The Darn Tootin’ Tribune

CITY TELLS HOUSE TO SIT DOWN

Million Dollar Nutana Home Gets Too Big for Its Britches as Saskatoon Finally Notices the House Is Too Damn Tall

By Al Swanski, Head Receiver
The Darn Tootin’ Tribune

SASKATOON

In a stunning victory for tape measures everywhere, a nearly completed million dollar home in Nutana has been told by the City of Saskatoon that it is simply too goddamn tall.

The house has walls. It has windows. It has a roof. It has been sitting there being a house for quite some time.

Unfortunately, it is apparently too much house.

The problem surfaced in May when an inspection determined the home did not match the plans originally filed with the city. Ceiling heights were higher, a side wall was larger and other dimensions had wandered beyond what was approved.

Normally this would be a fairly straightforward case of somebody getting ambitious with a tape measure.

Except the house had reportedly already been inspected.

Nine times.

According to an affidavit filed by the current owners, city inspectors visited the property at least nine times during earlier construction and none of those inspections identified problems with the height, ceiling height, sidewall area or wall stepbacks.

Apparently the tenth inspection included somebody looking up.

The current owners purchased the unfinished property from an estate in 2025 and say they continued construction using plans they were provided, unaware those plans differed from what had originally been submitted to the city.

By the time the discrepancy was discovered, the house was nearly complete.

Which raises perhaps the greatest municipal question since Saskatoon spent nearly $300,000 on fake rocks.

How the hell does an entire house get too tall without anybody noticing?

This isn’t a teenager sneaking another six inches onto a backyard treehouse.

It’s a house.

It doesn’t grow at night. Nobody watered it. At no point did neighbours wake up to discover it had suddenly sprouted another floor and was interfering with weather radar.

The owners appealed, arguing that correcting the problem now could mean significant demolition, reconstruction and financial loss. Several neighbours supported them. Opponents raised an equally fair point. If the city simply allows the house to remain, what stops the next builder from treating zoning bylaws like serving suggestions?

And therein lies the magnificent Saskatoon pickle.

Make them fix it and you potentially punish people who say they had no idea anything was wrong.

Let them keep it and every contractor in town discovers the exciting new architectural principle of build first, apologize vertically later.

The city has now denied the appeal.

Somewhere inside City Hall, a ruler is sweating.

Saskatoon has officially drawn a line.

Unfortunately for this house, that line is about five feet lower.

The Darn Tootin’ Tribune reached out to the home for comment.

It declined.

Sources say it is standing its ground.

WAIT… IS THE ’90s CLASSIC ROCK NOW?

Rock the River Changes the Guard and Absolutely Nails It

By Al Swanski, Head Receiver
The Darn Tootin’ Tribune

SASKATOON: Rock the River has done something very smart this year.

It moved the clock.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with the old formula. Styx, Streetheart, Trooper, Chilliwack and company gave Saskatoon years of great summer nights and enough classic rock to make a Trans Am materialize simply by yelling “TURN IT UP.”

But classic rock can’t stay 1978 forever.

Eventually the classics get new classics.

And apparently those classics are now Everclear, Sloan, Default, The Tea Party, Collective Soul and Limblifter.

Excuse us?

When the hell did the ’90s become classic rock?

The answer, unfortunately, is sometime while we were busy looking the other way.

The kids who watched MuchMusic, bought CDs at HMV and drove around blasting these bands are now in their 40s and 50s.

We own lawn chairs.

Some of us have favourite lawn chairs.

That’s how serious this has become.

Rock the River didn’t make us old. They simply noticed.

And rather than waiting for the old formula to get tired, organizers did exactly what a good festival should do. They passed the torch to the next generation while keeping one foot firmly planted in what made the festival great.

Friday brings Limblifter, Sloan and Everclear.

Saturday has Northern Pikes, Default, The Tea Party and Collective Soul, which is basically the six disc changer from a 1999 Pontiac Grand Am brought to life.

Sunday brings Black Tea, Haywire, Starship and Colin James.

That’s a ridiculously good weekend.

Then there’s Rotary Park.

