mackaycartoons

Graeme MacKay's Editorial Cartoon Archive

  • Archives
  • Kings & Queens
  • Prime Ministers
  • Sharing
  • Special Features
  • The Boutique
  • Who?
  • Young Doug Ford
  • Presidents

angel

Wednesday November 30, 2022

November 30, 2022 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday November 30, 2022

Doug Ford has no mandate to sell off the Greenbelt

The Ford government is messing with the Greenbelt and Ontarians should be furious.

March 9, 2005

I say this as someone who was part of the McGuinty government that brought the Greenbelt to life in 2005 — one of the most important accomplishments of my time in office.

The idea was simple — take two million acres of environmentally sensitive forests, wetlands, and prime agricultural farmland off the table for development. The result was the largest Greenbelt in the world, enhancing our environmental ecosystem, curbing urban sprawl, maintaining precious farmland, and creating greenspaces for recreation and tourism.

The key to the exercise was its permanence — it would never be developed.

Posted in: Ontario Tagged: 2022-40, angel, christmas, developer, Doug Ford, environment, greenbelt, housing, It's a Wonderful Life, Ontario, parody, Television

Tuesday October 27, 2020

November 3, 2020 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday October 27, 2020

New Doug Ford vs. Old Doug Ford: Which one is Premier of Ontario?

Since his election as Ontario Premier in 2018, Doug Ford has been available in two versions.

March 27, 2020

There’s the empathetic, uniting leader who works across political boundaries. He first appeared during the COVID-19 pandemic.

And there’s the original Doug Ford – the angry partisan who sows divisions and does favours for friends.

You may recall version 1.0 from such moves as Mr. Ford’s attempt to name an underqualified old crony, Ron Taverner, as commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police in 2018. It reeked so badly of conflict of interest that Mr. Taverner ultimately withdrew his name from consideration.

November 9, 2019

Doug Ford v. 1.0 was also infamous for unilaterally cutting the size of Toronto City Council from 44 members to 25 in 2018, in the middle of a municipal election. There was no justification for it, but Mr. Ford rammed it through for nakedly partisan reasons.

It was thus a pleasant surprise to see the Premier reboot himself as a less demagogic, more empathetic leader when the pandemic struck.

During the crisis, Doug Ford v. 2.0 has shown an openness to working with the federal Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, and an understanding of the difficulties facing Ontarians. He has spent months praising traditional targets. His government’s actual results leave much to be desired, but his work ethic and lack of partisanship have won him the respect of former critics.

November 17, 2018

And then last week he reverted to prepandemic form, slipping two self-serving measures into omnibus legislation meant to help businesses get through the pandemic.

One measure was a ban on municipalities using ranked ballots in elections, removing an option given to them in 2016 by the former Liberal government.

Ranked ballots let voters choose a first, second and third choice for a council seat or the mayor’s seat; if none of the candidates wins a majority off the bat, the voters’ second and third choices are redistributed until one candidate reaches the 50-per-cent threshold.

His other self-serving measure was to include a school run by a political ally among three Christian schools that are either being given university status or having their right to hand out degrees expanded.

Canada Christian College and School of Graduate Theological Studies in Whitby, Ont., is run by Charles McVety – a polarizing figure who opposes gay marriage and espouses hateful views about LGBTQ people, Islam and other targets. (Continued: Globe & Mail) 

 

Posted in: Ontario Tagged: 2020-36, angel, covid-19, devil, Doug Ford, facade, Ontario, pandemic, ranked ballot, voting

Tuesday March 31, 2015

March 30, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

Tuesday March 31, 2015Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday March 31, 2015

Austerity budgets of provinces will offset 75% of Ottawa’s tax cuts: BMO

About three-quarters of the billions in federal tax cuts and increases in benefits promised to Canadians this year will be offset by provincial tax hikes and cutbacks, the Bank of Montreal says.

In a research note early Monday, BMO economist Robert Kavcic calculates that the provincial budgets unveiled in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Quebec have announced a collective $2 billion in new tax hikes on citizens, or cuts to services, to balance the books — part of a new age of austerity prompted by lower oil prices.

By Kavcic’s reckoning, Ottawa has promised a combination of tax cuts and benefit hikes that add up to about $4.5 billion back to Canadians in its current fiscal year.

“It looks like the provinces will take back about three-quarters of it,” he said.

Finance Minister Joe Oliver has delayed releasing the federal government’s budget to give it more time to gauge the impact of oil prices, but a few election-year tax cuts have already been telegraphed. While it’s uncertain what Ottawa has in store, Kavcic says, “most of what Ottawa will be returning to one taxpayer’s pocket, the provinces will take out of the other.”

With debt-laden governments in Ontario and Atlantic Canada yet to telegraph their spending plans, it’s a good bet the theme of austerity will continue, which means even more ways that top-level tax relief will be clawed back in one way or another. (Source: CBC News)


Posted to Yahoo Canada News.

 

Posted in: Ontario Tagged: angel, austerity, Budget, devil, election, Kathleen Wynne, Stephen Harper, tax cuts, taxes, transfers

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

December 24, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

Tuesday, December 24, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Above all else, be humble

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

The last thing you wanted, if you were a father in Biblical times in those parts of the world that included Nazareth and Bethlehem and Jerusalem, was your daughter bringing home a shepherd to meet the family.

