Flipping through the pages of the 2000 and 2001 West Point Grey Academy (WPGA) yearbooks, we see a different side of our progressive prime minister.
The shocking image of Justin Trudeau with painted black skin and a large white turban shows that, as the 29-year-old celebrity son of a former Prime Minister, Trudeau was hardly a serious person, let alone a mature role model or teacher.
The cringe-worthy blackface photo at the Arabian Nights gala fundraiser is just one example. Trudeau’s photo is featured over and over again in the yearbook, smiling and hanging out — looking more like a teenage student than a teacher in his late twenties.
A former student tells me that during Trudeau’s short stint at WPGA, he was the back-up drama teacher, a yearbook instructor, coach of the ultimate frisbee team and he taught French to children in the junior school. Oh, and he helped the school raise hundreds of thousands of dollars through its gala fundraising dinners.
Another student tells me, “he was nice and floated around … not a great teacher though.”
Trudeau’s photo appears no less than a dozen times in each yearbook — more than most students at the small elite private school in the West side of Vancouver.
The only photo that shows Trudeau actually teaching came in the 2000 yearbook, where Trudeau can be seen wearing a traditional Scottish Highlander outfit — a white puffy shirt, knee-high socks and a kilt — reading to children with the caption: “Mr. Trudeau loves teaching French to kindergarten students.”
Trudeau has said that he was a math teacher, but there is no mention of Trudeau teaching it at WPGA. The page featuring the school’s Mathcounts competition team lists all the teachers involved. Trudeau’s name is not included.
Trudeau is featured very prominently, however, on the school’s ultimate frisbee team page, with three different photos showing Trudeau in wild outfits — hugging and roughhousing with the students. His various costumes included black and white face paint, a big black afro wig, a kilt and a large Mickey Mouse hat.
The team was called the “MadHatters,” and the yearbook includes a poem about the team that describes Trudeau as “a loud-mouthed maniac.”
While the 2001 WPGA gala photo of Trudeau in blackface has created a huge controversy, the 2000 gala shows Trudeau dressed as James Bond, equipped with a Martini glass and a fake gun. In this photo, Trudeau can be seen holding the gun to a woman’s chest.
The event took place less than 10 months after the Columbine school shooting massacre, and schools all over North America were suspending and expelling students for bringing similar fake guns to school.
Much like in his blackface photo, Trudeau seems oblivious.
According to yearbook photos, Trudeau was also part of the school’s ski club, and was the instructor of the ‘Senior Newspaper’ elective class. One of Trudeau’s blackface photos — this one posing with two Sikh men — was included in the school’s April 2001 newsletter. Trudeau was so ignorant when it came to the racism of his blackface outfit, it appears that, judging by his instructor role, he may have approved of his image being released in the community newsletter to live on in infamy.
Trudeau built his reputation in politics on the fact that he was a teacher, but looking back at his years at WPGA, we see the picture of an immature and unserious man who seemed to prefer light-hearted fun over discipline and hard work.
