John Diefenbaker, Tommy Douglas, and David Lewis each had difficult, even scarring, childhoods. Illness, poverty, prejudice were part of their early lives.

Yet, like their fellow party leaders of that era, those painful memories were not part of their public biography. It was not acceptable to discuss that type of personal history as recently as a decade ago.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been somewhat circumspect about the challenges of his parents’ very difficult marriage, and its impact on him having to navigate the issues it presented him as the eldest son. Friends’ private accounts are clear just how heavy was the impact of that pain in his childhood.

It is therefore almost astonishing the candour and courage that Jagmeet Singh has displayed with his new memoir “Love & Courage: My Story Of Family, Resilience, And Overcoming The Unexpected.” More binding than even the taboos within anglophone and francophone culture, families of a variety of other cultural backgrounds are even more unforgiving about public airing of family distress. One may hope a younger generation sees it as a commitment to openness not indiscretion.

Ours is a Kardashian era of relentless public sharing and shaming of celebrity lives, sometimes the product of public relations strategies by the stars themselves. Finding the bright line between merely indulging prurient interest and offering candid, if painful, insight into the childhood challenges that shaped you as an adult is not easy. It seems that Singh has artfully navigated it.

To some his tales may appear exploitative, though surely none would challenge his honesty. But consider this: how much more useful would it be for voters to always have this type of deep insight into a potential leader’s life and character as part of their vote decision?

Leadership politics is fundamentally about character, character as an icon of personal values.

Few political memoirs offer anything useful on that score, usually serving merely as another political marketing product. Anyone who had subjected themselves to political memoirs issued during an election year can attest to how few leaders’ self-awareness rises above that bar.

That Singh demonstrably chose love over hate in the face of repeated racist humiliation is an important proof of his convictions. He struggled to shelter a younger brother and was strengthened by an indomitable mother. He recalls his father’s battle with alcohol, with dignity and empathy, and then how Singh had to assume a family leadership role at an early age.

It is an intimate and compelling story that I cannot ever recall, as a lifelong political biography junkie, ever having read anywhere else.

How he overcame these obstacles is important in making a judgment of him. They are cues to how he will respond to the equally unearned and unfair blows that political life inflicts. We can’t predict what those career defining moments will be, but we know they will come. Judging how he will respond based on the lessons learned from hard challenges in adolescence is probably a useful predictor.

If, as a parent, one wants a child to understand the unearned and unfair insults that life inflicts — and how to respond to them with courage and dignity — it would be hard to find a better road map than Singh has had the courage to describe.

Tommy, David Lewis and Dief had many unresolved personal issues as adults. Each could fly into a choleric rage in private. They carried personal hurts and grudges with an unbecoming and abiding anger. They buried their pain with relentless discipline.

Minutes after he exploded over trivia, I was always amazed as the famous Tommy smile would gleam from any public stage. These were men of a generation of required public artifice where private demons and painful memories were concerned.

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How refreshing that Jagmeet Singh had the courage and the confidence to say, that he is a product of both happy and deeply wounding experience. As if to say, “Here are some of the lessons I learned. You deserve to know these parts of who I am, in considering me as a leader.”

This would not have happened even a decade ago. Let’s hope it helps set a new standard today.

RS Robin V. Sears is a principal at Earnscliffe Strategy Group and was an NDP strategist for 20 years. He is a freelance contributor for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @robinvsears

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