The air was crisp, the snow packed down on the grounds of Parliament Hill. A crowd had gathered for a Canada Day event in February, a national unity rally. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien worked the rope line. Then Bill Clennett, a protestor with the group Bread Not Circuses, broke through. He was shouting about poverty, about government cuts. He got close. What happened next lasted seconds, but was captured in a series of grainy, indelible photographs.
Chrétien, then 61, did not step back. He reached out with his left hand, grabbed Clennett by the neck, and pulled him down and off-balance. His right hand came up, seemingly to clamp over the protester's face. The expression on the PM's face was not one of rage, but of intense, focused exertion—a man doing a difficult job. Clennett's glasses flew into the snow. Security personnel swarmed in, but the Prime Minister had already taken matters, quite literally, into his own hands. Clennett was hauled away, charged with assault (later dropped), and the incident was christened the 'Shawinigan Handshake,' a wry nod to Chrétien's tough hometown in Quebec.
The public reaction was strangely bifurcated. There was outrage at a head of government using physical force. There was also a perverse, widespread admiration. In that visceral, unscripted moment, Chrétien had shed the polished veneer of politics. He was a scrappy fighter from Shawinigan again, defending his personal space. The incident didn't hurt him politically; it cemented his image as a pragmatic, no-nonsense leader. It became a joke, a legend, a piece of political theatre that spoke to a deeper Canadian fascination with the unguarded id of its leaders. It was all there in the crunch of snow, the flying glasses, and the Prime Minister's grip.