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Eleanor Roosevelt said that the role of the First Lady was not a job but rather a circumstance. For Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, it is even more oblique. She is neither the former First Lady — since Canada does not endow the prime ministerial spouse with “première dame” status — nor is she wife to Justin Trudeau, since their separation in 2023. In the wake of his resignation this week, she inhabits a curious predicament.
How better to occupy that quandary than to amplify her self-styled role as a wellness guru, mental-health expert and relationship healer? No sooner had Trudeau junior stood in great coat and gloves and offered his démission in the Ottawa snow than Mme Grégoire Trudeau, a former television anchor, was posting pictures of herself from a ski resort. In the post, she exhorted us all to better mental health via her “path to freedom.” I can categorically state that my mental health would be better if I was on a ski slope too, so I have her to thank for this observation.
The Trudeaus have always been about a certain holistic look-good, feel-good vibe. As Canada’s Liberal first couple, they incarnated the kind of hip grandiosity of the Obamas without, of course, being black. If everything in Canada is just a little bit boring (as I was often told with glee by Americans when I lived in the States), then the Trudeaus were the vanilla, Canadian alternative to the Obamas. They would appear at events like the Pride rally in Toronto, him in a turquoise open-collar shirt and her in a jumpsuit of a similar hue, all smiles and beatific togetherness even if their heterosexual vibe was at odds with the message. Pictured in India on an official visit with their three children, all in matching outfits, she attempted to manifest the maternal ideal that First Ladyship. And yet the Trudeaus were, of course, roasted for their Bollywood outfits. The poor man’s Obamas who got it all just a bit wrong.
Unlike the Obamas, the Trudeaus reeked of sex. What can it have been like to be married to the best-looking politician since JFK? Did she feel at all inadequate by comparison as prominent women from Kate Middleton to Ivanka Trump positively swooned, doe-eyed, over her husband as he droned on about green policies? I rather think she might have done. In pictures of them together in the early years of his political career, they seem at pains to underline their physical attraction for one another: with him kissing her on the mouth at a rally in 2013, or his bizarre dance move at a press dinner in 2016 where he stares out at the audience with his hands clamped on her bum. It’s hard to think of a British first couple who would lean into the physicality of their brand so overtly. In the light of their separation in 2023, perhaps the couple did protest rather too much.
Post-Justin, Grégoire Trudeau has leant into that form of feminine power beloved of divorced women such as Gwyneth Paltrow: wellness fused with self-help. Last year, she published her memoir, confusingly entitled Closer Together. No longer proximate to state power, Grégoire Trudeau’s book is a curious confection of her own observations from her relationship to Trudeau — “suffering is part of life” — and interviews with those who have “overcome adversity,” including a former banker who identifies as trans.
In line with other works from former First Ladies, such as Michelle Obama’s Becoming or even Melania Trump’s Melania, Closer Together cuts into the confusion of the role of First Lady by overlaying the seriousness of some of its issues (her eating disorder) with the smoke and mirrors of political celebrity: “Queens and Kings all have their own emotional struggle.”
As her ex-husband stands humiliated by the impotence of his leadership and his abrupt drop in popularity, perhaps his ex-wife may offer him some of her wisdom: “I’m still learning to get out of my own way.” Either way, her peculiar form of marital revenge on Trudeau is far from over as she begins to enjoy life apart from the Trudeau dynasty. Eleanor Roosevelt, perceptive as she was, could never have foreseen how the “circumstance” of modern-day First Ladyship has turned into something far more sinister: self-help.
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