The Bessborough Gardens were a fantastic home for Rock the River, but the move across the water may turn out to be brilliant.

More open space. Grass. Trees. Broadway Bridge. The Saskatoon skyline. The South Saskatchewan flowing right beside you.

Apparently after all these years somebody finally looked at the words ROCK THE RIVER and thought, “You know what would really tie this together? The river.”

Hard to argue with that.

There is only one disappointing part of this trip back to the ’90s.

Nobody brought the ’90s prices.

A weekend pass is around $258 before taxes and fees.

In 1996, $258 could get you concert tickets, supper, beer, three CDs and a Pontiac Sunfire that technically ran.

But that’s about the only complaint we can manufacture.

Rock the River didn’t need fixing.

It needed evolving.

The old bands aren’t suddenly too old. Their fans aren’t being shown the door. The festival has simply realized another generation now has thirty years of memories attached to its own soundtrack.

That’s not replacing the classics.

That’s how songs become classics.

New generation. New location. Same river. Same idea.

And one hell of a lineup.

So if you’re standing in Rotary Park this weekend singing every word to Everclear and wondering when your teenage music became classic rock, don’t blame Rock the River.

They didn’t age you.

They just booked the evidence.

SASKATCHEWAN’S MOST INTERESTING YOUNG MAN

Seriously. How Can This Kid Possibly Exist?

By Al Swanski — Head Receiver
The Darn Tootin’ Tribune

There is something suspicious going on in rural Saskatchewan.

His name is Jake Vaadeland.

He was born in 2003.

We have checked.

Apparently there are records.

And yet almost everything else about the young man suggests he should be about 83 years old, complaining about the price of gasoline while polishing a Buick.

Vaadeland doesn’t simply play old music. He dresses old. He talks old. He writes old. His hair appears to have been personally approved by Elvis Presley. He plays guitar, banjo and mandolin and fronts The Sturgeon River Boys, a group that looks like somebody accidentally left the Grand Ole Opry door open in 1957.

And somehow, at just 23, none of it feels like an act.

That’s what makes Jake Vaadeland perhaps Saskatchewan’s most interesting young man.

Because eventually you realize the kid isn’t pretending to be from another time.

He sort of is.

Vaadeland grew up around Saskatchewan’s Sturgeon River country in the Scandinavian settlement of Park Valley, where his childhood sounds suspiciously like the opening chapter of a novel published in 1952.

There was an old white house with a wood stove and clawfoot bathtub. His father, Gord, operated a guest horse ranch, taking people on horseback trips and cooking over outdoor fires. There were horses, cattle at his grandparents’ place, hay to bale and farm work to do.

This is beginning to explain a few things.

Music was everywhere too. Jake’s father had played in Saskatchewan bluegrass bands and won Saskatchewan Country Music Awards. His mother’s side was musical, and his parents regularly took him to the Northern Lights Bluegrass and Old Tyme Music Festival.

While other kids were discovering whatever happened to be on the radio, Jake was absorbing bluegrass, traditional country and old-time music. He could memorize lyrics almost as soon as he could talk. His parents even claimed he sang Johnny Cash songs as a tiny child.

Jake was skeptical.

They produced video evidence.

Case closed. The boy never stood a chance.

His first instrument was the mandolin.

Naturally.

Around 14 came the banjo.

Of course.

Eventually guitar became his primary instrument, and somewhere along the way this wonderfully peculiar Saskatchewan kid became really, really good.

Classmates reportedly told him nobody liked bluegrass. Most teenagers would have taken the hint and desperately tried to fit in.

Jake apparently looked around, saw everybody going one direction and thought:

“Excellent. More room over here.”

And then he started proving them wrong.

Because this isn’t cosplay.

If Jake simply slicked back his hair, put on a vintage suit and sang Johnny Cash covers, the novelty would wear off quickly.

Instead, he creates within the tradition.

He writes his own songs, combining traditional country, bluegrass and 1950s rockabilly with the showmanship of the old Grand Ole Opry. The suits matter. The presentation matters. And behind him are the Sturgeon River Boys, actually standing together playing the living hell out of real instruments.

