During a severe blizzard in the winter of 1984, Canada's long-serving prime minister Pierre Trudeau went for a long walk. By the time he came back, he had resolved to give up politics, quit his job, and make way for the next generation.
So admired was his decision that it remains a common adage in Canadian politics. Those who choose to go, rather than waiting to be pushed, have decided to "take a walk in the snow."
Four decades later, Pierre's son Justin Trudeau was at a similar juncture in his political career.
After nine years in office, and another election on the horizon, Trudeau's favourability rating was at an all-time low of 22 per cent.
And so, the 53-year-old went for his own version of a walk in the snow. He booked a skiing holiday at a resort in British Columbia (BC).
Bundled up from the cold and trudging through the ice, a woman wielding a phone approached him.
"Mr prime minister," she said with trademark Canadian politeness.
"Please get the f**k out of BC … you suck."
It was a humiliating confrontation for Trudeau, who loved nothing more than starring in — and often constructing — viral moments with his constituents.
And a week later, Trudeau finally followed in his father's snowy footsteps.
"I am not someone who backs away … particularly when a fight is as important as this one," he said.
"But I have always been driven by my love for Canada, by my desire to serve Canadians and by what is in the best interest of Canadians — and Canadians deserve a real choice in the next election."
From the day he was born, Trudeau appeared destined for Canada's highest office, but few initially took his political aspirations seriously.
Rich, privileged, and prone to stunts, he was dismissed as "the Paris Hilton of Canadian politics," "a pedigreed Dauphin," or simply, devastatingly, "the Shiny Pony."
Trudeau's near decade in office was a period of extraordinary highs and crushing lows.
Swept into office in 2015 on a tide of hope, Trudeau promised to tackle climate change and lift up the Canadian middle class.
He was credited with saving a trade agreement with the US and Mexico, putting a price on carbon emissions, and introducing a child tax benefit.
But his prime ministership was also riddled with scandal — from accepting gifts and free helicopter rides, to skipping the country's first national truth and reconciliation day in favour of a surfing holiday.
As Canadians faced an increasingly insurmountable cost of living, and Trudeau refused to step aside, many voters began to wonder if he was holding onto power for power's sake.
In the end, Trudeau's career was a reminder that power demands sacrifice from those who hold it.
When he descended the steps of the prime minister's residence to resign, Trudeau was noticeably alone.
It was a dramatic change from the beginning of his political career nine years before, when he was flanked by his greatest champions: his wife Sophie, and his best friend, and closest adviser, Gerald Butts.
By the time he left office nine years later, he had lost them both.
The star power of a political nepo baby
Even as an infant, Justin Trudeau was known to world leaders.
One even cannily predicted Trudeau's future political rise when he was just four months old.
"Tonight we'll dispense with the formalities. I'd like to toast the future prime minister of Canada: To Justin Pierre Trudeau," then-US president Richard Nixon joked at a gala dinner.
Trudeau didn't follow his father straight into politics.
At 28, he was working as a drama and French teacher in Vancouver when Pierre Trudeau died.
During the televised funeral, Trudeau gave an emotional eulogy and party powerbrokers noticed his potential.
He seemed keenly aware of it too.
Trudeau had the political pedigree and looks to push for a quick run up the political food chain.
He never lacked confidence, and was even able to turn a 2012 televised charity boxing match into a politically advantageous event.
No one expected him to beat his opponent, a Conservative senator and former Navy reservist with a black belt in karate. But he did.
"After the fight, he became a man lauded for his toughness, strength, honour and courage who vaulted into the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada and became a legitimate contender to win the next federal election," Peter Bouisseau from the University of Toronto wrote in 2015.
After winning that election and becoming prime minister, Trudeau crafted a perception of himself along similar lines to Barack Obama — young, charming, and ready to shake things up.
The photogenic leader knew the power of good images.
As PM, he photobombed a beach wedding, kayaked up to a stranger's house for a chat and posed shirtless for selfies with a family on a hike.
Trudeau was also keen to show he was more than a handsome nepo baby with a talent for PR stunts.
