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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.

The meeting of hospital administrators last week in Toronto was overshadowed by a very personal issue: the participants' salaries.

In the end, a dangerous and irresistible vanity - talking on the phone - proved fatal for Dzhokar Dudayev.

As usual, Brian Mulroney was dressed for the occasion, impeccably suited in sober, even prime ministerial, blue.

It was a short-lived fiasco that federal Liberals prefer to look upon as a petit faux pas.

Frank McKenna had a big smile on his face, and a new spin on a familiar sales pitch. In a national newspaper advertisement that appeared late last week, the New Brunswick premier told readers across the country that "the best place in Canada to do business keeps getting better and better.

It was perhaps ironic that Ontario's controversial Conservative government could not even cut taxes without sparking an agonized debate. Eleven months after Premier Mike Harris swept to power, he fulfilled a key election promise in last week's budget, introducing the first stages of a 30.

Ted Maczka is Garlic Man. "I preach the gospel of garlic," proclaims the retired tool-and-die maker. "It's my baby.

On Christmas Eve, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien asked Brian Tobin to drop by 24 Sussex Drive for a private chat about the future. Longtime political colleagues and, more recently, personal friends, Chrétien and his fisheries minister had much to discuss.