We’ve covered Justin Trudeau all his life. Here’s his story.

Canadians have watched Justin Trudeau grow up within the pages of Maclean’s. We followed his earliest days as a prime minister’s son, his emergence as a national figure, and eventually his own arrival as Prime Minister. Trudeau spent years dropping hints about his political ambition to Maclean’s writers. We’ve covered Trudeau all his life. Here’s his story.

He was first to learn of his dad’s first retirement.

The press reported that Pierre Elliott Trudeau told his three sons, including Justin, about his 1979 retirement from politics before he told their mother, Margaret. (The retirement wouldn’t last.)

He eulogized his father in front of the country.

Millions of Canadians who weren’t acquainted with Pierre’s eldest son watched him eulogize the elder Trudeau in 2000. That emotional tribute launched the first of countless rumours that Justin would run for office.

His career in politics became "when," not "if."

It was during an interview with Maclean’s writer Jonathon Gatehouse in 2002 that Trudeau first declared his intention to, some day at least, run for office.

His career in politics became all but official.

A couple of Maclean’s reporters who’d skulked around the Liberal leadership convention in 2006 first heard Trudeau hint, over the phone, that he’d run for Parliament in the next election.

He won a seat in Parliament.

After Trudeau took the hard road to the House of Commons, knocking off a strong Bloc Quebecois incumbent in Montreal’s Papineau riding in the 2008 election, he explained his new job to Maclean’s reporter Aaron Wherry.

He taught us a thing or two about boxing.

Before he fought Sen. Patrick Brazeau in a rowdy hotel ballroom in Ottawa’s east end, Trudeau correctly predicted exactly how the match would go down during a conversation with Maclean’s Ottawa bureau chief John Geddes.

He ran for Liberal leader.

Ten years after "if" became "when," Trudeau and Gatehouse sat down two days before the Liberal MP announced his intention to run for Liberal leader. His victory foreshadowed his 2015 election strategy.

He had a plan to run the country.

As Trudeau wrapped up a busy summer in 2014, Maclean’s political editor Paul Wells quizzed him on every issue under the sun.

He beat the man who detested Pierre’s legacy.

Three years after the technical knockout that unofficially launched his bid for the Liberal leadership, Trudeau soundly beat Stephen Harper’s Conservatives—and ended nine-plus years of Tory rule.

He was our biggest newsmaker of 2015.

For all that, we named Trudeau the Maclean’s Newsmaker of the Year for 2015.

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