Dudley and Preston are great, no doubt about it. Then there was Sam Steele, first commander of the RCMP...he was extraordinary. Read his life story, Dickey, it's a good one.

Pierre Trudeau was definitely our most interesting politician. Most people either greatly admired him or utterly detested him. I was among those who really disliked him at one time, but I slowly changed my mind about that and ended up admiring him. He had guts and keen intelligence, that's for sure.

Nixon referred to him once as an "asshole" (on the Oval Office tapes that came out in Watergate). When the press asked Trudeau what he thought about that, he smiled and quipped, "I've been called worse things, by better men." That was a very clever answer! ;-)

And here's a cool quote from Irving Layton, a Canadian writer who didn't like Trudeau: Pierre Elliott Trudeau's victory in Canada's 1968 election was not universally welcomed. "In Pierre Elliott Trudeau," Irving Layton declared, "Canada has at last produced a political leader worthy of assassination."