No laptop required.

After about thirty seconds, the novelty disappears. You’re no longer watching a young guy doing an impressive impression of an old musician.

You’re watching a damn good musician.

And the rest of the world has noticed.

Vaadeland won a JUNO Award in 2025, a Canadian Country Music Award and an increasingly ridiculous collection of Saskatchewan honours. He also became the youngest artist to receive CIMA Road Gold certification after selling 25,000 tickets in Canada within twelve months.

Twenty-five thousand tickets.

For bluegrass, traditional country and rockabilly.

By a kid born in 2003.

We would again like to remind everyone that none of this makes sense.

Jake and the Sturgeon River Boys have since carried their Saskatchewan sound across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe.

A musical tradition passed through his family, absorbed by a little boy at Saskatchewan bluegrass festivals, is now being carried back across an ocean.

That isn’t nostalgia.

That’s continuation.

And maybe that explains the whole mystery.

Jake has connected his music directly to memories of growing up around the Sturgeon River. The horses were real. The ranch was real. The wood stove was real. The cattle were real. The festivals were real. His father’s bluegrass history was real.

The old songs weren’t archaeological artifacts Jake dug up on Spotify.

They were part of the furniture.

To Jake, this stuff isn’t really the past.

It’s home.

Which explains why the whole thing feels so authentic.

He isn’t wearing somebody else’s history.

He’s wearing his own.

So how does someone born in the same century as Facebook end up looking like he should be opening for Hank Snow? How does a kid surrounded by smartphones and streaming services emerge with a banjo, an upright bass behind him and enough pomade to survive a Saskatchewan wind warning?

Maybe Saskatchewan itself is part of the answer.

There are still places here where generations overlap. Where grandparents aren’t ancient history. Where family stories survive. Where old songs still get played and somebody knows how something was done because somebody older actually showed them.

Jake absorbed all of it.

Then, instead of outgrowing it, he built upon it.

At this point, Jake Vaadeland probably couldn’t stop being Jake Vaadeland if he tried. Put him in sweatpants, hand him an iPhone and he’d somehow still look like he was waiting for the Grand Ole Opry to call.

You can buy the suit.

You can learn the songs.

You can grow the hair.

You can find an old microphone.

But you cannot fake being raised by the thing you’re trying to represent.

Jake was.

So yes, Saskatchewan has somehow produced a 23-year-old, internationally touring, JUNO-winning country and bluegrass musician who appears to have stepped directly out of the 1950s.

We have several theories.

A DeLorean remains a possibility.

But perhaps the explanation is simpler.

Jake Vaadeland isn’t a young man trying to bring the past back.

He’s living proof that some of the best parts of it never actually left.

ALL COMES DOWN TO THIS

Nine Innings. Two Cities. One Season. The Berries Have One Job Left.

By Al Swanski — Head Receiver
The Darn Tootin’ Tribune

SASKATOON — This is why you play the games.

Every practice. Every bus ride. Every bruised shin, sore shoulder, bad hop, blown call, clutch hit and mosquito inhaled under the lights at Cairns Field has led to this.

One game.

The Saskatoon Berries and Regina Red Sox enter Game 3 tied 1–1 in their WCBL East Division semifinal.

There is no cushion left. No tomorrow to fix it. No mathematical gymnastics required.

Win, and you move on. Lose, and summer suddenly gets a lot quieter.

The Berries took Game 1. Regina punched back in Game 2.

Now the slate is clean.

And maybe that’s exactly how this should end.

Because this team wasn’t built to have somebody else decide its season. It gets nine innings, 27 outs and a packed Cairns Field to write the ending itself.

And it’s Regina.

Of course it’s Regina.

Apparently even baseball in Saskatchewan eventually becomes an argument between our two largest cities.

But tonight isn’t really about Regina.

It’s about Saskatoon.

It’s about the purple in the stands. The kids leaning over the railing hoping for a ball. The volunteers, families and fans who turned a young baseball club into something this city genuinely gives a damn about.

Tonight, Cairns Field isn’t just where the Berries play.

