Alexandre Trudeau

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Alexandre (Sacha) Trudeau (born December 25, 1973) is a Canadian journalist, and the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Margaret Trudeau.

The second of three children born to Pierre and Margaret Trudeau during Pierre's term in office, Sacha Trudeau was a media sensation, just like his brothers, when he was born. However, Pierre and Margaret tried as much as possible to protect their children from the public eye, and after Pierre retired as Prime Minister in 1984, he raised them in relative privacy in Montreal.

File:ChretiensWithTrudeauSons.jpg
Sacha Trudeau with his brother and the Chrétiens.

When Pierre Trudeau passed away in 2000, both Alexandre Trudeau and his older brother Justin returned to the public eye. Since then, he and his brother had gained quite a friendship with Jean Chrétien and his wife, Aline. Although Alexandre was visibly more reserved and quiet than his brother, his heightened public profile brought new attention to his work as a journalist. In the next few years, he produced documentaries for Canadian television. In 2003, he was one of the highest-profile Canadian journalists covering the 2003 invasion of Iraq, producing a 60-minute documentary film for CTV, "Embedded in Iraq."

In 2004, when former U.S. president Ronald Reagan passed away, he understood the timing of it--the eve of the 60th anniversary of D-Day. He and Justin came back together as they were both part of CBC's coverage of the anniversary, helping the network's chief correspondent, Peter Mansbridge, in the commentary, along with the noted Canadian historian, Jack Granatstein, telling him that Reagan was in Normandy for the 40th anniversary, as they both recalled their father's experiences from being there when prime minister then. During CBC's coverage, it was the Trudeau sons who first said that Reagan should be honored with a state funeral. When Mansbridge brought up the planned funeral arrangements, they said that they hoped that Nancy Reagan (the former president's wife) and her family agree to the public honors for her husband because so many other Americans and people around the world wanted to join in. They also noted how they honored their father after he passed away. They would later be right--Reagan would have the first state funeral since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1973, a president whom Pierre Trudeau paid tribute to when prime minister.

Trudeau is also a director of Canada World Youth, and of the Trudeau Foundation for excellence in social sciences and humanities research and innovation.

He was one of several children of former Prime Ministers who became Canadian media personalities between 1998 and 2001. The others were his brother Justin, Ben Mulroney, and Catherine Clark.