Dartmouth instead of Davos.

A hockey rink in Nova Scotia rather than a resort in the Swiss Alps.

Reconnecting with ordinary Canadians swapped in for the World Economic Forum annual tall forehead yakapalooza.

That’s how much Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, globe-trotter extraordinaire, is committed to rotating the tires on a public image chassis distinctly dented over recent weeks and months.

Odd, though, that none of the questions posed by the Dartmouth audience on Tuesday touched on the dual schmozzles of a cash-for-access controversy and the prime minister’s super-secret Christmas family vacation to a billionaire’s private island, the latter now the focus of investigation by Canada’s ethics commissioner.

What, did Dartmouthians miss that news cycle? Or possibly those in attendance at the town hall meeting were simply in awe, having Trudeau — shirt-sleeves rolled to the elbow, tie loosened, charm oozing — in the house.

“Can I have your autograph?” (From a little girl).

“I want to applaud the courage you have of facing your citizens, to start with, face-to-face.”

“Thank you for continuing to contribute to our liberal democracy.”

“I like you, I like you.”

Or maybe Trudeau’s missteps, along with those of cabinet ministers trailing price-tags at dinners with deep-pocket schmoozers, is simply of minimal interest to Canadians, an inside-Ottawa issue hysterically touted by factions and commentators four-square hostile to everything about this PM and this government.

Trudeau made elliptical reference to the isolation sometimes imposed on him when answering a query about the difference between campaigning and actually governing.

“When you get working in Ottawa, you’re surrounded by a press gallery, opposition parties, people who are very much focused on the day to day minutiae of politics. What was said in question period. What speech was given that morning. What is the controversy of the day.

“It all seems very important from Ottawa and some of it is. But it’s a long way removed from the day to day lives of Canadians across the country who are worried about their jobs, worried about paying the mortgage, how their kids are doing and how their aging parents are struggling to stay healthy. They’re worried about a broad range of things that don’t necessarily connect that well with what’s going on in the purely political world of Ottawa. For me, it’s really important to break out.”

Adding: “If you lose the connection with Canadians across the country, you’re in trouble.”

A year into his government’s term, Trudeau is hardly in serious trouble. But some of the rhinestones and bugle beads have fallen off the Son of the Sun God’s raiment.

Trudeau, the former drama teacher, is adept on this type of stage, even with a voice and cadence that grates on the ear. Mounting a truck-and-trunk listening tour of the country is a smart scheme to reorient the PM’s profile because Trudeau doubtless still has star appeal and the format allows him to burnish the government’s record without really allowing for hard-nosed interrogation. There was that mother and grandmother in Peterborough last week who tearfully spoke about being barely able to afford groceries after paying her carbon tax and hydro bills. But they ended up sharing a hug.

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Smattering of boos, too, in Dartmouth when a woman who identified herself as Mi’kmaq asked about green energy, pipeline promotion and blurted “LIES” when Trudeau veered off towards the 39 indigenous communities in Western Canada who are supportive of the Kinder Morgan pipeline.

“A little respect, please,” Trudeau admonished. “I’m giving you as much respect as I can and I’m asking for respect back.”

As ringmaster, he gets to set the rules of conduct.

Otherwise, so tactful and chummy was Trudeau that he even drew a startling correlation between himself and president-elect Donald Trump, refusing to take the bait for a hanging fastball. “As different on some levels as my approach is from the incoming president-elect, we both got elected on a commitment to help the middle class and we’re both going to be able to find some common ground on doing the kinds of things that are going to help ordinary families right across the continent.”

Who would you say has a lesser grasp of the middle class — the guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth or the guy who slaps his surname in gold across the front of buildings? Neither could be called a self-made man, though Trudeau wears his exceptionalism with more humility — a word, however disingenuously fabricated, alien to Trump’s vocabulary.

But they’re both vanity cases, equally meagre of service resumes when they swaggered into the political forum.

“You define yourself from how you shape the world around you for the better, what you give to the world,” Trudeau answered the fellow who basically asked: How did you get here? “And that’s where I took a fairly meandering path that ended me up in politics. I refused to try and mirror my father’s path in any way because I was a different person from him. Some strengths he didn’t have and some weaknesses he didn’t have.”

Tugging figuratively on his signature forelock: “You might not have noticed but politics can be fairly cruel in terms of its criticisms from time to time. It even gets personal now and then. I realized that growing up in a family where there was a level of notoriety, people had opinions of my father before they met me and would apply those opinions to me. I had to learn from a little kid to not take personally people who didn’t like me for reasons unrelated to who I actually was.

“At the same time, and this was the other half but which I think is just as important, I had to learn to dismiss the opinions of people who loved me because they loved my father in a way that was entirely unrelated to who I was as a person.”

I thought the father was divine. I still cannot divine the son.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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