This week's mass processing inside (and outside) a Toronto courthouse helped clarify June's Jailapalooza festival during the G20, the largest mass arrest in our history. Of 1,100 detained, all but 227 had the charges dropped or were never charged. Most had no links to burning police cars or battered bank machines. They were picked up while protesting peacefully or looking on.

Why? Police say they wanted to prevent recurrences, after the dramatic events. Some intimate they were embarrassed by criticisms of their earlier inaction, and overreacted. Why had police gone missing at the crucial time? There's been no clear answer. One possibility: to justify the vaulting security costs via shocking images of violence.

Mario Laguë, Michael Ignatieff's communications director, died Thursday in a motorcycle accident on his way to work. I hadn't heard of him till this week, when a memo he wrote to MPs made its way into the press. I found it prescient on our current politics and especially this summer's surprising focus on the census. It was about "not taking the bait."

Maury Chaykin died this week on his 61st birthday. Some obits called him a character actor. It's basically a film-TV term -- where Maury mostly worked -- as opposed to star. Another term is supporting actor versus leading man. It's a shame he didn't do more stage work, where physical typing isn't as great. I once wrote a play on the Montreal Canadiens; a sports type who met the actor cast as Rocket Richard said, "You can't have a fat Rocket!" But you can and we did. Maury was a beautiful guy in his prime but not a typical movie lead; yet he'd have made a great Lear or Prospero. Asked by Jian Ghomeshi for a role he felt he'd nailed, Maury joked, "Hamlet," making you think it may have been on his wish list.

Political reality has been giving Michael Ignatieff a lesson in humility, and he needed it.

This is a guy who's spent much time, since moving back from the U.S., telling us what kind of guy he is, as if we need to know. ("I made a very calculated decision that I am the guy I am.") He spent the 1990s with his career on a steep rise. He acquired a heady podium in The New York Times, became chair of Harvard's human-rights school and regularly explained reality to Michael Enright on CBC Radio.