Article content continued

“I just said if I went out to a rally and spoke, even a local one, there would be an attack ad that Justin is so unready he needs his mummy,” she explained last month.

But since the final ballots were cast on Oct. 19, she has been front and centre for every milestone of the new Liberal government.

On Wednesday — 41 years after Trudeau last attended the swearing-in of a Canadian ministry — she appeared in front of cameras carrying one-year-old grandson Hadrien. Later, she could be seen holding hands with Justin’s wife, Sophie, as the ceremony unfolded.

And ever since Election Night, the proud mother has been doing the media circuit to extol the virtues of the oldest of three sons born while Pierre Trudeau was in office.

“I always knew he was going to win the landslide, but everybody just thought I was crazy if I said it out loud,” she told CTV.

She told Chatelaine, meanwhile, that she now has at least one thing in common with Barbara Bush and “would have to go and get nice big white pearls in her honour.”

Prime ministerial mothers usually dwell at the far fringes of the spotlight.

Stephen Harper’s mother, who is also named Margaret, made few political appearances. She got a mention during the financial crisis of 2008, cited as evidence that Harper understood what “people are feeling about the stock market.”

“I use my mother as an obvious example because she is the person closest to me most worried about the stock market these days,” Harper said at the time.