That was the theme in the cold North Atlantic yesterday, when a hardy band of surfers demonstrated against the Iraq war atop surfboards and wind-whipped waves.

The event, dubbed "paddle out for peace," was the first of what is expected to be a series of protests leading up to the Wednesday visit of U.S. President George W. Bush, who will deliver a major speech in Halifax during his first trip to Canada since being elected.

The water was barely 7C, the air hovered at 0, and the wind was blowing 25 kilometres an hour, but a dozen surfers in wetsuits and T-shirts followed a bagpiper across the beach at noon yesterday, then formed a peace symbol on the choppy waves.

Organizer Alan Jean-Joyce said he wanted to do something positive to oppose the war, a sentiment echoed by Lesley Choyce, a prolific author who spoke at the small demonstration.

"Surfing in Nova Scotia is something different; when you wipe out, that cold water really clears your head," said Choyce.

"I think if the president came up here to surf, he would wake up, a little common sense would seep in and he would see that killing thousands of civilians in a desert country is not a road to peace."

Choyce, who moved to Canada from New Jersey 26 years ago, offered Bush a used surfboard that has had "a lot of love," and lessons anytime he wants. The belligerence of U.S. foreign policy, he said, must be due to either too little sex or too little surfing by the president.

"I can't help him with that first thing," Choyce told the crowd.

"But we can help him with the surfing. He should call me, e-mail, anything. I'll be there for him."

Until now, Canada has preferred to make its opposition to the boycott known more tactfully, allowing the dollars of its continuing contributions to speak for themselves.

Carroll, who has also been invited to sit on a U.N. "leadership council" on women and AIDS, will announce Wednesday that Canada is increasing its annual $13.1-million contribution to the population fund to $67.4 million over four years — about $16.9 million each year.

Most of that will go toward core financing of the program that has been seriously damaged by the U.S. boycott over the past three years.

About $9 million of Canada's $67.4 million, meanwhile, will be specifically directed to a fund for birth-control supplies such as condoms.......

According to the program's own estimates, the money the U.S. has withdrawn since 2002 could have helped prevent more than 6 million unwanted pregnancies, 2.4 million abortions, more than 14,000 maternal deaths and more than 200,000 child deaths.

Moreover, the Bush administration has failed to prove any of the allegations against the U.N. Population Fund. A fact-finding mission by its own state department earlier this year actually concluded that the claims about support for abortion in China were groundless.

Despite having stormy relations with George W. Bush and Paul Martin in his last years in power, former prime minister Jean Chrétien will be one of the special guests dining with the president and the current Prime Minister tomorrow night.

New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, meanwhile, is thinking about staying away from the event and plans to release an open letter to Bush outlining why the president's visit and policies are stirring up "angst" in the Canadian population....

The NDP leader also warns that Martin, a minority-government leader, is not in a position to speak for all Canadians on the subject of the proposed North American missile-defence shield.

And his voice quavered when he talked about the two schools he visited last week: the first outside Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, the second outside Khartoum in a camp for displaced persons who had fled the decades of violent conflict in Sudan.

The difference, Martin observed, was that the children in the first school were at home; those in Sudan had never known a home.

It is almost impossible not to be caught up in Martin's enthusiasm, his sincerity, and his deepening conviction that Canada should find its niche by working on the problem of failed and failing states.

His double-barrelled campaign — to enshrine the responsibility to protect as an international principle, and to create a new group of world leaders, the L20 — is driven by his desire to make a difference.

But Martin paid a price for his flat-out intensity. He is no longer a young man — he's 66 —and fatigue took its toll. He has been working non-stop for weeks, flying overnight to Santiago, flying overnight again from Brasilia to Ouagadougou, and then racing halfway across Africa and back in a single day to squeeze in a tour of a displaced persons camp, meetings with the president, the senior United Nations official and several aid agencies working in Sudan.

This is the election campaign, gone global. These frenetic rhythms have become a characteristic of his governance. The gruelling pace left Martin — let alone those following him — sentimental to the verge of mawkishness, emotionally drained to the point of almost losing his composure and exhausted to the point of occasional incoherence.

