Sir John A. MacDonald – mackaycartoons

Saturday May 24 2025

May 24, 2025 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday May 24 2025

A Canadian Tradition Losing Its Stamp

In a nation synonymous with iconic symbols like the Mounties, the Rockies, and maple syrup, the spectacle of a Canada Post strike feels like another quintessentially Canadian tradition. Yet, in a rapidly evolving world, the impact of such strikes has become a curious mix of nostalgia and irrelevance, affecting only a select few—businesses clinging to traditional mailing systems, seniors, and those in remote regions.

News: Canada Post presents new offer to union, including 13 per cent wage hike and weekend delivery

December 13, 2024

Canada Post, once a pillar of Canadian communication, now struggles to find its footing in a digital age. The recent labor disputes and potential strikes highlight not just the financial chaos within the organization, but also a disconnect between its administration, workers, and the broader economic realities faced by Canadians. The Crown corporation’s financial woes are well-documented, with billions in losses and an increasing reliance on government bailouts. Meanwhile, private couriers have seized a significant portion of the market, thriving on efficiency and adaptability—qualities that Canada Post seems to lack.

For most Canadians, a postal strike today evokes little more than a shrug. The reality is that many have already adapted to a world where communication is instantaneous and transactions are digital. The memory of last year’s strike, which disrupted holiday plans, is still fresh, but rather than generating public sympathy, it served as a catalyst for many to explore alternative solutions. The public’s patience with these disruptions is wearing thin, and the notion of a strike as a bargaining tool appears increasingly futile.

The stakes are undoubtedly higher for those who rely on traditional mail services—businesses that depend on Canada Post for survival, elderly citizens accustomed to paper bills, and remote communities without reliable internet access. For them, the postal service remains a lifeline. However, their numbers are dwindling, and their voices are becoming a faint echo in a digital world.

Opinion: C anada Post workers could strike again. If they do, the public will see red

November 21, 2018 – Postal Strike Christmas

As the administrators, workers, and union leaders of Canada Post stand at this crossroads, they must confront an uncomfortable truth. The economic challenges faced by all Canadians—rising inflation, interest rate hikes, supply chain disruptions—demand adaptation and innovation. Ignoring these realities risks pushing Canada Post further into obsolescence, much like the Hudson’s Bay Company, which struggled to modernize in time.

A strike that once held the nation’s attention may now barely register as background noise to a public that has moved on. The quaintness of a postal strike, once a formidable force, has become a relic of the past. Canada Post’s survival hinges on its ability to embrace change, lest it fades into irrelevance, another chapter in Canadian history met with little more than nostalgic indifference.

Postal Strikes, Cryptocurrency, and the Modern Economy: A Tale of Two Worlds

Throughout my years of drawing cartoons, I’ve seen the familiar uproar whenever Canada Post goes on strike. These strikes often split Canadians into two camps: those supporting the union and those upset about late cheques and undelivered cards. The strikes have become as Canadian as hockey or the maple leaf, yet even Canada Post seems to be fading into history.

Thursday December 4, 1997 – Looking back from 28 years later, the 1997 postal workers’ protest against back-to-work legislation, with threats of free mail and delivery errors, seems like a quaint reminder of when snail mail drama was a headline grabber, before the days of inbox overload and instant messaging. Keen observers of my Young Doug Ford series will note Doug Ford Sr. always depicted from his arm chair reading his favourite tabloid, The Toronto Sun, often blazing a headline grousing over the latest Postie labour issue.

Despite financial challenges, Canada Post survives because the government considers it essential. With Canada’s vast distances and many people still depending on traditional mail, the postal service still has a role. But for many, it seems like a costly service, mostly delivering ads and junk mail.

In my 28 years in the media industry, I’ve watched the digital age change everything. Media often gets labelled as “fake news” and faces criticism for needing government help, but my work remains independent, and our real support comes from loyal subscribers.

