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Marvellous Maps

Marvellous Maps

I’ve always been fascinated by maps. When I was a kid I declared to anyone who would listen that when I grew up I was going to work as a “mapmaker”. To train myself I would copy maps out of atlases and try to squeeze as many place names and geographic features as possible. Then I later found out that the correct name for “map making” was “cartography” and that in order to become a cartographer you had to be a whiz in mathematics. Knowing myself to be one of world’s worst math students on record I knew my dream of drawings maps for a living would never pan out.

Nevertheless, as my career evolved over the years into editorial cartooning I’ve been able to put my passion for maps to good use in satire. Here’s a gallery of map cartoons going back a few decades:

Toronto Megacity, 1996
November 6, 1997
April 1, 1999
February 9, 2000
December 16, 2000
September 8, 1999
May 16, 2002
June 20, 2002
October 23, 2002
May 30, 2003
September 28, 2004
May 9, 2006
August 2, 2006
March 1, 2007
August 2, 2007
March 31, 2008
August 15, 2008
September 25, 2008
Toronto 2010
February 22, 2011
September 3, 2011
November 8, 2011
April 26, 2012
May 15, 2012
August 22, 2012
December 2012
March 8, 2013
September 8, 2013
February 3, 2015
August 15, 2015
September 4, 2015
ACC – 2016
June 23, 2016
June 29, 2016
June 25, 2016
August 25, 2016
December 1, 2016
February 8 2017
February 23, 2017
March 30, 2017
April 26, 2017
October 20, 2017
July 24, 2018
December 13, 2018
April 29, 2019
November 9, 2016

 

Tuesday November 24, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday November 24, 2020

Here’s a Colour coded map of Covid Ontario

November 5, 2020

The Ontario government released a brand new colour-coded framework last week that outlines rules, restrictions and zones for every region throughout the province based on its local COVID-19 situation. To help you keep track, we’ve created a map of each region and its current designated zone.

The framework includes five different zones, each with a specific colour attached: Prevent-Green, Protect-Yellow, Restrict-Orange, Control-Red and Lockdown-Grey. 

In the green zone, “restrictions reflect broadest allowance of activities in Stage 3,” according to the province, while the highest-risk settings remain closed. In the yellow zone, enhanced targeted enforcement, fines and enhanced education to limit further transmission are present, and public health measures for high-risk settings are also in place. 

November 12, 2020

The orange zone, meanwhile, includes enhanced measures, restrictions and enforcement while avoiding any closures, and the red zone includes broader-scale measures and restrictions across multiple sectors to control transmission (similar to modified Stage 2).

“Restrictions are the most severe available before widescale business or organizational closure,” says the province of the red zone. 

The grey zone can be compared to a modified Stage 1 or pre-Stage 1, according to the government, with widescale measures and restrictions, including closures, to halt or interrupt transmission.

Marvellous Maps

Regions have been placed in specific zones based on a number of indicators and thresholds, including case rates, per cent positivity, health system capacity and more. 

While no regions have been placed in the Lockdown-Grey zone just yet, the province’s COVID-19 hotspots — Toronto, Peel, Hamilton, York and Halton — are all currently in the red zone, and both Toronto and Peel have additional restrictions in place, introduced by their local public health authorities. 

The COVID-19 Pandemic

Provincial public health officials will be constantly reexamining the indicators and thresholds to determine whether regions should move forward or backwards through the zones. (BlogTO) 

 

Facing Face Masks

(Graeme is currently enjoying a Summertime respite from his usual duties drawing editorial cartoons. In the meantime, please enjoy this illustration highlight of things on offer for purchase through his Redbubble online shop. Graeme’s daily satire returns on September 1, 2020.)

Redbubble introduced face masks as a new product available for artists to design and sell a month of two after the WHO declared a COVID-19 pandemic. At first I held off adding them to my shop, skeptical knowing they aren’t medical grade PPE and wondering if they only provide false senses of security. The evolving opinions oscillating among varying degrees of effectiveness delayed my enthusiasm until the push back began against a solidifying scientific consensus that they actually do work in controlling the spread of the virus. A mouth covering whether medical grade, homemade, or in the form of a novelty mask as in the case of what’s on offer at Redbubble, the bottom line is that any mask that covers the nose and mouth will be of benefit. 

April 14, 2020

I’m firmly in the trust science camp when it comes to my own existence living through a pandemic. Experts have been for years predicting the scale of what’s happening right now in the world and there have been plenty of recent scares to prepare us for these times from SARS, H1N1, swine flu, and Ebola to name a few.

The biggest one of all in modern history was the Great Pandemic of 1918, with an uncanny number of similarities to the Pandemic of 2020 as I pointed out in this post of newspaper clippings from a hundred years ago. Then as now, were the skeptics, the contrarians, the religious zealots, the anti-science kooks, and the lunatic political fringe, all rallying against public health & safety measures, calling them a conspiracy, a hoax, a plot against rights & freedoms, an over-reaction leading to the destruction of the economy. 

To me the pandemic skeptics delight in showing themselves as skeptics by acting like stubborn refuseniks shunning face masks in public. One sees them all the time when out and about, with their masks hanging below their ears and chins in shows of defiance of mandatory rules.

