OTTAWA—Justin Trudeau and his team scrambled to deal with an explosive story that derailed his campaign for 24 hours and now throws into question whether his bid for re-election will be successful.

By Thursday night, the Trudeau campaign was trying to get back in the air, flying from Winnipeg to Saskatoon.

Yet in the hour before TIME magazine published a damning photo Wednesday night of Trudeau in brownface, the Liberal leader was on the phone from Halifax, intent on reaching out to apologize and shore up his support.

Omar Alghabra, the Liberal candidate for Mississauga Centre, was in the GTA between two houses, knocking on doors to win votes when the prime minister rang.

Alghabra says Trudeau — whom he’d known since 2006 — told him something “very difficult was about to become public. It’s not going to be pleasant,” and he “wanted to be the person to tell me about this and to apologize personally to me for what he’s done 20 years ago.”

Trudeau’s staff had just confirmed to the iconic American newsmagazine that the photo they were about to publish was indeed the Canadian prime minister, 19 years ago, then a teacher at a Vancouver private school, his face painted dark and wearing a turban and robes at an Arabian Nights-themed party.

Trudeau emerged on his plane about an hour after the story exploded to speak to Canadian reporters, apologize and admit he’d also worn blackface at a high school talent show. By the time it was all over, there’d be photos of a third, separate blackface incident, and a prime minister who admitted he couldn’t recall if there were others.

After the first apology, however, Trudeau continued to ring candidates and community leaders to personally apologize to several of his visible minority colleagues, like Alghabra.

“It was a shock, a surprise,” says Alghabra, whom Trudeau acknowledged as one of his party’s leaders in promoting diversity and fighting intolerance. “It’s been a difficult few hours,” Alghabra said, admitting uncertainty about how Canadians will react. “I don’t know how things will go.”

Born in Saudi Arabia to Syrian parents, Alghabra said he landed quickly on his decision to support the prime minister.

“I struggled to find the words. I told him I think this is going to be a painful story to many, a surprise to many.

“But I also told him, and I meant it, he has been over the last few years a comforting voice for many people not just in Canada but around the world who’ve been on the receiving end of hate and stereotypes and racism.”

Trudeau made several more calls, including to Greg Fergus, the chair of a small Black parliamentary caucus made up of only Liberals, before his plane flew to Winnipeg.

Trudeau made no calls en route. They landed around 2:30 a.m., Toronto time, and for the first time Trudeau and his senior staff headed to a different hotel than the media covering the tour.

Fergus, a candidate in Hull-Aylmer, said it is “gonna be rough” for the prime minister but that he accepted Trudeau’s apology and told him black Canadians would also forgive Trudeau because he has shown by his actions he is committed to fighting racism and bigotry in Canada.

Fergus made his own round of conference calls through the night and Thursday morning, reaching out to black Canadians. “There was a lot of confusion and hurt.”

But Fergus said he would stand by Trudeau, as he believed most black Canadians would.

“I’m certain that he’s embarrassed of that, ashamed of it. And he’s taken steps to demonstrate how he’s moved on from that, he’s woken up to the whole notion of what privilege is and he’s taken actions as prime minister when he had the opportunity to take action to provide a better place for all Canadians of diversity.

“I think really that’s the measure of the man and that’s why I have confidence in his continued leadership.”

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Fergus hoped the revelations would allow for a broader discussion of “systemic racism” in Canada, and a “nuanced” conversation about what needs to be done. He listed the creation of more economic opportunity and jobs as well as opening more space in academic and cultural spaces for Black voices.

By Thursday morning, Trudeau’s campaign cancelled an announcement at a university while Trudeau again hit the phones.

Trudeau called Liberal party headquarters in Ottawa and held a conference call with workers there to express the same thing he went on to tell all the candidates across the country on a national conference call.

Alghabra listened in on that too, and later said it was “important for people to hear it in his voice and directly from him about how remorseful he is and about how sincere he is in his apology and how committed he is in dealing with this in a constructive way.”

Liberal staff then spoke individually to dozens and dozens more Liberal candidates through the morning as they tried to field media calls. None were told how to handle questions, said a source, who said that spin or talking points wouldn’t have helped anyone. People needed to be encouraged to speak frankly if they were angry or hurt. In the end, many of the visible minority members of Trudeau’s campaign backed him publicly.

By early afternoon, Trudeau took to a Winnipeg street of café’s and stores, to shake hands, before going to an open park area to face more questions from reporters, while a crowd of about 100 people gathered around, at times applauding him. It was a sunny afternoon. But Trudeau’s “sunny ways” rhetoric was long ditched, for an expansive apology in which he named his acts, wearing blackface, an act he said outright is racist.

Trudeau’s itinerary for Friday will see him fly back to Toronto, where he may finally release the Liberals’ long-promised firearms policy.

Will it be enough? Officials with the Liberal campaign do not want to have discussions about political strategy.

But Shachi Kurl, executive director with the Angus Reid Institute, says it is too early to say, but polling numbers her firm released showed Andrew Scheer was marginally leading Trudeau on certain indicators — more honest, more strategic leader or being “up to the job,” but Trudeau was miles ahead on being seen as more tolerant and compassionate.

“94 per cent of uncommitted voters see Justin Trudeau, at least they did until 24 hours ago, as tolerant.” Now, Kurl said, how much of that political capital has Trudeau lost, or how much will he spend “to survive this.”

“It’s going to take a few days for all of this to shake out and we’re going to see the reaction in swing ridings because many of these swing ridings in urban settings are ones that are well populated by minority communities so guess what? They’re going to be the ones that will have the final say, we can’t assume how they’re going to react.

The election is Oct. 21.

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