The most interesting person in the above photograph is not Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, nor is it any of the hysteric individuals, mostly young women, greeting Trudeau as he left the media centre at the APEC conference in Manila, Philippines on Thursday morning.
It's the face unlike all the others, to the left and behind Trudeau.
That's the face of a man who gets paid to worry full-time about whether the very next second he will have to take a bullet for his boss.
That's what it means to be part of the security detail for a head of state. Among the hands reaching out to touch Trudeau, shake hands with him or take a picture or video of him, it is the job of this man and his colleagues to separate those hands from the hands that might be holding a gun.
To fully appreciate that job in real time, have a look at the Globe and Mail video of this scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfu7OGwe0wE). The noise, the movement, the lights. Everything is happening so fast.
In light of last year's shooting on Parliament Hill and last week's attacks in Paris, it is both madness and courage for Trudeau to continue to make himself so open to the public. Much has been made about how Trudeau plans to do things differently from his predecessor.
Accessibility and security are two of those changes.
The morning after the federal election, he showed up at a Montreal subway station to greet people heading to work. Later that same day, he walked from Parliament Hill to his first media conference as prime minister in the National Press Building across the street. It's a short stroll of a few minutes that probably seems like miles and an eternity to his security staff.
In an Ottawa Citizen story after the election, Dan Boehner, who provided security for Trudeau during the election and was the officer in charge of the prime minister's protection detail under Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, shed some light on standing on guard for someone like Trudeau.
"There's thing you do in advance... to have some control," he explained.
Notice in the Manila video how Trudeau never stops moving and both he and his staff follow a set path. He is never completely surrounded by the crowd. The pandemonium never descends into chaos.
The element of surprise works in the favour of security at these kinds of appearances because they are sudden and brief. Boehner says it's the formal public events that are more difficult. Trudeau's invitation to the public to come to Rideau Hall to attend the swearing-in ceremony for him and his cabinet would have certainly been one of those instances where security was on high alert.
Boehner went on to explain the "working relationship" between Trudeau and his security, which has to be built on trust. His guards need to trust Trudeau that he will stick to the plan and he will, as Boehner delicately put it, "take advice" when something bad happens. That's a gentle way of saying that he will shut up and do exactly as he's told.
If that man to the left in the photograph has to go to work, he's in charge. If that means tackling Trudeau or grabbing him and shoving him in a certain direction, so be it. If he has to lean in and say "Mr. Prime Minister, we need to leave now," that is not a request, that's an order and the operative words are "leave" and "now."
Canadian society remains open and Trudeau projects that with the small but calculated risk he takes each time he interacts with the public, his security right at his side.
