TORONTO - Toronto city council has rejected a proposed downtown casino for the city. Mayor Rob Ford — an outspoken proponent of the project — called the issue "essentially dead" last week and cancelled a special meeting to consider the proposal. But a group of councillors signed a petition to put the debate back on Tuesday's agenda. After debating the issue, council voted 40-4 against the proposal — essentially putting an end to the possibility of a downtown casino in the near future.

WINNIPEG - Hundreds of people lined up this afternoon to pay their respects to Elijah Harper, the Manitoba politician who blocked the Meech Lake constitutional accord in 1990. Harper's body is lying in state inside the provincial legislature and people patiently waited to walk by the open casket, which was draped with a Manitoba flag and a chief's headdress. Harper's family members stood nearby, accepting condolences.

WINNIPEG - Elijah Harper, the Cree politician who inspired Canadian aboriginals by blocking the Meech Lake constitutional accord while clutching an eagle feather in the Manitoba legislature, has died. Harper's family said he died Friday morning in an Ottawa hospital of cardiac failure due to diabetes complications. He was 64. "Elijah was a wonderful man, father, partner," the family said in a statement. "He will have a place in Canadian history forever for his devotion to public service and uniting his fellow First Nations with pride, determination and resolve."

WINNIPEG - Manitoba's Opposition party is calling for an inquest into the death of a woman who left a hospital emergency room without being seen by a doctor. The Progressive Conservatives say Bonnie Guagliardo (guh-LARD'-oh) went to the Victoria General Hospital in Winnipeg in February after falling in her home and hitting her head. The Tories say Guagliardo, who was in her 60s, was given an initial assessment, but went home after waiting six hours to see a doctor. She died the next morning.