Search for ""

The vote was close, nail-bitingly close. Last week, Polish voters narrowly elected a smooth-faced, smooth-talking former Communist to the presidency of Poland, ousting Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa and ending an era in Polish politics.

There were those who believed - and how naïve it seems in hindsight - that she would take the high road with her husband, be circumspect about the in-laws, and spare Britain's tattered monarchy a further ripping. How very, very wrong they were.

All mortals are replaceable, runs the modern mantra, betraying the ethic of programmed obsolescence that has come to dominate our culture. But there are exceptions, and one of them - Robertson Davies - died last week, leaving a gap in the Canadian conscience that can never be filled.

Still, there is nothing ordinary about the lives and contributions of the 1995 Honor Roll members.

Shania Twain feels at home in the bush. She grew up there, learning to hunt and trap and work a chain saw with her Ojibwa father.

The late August day began like most others in Sniper Alley during the summer of 1994 - with sporadic gunfire.

That combination of childlike wonder and entrepreneurial spirit is typical of Hoffmann, the visionary president and chief executive officer of I. Hoffmann + Associates Inc.

Still, at 61, Gzowski finds it increasingly difficult to shuck the celebrity baggage of the guy on the radio whose halting smoky tones are hailed as one of the invisible threads binding a fractious country into a sense of belonging.

When asked why she gives her money away, 86-year-old Anne Tanenbaum avoids grand pronouncements. Instead, she shrugs her shoulders and tells a story, inflected with just a hint of her native New York City accent.

He is not being entirely facetious. Although he has never boxed, Virgo is a huge fan of the sport. Growing up in the Jamaican beach town of Montego Bay during the 1970s, he had posters of three superstars in his room: Muhammad Ali, Bruce Lee and Pelé. Ali was his favorite.

In the early-morning light, the craggy peaks of the Serra de Sintra mountains glowed amber against the pale blue sky. Nearby, fishing boats from Cascais headed into the Atlantic. And in between, Jacques Villeneuve was making a terrible racket.

Sandra Oh lives just up the hill from Hollywood Boulevard. Her temporary home is a pleasantly faded apartment hotel.