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Gary Shapiro describes the idea as a "poison pill," a kind of desperate last resort to avert a looming national tragedy. Anthony Housefather considers it a "safety blanket to guarantee that we are all going to remain Canadian.

It is the morning after his convincing win in Newfoundland's general election and, at first, Brian Tobin insists that he is too tired to speak at length to a battery of journalists who have questions about his plans for the province.

Teddy Kennedy was one of the first to call Brian MULRONEY at home last Monday morning with congratulations. The U.S. senator's message, Mulroney later told friends, included the observation that Mulroney "proved that a citizen can take on city hall, and win.

In the spring of 1996, Glen CLARK was British Columbia's golden boy, a 38-year-old street-smart politician from Vancouver's scrappy east end who led the New Democratic Party to a stunning victory. He cast himself as a feisty populist and promised jobs and megaprojects.

FROM THE MOMENT it was announced a year ago, the Gomery commission of inquiry into rampant abuse of sponsorship programs seemed custom-designed to reveal the worst aspects of Jean CHRÉTIEN's tenure as prime minister.

Carol-Anne Grenier reckons the government owes her $20,000, and she is seething with anger at Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s refusal to pay up.

The birth of his first child can change the way a man looks at things. Stephen Harper had always been a hardline ideological conservative, not given to bending.

No one ever suggested Mel Cappe was much of a micromanager. Cappe's reputation in Ottawa's public service is as a big-picture guy, a bureaucrat more interested in the sweep of policy-making than the dotted i's of program management.

His absence was, in reality, due to a bout of flu. But many nights, Lord's tan minivan is the last vehicle in the parking lot behind the government buildings. His heavy workload has even reduced the premier to working out at home, instead of his usual fitness regimen of ball hockey and racquetball.

When it comes to taking care of personal finances, Bohdan Dolban, 32, and his wife, Mary, 35, are about as good as it gets. His job as a sales representative for a Toronto packaging company and hers as a systems analyst give them a family income of about $85,000, and every cent is put to good use.

It was vintage Glen Clark. Moments before B.C. Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Bennett entered Courtroom 55 in Vancouver last week, with his reputation, his finances and possibly his freedom hanging on her verdict, Clark rose from his seat beside his legal team and turned to the overflow audience.

This time there will be no push. No false non-aggression pact like the one Brian MULRONEY made with him in the early 1980s while all the while scheming against him.

For days, Nova Scotia Tory Leader John Hamm withstood the pressure.

It was a remarkable, and perhaps prophetic, closing chapter to the millennium.

It should have been a simple question for a man accustomed to the black art of political gamesmanship. What can the other contenders for Jean CHRÉTIEN's throne do to give former finance minister Paul MARTIN a run for his millions? But this seasoned LIBERAL PARTY strategist seemed stumped.

It takes a political animal to know one.

In his novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel García Márquez unwinds the final hours of a man fatally marked by circumstances and bad timing, whose death is preordained and who is utterly powerless to skew his fate, thus living with a sense of eerie, fatalistic determination.