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This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on July 13, 1998. Partner content is not updated.

On Oct. 2, 1987, a woman named Connie went to the singles quarters at CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick, convinced she was going to become a movie star. Two soldiers in the base bar had persuaded the 23-year-old woman that all she had to do was pose for what they called "Sunshine Girl-like" photos.

This article contains sensitive material that may not be suitable for all audiences.

Ryan Craig loves to Rollerblade. He listens to the Smashing Pumpkins, surfs the Net and likes Seinfeld almost as much as beach Frisbee. Ask him about politics, though, and Craig, a 21-year-old personnel officer for the Manitoba Lotteries Corp. in Winnipeg, becomes deadly earnest.

There is plenty to gossip about at the Lord Beaverbrook Hotel in Fredericton these days. For years, a collection of local lawyers, businessmen, politicians and backroom party types - most of them Liberals - have gathered Saturday mornings in the hotel’s restaurant to sip coffee and discuss politics.

There is not much Canadians don’t know about Joe Clark by now. He is an eternal optimist to some, a punching bag for others, and that combination has set him up for some of the more humiliating political defeats of his generation.

It was, as Mike Harris always predicted, nothing less than a revolution.

THE PAUL MARTIN TEAM spent a year and a half and $60 million of taxpayer money trying to prove that the squalid epoch when political favours could be traded for Liberal party advantage was over. Then Tim Murphy sat down for tea with Gurmant Grewal.

IT COST HIM five years of pressing flesh in the boonies, away from home and the cameras, but Jean CHAREST was finally able to convince a majority of Quebec voters that he belongs - and is ready to govern the province.

Jack LAYTON laughs a lot for a socialist. And maybe that's the problem.

EITHER MANUEL Vásquez Portal was an idealist, a romantic hero who fought for freedom and democracy in a country where neither exist. Or he was a fool, for waging a public-opinion battle against a dictatorship where public opinion does not exist either.

JUST ABOUT everybody breathlessly described Jean Brault's testimony as explosive.

The dark cars with the tinted windows roll up and Jack Layton emerges, an RCMP detail, as all candidates for prime minister are afforded, in tow.

BELINDA STRONACH'S job in Paul MARTIN's cabinet will last, barring catastrophe, for the life of this minority Liberal government. Perhaps even longer if the Liberals win re-election.