Of course the District of North Vancouver is not amalgamating with the City of Burnaby. That would be absurd.
But we hope our front page April Fools’ story at least got you thinking. That, of course, is the point of good satire. Subtlety at first and gradually becoming more and more outlandish, the piece is supposed to give the reader a few laughs then have them come away with a critical look at the real-life absurdity of the status quo.
Other ideas we kicked around for getting your jimmies rustled included developing Grand Boulevard into condos, removing lanes from the Ironworkers Memorial bridge to eliminate the bottleneck, or something on the asinine cost of real estate (although it would be quite a challenge to write anything that would make our housing market seem any more asinine than it already is.)
But, as they say, truth can be stranger than fiction.
Imagine if Lower Lonsdale decided to separate itself from the City of North Vancouver. “LoLo to go solo” would make a pretty snappy headline, but you’d have a hard time convincing any right-thinking person of the logic of it.
But, in 1907, that’s essentially what happened when a cadre of landowners and politicians carved the city out of the district.
So we hope you held off on writing an indignant letter to the editor until you realized the North North-Burnaby story was a farce.
But if you’ve laughed the story off without pausing to reflect on what it was really about, now that would be really foolish.
What are your thoughts? Send us a letter via email by clicking here or post a comment below.