At The Hamilton Spectator, my salary is similar to a postal worker’s. Despite not having had a raise in years, we stay passionate about our work. Many of us find extra jobs to cope with rising costs, and benefits have been reduced. Recently, 200 Canada Revenue Service workers lost their jobs but got good severance packages—something most media workers can’t count on.

I’m not complaining, just pointing out a reality many in unstable jobs face. Whether it’s traditional media, car manufacturing, or anything at risk of being replaced by technology, or tariffs, the future is uncertain. The postal service is under the spotlight now, but we must remember these are real people with real challenges. Many of us worry as we see plans that seem to burden the middle class while promising tax cuts for the wealthy.

November 30, 2016

Wednesday November 30, 2016 – The CBC asked for an extra $400 million to ditch ads, and my snarky cartoon pointed out the irony of print media cheering for a broadcaster that was happily munching on their lunch.

It’s interesting that those who complain the most about media subsidies also oppose carbon taxes, ignoring the big government handouts to the oil industry. This criticism misses the wider picture of government aid.

Wednesday April 3, 2024 – Justin Trudeau’s government faced criticism for its climate policies, especially as it continued to subsidize fossil fuel industries while professing a commitment to climate action, revealing a significant inconsistency in its approach.

May 22 2025

Meanwhile, the world of cryptocurrency is booming with quick profits, driven by fast-talking tech-savvy people. The Trump administration’s recent party for $Trump coin seems like another spectacle for us to watch, showing how the wealthy play with profits without adding much value to society. In a world where meaningful work often goes unnoticed, this is quite the contrast.

As we stagger in these uncertain times, it’s important to understand the bigger picture. Whether it’s the struggles of traditional industries or the rise of new, speculative ones, recognizing these dynamics can help us appreciate those who truly contribute to society.

Wednesday October 27, 2021

October 27, 2021 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday October 27, 2021

That’s enough, Jean Chrétien

Jean Chretien Cartoon Gallery

The former Indian Affairs Minister has had decades to ponder his failings. It’s not clear he even understands what the residential schools were.

“This problem was never mentioned when I was minister. Never.”

This was Jean Chrétien’s response on Radio-Canada’s Tout le monde en parle Sunday night when asked about the abuse of Indigenous children at residential schools when he was minister of Indian Affairs from 1968 to 1974. It might even be true: Maybe none of his underlings bothered telling him. Alas, that can’t save 87-year-old Teflon Jean this time. If he didn’t know it, he bloody well should have.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission report records that in 1970, Jacques Serre, a child-care worker at the Anglican residential school in La Tuque, Que., advised Chrétien’s Indian Affairs ministry in writing that another employee had “taken liberties (with a student) in the presence of a third party.” The ministry asked its Quebec director to look into it, but no one even bothered tracking down the alleged victim, who had left the school.

A year later the La Tuque school’s administrator, Jean Bonnard, called the gendarmes over his suspicions that another child-care worker was conducting “certain ‘activities’ of a sexual nature” with his charges. Bonnard duly informed Indian Affairs of this. The police interviewed four boys, concluding the behaviour had “been going on for some time,” and then nothing happened.

June 2, 2021

Not only was the La Tuque school Chrétien’s responsibility as minister of Indian Affairs. It was in his riding.

In the early 1970s, Chrétien’s ministry received at least four complaints from the Catholic St. Anne’s residential school in Fort Albany, Ont., including of physical assault and of at least one teacher keeping “guns and live ammunition in class to scare the students.” This week, NDP MP Charlie Angus produced a letter from a teacher at St. Anne’s addressed directly to Chrétien, complaining of a “prejudicial attitude” among staff members to the Indigenous people of the community.

The Truth and Reconciliation report records the case of Harry Joseph, an employee at the Anglican residential school in Alert Bay, B.C., who in 1970 pleaded guilty to indecent assault after having been fired for having “interfered with two other girls by removing (their) bed covers and fondling them.”

