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At 4 p.m. one recent weekday, Morley Safer was doing what comes unnaturally - starting to count the days until his month-long summer vacation.

As other Canadians prepared last week to celebrate the country's 131st birthday, families of the 26 men who died in the May, 1992, Westray mine explosion girded themselves for a more sombre undertaking.

After five months on the road, a weary-looking Gino Quilico conceded the obvious. "This time, I'm tired," said the 43-year-old baritone, slouched in a chair in his Montreal studio.

From the outside there was little to distinguish the sleek Toyota Prius from any other car on the streets of Timmins, Ont. But when the driver turned the key, it was clear this was no ordinary sedan. The only sound as the Prius pulled away was the gentle hum of an electric motor.

Camille Laurin once likened Bill 101, Quebec's landmark French language charter that he ushered into law, to shock therapy. It was a fitting analogy for Laurin, 76, a psychiatrist-turned-politician who died of cancer last week in Montreal.

The atmosphere was at once optimistic and wary. As they arrived in Saskatoon for last week's premiers' conference, provincial officials thought the stars were lining up for an agreement on a united front to carry them into negotiations with Ottawa on social programs.

For the man who has spent a decade living a real-life version of The Fugitive, Salman Rushdie no longer fits the part as well as he once did.

Even when all his appeals had at long last run out and the life remaining to him was measured in just minutes, Stanley Faulder had little to say for himself. For 22 years, while he sat on death row in Huntsville, Tex.

Under a hazy sky, Helen Beath clutched a placard on the picket line outside Montreal General Hospital. Even though she retired in May after 43 years of nursing, Beath returned to the hospital last week to support her former colleagues.

Every Barbara Walters celebrity interview has a signature moment, the one where the interviewee's lower lip trembles and the tears start to flow. Devotees of the form were heartened to see that her televised session with Monica Lewinsky was no exception.

It was another Kennedy family reunion at the storied Hyannisport, Mass., island compound where they have shared so much joy and sorrow.

He has her look, the one that gave her so vulnerable an air, that slow, shy upturned glance from a downturned head. He has her eyes, too, blue as an English summer sky. The blond hair is the same, as is the quiet smile, the fluid walk, the long, lean figure.

So why do people keep misjudging those choirboy looks? The fluently bilingual lawyer was a dark horse to become leader of the hapless New Brunswick Tory party after Bernard Valcourt was driven out during a fractious leadership review in 1997 - but won on the second ballot.

Jeanne Lamon was addressing the faithful in Toronto’s Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church. But far from delivering a sober sermon, the musical director of the Tafelmusik Baroque orchestra was talking about filthy lucre.

Finance Minister Paul Martin’s mission was clear in delivering his annual fall economic update. Douse hopes that much new spending is in the works. Dismiss the argument that Ottawa can afford a big reduction in Employment Insurance premiums.

On the crisp wintry morning after the televised leaders debate that was supposed to save his sinking election campaign, Quebec Liberal Leader Jean Charest took his remaining hopes home to the comfort of Quebec’s Eastern Townships.

The sheer cowardice of the act was chilling. Someone, it appears, waited in the dusk that comes early this time of year for Tara Singh Hayer, the editor of North America’s largest Punjabi-language newspaper, to return to his home in Surrey, B.C., at the end of the workday on Nov. 18.

Mere hours before the official reopening of its fashion floors in Toronto’s Yorkdale mall last week, there appeared perhaps the perfect illustration of Eaton’s quest to remake itself. Downstairs, the array of cosmetics and fashion accessories was deliciously tempting.

Theatre impresario Garth Drabinsky hailed the April, 1998 arrival of a team of executives led by superagent Michael Ovitz as a blessing. Sure, it meant that Drabinsky and his longtime partner Myron Gottlieb would have to relinquish control of Livent Inc., their Toronto-based live theatre company.