Angel >> War veterans We can all disagree on the merits of Saving Private Ryan, but those first 20 minutes of the film--as soldiers storm the beaches of Normandy (yes they were Americans in the film, but Canadians stormed those beaches, too)--gave us some idea of what war veterans lived through and of what grisly horror the rest of us have been spared. Soldiers trudged over top of their compatriots' dead bodies, or even used them as shelter from a hail of enemy bullets--and in some weird, twisted way, those things emerge as nothing less than acts of courage. Remembrance Day is next Wednesday, November 11. Although it's no longer a holiday, you can still observe a moment of silence at 11 a.m.

Insect >> Bogus tuition freezes Last week, Premier Lucien Bouchard made an election announcement targeted specifically at students: he promised to maintain the current tuition freeze for another four years. Sounds nice. Except that it's a false freeze: the current government has allowed universities to tack all kinds of "administrative" fees onto tuition invoices, so students are paying more anyway. Then there's the fact that universities have seen their government funding cut by 25 per cent, a total of $498 million. Is anyone really happy to know they are paying cheap tuition for a cheap, substandard university education?