November 9, 2018

Perhaps this news never made it down the telegraph to Ottawa. But it was the ministry itself that cashiered child-care worker Claude Frappier from his position at the Catholic residential school in Whitehorse in 1970 — though it didn’t bother informing the victims’ parents or the police. (Frappier was belatedly convicted in 1990 on 13 counts of sexual assault on boys aged eight to 11.)

The Truth and Reconciliation report records the case of Harry Joseph, an employee at the Anglican residential school in Alert Bay, B.C., who in 1970 pleaded guilty to indecent assault after having been fired for having “interfered with two other girls by removing (their) bed covers and fondling them.”

PM Merch

Perhaps this news never made it down the telegraph to Ottawa. But it was the ministry itself that cashiered child-care worker Claude Frappier from his position at the Catholic residential school in Whitehorse in 1970 — though it didn’t bother informing the victims’ parents or the police. (Frappier was belatedly convicted in 1990 on 13 counts of sexual assault on boys aged eight to 11.) (Continued: The National Post)

Friday November 9, 2018

November 16, 2018 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday November 9, 2018

Trudeau apologizes for Canada’s 1939 refusal of ship of Jewish refugees

Survivors and families of 900 German Jews whose pleas for asylum Canada ignored during the Holocaust received an official federal apology Wednesday, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed more federal help to combat anti-Semitic acts.

Toilet paper apologies

It was 79 years ago that the government of William Lyon Mackenzie King rejected an asylum request from an ocean liner carrying German Jews as it neared Halifax, forcing it back to Europe.

Most of the passengers scattered across the continent and more than 250 of them died in the Holocaust.

The decision to turn the country’s back on European Jews was “unacceptable then and it is unacceptable now,” Trudeau said in his speech on the week marking the 80th anniversary of what is known as “Kristallnacht” and the start of the Holocaust.

January 10, 2015

Trudeau said Holocaust deniers still exist and anti-Semitism remains prevalent in Canada — the latest numbers from Statistics Canada show Jews are the most frequent target of religiously motivated hate crimes — and North America, shadowed by the shooting deaths of 11 worshippers inside a Pittsburgh synagogue almost two weeks ago.

The ensuing days have seen countrywide vigils and, Trudeau said, calls for the government to do more through a federal program that funds security improvements at places at risk of hate-motivated crimes, such as synagogues.

WLMKing merch

Trudeau pledged to listen to the request, but didn’t provide further details. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Yet, statues of the then Prime Minister, William Lyon MacKenzie King, remain standing, despite his and his government’s anti-semitist policies. This follows several months of debate and scrutiny of another Canadian Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, and his government’s anti-indigenous peoples policies. Do more statues need to come down?

Sunday January 11, 2015

January 11, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Sunday January 11, 2015

Look at Sir John A. in the context of his time

(Author: Roy MacSkimming) It’s become intellectually fashionable to denounce Sir John A. Macdonald. This is a peculiarly Canadian irony: John A.’s rebranding in some quarters as racist and colonialist, not to mention alcoholic, coincides with the 200th anniversary of his birth on Jan. 11.

Any other nationality would be celebrating the bicentennial of its founding genius, whatever his personal or political flaws. When Abraham Lincoln turned 200 in 2009, the Americans built a spectacular Lincoln museum in his birthplace of Springfield, Ill., a virtual shrine complete with stations of the cross in the form of giant dioramas. Not so Canada. No great leaders for us, please.

True, Sir John’s drinking could be excessive. He admitted as much himself. But it interfered with the conduct of his duties only occasionally, and almost never during his later years. The fact that Macdonald died at 76, still in office after 19 robust years as prime minister, belies the notion that he was a chronic, broken-down drunk. The record reveals him as a binge drinker who largely cleaned up his act after marriage to his second wife, Agnes Bernard, in 1867.

