In the Cold with Justin Trudeau

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was wearing light wool trousers, dress shoes and a partially open coat, minimally dressed for minus 13 degrees Celsius on Monday when he emerged from his official residence to announce his resignation.

Mr. Ignatieff wore a Canada Hockey Team jersey — appropriately liberal red — mostly for the benefit of television camera crews and photographers, He went skiing With some other members of parliament and senators from his party.

I went ahead of them and randomly stopped other skaters to ask if they recognized Mr. Ignatieff. Few did. No one waved or paid attention to Mr. Ignatieff.

But as Mr. Ignatieff sat down on the bench to take off his shoes, I heard a noise on the ice behind me. Mr. Trudeau arrived — and was immediately mustered out.

(Reads: In Canada, Trudeau is covered by an “orchestra”)

Two years later, I got a personal demonstration of this star power.

I interviewed Mr. Trudeau at his constituency office in Montreal To get the profile This would emerge after he became Liberal leader in 2013. The office was above a pharmacy, and looked as if the furniture had been left behind by a previous tenant.

We met in a dark conference room. As we began to discuss the death of his father, former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and the crowds that lined the route of his funeral train from Ottawa to Montreal, Mr. Trudeau briefly lost his composure and had to reach for a box of tissues. I had never seen anything like it during an interview with a politician, and I haven’t seen it since.

After the interview ended, we walked in the same direction across the busy road in front of the office. It was another bone-chilling day. A man ran toward us across the street, zigzagging through traffic. He said in African-accented French that all he wanted was to shake Mr. Trudeau’s hand.

(From opinion: Justin Trudeau was his own worst enemy)

(From opinion: Say au Revoir to Trudeau. for now.)

Even as Mr. Trudeau’s popularity declined in the years that followed, the crowds never waned. Nor his obvious desire to meet people.

Stephen Harper, the Conservative prime minister whom Mr. Trudeau succeeded in 2015, favored tightly controlled events before carefully selected audiences. In contrast, even outside of campaigning, Mr. Trudeau held town halls that were open without registration and that often generated large crowds even after they were moved to larger arenas.

During the election campaigns, Mr. Trudeau didn’t just stop taking selfies and shaking hands, he took action on the spot. If people had questions, he would listen and strike up conversations, much to the chagrin of his employees who were trying to keep things on schedule.

In this way he sometimes worked without a network. In 2017, as his image began to tarnish, I attended a town hall in Peterborough, Ontario, on another cold day. While it was clear that Mr. Trudeau had fans in the crowd, the gathering became rowdy.

The Ontario government’s electric utilities have introduced steep rate increases. One woman waved to the Prime Minister about her monthly bill of more than C$1,000. Although the facility was never under federal control, Mr. Trudeau became the target of public anger.

After he became Prime Minister, his Interviews They lost their former frankness. His responses were carefully considered.

And he certainly never again gave anything like his response in that boardroom about why he subjected himself to the kind of vitriol that his father received as prime minister.

“Am I going to make mistakes? A lot of them,” he told me in 2013. “I’m going to apologize, and I’m going to stumble. But I trust my core, I trust my values, and I trust Canadians. If I messed up, it would be because I wasn’t up to the task.

Ian Austin Reports on Canada for The Times, based in Ottawa. Originally from Windsor, Ontario, he has been covering the politics, culture and people of Canada and reporting on the country for two decades.

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