It’s home.

And defending home doesn’t require heroics on every pitch.

Throw strikes. Make the play. Move the runner. Pick up the teammate beside you.

Then do it again.

Baseball has a funny way of making the biggest moments come down to the smallest things.

One pitch.

One swing.

One catch.

One guy deciding he’s absolutely not going to be the final out.

The Tribune’s highly sophisticated sports department has spent hours analyzing the possibilities and reached one firm conclusion:

Score more runs than Regina.

Revolutionary stuff.

But underneath the jokes, the stakes are real.

A season’s worth of work has been reduced to one summer night in Saskatoon.

So fill Cairns Field.

Wear purple.

Make noise.

Make Regina hear Saskatoon every time they step into the box.

And when that first pitch crosses the plate, forget Game 1. Forget Game 2.

There is only this.

Nine innings.
Twenty-seven outs.
One city behind them.

All season long they’ve been the Saskatoon Berries.

Tonight, they’re Saskatoon’s Berries.

Now go finish the damn thing.

BERRY UP.

By Al Swanski — Head Receiver
The Darn Tootin’ Tribune

SASKATOON — What began as a localized outbreak of severe internet butthurt has officially developed into a full-blown civic health emergency after Saskatoon physicians identified a second, rapidly spreading condition sweeping through local comment sections.

Doctors are calling it Artificial Intelligence Detection-Induced Grandiosity Syndrome, or AIDIGS, a neurological condition in which otherwise ordinary people experience an overwhelming sense of intellectual superiority after successfully identifying something as AI that has already been clearly labelled as AI.

“It’s remarkable,” explained one completely fictional physician. “A person sees a Darn Tootin’ Tribune cover, notices the publication openly states that AI is used to create its imagery, and immediately rushes into the comments to announce, ‘THAT’S AI.’”

The patient then reportedly sits back with the quiet satisfaction of Sherlock Holmes having just solved the fu***ng Zodiac murders.

Medical officials say the discovery is rarely kept private.

Victims feel an uncontrollable urge to inform everybody.

“YOU KNOW THAT’S AI, RIGHT?”

Yes, Brenda.

We know.

We fu***ng made it.

Researchers believe AIDIGS is closely related to the already rampant Acute Satirical Butt-Hurt Syndrome, which occurs when somebody reads an obviously absurd satirical story, sometimes clearly labelled satire, interprets it as investigative journalism from Reuters and experiences an immediate deep-tissue aching of the posterior accompanied by furious Facebook activity.

The two diseases are now appearing simultaneously.

Doctors have named this particularly dangerous combination Holier-Than-Thou Double-Ass Syndrome.

When reached for comment, Darn Tootin’ Tribune Head Receiver and self-appointed Public Investigator Al Swanski expressed little sympathy for those afflicted.

“You know the old saying that you should read between the lines?” Swanski said. “Well, as of press time, all 313 editions of The Darn Tootin’ Tribune have a special little space above the headline, between two goddamn lines, that always says something along the lines of, ‘THIS NEWSPAPER IS BU****IT BUT SOMETIMES TRUE, SO F**K YOU.’”

Swanski then reportedly pointed at the space between the two lines several times for emphasis.

“Between. The. Fu***ng. Lines. We literally put it between the lines. I don’t know how much more accommodating we can be. This s**t ain’t my fault, but goddamn it feels good to be a bamboozler!”

Swanski then declined further comment because he was reportedly busy bamboozling.

Symptoms of Holier-Than-Thou Double-Ass Syndrome include uncontrollable eye rolling, compulsive fact-checking of jokes, aggressive declarations that “AI IS RUINING EVERYTHING,” and an inexplicable need to explain artificial intelligence to the person who just used artificial intelligence to make the thing they are currently looking at.

But the most fascinating symptom is hypocrisy.

Investigators have discovered that some of the loudest sufferers of AIDIGS appear to have profile pictures featuring skin smoother than a freshly Zambonied rink, eyes brighter than aircraft landing lights, teeth capable of illuminating Circle Drive and approximately eleven fewer years of facial mileage than witnesses remember seeing at Costco last Tuesday.

