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VANCOUVER, B.C. - This city is in the throes of playoff hockey ecstasy, and agony. The Vancouver Canucks are in mortal secondround combat with the powerful Anaheim Ducks. Unbeknownst to many Canucks fans, there is another battle brewing, with more at stake than bragging rights and silver trophies. On the line are family connections, closely guarded business secrets, and a $250-million prize: Control of the 35-year-old NHL franchise itself, and the 18,600-seat, profit-churning arena where the team plays. A bitter ownership dispute between two wealthy Vancouver families goes to trial on Monday in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. In...

See for example this thread first. Arrest of ten youths in Toronto-- Islamic cells get busted up pronto! If facing this Danger makes Bush a "Lone Ranger" should Paul Harper change his name to Tonto?

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Marc Crawford paid the price for failing to meet the high expectations he helped set with the Vancouver Canucks. Touted as Stanley Cup contenders in September, the Canucks fired Crawford as coach on Tuesday after missing the playoffs for the first time in five seasons. "We need some new energy, some new juice," general manager Dave Nonis said. "We felt our team needs a kick-start, that we haven't played with the fire we had been known for in the past. A change behind the bench was the first place to start." Crawford was behind the Vancouver...

Canada is set to expand its combat role in Afghanistan very soon, and this is generating press in Canada (some of it negative). I like these pictures that show their soldiers doing their job. Photo: Michael Den Tandt / The Globe and Mail Private Chad Wiley of the Provincial Reconstruction Team playing a game of hands with one of the younger boys at the orphanage, which is under threat of burning by Taliban insurgents. Photo: Michael Den Tandt / The Globe and Mail A group of children at Kandahar's Karzai orphanage.Photo: Michael Den Tandt / The Globe and Mail Incoming...

OTTAWA, Nov 13 (Reuters) - The leaders of Canada's three opposition parties met on Sunday to decide how and when to try to bring down the 16-month-old minority Liberal government and force an election, possibly as soon as next month. Following a change in heart by the New Democratic Party, which said on Monday that it would no longer be able to support the Liberals, the heads of the three parties met in Conservative leader Stephen Harper's office in Parliament. They kept reporters away from the meeting, but were understood to be discussing whether to bring the government down before...

OTTAWA, ON, Canada (UPI) -- A Canadian official, during a hearing about a Canadian citizen deported to Syria, said the country will cooperate with other nations that practice torture. The Globe and Mail reports Canadian Security Intelligence Service lawyer Barbara McIsaac said that the government will work on anti-terrorism cases with governments that practice torture if it will save lives. She was speaking at a commission hearing looking into Maher Arar`s allegations that he was tortured while imprisoned in Syria. The 36-year-old Syrian-born Canadian citizen was detained at New York`s Kennedy Airport and deported to Syria despite his Canadian passport....

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadians can put away those extra welcome mats -- it seems Americans unhappy about the result of last November's presidential election have decided to stay at home after all. In the days after President Bush won a second term, the number of U.S. citizens visiting Canada's main immigration Web site shot up sixfold, prompting speculation that unhappy Democrats would flock north. But official statistics show the number of Americans actually applying to live permanently in Canada fell in the six months after the election.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) -- A pig farmer, who if convicted could become Canada's most notorious serial killer, was charged Wednesday with 12 new counts of first-degree murder. The new charges come on top of the 15 charges Robert Pickton already faces in the disappearance of more than 60 women, mainly prostitutes who vanished from the seedy Downtown Eastside neighborhood of Vancouver. The remains of at least 31 women were found at Pickton's farm about 15 miles (25 kilometers) from the heart of Vancouver. The 55-year-old single man lived with his brother and sister on the farm left to them...

Internet libel case threatens free speech, coalition says as appeal hearing opens TORONTO — More than 50 of the world's largest media organizations have banded together to overturn an Ontario court ruling that they say threatens free speech and development of the Internet. "This is a case of free expression," Brian McLeod Rogers, a Toronto lawyer representing the media coalition, told the Ontario Court of Appeal yesterday. The 52-member coalition includes CNN, The New York Times, Time magazine, The Times of London, Google and Yahoo, as well as Canadian media such as The Globe and Mail, CanWest Publications Inc., CTV...

