Description

1 Nov. 2026. PRE-ORDER NOW

Guy Bouthillier set out to understand why Trudeau, a fervent nationalist aspiring to freedom for Quebec until his late twenties, would impose the War Measures in 1970 under the false pretext of an “anticipated insurrection.” He also wanted to know how Trudeau could praise Europe’s right-wing extremists and anti-Semites in the 1930s and 1940s and later accuse the entire Quebec sovereignty movement led by René Lévesque in the 60s and the 70s of being Nazi replicas.

Bouthillier found answers by delving into Trudeau’s prolific writings as a youth and as an adult, as well as what his friends, collaborators, biographers, and adversaries wrote and said about him. Like a 5000-piece puzzle, he manages to make sense of disparate pieces of information that, taken individually and out of context, would not make sense. The result is an essay that reads like a novel, and has a surprising ending.

Pierre-Elliott Trudeau was driven by a consuming ambition to be number one, to be the leader. This ambition was accompanied by a deep contempt for the people beneath him, above all for the people of Quebec, but also by a fascination with violence, first with fists, but also with weapons, verbal or military, and people who took power violently.

At Any Cost was translated from the French by David Hagen

Guy Bouthillier studied Law at McGill University and obtained a PhD from Sciences Po Paris. He is Honorary Professor of Political Science at the Université de Montréal where he taught for 30 years. Author of several books on politics, history, and language in Quebec and Canada, he edited, with Édouard Cloutier, Pierre Trudeau’s Darkest Hour, War Measures 1970 (Baraka Books, 2020), an annotated collection of texts and essays by eminent English-speaking Canadians critical of Trudeau’s use of the War Measures. Guy Bouthillier lives in Montreal.

David Hagen has dedicated more than 30 years to his craft as a translator. Originally from British Columbia but a long-time resident of Quebec, he offers an astute cross-Canadian perspective informed by decades of immersion in Quebec’s culture and politics. David holds an MA in political science from McGill University and a BA in the same field from Université Laval. His career has encompassed collaborative roles on several book translations and a wide variety of academic publications. He lives just outside Quebec City.

Reviews and Praise

“Bouthillier’s book, captivating from start to finish, is not a traditional biography. Rather, it is a portrait in sixteen themes, drawn mainly from Trudeau’s personal archives, including his diary and private correspondence. The result is dynamic and revealing.” Louis Cornellier, Le Devoir

“Bouthillier sees each change in Trudeau’s position as either disloyalty or an attempt to cover his antisemitic right-wing tracks, so they wouldn’t blemish his future career. Thus, it is at Harvard that he realizes that his factional readings and enthusiasms during the Second World War would be obstacles to the goal he had determined for his life: ‘governing the people of his country.'” Graham Fraser, The Literary Review of Canada