It’s also true that Macdonald’s policy toward Aboriginal people on the prairies, documented by James Daschuk in his recent book Clearing the Plains, was callous and inhumane. Sadly, it reflected a general Canadian prejudice at the time, which failed to comprehend or respect Aboriginal societies and was indifferent to the point of cruelty.

Macdonald refused to pardon Louis Riel after a jury in Regina found him guilty of treason and sentenced him to hang. A recent article in Canada’s History magazine claims Macdonald’s refusal “created national disunity” by defying opinion in French Canada. Yet Riel was already a cause of national disunity: English

Canadians considered him a traitor who had rebelled against the state with lethal force. If Macdonald had pardoned Riel, he would have alienated an even greater body of public opinion.

But before we dismiss Sir John A. as nothing but a racist (an article in the current Walrus absurdly links him to Nazism), we must set these issues within a political career lasting half a century. Macdonald staked that career on persuading the largest groups in 19th-century Canada – French and English, Catholic and Protestant – to accept each other and live together as equals within a single state. Given their bitter mutual antagonism, this required statesmanship of the highest order.

Macdonald’s Canada wasn’t culturally diverse in the sense we understand today. But in the context of his times, he was laying the foundations for a society based on tolerance.

The most ludicrous charge being levelled at Macdonald is that he was a colonialist: that instead of establishing Canada as an independent republic like the United States, he and the other Fathers of Confederation created a vassal state of Great Britain. This criticism entirely overlooks the reality that the great majority of Canadians, including George Étienne Cartier and his Quebec followers, wanted to keep the British connection. They knew that remaining within the

most powerful empire in the world was Canada’s strongest guarantee against absorption by an aggressively expansionist United States.

In these circumstances, Macdonald negotiated the maximum independence possible. It was a literally exceptional achievement, making Canada the world’s first exemplar of moving from colony to nation by non-violent, evolutionary means. It established Canada as a peace-loving constitutional democracy.

John Ralston Saul’s writings have shown how Sir John A.’s predecessors, Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine, pioneered this paradigm by negotiating democratic self-government without a fratricidal revolution. Macdonald’s vision of a self-governing country within the Empire was consistent with that paradigm and would eventually lead to full independence. Equally important, it was what Canadians wanted at the time.

Which brings us to the ultimate measure of Macdonald’s greatness as a leader: with his exceptional gifts of communication and empathy for the people, he understood the Canadians of his day, and they understood him. This mutual appreciation explains why he and his governments were elected and re-elected time and again, a record that today’s political leaders can only dream about. (Source: Globe & Mail)

Thursday, February 13, 2014

February 13, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday, February 13, 2014

Parks Canada buildings in worse shape than claimed: Internal report

Parks Canada’s crumbling forts, historical houses and other heritage structures are in much poorer shape than the agency estimates.

That’s the finding of an independent consultant asked to review a comprehensive inventory created by Parks Canada to determine how much repair work is needed for its varied infrastructure across the country.

The agency’s 2012 inventory found that 47 per cent of all its assets — from dams, bridges and roads, to old stone forts — are in poor or very poor condition.

But Opus International Consultants Ltd. said its own sampling of hundreds of assets pushed that overall level to 53 per cent. And so-called cultural assets — the historical houses, fortifications, locks and other heritage gems from Canada’s past — are in even worse shape.

Opus estimates 61 per cent of these 2,000 structures are in poor or very poor shape, compared with Parks Canada’s more rosy assessment of just 33 per cent.

“Results indicate that at the portfolio level the value of (Parks Canada) assets in poor condition has increased from condition reported in the 2012 National Asset Review,” says the Opus report, which cost taxpayers $316,000.

A copy of the Dec. 16, 2013, document was obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

Parks Canada has come under fire in recent years for weak management of its real-estate portfolio, which includes historic canals and archeological sites, in addition to campgrounds, access roads and visitor centres. (Source: CBC News)

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