OTTAWA (NYTIMES, REUTERS) - The re-election campaign of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada was thrown into turmoil on Wednesday (Sept 18) when Time magazine published a 2001 photograph of him wearing brownface make-up at a private school party.
Trudeau apologised on Wednesday. "I should have known better then, but I didn't and I did it and I'm deeply sorry," he told reporters on his campaign plane in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The image could undermine his chances for re-election with less than five weeks to go before the national election.
Time said the photograph had been taken when Trudeau, then a 29-year-old teacher, attended an "Arabian Nights" themed costume gala at the West Point Grey Academy in Vancouver, British Columbia.
A spokesman for Trudeau's re-election campaign confirmed that the photo was him.
"He attended with friends and colleagues dressed as a character from Aladdin," the spokesman, Zita Astravas, said.
The photograph appeared in the school's 2000-2001 yearbook, The View, Time said, adding that it had obtained a copy of the yearbook from a Vancouver businessman, Michael Adamson, a member of the school community. The magazine reported that Adamson, who first saw the photograph in July, felt that it should be made public.
The news immediately injected new uncertainty into the political career of Trudeau, the Liberal Party leader who began his re-election campaign a week ago. He has sought to cast himself as a champion of Canada's racial and ethnic minorities in his nearly four years as prime minister.
The photograph immediately drew comparisons to the scandal that enmeshed Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia earlier this year over a photograph published in a medical school yearbook about 35 years earlier.
Initially, Northam apologised for appearing in the yearbook photo, which shows a man in blackface make-up standing next to someone wearing a Klan robe and hood. But he later insisted that he was actually not either of the people in the picture.
The photo of Trudeau immediately became the dominant topic on Canadian news websites.
Many Canadians are of South Asian and Middle Eastern descent and Trudeau has four Sikhs in his Cabinet. Many of those communities have been an important source of support for the Liberals and Trudeau.
But on a disastrous state trip to India earlier in the year, Trudeau attracted ridicule for wearing flashy silk and gold-embroidered outfits and pointed, red silk shoes. Though intended as a gesture of respect for Indian culture, it was widely seen in Canada as a cringe-inducing game of dress-up.
A self-proclaimed feminist, Trudeau was accused last year of groping a reporter in 2000 while he was still a private citizen. Trudeau rejected the allegation and it largely became forgotten.
On Wednesday, Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the New Democratic Party, who is a Sikh, said Trudeau's costume was "insulting" and suggested, along with the groping allegations, that Trudeau may not be the same person in private as he portrays himself in public.
"Who is the real Mr. Trudeau? Is it the one behind closed doors, the one when the cameras are turned off that no one sees?" Singh told reporters. "Is that the real Mr. Trudeau? Because more and more, it seems like it is."
Mustafa Farooq, the executive director of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, said that he found the photograph "deeply saddening".
"The wearing of blackface/brownface is reprehensible, and harkens back to a history of racism and an Orientalist mythology, which is unacceptable," Farooq said in a statement.
