Alexandre Trudeau

Speaking topics

Presentations listed below include in-person and virtual keynotes, as well as workshops, fireside chats, and other presentation formats.

• Forever Young: On Growing Up (Or Not Growing Up) in the 21st Century

  The world is changing at a frenzied pace. In a globalized market, our skills and talents are now measured against competitors in faraway places. The job security of previous generations is no longer a reality for today’s young people.

  At the same time, the information revolution has broadened the possibilities for learning and developing skill-sets at all stages in life. So, looking forward, today’s youth will be required to invent themselves over and over again to eke out a living and make their way in the world.

  Alexandre Trudeau, renowned filmmaker and storyteller, offers Canadian youth a compelling vision for them to effectively engage the challenges and opportunities that the new age holds. He invites them to reclaim for themselves the courage and pragmatism that Canada once required of its youth–who also faced great uncertainties–and match it with the independence and inventiveness unique to these exciting times.

• The Way of the World

  Canadians are blessed with plenty of elbow room, vast natural resources and unrivaled social peace. For most of us, this makes the violent places of the world seem far away and difficult to understand. Yet every day, we are flooded with stories about the wars tearing these places apart. Comfortable Canadians are left to wonder why these things are happening, what and who might be responsible, and what can be done.

  For over two decades, filmmaker and war reporter Alexandre Trudeau has tracked unrest in the world. He has found that there is usually a rhyme and a reason behind the chaos; always a coarse and a fine logic to every war.

  Using his personal documentary footage, shot  from some of the world’s most turbulent conflict zones, Trudeau deconstructs how geographic, climatic, political, economic, cultural, and media forces work together to cause violent breakdowns. He argues that unrest has always been a part and parcel of all civilization and only now has ease of travel and trade, as well as the speed of information transmission, amplified and focused the effects of conflict.

• Canadian History: An Alternative Take on the Past for a New View of the Future

  Canadian history has been told through a narrow prism. For too long, our national narrative has been distilled into something neat and friendly, something clean and nice, fitting the highest ideals of Western tradition. It is a story that makes our past seem comfortable and easy to deal with, and that glosses over the brutality and severity that faced our forefathers. This gross simplification does no justice, however, to the preceding generations, to the strength and endurance that they showed in the face of adversity, and provides little wisdom or insight for the new generations.

  Canada is an unfinished country, still in need of bold men and women. From pre-Columbian times through the early explorers and into the complicated nation-building of 19^th and 20^th centuries, Alexandre Trudeau spins a tale of a different Canada than the one held up now in our comfortable times. He argues that to meet the challenges of the new age, we must make our peace with our true past, no matter how raw and difficult it is, and draw from it our strength.

• Understanding China

  China is now a major player on the world scene, a major importer of planetary resources, a major producer of manufactured products and a massive and dynamic population pool of potential tourists, emigrants and investors.  It is also an ancient and complex nation that functions according to its very own logic. Making sense of such a potent and unique place can be difficult. Yet one cannot understand the shape of the world today without comprehending the nature of the new China and the growing role it plays, not just in the world economy, but in our everyday lives as well.

  Through rare stories and insightful portraits accumulated through years of travel there, Alexandre Trudeau, untangles and decants key notions about the New China. A natural story-teller and author of the bestselling book, Barbarian Lost, Travels in the New China, he sheds light on the origins of Chinese manufacturing successes, on the ethical framework that underlie Chinese life to this day, on the values that set it apart, on the environmental challenges facing the country and on the political transformations of the past, present and future of this ever changing superpower.