David Dunbar

The once clean and healthy city of Toronto becomes the pariah of the western world when a deadly chain of infection lands in the city. Panic spreads as the number of SARS cases increases as there are no effective treatments.

Veteran Detective Ed Delopre and partner Mike McGivern have their hands full when they hit the pavement in search of a dangerous killer with five dead bodies already on his record. The mayor, in a rush to see peace restored in her city, makes a deal with the mob instead of waiting for Delopre and McGivern's results. Now that both sides of the law are involved in the killer's capture, the city is turned upside down.

Robert Ross (Brent Carver) lives a protected adolescence in a well-off Toronto suburb. Secretive and withdrawn, he shares his thoughts only with his sister Rowena (Anne-Marie MacDonald) who is mentally disabled. He feels compassion for his weak and conventional father. He avoids any confrontation with his mother (Martha Henry), a dominating woman whose despondency at having given birth to a handicapped child has turned to bitterness. Rowena occupies a central position in Robert's existence of daydreams and make-believe. When she dies, Robert clashes openly with his family, and decides to take himself in hand. It's 1914. He enrolls in the Canadian army, and, after training in Alberta and Montreal, he finds himself in England and France. The war becomes another way for him to resolve his conflicts, his dramas, his passions--his wars.

Sydney Fox is a professor and globe-trotting "relic hunter" who looks for ancient artifacts to return to museums and/or the descendants of the original owner. She is aided by her linguistic assistant Nigel and occasionally by her somewhat air-headed secretary Claudia. She often ends up battling rival hunters seeking out artifacts for the money.

Nikita is a drug-addicted juvenile delinquent who was accused of killing a police officer in cold blood during an attempted robbery of a pharmacy. She is later arrested and sentenced to death by lethal injection, upon which she was secretly drugged by the government, faking her death. Nikita is then "recruited" by a secret government organization and transformed into a highly skilled assassin who cannot be traced.