There’s no way to put it kindly: Shepherds were the unclean outcasts from society.

There really is no equivalent today. A slaughterhouse worker or a latrine cleaner or a sewer worker today can all “clean up real good,” to use a contemporary phrase. Hot water and soap make up for a multitude of dirty jobs.

But in Biblical Judea and Galilee, it was a different story. Shepherds, looking after flocks of sheep outside city or village walls, had no way of observing the required ritual washings and other hygiene demands of Judaism; they lived in the fields with their charges and so were not only ritually unclean, but almost certainly odiferous even by the standards of the time. They were cut off from most human contact and lived a nomadic life, moving flocks from one arid grassland to the next.

And yet, in this deeply stratified society of Biblical Judea, in which shepherds were at the very bottom of the social pile, who was it the angels told of the arrival of the Messiah? The Gospel of Luke tells us Jesus’s birth was announced by the angels to shepherds in their fields.

Filthy and shunned, shepherds were entrusted with witnessing the infant Jesus and then spreading the word of the arrival of the long-prophesied Emmanuel (God with us). The magi also came to visit and pay tribute, but they were led by their divination of the heavens. No angel came to them.

What must Joseph have feared as this ripe, motley crew of shepherds arrived at the stable where his wife had just given birth? What must Mary have thought of these unclean men coming to see her newborn son?

Whether you believe Luke’s birth narrative to be literal or metaphorical, the angels’ appearance to the shepherds is fundamental to the story of Jesus’s life and death. The Gospel of Luke is believed by scholars to have been written within the lifetime of people who knew Jesus, probably about 60 AD, and so there is an undeniable authenticity to his story.

While the nativity story may be largely metaphor and myth, the symbolism of the Annunciation is true to the core beliefs of the Disciples and earliest Christians: That the Jesus they knew and followed came for the poor, not for the rich; for those with the least power, not for those who ruled. Jesus was there for the hungry, the outcast, the undesirable.

This message resonates today in the remarkable, unconventional attitudes of Pope Francis, who demonstrates a hands-on affinity for the poor, hungry and marginalized.

Francis has raised the job of Vatican “almoner” — a centuries-old job of handing out alms to the poor — from a position that was largely symbolic, given as a sinecure to an aging Vatican official, to one that is literally hands-on, telling the archbishop he appointed to “Sell your desk. You don’t need it. Go and look for the poor.” Get your hands dirty, Francis has told his priests (and bishops): Go to be with those who need you.

This is the message of the birth that Christians celebrate tonight and tomorrow: That dirt and stable-muck and a not-very-rigid attitude toward the “rules” of religion and society didn’t matter. Jesus’s birth was representative of what as a grown man he would ask of those who followed him: Feed the hungry, clothe the poor, shelter the homeless.

That message is not unique to Christianity: All faiths extol the critical importance, the holiness, of helping the poor and the troubled. When the days are shortest and the nights are coldest, when the fields are frozen and every living thing is seeking warmth in homes or burrows or dens, it is then that we who are fortunate, we who are warm and full and content, are commanded to seek out the shepherds of our time and offer them comfort.

Christmas is a celebration of our blessings and gifts, the greatest of which, Christians believe, was the gift from God of his only Son. But regardless of our faith or lack of it; regardless of who or what we celebrate; regardless of whether we believe in Jesus’s divinity, the child who was welcomed into the world by shepherds and is still known millennia later as the Good Shepherd, left behind a call for humbleness.

Indifferent to our status and wealth or the lack of it, uncaring of who or how we worship, the ancient blessing sends us out on a cold winter’s night from our homes, churches, temples and mosques: “Go your way in peace. Hold fast to that which is good. Render to no one evil for evil. Support the weak. Help and cheer the sick. Honour all people. Love and serve the Lord.”

From all of us at The Spectator, to all of you: We wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, a Joyous New Year. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Posted in: Canada Tagged: angel, Annunciation to the shepherds, christmas, Editorial Cartoon, shepherd

Click on dates to expand

Please note…

This website contains satirical commentaries of current events going back several decades. Some readers may not share this sense of humour nor the opinions expressed by the artist. To understand editorial cartoons it is important to understand their effectiveness as a counterweight to power. It is presumed readers approach satire with a broad minded foundation and healthy knowledge of objective facts of the subjects depicted.

Social Media Connections

Link to our Facebook Page
Link to our Flickr Page
Link to our Pinterest Page
Link to our Twitter Page
Link to our Website Page
  • HOME
  • Sharing
  • The Boutique
  • The Hamilton Spectator
  • Artizans Syndicate
  • Association of Canadian Cartoonists
  • Wes Tyrell
  • Martin Rowson
  • Guy Bado’s Blog
  • You Might be From Hamilton if…
  • MacKay’s Most Viral Cartoon
  • Intellectual Property Thief Donkeys
  • National Newswatch
  • Young Doug Ford

Your one-stop-MacKay-shop…

T-shirts, hoodies, clocks, duvet covers, mugs, stickers, notebooks, smart phone cases and scarfs

Brand New Designs!

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets
Follow Graeme's board My Own Cartoon Favourites on Pinterest.

MacKay’s Virtual Gallery

Archives

Copyright © 2016 mackaycartoons.net

Powered by Wordpess and Alpha.

 

Loading Comments...