OTTAWA, Ont. — Sophie Grégoire Trudeau hates negative energy, which made her an unconventional spouse in the blood sport of partisan politics.
A day after she updated Instagram with the blockbuster news of her uncoupling from Canada's prime minister, the Liberals deleted her from the party website.
Her break from Justin Trudeau also included a split with the single part-time employee in the Prime Minister’s Office who supported her public schedule as Canada’s unofficial first lady.
“Her time as a political wife was a bit of a mixture of the traditional role,” said Shachi Kurl, president of Angus Reid Institute. Grégoire Trudeau hosted luncheons and parties, she said, but also brought her experience as a TV host and reporter. “She knew how to communicate, she knew how to connect with an audience.”
No one is expecting Grégoire Trudeau, 48, to slip away from the public eye.
For starters, she’s working on a book that will be out next spring.
The vivacious, new-age yogi and longtime mental health champion is at work on a self-help and wellness project that promises to delve into brain health and “unique emotional signatures” — a reflection of the positive vibes and promises of "real change" that first swept the prime minister to victory in 2015.
She also incorporated her own company last year, Under Your Light Communications, offering services as a communications specialist, the industry in which she worked before she married Trudeau in 2005.
Their engagement made headlines and their Montreal wedding was a high-profile affair with bagpipers and Mounties. “I’m the luckiest girl in the world,” she shouted to the crowd before the ceremony. The newlyweds left the church in a convertible Mercedes roadster that had belonged to Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Justin’s dad and former prime minister.
Although social media has dissected this week’s news, there have been no official partisan attacks over the disintegration of the prime minister’s marriage. The couple’s inner circle and politicians have also been tight lipped. Dozens of people who know the Trudeaus in private declined to comment in public about a situation they say is nobody’s business.
Any word of troubles in their 18-year marriage have come from the Trudeaus themselves, albeit in vague terms.
An infamous Vogue photoshoot that captured husband and wife staring into each other’s eyes in intimate embrace was an exercise they picked up in couples therapy, she later revealed.
Trudeau alluded to their problems in his 2014 memoir, Common Ground. “Our marriage isn’t perfect,” he wrote. “We have had difficult ups and downs.” He told an interviewer the same year that “there are times when she [Sophie] hates my job and she hates me for loving my job.”
It’s unclear what events or differences split the former power couple apart. Their marriage has fueled gossip around Ottawa for years. Trudeau denied extramarital affairs nearly a decade ago, but their personal tribulations have never driven a news cycle until now.
They’re expected to share joint custody of their three children: Xavier, 15, Ella-Grace, 14, and Hadrien, 9.
Main character issues
Grégoire Trudeau was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, as an only child. Her father encouraged her to overcome any loneliness by being extra gregarious and extroverted.
During her teens, she developed bulimia nervosa while attending a Montreal private school for girls. Her struggle with the eating disorder lasted until her early 20s. When she talks about it, which she does at speaking engagements or on her social media channels, she says the experience revealed a formative life lesson in self-love that has become a touchstone in her work as a mental health advocate.
Everyone talks about her confidence and joie de vivre, which has shown up in astonishing ways and unexpected moments.
Two months after her husband was sworn in as prime minister, she burst into song at a Martin Luther King Day event, serenading a surprised audience with a ballad she wrote for her daughter. “This is not planned, trust me,” she said at the time.
Later that spring, Grégoire Trudeau admitted to a French-language newspaper that she was overwhelmed and needed help. It roiled into a heated political debate about motherhood and the fact Canadian taxpayers were paying for the family’s two nannies. The expense was new to a prime minister’s household budget — unexpected since a string of Trudeau’s predecessors did not have school-age children while in office. They ended up paying the cost for one of two caregivers out of pocket.
Grégoire Trudeau appeared to take the viral moments in stride.
At the 2016 parliamentary press gallery dinner, she turned her critics’ outrage into a skit that brought down the house. Playing a caricature of herself, she sang to a crowd of politicians and reporters, “It’s all about me.” The certified Hatha yoga instructor stole the show when she dropped into “two-legged sage” pose while wearing a billowy white dress.
‘Perfection is boring’
She has used social media as a tool to reaffirm her authenticity. In one Instagram reel, she once shared that close friend Canadian singer Chantal Kreviazuk’s children call her “crazy auntie Sophie” because she liked to nibble on her youngest child’s nose.
The former broadcast journalist (she was an eTalk entertainment reporter between 2005 and 2010) has said publicly that she enjoys rolling in the grass with her children as an exercise in humility, personifying hashtag gratitude. Former first lady Michelle Obama once introduced Grégoire Trudeau as her “soulmate.”
In a 2017 Fashion magazine interview, Grégoire Trudeau said she doesn’t care about celebrity — a funny admission from someone whose social circle includes the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle. The Duchess once asked her friend to describe herself in three words during a podcast. Her response: Sensitive, courageous and funny.
“I’ve been doing so much work to go back to that little Sophie inside of me, through all the adversity, through all my own struggles,” Grégoire Trudeau said. “I found her, so I’m going to continue to take care of her.”
Her yogi enthusiasm hasn’t always benefited the Prime Minister’s Office. When the family travelled to India on an official government trip in 2018, their namaste photo-ops and colorful, traditional wardrobe was mocked for being reminiscent of a weeklong Indian wedding. Later, in May 2021, she offered Liberal staffers a free virtual yoga class to help her husband’s team “cope with the stress of the pandemic.”
In an interview during the first wave of Covid, Grégoire Trudeau said the message she’d give a younger version of herself would be “Perfection is boring; celebrate your uniqueness.”
Her exuberance has drawn irresistible parallels with her mother-in-law, Margaret Trudeau, whose life was changed at 22 when she married a sitting prime minister 30 years her senior.
Both women were wedged into positions in a political system under a constitutional monarchy that doesn’t recognize the prime minister’s spouse in an official role.
Like the First Lady of the United States, Grégoire Trudeau did not collect an official salary, despite regularly accompanying her husband on official visits or hosting high-profile guests for government events. But unlike the First Lady in Washington, there’s no formal office in Canada for the political spouse.
Her work with WE Charity, and as a frequent guest on stage at WE Day, became ensnared in political controversy related to a C$912-million federal government contract awarded to the non-profit organization. Since giving up her career as an on-air TV personality, she has volunteered extensively. Her income has been drawn from speaking fees and book royalties.
An official for the Liberal Party of Canada confirmed Grégoire Trudeau has never been on salary, despite her role in fundraising during campaigns.
She wasn’t paid for delivering a virtual keynote address at the party’s national convention in Ottawa this past May.
Grégoire Trudeau has found ways to use her profile to give back. She earned a certification in “radiant child” Kundalini yoga training, and taught lessons at a public school close to Rideau Cottage, the prime minister’s temporary official residence.
For the time being, Grégoire Trudeau is expected to come and go from Rideau Cottage where the kids will continue to live. The couple plans to co-parent and next week will head out all together on summer vacation in an undisclosed location in Canada.
