Today’s issue includes a familiar byline: Sara Miller Llana. Her dateline over the past five years has typically been Paris. Or Berlin. Or Amsterdam, Athens, Bilbao, Budapest, Copenhagen, Kiev, Moscow, Reykjavik, Rome, Stockholm, Warsaw, or … you get the idea.

Today, it’s Halton Hills, Ontario, and she is filing as the Monitor’s new Canada bureau chief.

To all of us at the Monitor, it’s an exciting time. “On both sides of the Atlantic, people frequently tell me ‘we are in strange times,’ ” Sara says. “Toronto is the perfect place from which to plumb that sentiment, because Canada is adhering to the international order, while the United States, under the Trump administration, seems to be suggesting a new direction.”

While Sara is moving to a new geographical base, her focus will be less on physical location than on new ways of thinking about long-standing issues: a nation defining itself as a "post-nationalist state" based on “shared values”; what it means to be “us,” with implications across North America and Europe; land and energy issues; consensus-building amid immigration challenges and concerns about democratic institutions; and trade initiatives.

Sara served as Latin American bureau chief before reporting from Europe. Fluent in French and Spanish, she covers the news with rigor and heart. She and her husband and young daughter are liking the Toronto vibe so far. “I was on a crowded, hot streetcar that people were trying to exit. Instead of yelling at the driver who had shut the doors, it was a polite, 'Could you open the door? I'm trying to get out.’ It just set a tone that changed the mood for all.”

Now to our five stories, showing how the consequences of certain actions are hard to anticipate, and the power of generosity.