51, and Grégoire, 48, were married in May 2005 and have three children together: two sons, Xavier, 15, and Hadrien, nine, and one daughter, 14-year-old Ella-Grace.

“As always, we remain a close family with deep love and respect for each other and for everything we have built and will continue to build,” Trudeau and Grégoire Trudeau wrote in identical messages. “For the well-being of our children, we ask that you respect our and their privacy.”

Grégoire Trudeau, a former television presenter, has been a prominent presence at Trudeau’s side throughout his political career and became a public figure in her own right as an advocate for several charitable and social causes, including mental health and gender equality.

According to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office, Trudeau and Grégoire Trudeau have “signed a legal separation agreement.”

“They have worked to ensure that all legal and ethical steps with regards to their decision to separate have been taken, and will continue to do so moving forward,” Trudeau’s office said.

“They remain a close family and Sophie and the Prime Minister are focused on raising their kids in a safe, loving and collaborative environment.  Both parents will be a constant presence in their children’s lives and Canadians can expect to often see the family together. The family will be together on vacation, beginning next week.”

According to a source with knowledge of the arrangements, Grégoire Trudeau has moved to a separate home in Ottawa and the prime minister will remain at Rideau Cottage. Grégoire Trudeau will also spend time at Rideau Cottage, where their children are expected to live most of the time, and the Trudeaus will share parenting responsibilities, according to the source. Trudeau is expected to speak publicly this week before leaving on vacation with his family.

Trudeau’s parents — former prime minister Pierre Trudeau and Margaret Trudeau — famously separated in 1977. The announcement of Trudeau and Grégoire Trudeau’s separation was extensively covered by international media on Wednesday.

Dominic LeBlanc, a cabinet minister and childhood friend of Trudeau’s, was expected to brief Liberal MPs about the situation on Wednesday afternoon.

As first reported by the National Post, a source confirms that Grégoire Trudeau will no longer take on any official duties and she will not be provided with government staff to manage her own personal appearances.

As recounted in his autobiography, Common Ground, Trudeau and Grégoire Trudeau began dating in 2003. Grégoire Trudeau, the daughter of a stockbroker and a nurse, was a former schoolmate of Trudeau’s late brother, Michel.

The couple became engaged in 2004 and married each other a year later during a ceremony at Montreal’s Sainte-Madeleine d’Outremont church — “by Canadian standards, a sweet and appropriately understated fairy-tale wedding,” was how a writer for Maclean’s described it.

‘Our marriage isn’t perfect’

Both Trudeau and Grégoire Trudeau spoke at times candidly about their relationship and the challenges of marriage.

“Our marriage isn’t perfect, and we have had difficult ups and downs, yet Sophie remains my best friend, my partner, my love,” Trudeau wrote in Common Ground, which was published in 2014.

Grégoire Trudeau told an interviewer in 2015 that “no marriage is easy.”

“I’m almost kind of proud of the fact that we’ve had hardship, yes, because we want authenticity. We want truth,” she said. “We want to grow closer as individuals through our lifetime and we’re both dreamers and we want to be together for as long as we can.”

Trudeau launched his political career in 2007, when he decided to seek the Liberal Party nomination in the Montreal riding of Papineau. After winning there in 2008 and 2011, Trudeau began to consider seeking the Liberal leadership. The decision, he wrote, would ultimately come down to “a deeply personal private discussion between Sophie and me.”

“We had many long, honest talks that summer,” Trudeau recalled. “I wanted to be sure she knew, from my own  experience, just how rough that life can be. I recalled for Sophie that my father had once told me I should never feel compelled to run for office. ‘Our family has done enough,’ he said.”

His father said that, Trudeau noted, “despite having never experienced the incessant, base vitriol of twenty-first-century politics.”

“I welcome a good tussle, and my skin is thick, but I had grown up in the reality of public life,” Trudeau wrote. “Sophie had not, and our decision would affect our kids, in some ways, more than either of us.”

In an interview in 2008, Grégoire Trudeau said that when she met Trudeau, “politics was not impossible, but it was not in the short-term or the mid-term plan.”

“But an opportunity came up, and we felt that if we weren’t going to embark on this adventure, a part of us would be selfish with the voice that we have and the opportunities that are given to us,” she said.

In Common Ground, Trudeau credits Grégoire Trudeau with “profoundly” influencing his style of politics and for helping keep him grounded.

“Sometimes it’s easy for people who have made politics their livelihood to get caught up in the heat of battle and forget about their personal values. Sophie never does, and no matter how intense things get, she makes sure I don’t either,” Trudeau wrote.

Personal lives generally private matters

The personal lives of prime ministers are generally treated as private matters. But Pierre Trudeau’s relationship with Margaret Sinclair — including  their marriage in 1971 and their separation in 1977 was highly publicized. Trudeau was the first prime minister to get married while in office and also the first to publicly separate from his partner. Margaret Trudeau later disclosed her long struggle with mental illness.

Justin Trudeau, who was born nine months after his parents wed, experienced their divorce as a young child and he wrote at length about those years in Common Ground. Trudeau said that much of what was written about his parent’s relationship was “lurid and inaccurate.”

“From my perspective today, the commonly held story of my parents’ marital breakdown is nothing but a caricature, because my father was not just the tradition-bound diehard he appeared and my mother was not entirely the totally free spirit that her actions suggest,” Trudeau wrote.

