'I can always find the humourous': Margaret Trudeau shares her struggle with mental illness in one-woman show

Originally published on June 20, 2019

In the 1970s, Margaret Trudeau was under the microscope. You might already know the story: she had married Canada's bachelor prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and she spent her time partying with the Rolling Stones and dancing the night away at Studio 54 in New York.

Trudeau occupied a unique space at the centre of politics, pop culture and tabloid gossip, which was something new for Canada, but the media portrayed her as reckless and impulsive.

What the public didn't know — and what she didn't even know herself — was that she had bipolar disorder. In 2010, she wrote a best-selling memoir about her diagnosis and she's become a well-known advocate for mental health.

Trudeau has turned her story into a new one-woman show called Certain Woman of an Age which she brought to Just For Laughs in Montreal last year. The play is now available as an exclusive listen on audible.ca and audible.com.

She joined q's Tom Power to tell us more about it.

— Produced by ​Diane Eros