Apparently AI is a dangerous technological abomination threatening the very fabric of human creativity.

Unless it makes your crow’s feet disappear.

Then apparently we have discovered electricity.

The Saskatchewan Centre for Completely Made-Up Medical Research estimates that advanced AIDIGS can cause the human ego to swell to sixteen times its normal size.

At Stage Four, patients may begin believing they possess a rare supernatural ability known as “spotting AI,” despite identifying a picture containing six-fingered politicians riding a bison through downtown Saskatoon beneath a newspaper masthead that essentially says:

HELLO. WE USE AI.

Several patients have reportedly died from complications related to an acute false sense of grandeur with a side of holier-than-thou.

Doctors describe the final stage as tragic.

“The ego simply becomes too large for the body,” explained another physician we invented moments ago. “Eventually there’s nowhere left for the humility to go.”

Treatment options remain limited.

Patients suffering from Satirical Butt-Hurt are advised to apply ice directly to the affected area, take two common-sense tablets and avoid comment sections until they can distinguish between CBC News and a newspaper called The Darn Tootin’ Tribune.

AIDIGS patients require more intensive rehabilitation.

Doctors recommend placing the patient in front of an obviously AI-generated image and allowing them to announce, “THAT’S AI,” until the feeling of accomplishment gradually subsides.

This can take several hours.

In extreme cases, medical staff may congratulate them.

“Very good, Trevor. You found the AI.”

Patients are then given a juice box, a sticker and 20 minutes of supervised quiet time.

The Darn Tootin’ Tribune is therefore raising Saskatoon’s official BUTTHURT & GRANDIOSITY THREAT LEVEL to SEVERE, just one level below FACEBOOK COMMUNITY GROUP ADMINISTRATOR.

Residents are reminded that satire is allowed to be ridiculous.

AI is allowed to be AI.

You are allowed to dislike both.

And successfully identifying the technology openly acknowledged by the people using it does not make you Alan fu***ng Turing.

Meanwhile, Saskatoon hospitals are preparing for another difficult weekend.

Emergency supplies of inflatable donut cushions have been ordered.

Ego-deflation needles are standing by.

And authorities are begging residents to remember one simple piece of preventative medicine:

Before correcting the internet, make absolutely certain the internet wasn’t fu***ng with you first.

The Darn Tootin’ Tribune

Artificially assisted. Naturally ridiculous.

Yer darn tootin’.

By Al Swanski, Head Receiver
The Darn Tootin’ Tribune

SASKATOON: Remember those orange scooters you could rent by the minute? Notice they aren’t around anymore?

Maybe you took one home after leaving Bud’s on Broadway. Maybe you rode one to work. Maybe you threw one into the South Saskatchewan River and watched it go around and around in the whirlpool of the weir just for fun.

Whatever the case, investigators say you were trafficking drugs.

You just didn’t know it.

After a three year investigation, local private investigation firm Swanski P.I. & Associates says it has dismantled a Ukrainian Mafia operation so elaborate, so audacious and so thoroughly Saskatoon that hundreds of ordinary citizens allegedly spent years transporting narcotics across the city while paying by the minute for the privilege.

At the centre of it all were those innocent orange steeds.

The same scooters with the helmets nobody wore but somehow had to pay for when they disappeared.

Investigators allege the scooters were actually a constantly moving narcotics distribution network controlled from a criminal headquarters in the most inconspicuous location imaginable:

Hafford. 45 minutes north of Saskatoon.

From there, alleged crime boss Archie Dinkchenko and his brothers Borys, Leonid, Yuri, Dmitri and Mykola Dinkchenko communicated with street level traffickers and coordinated an operation that Swanski investigators say had effectively turned Saskatoon into one enormous, unsuspecting delivery service.

A MINIBAR OF DRUGS ON WHEELS!!!

Each scooter allegedly contained a secret compartment stocked with a rotating smorgasbord of Bennies, ludes, reefers, uppers, downers, hashish, whippets, magic mushrooms, pep pills, goofballs, speed and various other mind altering odds and ends.

