RIP

Thursday April 7, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 7, 2022

A lament for Hamilton’s maestro

With the tragic death Tuesday of Boris Brott, 78, Canada has lost one of its outstanding orchestral and operatic conductors.

Maestro Brott

Born in Montreal to violinist-composer-conductor Alexander Brott and cellist Lotte Brott in 1944, Brott debuted as a violin soloist with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra at age five. Seven years later, he studied conducting with Pierre Monteux at his academy in Maine. It was Monteux who gave Brott his first conducting job as his assistant with the London Symphony Orchestra and on his European tours.

After studies with Igor Markevitch, Brott won top prize at the 1958 Pan-American Conducting Competition in Mexico. One year later, Brott, then a 15-year-old student at Montreal’s West Hill High School, founded the Philharmonic Youth Orchestra of Montreal.

After winning third prize at the 1962 Liverpool Competition, he served as Walter Susskind’s assistant at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra from 1963 to 1965. Brott then became active in England, conducting the Northern Sinfonia at Newcastle upon Tyne from 1964 to 1968, and was principal conductor of the Royal Ballet Covent Garden’s touring company from 1964 to 1967.

In 1968, he was awarded first prize at the prestigious Dimitri Mitropoulos International Music Competition in New York and later that year was consequently named assistant to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra’s charismatic and flashy music director, Leonard Bernstein.

Brott came to Hamilton in 1969 as artistic director and conductor of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra (HPO). Over the years, he led the HPO from an amateur ensemble to a professional orchestra that at its peak had a 42-week season and some 16,000 subscribers.

Fantasy Classic 2020

Together with members of the community, Brott also spearheaded the construction of the 2,200 seat Hamilton Place, now FirstOntario Concert Hall.

After having made his opera conducting debut with “La fille du régiment” at the Canadian Opera Company in 1977, Brott was one of the movers and shakers who helped to found Opera Hamilton, conducting performances of “La traviata” in 1980 and “Tosca” in 1981.

During the late 1970s and 1980s, Brott was one of Canada’s busiest conductors. In addition to his duties in Hamilton, he held positions with the CBC Winnipeg Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia and the Ontario Place Pops Orchestra, among others.

Unfortunately, things turned sour for Brott at the HPO and the two parted ways around 1990. In 1989, Brott founded the Hamilton-based professional training orchestra, the National Academy Orchestra (NAO) of Canada, which served as the orchestra-in-residence for his eponymous music festival, Canada’s largest orchestral festival. Today, many of the NAO’s over 1,000 alumni hold positions in orchestras across North America and beyond. He also established BrottOpera, which staged operatic productions in the Hamilton area.

From the book, “You Might Be From Hamilton If…”

In the 2000s, Brott also took over the McGill Chamber Orchestra, which had been founded in 1939 by his parents. Renamed the Orchestre Classique de Montréal, Brott was to have co-conducted a “Forever Handel” concert with this ensemble on April 28.

Internationally, Brott was the first music director of the New West Symphony in Thousand Oaks, California, in 1995 and also guest conducted throughout Italy. A career highlight came in 2000 when he conducted Bernstein’s “Mass” in Vatican City before an audience which included Pope John Paul II.

Brott’s many awards include an Officer of the Order of Canada (1986), Order of Ontario (2006), and City of Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Arts Award (2007).

Dorothy the Dinosaur – Illustration by Graeme MacKay

Though Brott had conducted countless works over his career, to many the most essential of these was Handel’s “Messiah,” which he performed in Israel and led annually for many years in Hamilton and Montreal.

For Brott, it was always go big or go home. His chutzpah, his ability to make things happen and to figuratively move heaven and earth if necessary, are irreplaceable. Canada will not see anyone like him and we are all the poorer for his loss.

Brott is survived by his brother, Denis, of Montreal, his wife, Ardyth, of Hamilton, two sons and a daughter and their families.

May his memory be a blessing. (Hamilton Spectator) 

 

Tuesday August 10, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday August 10, 2021

Premier Bill Davis was the steady hand driving Ontario’s Big Blue Machine

William Grenville Davis, premier of Ontario for 14 years (1971 to 1985), was a baffling, contradictory figure – a shy, inscrutable man, who liked family and football yet spent his life absorbed by political issues, travelling up to 160,000 kilometres a year; a tradition-bound, non-intellectual with a passion for ideas and experimentation that gave birth to such intellectual playgrounds as the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

February 1, 2019

The press consistently panned the performances of Mr. Davis, reporting that he was bland and boring, but he charmed voters out of the trees. Right-wing conservatives described him as a left-wing socialist; left-wingers attacked him for pandering to the right.

“Bland works,” he once said. “The only time a politician gets in trouble is when he opens his mouth.”

He was renowned for his ability to appear prosperous, calm and confident, to say little, and to lead the province through dramatic, potentially unpopular changes.