When asked to explain quantum computing, he grinned mischievously and warned his audience: "Don't get me going on this or we'll be here all day, trust me."
His detailed answer had an audience of experts applauding and the internet frothing.
The public seemed to love him, but only one year into his leadership, critics had started to call out Trudeau for his penchant for publicity.
Toronto writer Jesse Brown wrote that Trudeau had positioned himself as a sunny antidote to the turbulent news spilling out from other parts of the world.
"Trudeau is the political equivalent of a YouTube puppy video," he wrote for the Guardian in 2016.
"Each week, Trudeau feeds the news cycle a new shareable moment, and our Facebook feeds are overwhelmed with shots of the adorable young statesman cuddling pandas and hugging refugees and getting accidentally photographed in the wild with his top off, twice."
Political commentators eventually tired of his stunts.
One wrote of how he watched Trudeau work a room of "adoring fans" with zeal, but ultimately decided there was little beyond a show.
"He owned the stage and had his audience hanging on every word," Gord Henderson wrote in the Windsor Star in 2019.
"Only later, after the crowd had filed out, did it dawn that Justin had said nothing of substance. His presentation was polished. It confirmed his capacity to excite a friendly crowd.
"But it was a pedestrian exercise, all sizzle and no steak."
Henderson went on with a scorching take-down.
"Our prime minister is a narcissistic showman with an ego larger than his intellect and a blimp-sized belief in his own virtue," he wrote.
The shine was starting to wear off Canada's viral darling.
How the golden boy of Canada lost his shine
In 2019, things took a turn for Canada's PM when his veneer of charm and unflappability was put to the test.
A murky ethics scandal brewing inside his cabinet and inner circle threatened to destabilise his leadership in a high-stakes election year.
Trudeau was accused of urging members of his government not to prosecute an engineering company facing fraud and bribery charges, fearing it could result in major job losses.
According to an explosive report by Canada's ethics commissioner, Trudeau engaged in "flagrant attempts to influence" his attorney general and minister of justice, Jody Wilson-Raybould.
Trudeau ultimately took responsibility for his role in the incident, though he disagreed with the ethics report findings.
His popularity took a serious hit in the polls, but it was the resignation of his principal secretary and close confidante, Gerald Butts, over the scandal that appeared to do the most damage.
Butts had been by Trudeau's side since they studied together at McGill University.
He is widely credited with Trudeau's astonishing rise to power, crafting the hopeful narrative behind electoral victory in 2013.
"They often would finish each others' sentences," said Canadian writer Jonathan Kay, who helped Trudeau write his autobiography in 2014.
"They were very much equals — when they're together they balance each other out."
Losing his closest friend was a devastating blow to Trudeau, but it also had an impact on his ability to govern.
"Close observers believe the government never fully recovered because nobody with the same strategic skills — particularly for narrative-building — ever replaced [Butts] in a central role," veteran journalist Stephen Maher wrote in his book The Prince.
"For the rest of the Trudeau era, the government was reactive, dealing successfully with crises but never again managing to seize the agenda."
Before he had a chance to take a beat, photos of Trudeau in "blackface" and "brownface" began circulating online, including one from when he was a 29-year-old teacher at a school in Vancouver and attending an Arabian Nights- themed gala.
Trudeau, who had crafted an image of himself as a tolerant and compassionate leader, was left deeply embarrassed by the discovery.
"Darkening your face, regardless of the context or the circumstances, is always unacceptable because of the racist history of blackface," he said.
"I should have understood that then, and I never should have done it."
The troubles at home followed him abroad, where his star power proved to be no match for the supernova bluster of America's 45th president.
When Donald Trump came to office promising to "Make America Great Again," he forced a renegotiation of North American trade.
Steep tariffs imposed on Canadian aluminium and steel on the grounds of "national security" in 2018 left Trudeau's government scrambling to reach a new trade deal with the United States.
In a foreign policy coup, Canada salvaged the agreement in 2019, securing a lucrative partnership that was crucial for the economy.
