Breakups: Sayonara!

GORDON CAMPBELL AND B.C.

He ran B.C. during the triumphant Olympic Games, but a year later was nothing but the butt of jokes. The premier stepped down amid controversy over his support of a 12 per cent harmonized sales tax, which divided the province. When he was announced as one of the recipients of the Order of British Columbia, resentment ran so high that an online petition opposing it was launched.

MICHEL DORAIS AND THE TORIES

The bilingual Dorais toiled at various government jobs starting in 1976, and nothing could make him stop loving public service—until the Harper government came along. The former deputy minister told the Ottawa Citizen that Conservatives “lack respect for civil servants,” but the final straw came when the Tories appointed a unilingual auditor general. “For all my professional life I worked at ensuring bilingualism would take hold in the Canadian public service,” he lamented as he resigned.

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JENNIFER LOPEZ AND MARC ANTHONY

JLo was married to the salsa singer throughout her years of career decline. Soon after she was hired as an American Idol judge, the couple broke up with a joint statement to People. TMZ, however, recently spotted them in Puerto Rico, “filming their upcoming Latin talent show.” In Hollywood, marriages are temporary but business partnerships are forever.

LAURO GARZA AND THE GOP

Garza was a Latino leader in the Texas Republican party, but quit the GOP in October over the anti-immigrant rhetoric of presidential candidates. He criticized Gov. Rick Perry for abandoning his pro-immigration views, and called Herman Cain a “hateful bigot” for his electrified border fence joke. Garza, comparing himself to Ronald Reagan, who left the Democrats, said the GOP “has become radical and unreasonable.”

HUGH HEFNER AND CRYSTAL HARRIS

The Playboy founder was engaged to Harris, 61 years his junior and a former Playmate of the Month. After breaking off the engagement just before the wedding, she told Howard Stern the 85-year-old lasted “like, two seconds” in bed. Hefner responded by calling her a liar on Twitter. None of this hurt her follow-up project: auctioning off her diamond engagement ring.

GEORGE CLOONEY AND ELISABETTA CANALIS

She was an Italian model who mostly played minor parts as random beautiful people on TV. He was, well, George Clooney. This summer, they separated following a year of engagement rumours and some other, less savoury whispers: an Italian newspaper linked Elisabetta to a drug investigation, and she and George were both named as witnesses in the Silvio Berlusconi trial.

HALLE BERRY AND GABRIEL AUBRY

If you wonder why George Clooney would break up with a model, look what happened when Berry broke away from Aubry, her Canadian model boyfriend. The two have spent the year locked in a custody battle over their three-year-old daughter, Nahla. It turns out Berry doesn’t trust Aubry to look after the child for more than three hours by himself, and when he asked the court for a ruling, it agreed. Now Aubry has to have a nanny tagging along whenever he’s got the kid.