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At moments during last week's Liberal nomination meeting in the provincial riding of Humber East in Corner Brook, Nfld., the spirit of the legendary Joey Smallwood seemed to permeate the room. At the microphone, a pumped-up Brian Tobin, in a pugilist's stance, was in full rhetorical flight.

The three wolves were laid out on blankets - a young 105-lb. animal with a sleek black coat, and a pair of slightly smaller, grey-flecked ones, still unconscious after being tranquillized earlier in the day.

By the standards he set during his street-brawling youth in Shawinigan, it was not much of a rout.

Wayne Gretzky has a long memory. The most prolific scorer in the history of hockey can recall the tiniest details of past games. His business life has been enhanced by his ability to remember names and faces, and he never forgets the kindness of friends.

Dumpy, balding and bespectacled, he did not look like a demonic angel of death.

When Maxine Lawson first suspected that her two-year-old son, Caden, might be picking up nasty habits from television, she was not sure what to do about it. "If he caught a glimpse of something like wrestling, he'd start kicking and pushing," the Toronto accountant recalls.

As Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's government tried to evoke a new era of Canadian team spirit in the House of Commons last week, it was no coincidence that the one premier who came to listen was Captain Canada himself.

In the end, the protest sputtered out, a victim of high seas and bad weather in the choppy Straits of Florida. The 35 boats and several private planes that set out from Key West, Fla.

When David Harris, a 40-year-old Toronto elementary school teacher, arrived at the Ontario legislature last week, the ornate building was surrounded by almost 5,000 striking members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU).

The debacle began with only 31.6 seconds left in the overtime period. The University of Moncton Blue Eagles, the reigning Canadian collegiate hockey champions, were down one game to nil in their best-of-three divisional final against the University of Prince Edward Island Panthers.

For more than a decade, scientists have been using genetic technology to produce biologically identical copies, or clones, of animals. In theory, cloning can be used to improve sheep and cattle breeds by ensuring that the animals' most desirable genetic characteristics are passed on.

"Pay attention ladies and gentlemen, and you will see with your own eyes that our army left the Serb areas untouched.

Women now make up slightly more than half of all people living in Canada. In fact, in 1991, the last census year, 50.4 per cent of the total population was female, compared with 50.2 per cent in 1981 and 48.4 per cent in 1921.

Canadians have never needed banana peels as a cure for rare displays of over-confidence; ice works well enough. It was ice last week on the speed-skating oval and in Salt Lake City's figure-skating arena that momentarily flattened Canada's self-described "best ever" Winter Olympic team.

During the mid-1970s, a Canadian Wildlife Service researcher discovered that birds in Lake Ontario were behaving in a bizarre way: unable to find mates, pairs of female herring gulls were nesting together and devotedly tending clutches of eggs that usually turned out to be infertile.

"Be careful, some of 'ems in a nasty mood," warned a police constable to those venturing into Smithfield Market in London last week. The sprawling shed with its grand Victorian lattice has been the centre of Britain's meat trade since the last century.