Meanwhile, people are dying because of this infection.

If any authority is going to realize those deaths more than any other authority it’s going to be government. It’s government (most of them, anyway) that’s telling us to keep a distance from one another, and government is telling us we need to wear masks, because they are being guided by scientists. There’s always an inclination to mistrust government in many other areas, but advice on how to protect oneself during a pandemic isn’t one of them.

My answer is masks are going to be here for a while, so as we’re using them to protect us and others, why not get on the growing bandwagon to express ourselves?  I am happy to help, and here’s a few to consider:

JFK mask
Shakespeare
Washington mask
Oscar Wilde
Pope of Mope
Nixon mask
Darwin
HRH

Please have a look to see the many more masks of this particular style on offer through the MacKaycartoons store with quotes and without. If you think you have a particular statement that might go well with one of the personalities I’ve drawn do let me know and I’ll post it up.

Did you hear about the famous person who shared a photo of themselves wearing one of my mask designs? Oh, well let me tell you…

Thursday May 14, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 14, 2020

‘Social bubbles’ allow you to see friends as coronavirus lockdowns ease — but they might not work

As more countries look to lift their coronavirus lockdowns, “social bubbles” have been floated as an idea of how to ease restrictions, but experts say they could be difficult to put into practice.  

Marvellous Maps

A social bubble entails allowing people to form a group with a select number of people they are allowed to see socially outside their own household. 

They have been put forward as a way to continue containing the spread of Covid-19, which has infected more than 3.6 million people worldwide and killed over 257,000, according to the latest figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University. 

New Zealand — which has been heralded as an example for bringing its coronavirus cases down to zero — has already implemented social bubbles. It lifted certain lockdown restrictions last week and allowed people to expand their bubbles to contact with close family outside their own households. 

April 18 2020

Meanwhile, Belgium is reportedly considering allowing people to socialize with a group of up to 10 people. It currently allows people to meet up with two others outside their household, so long they are outside and keep a distance from each other.

William Hanage, associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said social bubbles were “certainly a component of how, once the initial outbreak is under control, measures could be refined.” 

However, he added that “as the size of the cluster grows, the probability that one of its members could become infected obviously increases.”

Mike Tildesley, an associate professor who specializes in infectious disease control at the University of Warwick, said that while “in principle, it’s a really sensible strategy,” practically it would be difficult to implement. 

He also said that narrowing down a list of friends — and ensuring that those friends also have the same list — sounded like a “social nightmare.” 

“You could envisage this situation where you name a group of friends, they name a group of friends that includes you, but it has some people that aren’t included on your list and all you’ve got is some sort of porous process that (the coronavirus) filters through the population more slowly that it did before,” Tildesley added. (CNBC) 

 

Wednesday April 15, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday April 15, 2020

After Mocking ‘King’ Trump, Cuomo Says Virus Should Be ‘No-Politics Zone’

Since the coronavirus began to ravage New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has used a fine mix of outright flattery and back-room diplomacy to draw down a variety of federal support, preaching nonpartisanship while mostly avoiding direct attacks on President Trump.

Marvellous Maps

In a span of about 24 hours this week, however, Mr. Cuomo, more typically known for his bruising political style, appeared to return to his roots. 

In a frenzy of television appearances on Tuesday, Mr. Cuomo urged the president to avoid being “dictatorial.” He said on CNN that Mr. Trump’s coronavirus response had been “schizophrenic.” About 30 minutes later on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” he compared the president’s daily briefings to “a comedy skit,” while saying no governor should watch them because “there’s no value in it.”

Mr. Cuomo’s comments were prompted by Mr. Trump’s unsubstantiated claim during a White House news conference on Monday evening that he had “total authority” over the states when it came to reopening the economy.

That claim was quickly rebuked by several governors, including Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a Republican who heads the National Governors Association. But it was Mr. Cuomo who used the sharpest language, threatening to undo weeks of diplomacy toward the White House.

Mr. Cuomo’s shift in tone comes at a time when New York’s once-urgent need for immediate resources from the federal government has lessened, with many indicators showing a so-called flattening of the curve in the state.

Coronavirus cartoons

It also followed the introduction of the governor’s new coalition with his counterparts from six neighboring states to draft a plan to reopen the region’s economy — a move that displeased President Trump, whose exasperation grew Tuesday after Mr. Cuomo’s media appearances.

“Cuomo’s been calling daily, even hourly, begging for everything, most of which should have been the state’s responsibility, such as new hospitals, beds, ventilators, etc.,” the president wrote on Twitter. “I got it all done for him, and everyone else, and now he seems to want Independence! That won’t happen!”

Mr. Trump followed up with another post in which, referring to the film “Mutiny on the Bounty,” he compared the governors’ coalition to mutineers turning on their captain.

But given a chance to respond at his daily news briefing later Tuesday morning, Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, held back, repeatedly saying that he did not want to argue with Mr. Trump.

“The president was clearly unhappy,” Mr. Cuomo said, noting the “Mutiny on the Bounty” tweet and other remarks by Mr. Trump, who he said “was clearly spoiling for a fight on this issue.” (New York News)

Every cartoon idea starts with an ugly rough sketch