ANTIGONISH, N.S. — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau remembered Allan MacEachen as a “once-in-a-lifetime” calibre cabinet minister who helped transform Canada into the country of its citizens’ dreams.

Politicians of various generations were among the crowd at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish on Sunday to commemorate MacEachen, who died at the age of 96 last week.

Speakers at the memorial service described the long-serving Liberal MP and senator from Nova Scotia as a consummate public servant whose mix of political savvy and devotion to his constituents helped usher in some of the most ambitious Canadian social reforms of the postwar era.

“Whether they credit him or not, Canadians are living in the country that Allan J. built, and they like it,” Trudeau told the crowd. “Let us honour him by recommitting ourselves as Canadians to continuing his life’s work of hard things done well.

“His life’s work — a Canada in which good enough is never good enough, and better is always possible.”

Former prime minister Jean Chrétien was among the honorary pallbearers as Mounties in serge carried a flag-draped coffin into the auditorium to the wail of bagpipes, the musician having flown in from Scotland in keeping with MacEachen’s last wishes.





The prime minister bowed his head before MacEachen’s coffin as he took to the stage in a tartan tie honouring his own Scottish heritage.

Trudeau said MacEachen receives too little credit for helping his father, Pierre, execute their shared vision for Canada when he was prime minister.

MacEachen was the legislative muscle behind many Canadian social programs, including the creation of medicare in the 1960s, he said.

The political allies were a “match made in heaven,” said Trudeau, their friendship founded on the bedrock belief that all people are created equal.

“He also understood that making change happen is difficult, especially when its aim is to give power and resources to the people,” Trudeau said.

“This Canada existed only in Canadians’ hopes and dreams when Allan MacEachen entered politics in 1953. By the time he left in 1996, it was a fact of life, taken for granted.”

Former Ontario premier Bob Rae said MacEachen’s life was an “eloquent testimony” to the trials and rewards of public service, describing his former parliamentary colleague — and sometimes adversary — as a “gladiator” with a flare for the political stage, but a reserved private life.

“(Politics) brought him out of himself. It allowed him to relish the foibles and strengths of those around him,” Rae said. “He knew that politics was not for the squeamish or weak of spirit.

“His life is a reminder that people matter, and that history is not a dance of abstract categories, but it’s about real people of flesh and blood.”

Born in Inverness on Cape Breton Island in 1921, MacEachen — who spoke fluent Gaelic — brought Nova Scotian values to the halls of Ottawa, said the province’s Premier Stephen McNeil.

MacEachen served in a variety of cabinet posts during his decades-long political tenure, holding portfolios in finance, external affairs and national health and welfare.

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He won five elections in the Inverness-Richmond riding, and another five representing Cape Breton-Highlands Canso.

MacEachen ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Liberal leadership in 1968, but served as the party’s interim leader during the elder Trudeau’s brief political hiatus in 1979.

He also served as deputy prime minister and was appointed to the Senate in 1984. He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2008.

MacEachen is to be buried in Inverness this week following a funeral service in the hometown church in which he was baptized.

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