Justin Trudeau Canada's Prime Minister

Justin Trudeau was born Christmas Day, 1971, and because his birth came almost exactly nine months after his parents’ wedding, people took to calling him “Justin time.”

Now the 43-year-old is just in time for something else: the office of Canadian prime minister. He was elected to office Monday, becoming Canada’s second-youngest leader ever.

The victory was considered shocking to some because, until recently, Trudeau hadn’t exactly been considered head-of-state material.

He’s likely the first prime minister whose résumé includes time as a bungee and snowboard instructor, the first to have a tattoo on his biceps (the planet Earth inside a raven, a nod to the indigenous Haida people), and definitely the only world leader with a YouTube video demonstrating his party trick of falling down stairs.

To many, Trudeau’s only qualification was being the handsome son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. His opponent, the Conservative incumbent Stephen Harper, questioned Trudeau’s experience and intelligence.

One ad jabbed, “Being prime minister is not an entry-level job … nice hair, though.”

He was called a “breathtaking ignoramus” by one Canadian journalist, though Trudeau has pushed back against the dim-bulb reputation, once claiming he placed in the 98th percentile on his LSATs.

Trudeau was born in Ottawa, the eldest child of then-Prime Minister Pierre and wife Margaret. As a boy, he played games in the halls of Parliament, rubbed shoulders with luminaries such as Margaret Thatcher and was taught to sing Richie Havens’ “Freedom” by his hippie-ish mom.

His childhood, however, was at times tumultuous.

His parents, who married when his mother was 22 and his father 52, separated in 1977 amid rumors that his mom had skipped the couple’s anniversary to party with the Rolling Stones. Though she denied a rumored fling with Mick Jagger, she later admitted to having had an affair with Ted Kennedy.

“I remember the first time I met Teddy Kennedy,” Trudeau’s mother wrote in her 2015 memoir. “That evening, I felt such a pull toward him that we couldn’t even stand within a couple meters of one another. Pierre was not amused.”

But that following would take a while. He graduated from McGill University in 1994 and set off to travel the world. With some 20 friends, he spent time in France, Spain, Morocco and China.

Following his return to Canada, he moved to Whistler, BC, to become a ski bum, sleeping on a friend’s couch while teaching snowboarding and working as a nightclub bouncer.

In his free time, Trudeau chased the ladies.

Modal Trigger

Mother Margaret at Studio 54 in 1977. A party girl, she was rumored to have had a fling with Mick Jagger.Photo: Ron Galella/WireImage

“We were all young and single, hanging out in Whistler together,” friend Sean Smillie says in Althia Raj’s 2013 biography “Contender: The Justin Trudeau Story.” “So yeah, that was another big pursuit.”

Trudeau would later put his education and degree to use, teaching math, drama and French.

It wasn’t until 2000, when he delivered a eulogy at his father’s funeral, that Trudeau drew national attention.

“We knew we were the luckiest kids in the world,” he said at the funeral. “And we had done nothing to actually deserve it. It was instead something that we would have to spend the rest of our lives to work very hard to live up to.”

In 2005, Trudeau married Sophie Grégoire, a Canadian TV host and childhood friend of his brother Michel (who died in a 1998 avalanche). He arrived at the wedding in his father’s 1959 Mercedes wearing a gold suit.

He and Sophie had reconnected at a 2003 charity event, and the following day, she e-mailed him suggesting they meet up. He didn’t respond.

“I knew that the day I went out for coffee with her, that would be the last day I would ever have as a single man,” Trudeau said on Canadian news program “Beyond Politics” in 2009.