The end of the year is a time when newspaper columnists, like most people, pause to take stock. Some, looking back over what they have written in the past twelve months, discover a becoming humility, confessing that, indeed, they got a few things wrong -- or more than a few! As I review my own work, however, I am forced to acknowledge, to the contrary, my unerring prescience. I just seemed to get everything right. Mea certa.

Take the scandal over the government's handling of the Airbus case. Last January, after the settlement of Brian Mulroney's libel suit over Justice department allegations of his involvement in the affair, I wrote: "Make no mistake, this government has not heard the last of Brian Mulroney. Though he has agreed to settle out of court, in exchange for a vague statement of regret and payment of his legal costs, it will not be more than 10 months, a year at most, before he will be back, demanding more." How right I was.

In March, I wrote: "Those investors who are eagerly snapping up Bre-X stock at more than $20 a share should ask themselves one question: what if there's no gold? What if the Bre-X 'find' is in reality a massive hoax, possibly involving the use of 'salted' samples, on a scale surpassing anything we have yet seen? Is it conceivable that the entire world mining community could be duped in this way?" That was one week before Michael de Guzman fell to his death.

In the spring, I predicted that Ralph Klein would be re-elected in Alberta. No surprise there, perhaps, but I also pegged the size of the surplus his government would announce sometime after the event.

I called the crest of the Red River to within a half-hour.

As the federal election approached, my political spider-sense was tingling. "Those obituaries for the NDP are too hastily written," I cautioned in May. "Sure, they have only pockets of support in the west, still less in Ontario, and scarcely exist in Quebec. But this just might be the election where the New Democrats break through in the Atlantic provinces. Bet on half a dozen seats in Nova Scotia alone." That wasn't my only coup.

I was the only pundit to foresee both the Tory mid-campaign surge in Quebec and its subsequent collapse (as in, "the Conservatives may do well in Quebec, but then they may not.") The Bloc Quebecois, I suggested, seemed "to have lost their way" (a premonition?), while the Liberals' supreme self-assurance left them exposed to some nasty surprises -- "a leaked campaign document, for example." As for Reform, I hedged. "The erstwhile western protest party seems assured of at least a few seats in Ontario -- unless it frightens voters off with some gratuitously hostile gesture towards Quebec." A good prognosticator always leaves himself an out.

I predicted a postal strike as far back as July. And again in August. And in September, October and November. Remember: buy and hold is your best strategy in the long run.

In the first week of August, I noted: "The decision of the government of Thailand to unpeg the baht may seem a matter of little importance to Canadians. But it could lead to a series of devastating currency crises in countries across southeast Asia that would expose the weakness in their financial systems, sending stock markets around the world into a prolonged tailspin and ultimately threatening the health of even the western economies." I emphasized "could."

Later that month, I complained: "The stalking of celebrities by the media has now reached such a frenzy that one begins to worry for their physical safety. Freedom of the press has its place, but not when lives are at stake. What's it going to take? Must some beleaguered personage be hounded literally to death before we put an end to the paparazzi's reign of terror?" Chilling, isn't it?

My news judgment was equally flawless. I paid precisely the right amount of attention (i.e. none) to the problems of European Monetary Union, the Sable Island pipeline dispute and the Year 2000 bug, devoting no space whatever to educating readers in the nuances and ambiguities of these issues. On the other hand, I often misspell "trichinosis."

As the year drew to a close, I grew increasingly agitated at the state of my profession. "Consider, if you will," I invited my readers, "the last week of the year. The newspapers are filled with columns that do nothing more than rehash past events. Or else they make sweeping predictions about the year to come, in the certain knowledge that no one will bother to check how they turn out."

Right, and right again.