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It was a visit that marked a turning point in Canada’s relationship with Cuba, but Margaret Trudeau remembers the groundbreaking trip as one in which a dictator melted at the sight of her baby.

In some of the photos of Pierre Trudeau’s closely followed 1976 trip to Cuba with Margaret and four-month-old Michel, Fidel Castro had a telltale stain on the front of his uniform, she remembers with a laugh.

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“Fidel made it clear in his opening remarks that the parents were important but not nearly as important as the baby. In some pictures Fidel had a big patch of wet saliva on his uniform because he had come over early to cuddle the baby.”

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Thirty-eight years after that trip, Trudeau says she is celebrating the thawing of U.S.-Cuban relations along with the Cuban people, a move that was helped along through secret meetings held in Ottawa.

She remembers Castro during that visit as a “very warm and charming man — I enjoyed him.”