PENPIX: Players in Canada's political drama

(Reuters) - Canada's governor general has decided to cut short a state visit to Europe to deal with one of the worst political crises in the country's 141-year history.

The minority Conservative government is considering a temporary suspension of Parliament as it fights opposition party efforts to replace it with a coalition government.

Here are profiles of some of the players in the political drama:

THE OPPOSITION LEADERS

Stephane Dion, 53, is leader of the Liberal Party. He would become interim prime minister of the opposition's proposed coalition government. A former politics professor, Dion entered federal politics to fight the separatist movement in his native Quebec. Dion became a lame duck leader of the Liberals after the party's poor showing in the October election. He has agreed to step down when the party chooses a new leader, likely in early May.

Jack Layton, 58, has served as leader of the New Democratic Party since 2003. He entered federal politics after six terms on Toronto's city council. A former professor who took over the NDP promising to push it more to the left. His father, Robert Layton, was a prominent Liberal who split with that party and served in the cabinet of Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

Gilles Duceppe, 61, is leader of the Bloc Quebecois, a party post he won in a bitter contest in 1997. First elected to the House of Commons in 1990, he served as leader of the official opposition in 1997. Born in Montreal, Duceppe is a former union organizer who was a Marxist in his early political years. He became a supporter of the Quebec separatist movement in the early 1980s.

THE PRIME MINISTER

Stephen Harper, 49, has served as prime minister since 2006, having been reelected with his party in October 2008. He began as a legislator of the western-based Reform Party in 1993, he quit in 1997 over differences with the right-wing party's leadership. He became leader of the Canadian Alliance Party, a successor to Reform in 2002 and pushed through a union of Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives in 2003 to create the current Conservative Party. He was elected leader of the Conservatives in 2004.

THE GOVERNOR GENERAL

Michaelle Jean was born in Port au Prince, Haiti, and immigrated to Canada with her family in 1968. Jean became Canada's 27th governor general in 2005. A former journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp and university professor in Quebec, Jean is fluent in five languages. There was controversy when she was named to be the Queen's representative in Canada because she also held French citizenship -- something she later gave up.

(Reporting by Allan Dowd; Editing by Frank McGurty)