Cheap Tucows domain w/ privacy? Canadian email? Hosting?

Been looking around to register some domain names and roll out a site soon.

Any good Tucows domain reseller recommendations? Cheap with full whois privacy. I am about to say fsck it and register with namecheap or something.

Canadian email hosting recommendations? Something cheap with 5-10 mailboxes and pop/imap. I was thinking this may be better than something in the US, although it would be cheaper to use email service that would be included from my yet-to-be-decided hosting provider.

I am looking for web hosting too. Was considering NearlyFreeSpeech with their low cost plans, but they do not have email service. Been looking at other traditional hosting plans too in the range of ~$5/month. If I could find something well connected in Canada to serve all my email and drupal needs that would be ideal.

Ok that is the basics. Read on if you want to learn more about intended use.............

My site is bound to be small and low traffic especially at first. I do want it to be snappy, and be able to handle a slashdotting or digging if I were to ever be so lucky. Instead of pulling the plug like a pussy, it would be nice to have a sys admin who could grin and say "I'm hosting that" without dollar signs in their eyes.

I just want some pages in a CMS and probably a forum too. Mainly hardware hacking/mods/info, more focused on linux workstations and the kinds of useful server parts that are found cheap on ebay. Less of the twinkling lights and bling you find everywhere else. And Macs too, after playing with some PPC PowerMacs I think I am on to something that is much needed. Instead of just posting on another forum I'd rather build up my own site too, in case it is another claim to fame.

Canada, I keep mentioning it... I think they have better privacy laws. I'm not looking to do anything immoral or blatantly illegal. However I could see myself walking a fine line. (With US laws like DMCA who the hell knows anymore). Definately not looking to pump out warez but copyright is a moral gray area. There is alot of abandonware out there, where one could not guess a product even existed by looking at the manufacturer website. Either because of corporate buyouts or sometimes they are just asshats who can't spare a few extra MB of webspace. Firmware, diagrams, manuals, all can get hard to find over time making good hardware nearly useless. If they are not going to support it I don't see why I shouldn't be able to help fill in the gap. And some companies are not so fond of modding either. I don't have a tinfoil hat on whilst peeking out the windows like a crackhead, just want to plan a little on the safer side.

For the domains I want full whois privacy protection with everything masked, including name. It seems to me that having the domain in a name other than my own is risky. It would suck to have a sleazy registrar steal it. I have come to the conclusion that Tucows would be best to trust. Other reasons to pick Tucows is everyone raves over their control panels, I've seen reports of them helping to police problems with resellers, they seem unlikely to remove domains after a complaint like other registrars (ie godaddy), and they are Canadian with a Canadian address for the whois mask.

Tucows domains are only available thru resellers as many of you prob know. Many are $15/month, or if they are ~$10 (which is ok price) they charge an assanine amount for the whois privacy. Oh yeah, Tucows offers their privacy service FOR FREE TO THE RESELLERS. So the resellers are just trying to make some cash.

I am going to spend a chunk on registration. I want MyDomain .com .net .org and a easy misspelling. Plus I have another 5-letter word that is pretty brandable, and since it is not registered in any of the TLC's I was thinking of squatting^H^H^H reserving it for the future. And maybe OneOfMyOldNicknames.com too to redirect to MyDomain.com. So that is 8+ domains (or maybe 5), for at least a couple years, just a few dollars difference adds up.

Please do not suggest ipowerweb. Tempting because they have dirt cheap tucows domains (likely a loss-leader), but I would have to fight to transfer and in the end prob find out how helpful Tucows really is in policing their resellers.