by Sean Orr | Hasta la victoria siempre! Fidel Castro dies. Justin Trudeau issues statement. Much hilarity ensues. #TrudeauEulogies. Look, I’m clearly not a fan of JT but it must suck to be ridiculed for giving such a well thought out and sensitive eulogy when all Donald Trump did was blurt out Fidel Castro is dead! like some Manchurian Candidate.

That it pisses off Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz should be all you need to know about it, but if you wonder what Trudeau would say about Stalin, and not what Harper actually said about King Abdullah, then you’re missing the point:

For comparison, here is Stephen Harper’s statement on the death of a (far more) brutal, misogynist, fundamentalist despot #TrudeauEulogies pic.twitter.com/nrEjOB4C0T

— Derrick O’Keefe (@derrickokeefe) November 26, 2016

And how did Justin outflank the so-called left, again? Does Tom Mulcair’s total non-statement while previously praising Thatcher prove that the liberal elite are having their Marie Antoinette moment?

Of course maybe it was because Fidel is Justin’s father. Show us the birth certificate!

What these reactions tell us is that we have lost our ability to talk rationally: “Is Chinese president Xi Jinping somehow a good dictator? Is the dictator within NATO, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the politician who closes newspapers and jails dissidents in Turkey, okay because he is aligned? Do we wait until they all die to find our principles?”

As Derrick O’Keefe writes in Ricochet, “When it comes to assessing the improbably long life of this 20th-century giant, neither ahistorical liberal and conservative condemnation nor leftist deification suffices.

Maybe the suppressiom of Cuban democratic rights is what really attracted Justin Trudeau: No electoral reform until enough Canadians want it, Monsef says. Hmm, what’s a good way to gauge if enough Canadians want it?

Time to roll up the yoga mats, Vancouver, and man the barricades! Although the gist of this article says “protest is broken, go out and protest” – I say you go out and protest.

Just make sure you don’t treat it like Burning Man. Because from Alberta to Standing Rock, indigenous peoples must be consulted.

This is what mobilization looks like: Bicycle overdose response unit launched in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Fidel would be proud.

Meanwhile, Horgan, Horgan, Horgan… ah fuck: BC NDP leader won’t visit pop-up injection site either. “We need to save people’s lives and you do that by creating facilities that are appropriate. And Insite is appropriate, it needs to be multiplied throughout the region…”

They just can’t be where we want to put our new yoga studio: Kelowna business association opposes proposed safe injection facility location.

“If they put it on Leon we’ll be strongly opposed to the site,” says DKA board president Dan Allen. “We want to revitalize and gentrify that street and I think a safe consumption site will impede any revitalization of that area.”

Yeah, and god forbid you put it in an area where people will actually use it.

Meanwhile, Health Canada to crack down on vaping in order to stop nation from looking lame. We reached Peak Vancouver a while ago so it’s only fitting we’ve reached Peak Canada as well.

First Canadian MDMA-assisted trauma therapy trial wraps up in Vancouver. But what about trauma inflicted from your time as a 90s raver?

From them people who thunk Mary Poppins was communist agitprop. Fraser Institute’s wait-time survey: Does it still count if most doctors ignored it? No. No it does not.

Mike Smyth: Ignore the distractions — voters can handle the truth on ICBC rate hikes. “Pay no attention to that humongous rate hike bearing down on your wallet like a runaway 18-wheeler, B.C. drivers! We’re bringing the hammer down on wannabe James Bonds tearing around in Lamborghinis and Maseratis”. Also, isn’t this a tacit admission that general rate payers have been subsidizing luxury car insurance for years?

2016 takes another: Aurora the beluga whale dies. The cause of death remains unclear, but it probably had something to do with her living in a bathtub her whole life…

Bonus: Vancouver’s Clark Park Gang