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When Pearson resigned in 1968, Trudeau beat out 19 other Liberal opponents to win the post of party leader and Prime Minister. Just three days after his inauguration on April 20, 1968, Trudeau dissolved Parliament and called for general elections. In the campaign that followed, he ran on the promise to create a "just society- for all Canadians, rich and poor, and inspired a veritable cult of personality "dubbed "Trudeaumania- "among his countrymen. Such popular support swept the charismatic and untraditional Trudeau into power by a comfortable majority in the general elections in June 1968. .
After two years of characteristically liberal rule, the high point of Trudeau's popularity came in 1970, during the so-called October crisis. Members of an extreme separatist group, the Front de Libération de Quebec, kidnapped James Cross, a British diplomat, and Pierre Laporte, Quebec's labor minister, demanding the release of several of the organization's members who had been imprisoned for various crimes. Reluctantly, Trudeau enforced the War Measures Act and declared virtual martial law in Montreal, where some 400 people were arrested and held without being charged. When the crisis ended, Laporte had been killed and four separatists were charged and imprisoned for his murder. A majority of Quebec's citizens lauded Trudeau's tough stance, which effectively ended terrorism in Quebec. .
Trudeau lost power for nine months in 1979 and early 1980 when Joe Clark, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, defeated him. He regained his seat as prime minister by March 1980, after René Lévesque, one of the foremost leaders of the separatist cause, organized a referendum on the issue of Quebec's independence and unintentionally strengthened support for Trudeau among those Canadians who missed his strong voice against separatism and for nationalism. .
Among the indelible changes that Trudeau's 16 years of leadership brought to his native land "in addition to his success in handling the French separatist movement "were parliamentary independence from Britain and improvement of foreign relations with powerful nations such as China.