There was no dealer standing on a corner.

There was no handoff.

There was barely even a person involved.

Customers simply called the Ukrainian Mafia hotline, told an operator what they wanted and how much, and paid.

Moments later, two GPS locations arrived.

The first led to a hidden single use skeleton key.

The second led to the nearest orange scooter containing the requested merchandise.

Find the key.

Find the scooter.

Open the compartment.

Take the order.

Walk away.

The scooter remained exactly where it was, ready for some completely innocent Saskatonian to rent it and unknowingly relocate whatever inventory remained.

That was the brilliance of the scheme.

The Dinkchenkos didn’t move the drugs. Saskatoon moved them.

A scooter could begin the afternoon downtown carrying Bennies, get ridden to Broadway by somebody going for supper, spend the evening holding ludes outside Bud’s, then be driven halfway across the city by a man whose only criminal intention was avoiding a cab fare.

And if somebody threw it into the river?

The drugs simply went around and around in the whirlpool of the weir.

THEN THERE WERE THE TOADS

Not every scooter carried pills and powders.

Investigators say certain specially modified units contained tiny filtered living quarters for Sonoran Desert toads, also known as Colorado River toads or Incilius alvarius.

The species is known for producing secretions containing the powerful psychoactive compound 5 MeO DMT. Direct contact with or ingestion of those secretions can be extremely hazardous to humans and animals.

Nevertheless, investigators say the toad became the organization’s number one seller in Saskatoon.

The Dinkchenkos had apparently developed an international criminal organization sophisticated enough to engineer ventilation and living quarters for a psychoactive desert amphibian inside a rental scooter.

Unfortunately, they were considerably less sophisticated when it came to banking.

THE ACCOUNT THAT BROKE THE EMPIRE

According to investigators, virtually all proceeds from the operation were funnelled into Archie Dinkchenko’s personal credit union account.

Not an offshore account.

Not a maze of corporations.

Archie’s Credit Union account.

Before long, credit union employees noticed an exorbitant amount of money pouring into it at all hours of the day and night.

Morning.

Afternoon.

Midnight.

More money.

Then more money.

Then some more money.

Staff also became suspicious of the name Dinkchenko.

It just didn’t seem right.

The irregular activity eventually caught the attention of Swanski P.I. & Associates.

What followed was three years of surveillance.

A couple phone taps here.

A couple cameras there.

Undercover private investigators inside the operation.

The hotline was identified. GPS drops were followed. Skeleton keys were traced. Scooter movements were documented. The money trail was pieced together.

Eventually, the entire Dinkchenko house of cards collapsed.

OPERATION ORANGE CRUSH

Archie, Borys, Leonid, Yuri, Dmitri and Mykola Dinkchenko were arrested following the culmination of the investigation, ending what investigators describe as the largest scooter based criminal enterprise in Saskatchewan history.

The brothers face a staggering collection of criminal charges, including international drug trafficking, conspiracy to traffic, possession for the purpose of trafficking, laundering proceeds of crime, directing and participating in a criminal organization, trafficking Bennies, ludes, reefers, uppers, downers, hashish, whippets and magic mushrooms, GPS trafficking, skeleton key crimes, unlawful scooter modification, operating an illegal narcotics minibar, toad trafficking, conspiracy to conceal a toad inside a scooter, using unsuspecting civilians as drug couriers, organized scootering, trafficking by scooter, possession of proceeds obtained by scooter and numerous helmet related offences.

They are expected to serve their fictional sentences at Saskatchewan Penitentiary in Prince Albert.

Today, the hotline is silent.

The skeleton keys are gone.

The toads have been removed.

And the orange steeds no longer roam Saskatoon carrying their mysterious cargo from neighbourhood to neighbourhood.

But the investigation leaves one uncomfortable question hanging over the city.

How many of us worked for the Dinkchenkos without knowing it?

Maybe you rode one to work.

Maybe you took one home from Bud’s.

Maybe you hurled one into the river and watched it circle the weir.

You thought you were renting a scooter.

Turns out Archie Dinkchenko had you working logistics.