“Man and Woman”, “Wife”, “Husband”, “Widow”, “Widower” Banished From all Ontario Law Terms, when referring to spouses, are banned from all government programs, services, documentsToronto, February 25, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – With the obscenely rapid, three-day introduction and passage of its same-sex “marriage” Bill 171, the Ontario government has advanced a revolutionary change in the way all laws and government programs and institutions refer to marriage and married persons. Everything referring to spouses must now be gender neutral. No longer can a married couple be referred to as “husband and wife” or “man and woman”. The terms “Widow” and “widower” are...

> Canada, which this week refused to join a U.S. missile system designed to protect North America, nevertheless insisted on Friday that Washington must consult it before firing rockets into Canadian airspace. "This is our space, our airspace. We're a sovereign nation and you don't intrude on a sovereign nation's airspace without seeking permission," Prime Minister Paul Martin told reporters. < So, we have to ask permission to shoot down a warhead headed our way? Right, we'll get on that, Mr. we-spend-less-than-half-of-the-NATO-average-on-defense. Also in the article was a quote by the Conservative Party of Canada: > The opposition Conservatives mocked...

Rather than give Immigration Minister Judy Sgro a hard time about whether or not she greased the pole, as it were, to fast-track the process to allow a Romanian stripper to stay in Canada, we need to be taking a look at the bigger issue: Why is Canada unable to meet the demand for exotic dancers on its own? What is lacking in our national character that we cannot turn out enough people who can figure out how to take off their clothes? Are we so lacking in skills that we do not know how to pull down a zipper,...

The cash-strapped federal gun registry will miss out on more than $46-million in fees from gun owners this year by giving away 770,000 free licence renewals so that bureaucrats can catch up on their paperwork. Those firearms owners who were randomly chosen by the Canada Firearms Centre for the free extensions of up to four years should receive their notices in the mail next week. The unusual move is to head off an expected deluge of applications to renew licences -- which are normally valid for five years -- as the fifth anniversary of the original Jan. 1, 2001, firearms...

TORONTO - Canadian officials insisted a massive blackout Thursday across the Northeast and parts of Canada originated in the United States, though U.S. power workers denied that and American officials blamed Canada. In the hours of confusion after the outage — the biggest in U.S. history — Canada's government offered conflicting explanations for the blackout, blaming it first on lightning in Niagara, then a fire at a Niagara plant, and next a fire at a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant. Canada's defense minister later backed off some of those theories, though remained firm that the source of the problem was in...

Well, this whole quagmire seems to be getting worse, eh? I see the Yanks have now been reduced to staging fake scenes of supposed jubilation on the alleged streets of what the Pentagon assures us is Baghdad. If you pause the video, you'll see the guy on the right jumping up and down thwacking his shoe on the head of Saddam's toppled statue is actually Richard Perle disguised as an Iraqi cab driver and the woman standing next to him ululating "Blessings be upon you, o great Bush" is David Frum in a chador.Meanwhile, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, the Iraqi information...

 A Liberal backbench MP has apologized for a remark she made about the United States. Carolyn Parrish was responding to reporters' questions when she was heard saying "Damn Americans."The Toronto-area Liberal MP, who is staunchly opposed to war in Iraq, had been commenting about her frustration with the American rejection of Canada's efforts to bring another UN resolution against Iraq.As she finished a scrum with reporters outside the House of Commons, she quietly said "Damn Americans" to a nearby reporter. A nearby camera operator filmed Parrish making the remark, then smiling.As she walked away a few seconds later after the...

The Queen holds up the puck after it was presented back to her by Vancouver Canucks' captain Markus Naslund (R) prior to a National Hockey League exhibition game between the Canucks and San Jose Sharks October 6, 2002. The Queen, who dropped the puck in an honorary faceoff, was given the puck back as a souvenir. Standing behind the Queen [and staring at her ass] is Canadian hockey legend Wayne Gretzky (L).

Go WINGS!!