But an awkward hot mic moment at a NATO summit in the same year went some way to explain the significant rift between the progressive Canadian and his right-wing counterpart.
Trudeau was caught on camera seemingly mocking Trump in a conversation with then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French leader Emmanuel Macron when discussing a sudden press conference held by the American president.
In the video, Mr Johnson asked Mr Macron: "Is that why you were late?"
Mr Trudeau interjected: "He was late because he takes a 40-minute press conference off the top."
Never one to let things go, the then-president responded by describing Trudeau as "two-faced" and criticising his government's military spending.
Trump's return complicated Trudeau's standing
Trudeau may have breathed a sigh of relief when Trump's term in office came to an end in 2020 but it did not bring an end to his political troubles.
More scandals and slip ups followed.
In 2021, he was slammed for choosing a family vacation over observing the country's first National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, which commemorated the Indigenous victims and survivors of Canada's former residential school system.
The next year, a vaccine mandate on truckers crossing the border spiralled into a massive protest in Ottawa, with a convoy of drivers blocking the streets of the city's business districts.
Trudeau responded to the gridlock crisis, which made headlines around the world, by invoking emergency measures to break up the occupation, a decision that sparked criticism from libertarians and American conservatives.
Canada, like many other countries, then exited the COVID-19 pandemic only to confront a surge in inflation, further sinking Trudeau's standing among a belt-tightening public.
But it was Trump's return to the White House and his goading of the Canadian PM in recent months that seemingly hastened Trudeau's exit.
The president-elect has repeatedly vowed to enact 25 per cent tariffs on Canada in response to what he alleges is a flow of illegal drugs into the United States.
Canadian officials, including Trudeau, have met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in recent months to smooth over ties, but there has been little sign the president-elect is budging on the issue.
"I wouldn't say that Trump being elected was changing the Canadian government, but he's certainly changing the conversation, he's changing what the next election will be about and this government's response," Matthew Lebo, a visiting professor at McGill University in Montreal, told CNN last month.
"And probably, he's changing the timing of when Justin Trudeau would go."
When Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland resigned last month, it was the final nail in the coffin of the Canadian's leadership.
A long-time ally of Trudeau, Freeland said in her resignation letter that she and the prime minister had been at odds over the best path forward for the country and how to respond to the proposed tariffs.
Her departure, just hours before she was set to deliver an important economic update after Trump's re-election, was seen as an indictment on Trudeau's administration.
With few allies left, Trudeau was facing a political reckoning in the wilderness.
It was time to take a walk in the snow.
Trudeau leaves public life alone
Sixteen years ago, Trudeau declared that he had learned the lessons of his parents' mistakes before deciding to embark on his own political career.
Once seen as one of Canada's most famous couples, Pierre Trudeau and Margaret Sinclair endured a very public marriage break-up in the dying days of office.
"I felt unfulfilled, unhappy, caught in an old-fashioned marriage. I wanted my own life and my own career," Margaret Trudeau told The Globe and Mail in 1982.
Their son, Justin Trudeau, believed his marriage to Sophie Grégoire would not suffer the same fate.
"I wouldn't be a very good politician if Sophie wasn't in my life. Knowing that she knows that is what hopefully makes everything a lot easier in terms of the difficult times, we'll always go through," Trudeau told the Star in 2009.
In the end, he became just the second prime minister after his father to suffer a divorce while in office.
Justin and Sophie separated in 2023 after 18 years of marriage.
"We are still bound by love and respect and smiles and tears, and we're still trying to figure it out. And it's not perfect," Sophie Grégoire told American journalist Katie Couric's podcast.
Author Stephen Maher wrote that Trudeau's inner circle believed the break-up was not a shock to anyone who knew the pair.
Just like Justin's mother, Grégoire found it hard to be the wife of a prime minister.
"Trudeau might have saved his marriage if he had decided to step down in 2023 and let someone else take on [his new rival, Pierre Poilievre], but he did not want to do that," Maher writes.
"His friends say he put the country ahead of his marriage."
