Claim:
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is Fidel Castro’s son.
Rating:
Unfounded ( About this rating? )
In September 2024, a number of users on X referenced the theory that Fidel Castro was the father of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in response to a prompt asking users about the "goofiest low-stakes conspiracy theory" they believe in:
Snopes first covered this rumor in November 2016, which originated in the (now banned) subreddit r/The_Donald. On Nov. 26, 2016, Trudeau sparked controversy by praising Fidel Castro in a statement about the former Cuban dictator's death, saying:
While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro's supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for 'el Comandante.' I know my father was very proud to call him a friend and I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away. It was also a real honour to meet his three sons and his brother President Raúl Castro during my recent visit to Cuba.
Some Canadians (and others) were angered by what they viewed as Trudeau's humanization of a dictator who had caused profound suffering for his own people. Trudeau's statement, as well as his family's friendly history with Castro, led to speculation that a much harder truth lay behind his soft words.
On Nov. 27, two days after Castro's death was announced, a user on the pro-Donald Trump subreddit /r/The_Donald presented a theory that Justin Trudeau, the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, was actually the love child of Castro and Margaret Trudeau. The theory rested on three unconnected assertions:
- Margaret Trudeau and Castro met in 1971 and were close friends ever after.
- Margaret Trudeau was sexually promiscuous.
- Castro and Justin Trudeau were similar in appearance.
The Trudeaus were indeed close to Castro, who once described Pierre Trudeau as "a close friend and an extraordinary figure." Margaret Trudeau was also open in her later writings about her various past affairs. And yes, young Castro and Justin Trudeau might bear a physical resemblance . The notion that the Trudeaus and the Castros met in 1971, however, is based what appears to be a willful misreading of a newspaper article by a Reddit user:
So now that we've established the similar appearance, we need to figure out if it's even possible that Fidel met with Margaret before Justin's conception. Turns out he did — in fact, Pierre and Fidel met for the first time one year before Justin was born.
Ignoring the biological impossibility of conceiving a child a literal year before that child was born, the user linked to an article by the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, describing the first time the two leaders spoke to each other:
Pierre Trudeau's and Fidel Castro's paths crossed for the first time in 1970, when the Canadian government sought to negotiate the exile of members of the FLQ, who had kidnapped British trade commissioner James Cross. Fidel Castro obliged the Canadian PM by providing a refuge, and in a private letter Mr. Trudeau later extended his heartfelt gratitude.
The two leaders' paths did not literally cross at that time: No head-of-state level visit took place between Cuba and Canada in 1970. (These things typically make big news.) The first time Castro and the Trudeaus met face-to-face was a famous trip made by the Canadian couple to Cuba in 1976. This event has been chronicled, along with some purportedly saucy comments, in a book that has been cited by many of the Trudeau-truthers to suggest sexual attraction between Margaret Trudeau and Castro. But even if true, that facet is a red herring, as Justin Trudeau was born well before the 1976 meeting.
One doesn't even have to believe any of that, though, as science gives us a rough estimate of when the future leader of Canada was conceived, and history can tell us where Margaret Trudeau, Pierre Trudeau and Castro were during this window of opportunity.
Justin Trudeau was born Dec. 25, 1971. By means of a rough estimate, we note that a 2013 study published in the journal Human Reproduction used data from 130 pregnancies to investigate the range of different pregnancy lengths from conception to birth and reported a range of 247 to 284 days:
It is extremely unlikely that Justin Trudeau's birth fell outside that gestational range, meaning that Castro and Margaret Trudeau would have to have conceived their secret love-child between March 16 and April 22 , 1971.
It should be noted that Margaret and Pierre Trudeau secretly wed on March 4, 1971, and honeymooned until March 8 . When they returned home, Margaret moved in with the prime minister for the first time. If ever there were a time to coneive a baby and have it be born in late December, it would have been then, as hinted at in a Harper's Bazaar profile of Margaret Trudeau: "Margaret moved into the prime minister's official residence, at 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa, and gave birth to Justin just 10 months after the wedding, on Christmas Day in 1971."
If that is not enough evidence, or if the prospect of a head of state (or his spouse) making secret visits to foreign nations unnoticed sounds plausible, careful examination of the historical record provides little chronologic room to place Margaret Trudeau and Castro together at the time necessary to have conceived the child. Upon their return from their honeymoon, the shock of the Trudeaus' marriage (she was 22 and he was 51) put them under intense media scrutiny , making it unlikely Margaret Trudeau could slip away to Cuba for a tryst unnoticed, since she was now the talk of the town.
The first couple made a big impression at a local sugaring event , for example, on March 27, and the press (in a testament to the level of scrutiny the prime minister's new wife received) noted that Margaret Trudeau did not travel with the prime minister on an April trip to the Niagara region:
Fidel Castro, for his part, appears to have been in Cuba during the entire conception window, though reports of his daily movements are sparse. Castro's international travel, when it occurred, always received significant coverage in American media, but there is no mention of such travel during this time.