This would be a harmless indulgence if Parliament were not sitting, and he were heading for some recovery time at his farm or a beach. But this week is arguably one of the most important of his prime ministership.

George W. Bush is making his first visit to Ottawa as U.S. president. The stakes are high: there is a delicate balance to be struck in Canada's most important relationship. Deftness will be essential. And Martin will be coming to the table jet-lagged and sleep-deprived.

Federal officials are putting the final touches on a plan to spend at least $200 million as Canada's contribution to a global network that will keep tabs on the Earth's environmental health.

The monitoring network has been strongly championed by U.S. President George W. Bush, who arrives here tomorrow on a two-day working visit to Canada.

The Canadian plan is detailed in a memorandum to be submitted soon to the cabinet, said a source familiar with the confidential discussions.

The investment should improve Canada's warnings of floods, hurricanes and catastrophic ice storms as well as improve management of agriculture, forests and other natural resources, officials from the federal environment department told a media briefing last week....

In addition to beefing up existing measurements of wind, precipitation and temperature, arrays would also monitor carbon dioxide exchanges in forests and wetlands, the extent of dead zones in lakes, seismic activity along the British Columbia coast and Arctic Ocean circulation.

A Toronto homeless man's recent death from late-stage tuberculosis offers a stark reminder of the threat posed by old diseases that science has failed to eradicate yet.

In the words of Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Toronto associate medical office of health: "Tuberculosis is preventable, treatable and curable."

It is also deadly, and on the march. This airborne respiratory disease has caused or contributed to six deaths in Toronto so far this year, according to public health officials. Up to 400 active cases are diagnosed in the city each year.

Most are immigrants from parts of the world where tuberculosis runs rampant. These cases tend to be isolated and readily treated. But, in the homeless population, there is a real risk of spreading contagion.

Crowded living conditions, poorly ventilated shelters, and people whose immune systems have been sapped by hunger and hard living present a fertile field for infection.

Even before tuberculosis claimed a homeless man's life this past week, local health officials had begun testing staff and residents of downtown shelters and drop-in centres for traces of the bacteria. That screening was ordered after two shelter employees contracted active tuberculosis in recent months.

Hospital staff have been told to "think TB" when making diagnoses.

In between the blacked-out sentences in more than 1,000 pages of documents is a glimpse of how the Royal Canadian Mounted Police cooperated with their American counterparts and worked to control the media fallout in the case of Syrian-Canadian Maher Arar.

The documents show the RCMP worked closely with U.S. authorities, including faxing them a list of questions to ask Arar while he was in custody in New York.

But the RCMP seemed unaware Arar would be deported to Syria instead of Canada.

Bush is also meeting with Conservative Leader Stephen Harper during his visit to Ottawa, but not the other opposition leaders. Few details were known late yesterday about when and where the meeting would take place, but the White House reportedly decided that some time should be set aside to meet the official Opposition leader.

NDP Leader Jack Layton is not pleased that his request to meet the president has been rebuffed. Nor is he happy that no one in the Martin government seems inclined to raise the issue of the U.S. proposed missile defence shield next week.

It all just encourages the kind of protests Bush is likely to see, Layton said, arguing Canadians will have to take to the streets to make their concerns about the much-disputed project heard.

"In the end, the Prime Minister is leaving Canadian citizens no choice but to attend the peaceful rallies and marches that are going to be held. Because he doesn't intend to raise issues on their behalf quite clearly, particularly the most important one in international affairs today," he said.

Everything is labelled in English and French

Everything is measured in metric.

Milk comes in plastic bags as well as in cartons and jugs.

Restaurants serve vinegar with French fries.

There are $1 and $2 coins. The paper currency is in different colours, and it's pretty.

The Trans-Canada Highway — Canada's analogue to the U.S. interstates — is two lanes wide for most of its length.

