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When Norman Leach arrived for a meeting in Calgary one morning last September, he had a checklist of items to be verified and lessons to deliver. An expert on Canada's [...]

To anyone visiting Washington from another country-or planet-last week, it might have made perfect sense to conclude that there are two Bill Clintons. The first is the poised, articulate, intelligent [...]

Photo: Blackout-patched Montreal from Mount Royal; Photo: A downed transmission tower near Trois-Rivieres, Que.: 'nothing prepares you for this'; Photo: Ottawa firemen evacuate a woman; Photo: Military trucks near the [...]

On a balmy late-December afternoon, Prime Minister Jean Chretien was in conversation with Maclean's at his official residence when the telephone rang for the second time. Gesturing to an aide [...]

Over the past few weeks, Jamie McAlpine and his wife, Ann, had several intense and emotional discussions across the kitchen table about the provincewide teachers' strike that gave 2.1 million [...]

Inside his second-floor corner office at Queen's Park one afternoon last week, it was business as usual for Ontario Premier Mike Harris. Through the window came the raucous cries of [...]

To better understand what makes Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard tick, consider this: on Nov. 18, 1995, media reports said that former prime minister Brian Mulroney was being investigated by the [...]

On the last day of what may have been Jean Chretien's final election campaign, the Prime Minister went back to the place where his life and his political career both [...]

When the telephone call came from Jean Charest earlier this year, Raymond McBain was surprised -- and for a moment, uncharacteristically speechless. Last year, McBain, a blunt 61-year-old businessman, retired [...]

Among political strategists, it is sometimes known as 'the barbecue factor': the manner in which a once-hot candidate ends up cooked on election day. The principal example, one that many [...]

Call them the Legion of the Damning [!]an elite but unhappy group of former political leaders who rise, often at the most inopportune times, to smite their successors with deeply [...]

For those who have ever wondered what a prime minister does for fun, here is an example. In early April, Jean Chretien was in British Columbia for several events that [...]

Caring, sharing, patient, mostly tolerant and a bit boring. Throughout Canada's 130-year history, Canadians have often been self-congratulatory about their perceived virtues-and worried about why the rest of the world [...]

Meet Dr. Keith Martin, a man who admits that his closest friends consider him 'absolutely, completely nuts.' Four years ago, Martin, a then-32-year-old physician, relished his thriving medical practice in [...]

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 [...]

It is a remarkable image from a pivotal time in Canadian politics. The black-and-white photograph, taken in 1967 at a swearing-in ceremony of new federal cabinet ministers, shows four men [...]

Victory in the referendum in Quebec led to a new showdown In the days immediately following the Quebec referendum on Oct. 30, 1995, Prime Minister Jean Chretien worked feverishly behind [...]

In the weekend before he planned to shuffle his cabinet, Jean Chretien was tired but in a teasing mood. Visibly exhausted in the aftermath of a 12-day trip to Asia [...]

A community of communities? A union of 10 equal provinces? A pact between two--or, with the natives, among three--founding peoples? A sea-to-sea-sea notion that became a nation despite its vastness [...]

At first in the House of Commons last week, it seemed that all the major players in the Quebec referendum had decided to go back to the future and behave [...]

Shortly after the kickoff of the first Quebec referendum campaign on sovereignty in 1980, then-finance minister Jacques Parizeau decided to go for a drink one night at his favorite haunt, [...]

What divides Canadians often seems to matter more than what unites them. When they are not raging in--or about--Quebec, denouncing Toronto or hand-wringing about Ottawa ignoring their own region, they [...]

Among longtime friends of Justice Minister Allan Rock, it is known simply as the John Lennon Story--burnished by more than a quarter century of retelling. The year was 1969, and [...]

After a week that included, among other things, a run up the Great Wall of China, a bicycle trip down a street in Shanghai, a printed excerpt of his autobiography [...]