In terms of public appearances, Castro gave an address to attendees of the "first education and culture congress" on April 1. On April 19, he gave a defiantly anti-American speech that commemorated the 10th anniversary of the defeat of the United States‐sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion.
Following Snopes' original publication of this piece, several readers discovered an omission in our debunking. Some particularly zealous critics have argued this omission masks a more plausible time in which a Castro-Trudeau child could have been conceived — an April trip to the Caribbean dubbed a "second honeymoon." In our original piece , we stated:
For the remainder of April, Pierre was busy with governing, as attested to by logs of the Canadian House of Commons, making it unlikely that his work would take the couple anywhere near Havana.
This statement was incorrect. The Trudeaus took a trip to several Caribbean islands from April 8 to April 18 — a period of time consistent with the conception window for Justin Trudeau discussed above. Based on coverage of their movements from 1971, the trip took the couple to Barbados, Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago.
Only one of these days, at least publicly, was dedicated to the prime minister's official duties. On April 15, Pierre Trudeau traveled alone from the island of Tobago, where he was vacationing with his new wife, to Trinidad, where he met with the prime minister of the island nation for lunch . He returned to his wife in the afternoon.
One April 13, 1971, newspaper article has been cited by several adherents to the theory that Castro and Margaret Trudeau conceived Justin Trudeau on this second honeymoon because it describes the couple's trip to an "unidentified nearby island" [emphasis ours]:
Prime Minister Trudeau and his wife left here Monday by chartered plane on a quick side trip to an unidentified nearby island. They arrived here Thursday on a brief "second honeymoon," and have reportedly been staying at a private residence on the island's posh west coast.
Given the secrecy, some Reddit users wondered whether this could have been the day that Castro and Margaret Trudeau crossed paths, presumably in Cuba. That was not the case. While that location was indeed kept secret on April 13, reporting from April 16 in their trip makes it clear the undisclosed island was St. Vincent:
The Trudeaus already have visited Barbados and spent a day swimming off Bequia, a tiny island in the Grenadines, and nearby islets when they visited St. Vincent Monday.
Speaking of the April trip, one Reddit user explained that "This is the very period [during] which Margaret was in various Caribbean islands east of Cuba." The notion that this trip to the Caribbean provided a unique opportunity for a Castro-Trudeau love child must be tempered by some obvious realities.
One, while Cuba and the locations visited by the Trudeaus are all islands, they are not particularly close to one another. In fact, Ottawa is closer to Havana than either Barbados or Trinidad and Tobago .
And secondly, this claim is a solution to a problem that does not exist. The most likely period of time in which Trudeau was conceived remains late March 1971, which happens to be when the couple began officially living together after their honeymoon.
There is no reason to think, or evidence to support the notion, that Margaret Trudeau met Castro before 1976 — years after Justin Trudeau's birth — and there is no plausible circumstance during which a meeting between Castro and Margaret Trudeau could have secretly occurred during the biologically necessary time that accommodates their known public schedules. Even the original poster of the Reddit thread seemed to cede this point:
There are still some timeline issues - anything that would place them together around the time of conception would seal the deal, but I'm confident in what I've found so far.
For these reasons, and because the claim originated from someone who misstated the year in which the Trudeaus and Castro actually first met in person, the notion that Justin Trudeau is a child of Castro and Margaret Trudeau is unfounded.
Sources:
AP Images. "Pierre Trudeau with His Bride Margaret" 27 March 1971.
Castro, Fidel. Fidel Castro: My Life. Simon and Schuster, 2008. ISBN 1-416-56250-8.
Cohn, Andrew. "What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been" The Globe and Mail. 15 October 2010.
Getty Images . "Bringing His Bride Home: Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Wife." 8 March 1971.
Jukic, A.M. "Length of Human Pregnancy and Contributors to Its Natural Variation." Human Reproduction . 6 August 2013.
Kuczynski, Alex. "First Lady Wild Child: Margaret Trudeau." Harper's Bazaar . 17 March 2016.
Library of Parliament . "House of Commons Journals, 28th Parliament, 3rd Session: Vol. 117."
Office of the Prime Minister of Canada . "Statement by the Prime Minister of Canada on the Death of Former Cuban President Fidel Castro." 26 November 2016.
Park, Madison. "O Canada: Trudeau's Castro Tribute Raises Eyebrows." CNN . 27 November 2016.
The New York Times . "Castro Rejects New Ties to U.S." 20 April 1971.
The New York Times . "Trudeau Weds in Canada." 5 March 1971.
Wright, Robert. "Castro and Trudeau: A Famous, But Also Fraught Friendship" The Globe and Mail . 26 November 2016.
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