The hero Vancouver needs? Independent council candidate Jean Swanson offers to donate $41,000 of her salary if she’s elected. It’s a little disappointing that this headline focuses on the rather populist notion of donating ones salary because she has much more profound ideas like: tax the rich to build housing for all, a four-year rent freeze, trim the police budget to fund community advocacy, work toward free transit, expand Sanctuary City measures. Whether or not this is within the jurisdiction of the city is irrelevant. Interesting to see if COPE runs a candidate.

Speaking of running: The Vancouver Sun and the Province have vacated their downtown offices for new ones in East Van. This is not the first time they’ve fled downtown. They used to operate out of the Downtown Eastside, back when it used to be the locus of enterprise. They later abandoned the neighbourhood, moving to a building that was part of a massive waterfront redevelopment.

Related satire: Variety Of Unsustainable Business Models Make Up Extremely Hip Neighborhood.

Dear Homesteaders, Self-Reliance Is A Delusion. “The homesteader who is confident their security is in their own hands should go live off-the-grid in Syria and find out how far self-protection takes them.

In case you missed it: The 10 most cringeworthy lines in Rolling Stone’s Justin Trudeau profile.

“The Canadians will hate this, but at times Trudeau and his young staff give off the aura of a well-meaning Netflix adaptation about a young, idealistic Canadian prime minister.”

Correct.

And yet, Macleans missed the most cringeworthy line of all: ‘Privileged’ Justin Trudeau accused of colonialist attitude over boxing match. “I wanted someone who would be a good foil, and we stumbled upon the scrappy tough-guy senator from an indigenous community. He fit the bill, and it was a very nice counterpoint. I saw it as the right kind of narrative, the right story to tell.” If “listening is seducing”, and we are hearing him correctly, he wanted a villain and that villain was a scrappy ‘injun’- a logical extension of a war which Canada has been waging against Indigenous peoples since its very inception as a settler state.

But the irony of Rolling Stone – you know, the same magazine that still thinks Metallica is relevant – endorsing Trudeau is that it is clearly trolling Donald Trump ahead of the NAFTA talks: Conservatives say Trudeau’s Rolling Stone cover jeopardizes NAFTA talks.

That’s bad news for John Horgan. Although maybe that’s Trudeau’s plan.

Speaking of angering Trump: Montreal’s Olympic Stadium used to house surge in asylum seekers crossing from U.S.. I hate to detract from this good news by focusing on a single quote but, “We’ve never seen this before”? The Irish, Jews, Komagata Maru? More tone deaf colonialism? Or am I overthinking this?

This Harper-lite shtick is getting tedious: Ottawa ready to review Saudi arms deals amid crackdown. ‘Whoa, whoa, we didn’t think that by selling armoured vehicles to the single worst human rights violator on the planet would have unintended consequences?’

Vacant Homes Are A Global Epidemic, And Paris Is Fighting It With A 60% Tax. Attn: YIMBY’s and supplyists:

Growing populations have barely put a dent in the vacant homes in global real estate capitals. The amount of speculation has been scaling with demand, which is a curious paradox. This signifies an issue that’s more complex than just a basic supply and demand problem.

Related: The Great Recession never ended.

B.C. boater called ‘hero of the day’ for spraying grass fire with his jet boat. Can we give every fire fighter one of these?

B.C. man unknowingly catches world record fish, then eats it. Ugh. He probably overcooked it too.

Bonus: An anti-immigrant group mistook empty bus seats for women wearing burqas.