Walk around the inner-city of Vancouver, and the painful reality is clear. The parks are still strewn with needles; addicts are still lying on the sidewalks in drug-induced hazes; death is everywhere. I'm hoping to be proven wrong, but I suspect that in a decade, despite Insite's zealous staff working away, the problems will remain.

Only you can manage your own diet and your own calorie intake. No government, no restaurant, no physician can do it for you. It's this complexity that makes personal health responsibility so important in reversing the obesity epidemic.

Canada gets top marks for freedom -- odd in a country where you can easily get a marijuana joint in most big cities, but not a private MRI scan

As the game returns to Winnipeg, it says much about the country and its newfound prosperity. The anemic Loonie now trades near parity. The real estate market didn't collapsed and the federal government's debt-to-GDP ratio is about a third of America's.

Star quarterbacks throw touchdowns into their 40s. Seniors populate the country club's greens -- and also the House of Commons and the Supreme Court. Retirement, once seen as a brief interlude between work and death, spans decades for some. Old age has been redefined.