“Things are never that simple, especially with a couple as complex as my parents, and I remain amused by and exasperated with those who view their relationship — all the passion, triumph, achievements, and tragedy — in black and white, seeing it merely as a flawed union between a cool and aloof man and an exuberant and uninhibited younger woman. It was that, but also much more.”

Source: CBC News

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

World

Trump Gives Iran Two Weeks Ultimatum to Negotiate or Face Imminent Strike

Published

on

By

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, on Friday, warned that Iran has a “maximum” of two weeks to avoid possible US air strikes, indicating he could take a decision before the fortnight deadline he set a day earlier.

Trump added that he is not inclined to stop Israel attacking Iran because it was “winning,” and was dismissive of European efforts to mediate an end to the conflict.

“I’m giving them a period of time, and I would say two weeks would be the maximum,” Trump told reporters when asked if he could decide to strike Iran before that.

He added that the aim was to “see whether or not people come to their senses.”

Trump had said in a statement on Thursday that he would “make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks” because there was a “substantial chance of negotiations” with Iran.

Those comments had been widely seen as opening a two-week window for negotiations to end the war between Israel and Iran, with the European powers rushing to talks with Tehran.

But his latest remarks indicated Trump could still make his decision before that if he feels that there has been no progress towards dismantling Iran’s nuclear program.

Trump meanwhile dismissed talks that European powers Britain, France, Germany and the EU had with Iran’s foreign minister in Geneva on Friday.

“They didn’t help,” he said as he arrived in Morristown, New Jersey, ahead of a fundraising dinner at his nearby golf club.

“Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said after the talks in Geneva that Tehran would not resume negotiations with the United States until Israel stopped its attacks.

But Trump was reluctant.

“It’s very hard to make that request right now,” Trump said.

“If somebody’s winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody’s losing, but we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens.”

Trump meanwhile doubled down on his claims that Iran is weeks away from being able to produce a nuclear bomb, despite divisions in his own administration about the intelligence behind his assessment.

Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, said in a report in March that Iran was not close to having enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.

“She’s wrong,” Trump said of Gabbard, a longtime opponent of US foreign intervention whom Trump tapped to coordinate the sprawling US spy community.

Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

Continue Reading

Middle East

Israel kills Iranian Armed Forces Chief Two Days after Appointment

Published

on

By

The Israel Defense Force has announced the elimination of Major General Ali Shadmani, the Commander of the Khatam-al Anbiya Central Headquarters of the Iranian General Staff.

He was just appointed to the position two days ago by Iranian Supreme-Leader Major Ali Khamenei,

He was appointed after the assassination on Friday of the previous Commander, Major General Gholam Ali Rashid, in an Israeli strike on Tehran.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he believes that neutralising Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would not escalate the conflict in the Middle East but instead bring it to an end.

Netanyahu made the controversial remarks during an interview with ABC News on Monday, saying that previous U.S. concerns about targeting Iran’s leadership were misplaced.

“It’s not going to escalate the conflict, it’s going to end the conflict,” he said, alluding to reports that the former U.S. President Donald Trump had rejected similar suggestions out of fear of provoking further instability.

The Israeli leader blamed Tehran for decades of unrest, stating, “We’ve had half a century of conflict spread by this regime that terrorises everyone in the Middle East… What Israel is doing is preventing this, bringing an end to this aggression.”

When asked if Israel would directly target Ayatollah Khamenei, Netanyahu responded cryptically, “I’m not going to get into the details, but we’ve targeted their top nuclear scientists. It’s basically Hitler’s nuclear team.”

The interview comes amid escalating violence between the two regional rivals. On Monday, Iran fired another round of missiles at northern Israel, triggering air raid sirens throughout the region.

In retaliation, Iranian state media warned of what it described as “the largest and most intense missile attack in history on Israeli soil.”

As tensions soar, Netanyahu reaffirmed Israel’s commitment to defending its sovereignty: “We can only do so by standing up to the forces of evil. We’re doing what we need to do.”

Continue Reading

Middle East

Netanyahu Incites Iranians to Rise Against Country’s ‘Evil, Oppressive Regime’

Published

on

By

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called on Iranians Friday to unite against what he described as an “evil and oppressive regime”, telling them Israel was engaged in “one of the greatest military operations in history”.

“The time has come for the Iranian people to unite around its flag and its historic legacy, by standing up for your freedom from the evil and oppressive regime,” Netanyahu said in a video statement after Israel struck over 200 military and nuclear sites in the Islamic republic.

“We are in the midst of one of the greatest military operations in history, Operation Rising Lion,” he added.

“As we achieve our objective, we are also clearing the path for you to achieve your freedom,” he said, referring to Israeli strikes that hit targets across Iran, including nuclear sites, killing several top military commanders and nuclear scientists.

“The regime does not know what hit them, or what will hit them. It has never been weaker,” Netanyahu said in his video published shortly after a salvo of Iranian missiles reached Israel.

“Our fight is against the murderous Islamic regime that oppresses and impoverishes you,” he said, adding: “This is your opportunity to stand up and let your voices be heard.”

Netanyahu also promised that “more is on the way”, having said earlier that Israel’s attack on Iran would “continue for as many days as it takes”.

Iran called the attack “a declaration of war” and threatened to retaliate by opening “the gates of hell” on Israel.

It first sent about 100 drones towards Israel, many of which were intercepted before reaching the country.

The drones were followed by dozens of missiles, some of which caused physical damage in Israeli cities, and injured at least seven people, according to first responders.

Continue Reading

Trending