Retired senator Michael Pitfield, a longtime confidant of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau and a man who wielded enormous political influence, died Thursday after a decades-long struggle with Parkinson’s disease. Pitfield joined the public service in 1959 as an administrative assistant to Davie Fulton, a justice minister in the Diefenbaker government. He was appointed to the Senate by Trudeau in 1982 to represent Ottawa-Vanier. President of the small-l liberal think-tank Canada 2020, Pitfield is married to Anna Gainey, president of the Liberal Party of Canada. Gainey said the Senate was where Pitfield was “comfortable intellectually, and in his element.

Source: thestar October 20, 2017 00:57 UTC