Mr. Davis died on Sunday at the age of 92 surrounded by family in Brampton, Ont., a family statement said. He was the fifth consecutive Tory leader to occupy the premier’s office since 1943 and held the office longer than any other.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “deeply saddened” to hear of Mr. Davis’s death. “The former premier of Ontario leaves behind an incredible legacy of service – and I have no doubt that the impact of his work will be felt for generations to come,” Mr. Trudeau tweeted.

Premier Doug Ford said Mr. Davis served Ontario “with honour and distinction” and flags across the province will be lowered to half-mast in his honour.

September 12, 2000

Former prime minister Brian Mulroney said in a statement that “Canada has lost a great statesman today, and I have lost a great and true friend. Bill Davis devoted his life to Ontario, to Canada and to his family. The progress he made on many fronts as premier place him in the front ranks as one of Canada’s greatest premiers ever.”

Mr. Davis supported the controversial energy policies and constitutional endeavours of then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals; under his premiership, the free-enterprise Tory government bought a 25-per-cent stake in Suncor, an oil company, and initiated tripartite industrial strategies advocated by the New Democratic Party. And as education minister, he reformed and vastly expanded the education system – all without upsetting too many of the people too much of the time.

Yet his skills as a politician failed to help his successor. Nearly 42 years of Conservative government ended 138 days after he stepped down as premier on Feb. 8, 1985. His successor, Frank Miller, called an election and failed to win a majority government in the May 2 election. Mr. Miller’s minority government lost a vote of confidence on June 18 and on June 26, he resigned. (Continued: Globe & Mail) 

 

Farewell to a Great Editorial Cartoonist

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RIP Roy Peterson

Across Canada, throughout the U.S., and around the world cartoonists are today coming to grips with the sad and sudden news of the passing of one of our greats, Roy Peterson. For more than 45 years he held the position as editorial cartoonist at the Vancouver Sun, and many Canadians became familiar with his beautifully etched ink and sometimes colour caricatures which often graced covers of MacLean’s magazine, or illustrated columns written by Allan Fotheringham.

Roy Peterson sits before a who's who of cartoon talent at the 2008 convention of the Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists in Banff, Alberta

Roy Peterson sits before a who’s who of cartoon talent at the 2008 convention of the Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists in Banff, Alberta

For many of us younger editorial cartoonists Roy was more than just a mentor, he was the draftsman of such an unattainable skill he made monkeys of us, enticing wannabes like me to trace his work and still not getting the nuances right. For any kid inspired by Roy’s work the mandatory medium of editorial cartooning in the 70’s and 80’s was pen and ink cross-hatching, which, following in the steps of Duncan MacPherson, was made a standard for several present day cartoonists thanks to cross-hatching giants like Roy Peterson, Terry Mosher, and John Larter.

Growing up in Hamilton my main inspiration naturally came from the local cartoonist at the daily newspaper, and throughout those years that guy was Blaine, who passed away just last year. If Blaine’s cartoons were the inspiration for taking up the brush, Roy Peterson’s work was a prime motivator of not just adding 3-D depth to ink line drawings, but employing really nicely exaggerated and convincing facial features without going overboard.

I have since given up the cross-hatching technique but I will always be a huge admirer of the medium. I told Roy a few years ago at a cartoonist convention that I had to give it up because it was causing my eyes to get bloodshot after a days’ work and I was afraid if I kept doing it I’d become permanently cross eyed. He pointed at his own medical condition which caused his right eye lid to appear droopy in his later life as a good reason not to keep cross-hatching, a comment to which brought us both to laughter.

Tim Dolighan, a fellow 40 something cartoonist based in Oshawa who draws for the Sun chain once said that we Canadians can go down to American editorial cartoonist conventions and never get the time and day given to us from some of the puffed up Pulitizer prize winning cartoonists that show up at gatherings down there but we could always trust our Roy would happily sit among us regaling us with great stories of the past and chortling along with the antics of the present. Ten snooty Pulitzer prize cartoonists could never be match to our Order of Canada winning Roy Peterson.

Since his rather abrupt, disrespectful and unceremonious boot from the Vancouver Sun a few years back a few conventions have come and gone without Roy’s attendance. His decline in his health was no doubt hastened by the thoughtless bean counters who obviously put more effort into cutting the talent than realizing the folks like Roy were truly responsible for maintaining admiring subscribers. It’s this kind of treatment along with the ruthless chopping of other great cartoonists in this country that keeps the rest of us doodlers still lucky to be employed wondering when the next axe will fall and on whose neck it will hit – but I digress.

Roy Peterson leaves this world with a solid reputation as one of the great masters of editorial cartooning in Canada. His catalogue of work is his legacy, along with fond memories of a great and gentle soul, surely to endure in the minds of many who will continue to be inspired by him for generations to come.

My first meeting with Roy at his studio in North Vancouver BC in 1991.

My first meeting with Roy at his studio in North Vancouver BC in 1991.

Drinking buddies by the time of the 2007 AAEC convention in Washington D.C.
Drinking buddies by the time of the 2007 AAEC convention in Washington D.C.