There are billboards advertising vacations in Cuba, and Cuban cigars are freely available

Sure, barring an ugly incident, the Bush trip will likely measure up to new, minimalist expectations. A personal rapport that began to grow in Monterrey, Mexico almost a year ago will get a second chance and some important files will, inch by difficult inch, move forward.

But there won't be much, if any, measurable progress on the most contentious issues. Canada's participation in the controversial continental missile defence scheme will be skirted, access to southern markets will remain vulnerable to a single lunatic act and, most troubling of all, there won't be any greater sense that two countries with so much in common are building a more durable framework around their vital relationship.

In a move designed to attract TV cameras, protesters plan to topple a large papier mâché statue of Bush in the same manner that statues of Saddam Hussein were brought down after the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Also, his trip to Halifax to thank people in Atlantic Canada for their help after the terror attacks on America is mostly a photo op that is a few years late. But Bush has at least chosen Canada to launch his fence mending with allies. For that he deserves credit.

Most Canadians don't buy Bush's view that 9/11 plunged the world into an existential struggle with "evil" that gives Washington the right to unilaterally wage pre-emptive wars in order to change regimes it regards as unfriendly, whether or not they genuinely threaten others.

Rather, Canadian policymakers see the "war on terror" as chiefly a police matter. For them, it's about beating Al Qaeda, and terror-proofing our borders. On that score, we're pulling our weight. Ottawa has budgeted $9 billion to boost military and security services, fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and to rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq. Few allies have done more.

At the same time, Canada has managed this without spurning the United Nations Security Council, the Geneva Conventions and arms control.

Given this difference in Canada/U.S. approaches, it is easy to see why Bush chose not to kick off his Canada/Europe charm offensive by delivering his boilerplate war-on-terror speech to a skeptical Parliament, in a country where he is not widely popular. Canadians would hardly be inspired by that. Going to Halifax to say "thanks" on behalf of the American people is far likelier to attract the positive coverage he seeks.

Already this year, Canadians have witnessed grave assaults on journalistic freedom. In January, RCMP officers raided the home of Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O'Neill in a bid to find out who had leaked her secret information on the Maher Arar case. Arar, a Canadian, was deported in 2002 by the U.S. to Syria, where he spend a year in prison.

Media lawyers in Canada are also going to court more often to fight publication bans that are either too broad or simply unwarranted.

The world is noticing. Reporters Without Borders ranked Canada 18th this year on its press freedom index, behind the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and down from 10th place last year.

Why should the public care about the erosion of press freedom? Because a free press serves the interests of everyone. It keeps politicians and other public leaders honest. It is also crucial to the functioning of a free and democratic society.

Ever since the election in Ukraine, reformers have won just about every tactical political or public relations battle. A key reason for this is paradoxical.

The opposition presidential candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, and his advisers, knew full well that the election was going to be stolen from them. So they prepared themselves to fight back hard during the actual election campaign itself and through the post-election skirmishing and manoeuvring.

The governing elite, headed by President Leonid Kuchma, who is retiring after 30 years in office, and his chosen successor, Viktor Yankovich, were, of course, no less fully aware that the election was going to be stolen — by themselves.

But a villain who is about to commit a crime can't summon up the same energy, passion or intellectual inventiveness as someone who knows he is going to become a victim of a political fraud.

A key focus at the table in Geneva in recent years has been preventing the arms race from spreading to outer space — a development most experts believe would make nuclear war more likely. Interestingly, Canada has been one of the key players in the battle to keep weapons out of space, and in the overall disarmament talks.

This doesn't fit with the image of Canada painted by Canadian right-wingers, as a faded power, long past its prime as a serious player on the world stage.

In fact, Canada has been a feisty, independent force on the international stage when it comes to championing disarmament — something that matters a lot to most of the civilized world......

......So we have to choose which table we really want to sit at — the one where we continue to lead the fight for world disarmament, or the one where we help an aggressive superpower launch an arms race we've vigorously opposed for years.

The gala events for Bush on Tuesday will be packed with those who favour acquiescing to the demands of the superpower.

But beyond the Ottawa glitter, my sense is that a feisty, independent Canadian spirit is still loose in the land.