In an occupation in which who you know can matter as much as what you think, the walls of Immigration and Citizenship Minister Sergio Marchi's fifth-floor Parliament Hill office provide [...]

When they first took centre stage in the 1970s and 1980s, the cast of characters in the ongoing melodrama of Quebec politics was so familiar that no one in Canada [...]

The door is slightly ajar--a crack barely visible in the ancient, burnished wood panelling that lines the office of the leader of the official Opposition on Parliament Hill. Lucien Bouchard [...]

Through the clearing mist, the French village atop the sable beach looked so unreal that Sgt. Maj. Charlie Martin kept thinking, 'It's like a picture postcard.' As his Allied assault [...]

The tax on cigarettes and tobacco should be greatly reduced. All members know that, more than ever before, tobacco is being smuggled into this country. This is largely due to [...]

By 8 a.m. most mornings, the Prime Minister of Canada has been up and about for more than an hour. If Jean Chretien has his way, he rarely stays up [...]

In a capital grown accustomed to solemn pomp, the change in style was as apparent as the dramatic change in government. During a private meeting at Rideau Hall last Wednesday, [...]

All through the day that would end with him poised to become Canada's 20th prime minister, Jean Chretien remained almost eerily serene. The fatigue that had been so apparent in [...]

Sometimes in politics, a little attention can be a very good thing--but a lot is not nearly as welcome. Consider the case of Reform party Leader Preston Manning. At the [...]

Mimi Findlay is a 41-year-old caterer in Mahone Bay, N.S., who usually supports the New Democratic Party but is undecided on how to vote in the coming federal election. Kelly [...]

Long before the formal confirmation that Canadian political history had been made, the final result appeared obvious. The first ballot to elect a new leader for the Conservative party on [...]

In the final 48 hours before announcing one of the most important decisions of his life, Jean Charest, most uncharacteristically, did not know what to do. Even before Prime Minister [...]

From his home in the sparsely populated Northern Ontario township of Ignace, Nelson Taddeo has to travel 250 km east to reach what he refers to as the nearest ``big [...]

Last week, Brian Mulroney ended a historic epoch in modern Canadian history when he announced that he will step down as Prime Minister following a June convention to select a [...]

On a freezing cold afternoon last week, sunlight streamed through the windows of the room that for more than eight years has been a retreat for Prime Minister Brian Mulroney [...]

In the dregs of winter, few Canadians need encouragement to hop on a plane and head for the sun. Ottawa bureau chief Anthony Wilson-Smith and associate editor James Deacon joined [...]

Intelligent, idealistic and still only 32, Les Campbell is the sort of person that every political party wants to attract to its fold. A onetime aide to Manitoba NDP leader [...]

``Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.'' --German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in a 1904 letter to a friend Long before Hugh MacLennan [...]

The latest instalment of Canada's longest-running melodrama featured a familiar cast, a plot that mixed surprising twists with long stretches of tedious dialogue, and a still entirely uncertain conclusion. At [...]

It was a welcome interlude in the saga of a people too often torn between arguing over the past and anguishing over the future. From Newfoundland to British Columbia, Canadians [...]

Inside the 25th-floor Ottawa office of Transport Minister Jean Corbeil, the reminders of one of his professional preoccupations are readily evident. One wall is lined with photographs and models of [...]

HUGH SEGAL BRINGS A BUOYANT OPTIMISM TO HIS JOB AS THE PM'S CHIEF OF STAFF The early-afternoon telephone call from Prime Minister Brian Mulroney came as Hugh Segal was relaxing [...]

Maclean's: After a decade of conservative governments in North America and much of Western Europe, with business-supported agendas, the world is now in a deep recession. What went wrong? Mulroney: [...]

Inside the heavily guarded confines of London's 166-year-old Lancaster House, the seven men put aside their public air of careful formality and treated one another as old and familiar acquaintances. [...]

With the country in crisis and his own reputation battered, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney opened the doors of 24 Sussex Drive, his private offices and the normally off-limits Conservative caucus [...]