The expansion will bring Wal-Mart's presence in Canada to as many as 325 stores by the year's end from the current 317 stores. Wal-Mart closed six Canadian Sam’s Club warehouse stores in March to focus on the supercenter format, Andrew Pelletier, a spokesman, said today by telephone. Wal-Mart is also investing C$115 million in a sustainable, refrigerated distribution center in Balzac, Alberta.

But Deborah Morrison, president of Canada's National History Society and the longtime publisher of The Beaver, told Canwest News Service that the unfortunate double entendre has posed serious difficulties for several years as the magazine attempted to attract new, younger, Web-based customers to bolster its loyal but aging base of about 50,000 print subscribers.

"To be perfectly blunt about it, The Beaver was an impediment on the Internet," she said. "People were literally writing us and saying, 'We can't get your e-newsletter because it's being spam-filtered out, can you change the title of the heading?' "

Tomorrow is Black Friday for U.S. retailers -- the biggest shopping day of the year south of the border -- and the Canada Border Services Agency is gearing up for a sharp increase of U.S.-bound Canadian shoppers. The agency's Pacific region spokeswoman, Faith St. John, said CBSA is bringing in extra employees to staff the crossings, adding that on Black Friday in 2008, Lower Mainland border crossings saw a 35-per-cent increase in vehicle traffic from the previous Friday.

"Last year on Black Friday, we had 14,225 vehicles at the four border crossings in the Lower Mainland. The Friday before that there was 10,536. And that was fairly consistent in 2007 and 2006. It's definitely one of the busiest days. Based on historical data, we expect a significant increase in the number of travellers returning from the U.S., and as a result we'll be increasing our staffing levels."

As well, a survey released this week by Visa Canada suggests that online shopping by Canadians is picking up, with six in 10 reporting shopping online over the past year, and 29 per cent of those questioned making a purchase from an American website. Fully 23 per cent of Canadians who shopped online reported taking advantage of deals offered on Black Friday in the U.S.

Experts do not yet understand why the new strain affects some healthy people so severely, ravaging their lungs with an aggressive pneumonia and forcing them to spend weeks in hospital, attached to breathing machines.

"They are ending up on ventilators and it can last from weeks to months," said Michael Gardam, director of infectious diseases at the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion. "I would like people to be concerned about H1N1, without panicking. More concerned than they are about seasonal flu."

A new study tracking the epidemic in Mexico also found the flu strain hits those between the ages of 20 and 50 the hardest, with a higher death rate than other age groups.

In recent weeks, as swine flu has faded from the world's radar, infectious disease specialists worry that people have become complacent about the pandemic, which is expected to infect one third of the population, or about 10 million Canadians. (In contrast, seasonal flu affects about one in 10 people.)

Strang said the four are between the ages of 12 and 18 and all attend a private school in the Windsor area of Nova Scotia.

They had been part of a group of students who were on a school trip to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in early April, Dr. Gaynor Watson-Creed, medical officer of health for Capital Health, told reporters

B.C.'s Centre for Disease Control on Sunday confirmed cases of swine flu involving two people from the province who recently returned from Mexico.

After leaving Parliament Hill, the president's motorcade stopped at the By Ward Market, a farmers' market in an historic section of Ottawa. Obama's arrival surprised and stunned shoppers, many of whom crowded around the new president, shook his hand and posed for photos.

Obama walked through aisles of vendors selling crafts, Chinese noodles and Indian food. He purchased a key chain and searched for a snow globe. But his main destination was a French bakery. He tried to buy cookies for daughters Malia and Sasha, but the baker behind the counter refused Obama's money, indicating the sweets were for his children.