Matador Ballroom owner isn't leaving his 13th try up to lady luck. The city rejected Paul McCaughey’s latest plan for the honky-tonk at Dovercourt and College—his 12th attempt to get an approval in the past seven years. McCaughey previously mused about selling to a condo developer who’d put a Shoppers Drug Mart at the bottom. But he’s now stepping up an effort to lure more protest to city hall.

Skateboarders say they’re the ones preserving the glory of Fort York. The new Bentway park plan, for beneath the Gardiner Expressway, requires some space currently inhabited by concrete ramps that were turned into a DIY skate park. But the ramps are technically part of a national historic site, and their existence may expose the city to lawsuits. Even so, the half-pipers argue that, before they started using it, the area was strewn with garbage and graffiti.

Papa Trudeau’s connections haunt us still. Vice’s town hall with the prime minister about the proposed Cannabis Act revealed that Pierre Trudeau once helped Michel, Justin's brother, escape possession charges. The chit-chat featured Trudeau explaining his reference to dealers being “a shady character in a stairwell.” (The PM claims he’s more of a beer and bourbon drinker himself.) These soundbites are competing for attention with a photo from Jonah Keri's podcast taping, which led to confirmation of Trudeau's fondness for another therapeutic practice.

Kathleen Wynne doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. The premier’s unveiling of her "guaranteed basic income" pilot project suggests she's shifting the provincial Liberals to the left. She's up against NDP leader Andrea Horwath, who is promising a universal pharmacare plan. Patrick Brown had best generate a parallel hook for the Ontario PCs soon, or the likes of Reverend Charles McVety will do it for him. (The latter's group bought a Toronto Sun ad in an attempt to characterize the Greenbelt as an attack on social conservatism.)

Solitude sounds like something to read if you’re bored by the internet. Vancouver writer Michael Harris (not to be confused with any political pundit or provincial politician) has a follow-up to 2014’s The End of Absence. A scathing reivew of Solitude by Bert Archer argues that the book is full of mischaracterizations of online culture, adding up to “the work of someone trying to capitalize on his success without having anything to say.” If you dare to care about a guy who spent a week alone without technology on an island, here’s an excerpt:

John Tory accuses the Toronto Star of fake news. Much like Rob Ford once did, the current mayor believes the newspaper is out to get him—at least when it reports on the proposed subway extension in Scarborough. Tory griped to Stephen LeDrew on CP24 about how Star reporters “don’t even make an effort to be objective about it.”