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Thursday April 9, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 9, 2020

Why we should all be wearing masks — and how our public health authorities got it wrong

Coronavirus cartoons

For months, as the COVID-19 crisis escalated and Canadians and Americans watched people across Asia increasingly wearing masks in public spaces, our health authorities stuck to their long-held policies, strongly advising against this. 

That is, until Friday. That’s when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reversed course, advising the public to use “cloth face coverings” to help slow the spread of COVID-19. They may have preferred to make this a quiet change on their website, but a characteristically bombastic press conference (and victory lap) by Donald Trump ensured that there was no saving face (no pun intended). 

The Public Health Agency of Canada made the same policy change Monday, and I suspect that the World Health Organization will not be far behind. And with these reversals come an eroding in public trust in the very organizations we need people to trust the most, at the very moment when our collective survival most depends on that trust.

So what went wrong? (continued: Toronto Star) 

 

Monday June 5, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Monday June 5, 2017

Hamilton is rebranding — and not as a bedroom community

Hey Toronto: Hamilton wants to be your business partner, not your bedroom community.

May 13, 2013

The sensitive topic came up repeatedly on the first day of the cheekily named Hamilton Consulate event on Queen Street West, which is using panel discussions, music, fashion showcases and even business-oriented speed dating to “rebrand” the city in the eyes of Toronto investors.

The city’s white-hot real estate market was a popular talking point — particularly a local realtor’s study that suggests priced-out Toronto residents were responsible for a quarter of Hamilton home sales in the first three months of the year.

But well-known GTA developer Brad Lamb, an event panellist who has pitched a 600-unit, two-tower condo project on the former CHCH property, found himself clarifying quotes attributed to him in a Toronto magazine declaring Hamilton is destined to become a “suburb to Toronto.”

The self-proclaimed Toronto condo king told concerned Hamilton boosters he was taken out of context.

August 14, 2007

“I would never call Hamilton a bedroom community. I don’t develop in bedroom communities … I like Hamilton because it’s a city,” said Lamb, who added he is considering four possible Hamilton condo and rental projects in the downtown worth more than $1 billion, including at least one 300-unit tower on Main Street.

(He said his other contentious quote about a “dying city” was meant to refer to Hamilton as a past industrial powerhouse.)

Lamb, nonetheless, maintains newcomers to Hamilton who continue to work in Toronto will be “part of the recipe of success” for the growing city. That continued population growth — he sees Hamilton topping a million people faster than provincial projections — is also critical for economic development, he argued.

“Intercity migration is going to take place. Some of those people are going to have great jobs in Toronto and they’re going to keep those jobs … I think that is a viable lifestyle, especially with the GO train,” he said.

City planning head Jason Thorne said there’s no doubt there will be “more fluidity between where people live and work in future.”

But he argued Hamilton is “in no danger” of becoming a suburb of Toronto. He said past studies show only a “pretty small fraction” of local commuters actually travel outside the Hamilton-Burlington area. (Continued: Hamilton Spectator)

 

Monday, September 11, 2006

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Monday, September 11, 2006

Five years after 9/11: a shifted view of the world

Old allies have become wary of one another, if not openly suspicious. Sensing inattention, small rogue nations may have decided it is time to make trouble. Two wars have begun, and their ends do not yet appear in sight. Less noticed, a quiet empire continues to rise in the East.

Wednesday September 12, 2001

The world today is a very different place from the way it was on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. 

In one sense that statement is obvious. Five years is a long time in geopolitics. The world turns, whatever terrorists do. 

But half a decade on, it also seems clear that Al Qaeda’s attacks and the US response have helped move the metaphorical tectonic plates of the globe.

Besides direct effects, such as the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the reverberations from 9/11 may include a new general organizing principle for international affairs.

The cold war was about the Western and communist blocs, and their values, conflicts, and internal cracks. The current period is about the US and the Islamic world – their mutual suspicions and occasional cooperation, and the wedge Al Qaeda has tried to drive between them. (CSMonitor) 

“In the five years since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center when hijackers flew two planes into the twin towers, killing more than 2,700 people New York has made a stirring recovery. Lower Manhattan shows signs of economic renewal and is once again a trendy place to dine; real estate values citywide have soared; the stock market has strengthened; new construction is booming; the overall crime rate is down; ticket sales on Broadway have hit an all-time high; and tourists are flooding the city in record numbers.” The Los Angeles Times

Quite optimistic sounding, but the article actually pertains to how anxiety ridden New Yorkers are 5 years after the attack. The excerpt above stuck out when I read it since it goes against the daily mantra that things will never return to the nice and carefree days before September 11, 2001, and that in order to exist in this day and age we have to live in fear while always looking behind our backs.

Has 9/11 really changed the world as much as we’ve been led to believe? Are we cowering in our basements waiting for the next terrorist attack to occur? Have our liberties been curtailed that much by paraniod governments? Have our economies crumbled in the aftermath of September 11th? I suppose if we’re connected to anyone who was killed in the 9/11 attacks life did change for some. Those of the Islamic faith must feel the impact and inconvenience everytime they pass through airport security. While there were economic consequences which put airlines out of business and put a dent in travel immediately after 9/11 our day to day activities really didn’t change at all.

We still eat out at restaurants, fill our gas tanks with ridiculously priced fuel and we still do all the normal daily things we did 5 years and a day ago. The attack on America was a huge event and its memories will always remain with us for years to come. Are we feeling as fearful as critics are suggesting we are as something orchestrated by the Bush administration? I don’t think so. 

There’s an excerpt of Michael Moore’s movie Bowling for Columbine (and you know how much I love Michael Moore) which I think is very nice observation. Its examination of America’s culture of fear as a root cause of gun violence also extends to the higher levels of office. America’s need to have something to be scared of has essentially been the bedrock of its strength since its earliest colonial days. Michael Moore gives an entertaining chronicle of things which have scared the bejezus out of Americans for the past 230 years.

I don’t think it’s just an American thing. Most countries need to fear something in order to keep itself together. Canada has feared the U.S. in the past and continues to do so today. Not too long ago, we were shaking alongside the U.S. and the so called “free world” waiting for the day we’d all be annihilated by Soviet nuclear weapons in the 1980’s. My 9/11 occured in the 5th grade when my music teacher decided to reveal the existence of nuclear weapons pointed at every city in North America. It was the early 1980’s, and that revelation alone freaked me out for years. 

No doubt a lot of fifth graders became freaked out 5 years ago today. But like my own introduction to fear of nukes everyone from every generation enters the culture of fear sometime in their lives. 9/11, as horrible and surreal as the film footage and images freaks us all out is just another moment of collosal human tragedy and fear which is repeated over and over and over through the centuries. Something is bound to push the events of 9/11 from our collective memory. Maybe that’s what’s so worrisome. (Random Thots Blog)

Wednesday July 12, 1997

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator - Wednesday July 12, 1997 BURNING DESIRE TO WATCH Everyone's an armchair fire chief. As the plastic recycling plant burned to a shell, heaving an Apocalyptic cloud of smoke skyward, it seemed half of Hamilton gathered Wednesday night to gawk -- and offer their firefighting expertise to anyone within earshot. "What nimrod would put a hose right there? The smoke's coming from over there, " said one man, pointing agitatedly to where he felt Hamilton's smoke-eaters should be paying attention. "Why aren't there any hoses along that wall? They should be hosing down the walls near that smokestack, " said another, as he settled into a comfy patch of grass off of Ferguson Avenue North with his family. But along with the complainers came an enthusiastic crowd of onlookers who were treated to one of the biggest and most spectacular fires in the city's history as free entertainment. Children played, families sat on blankets, others brought coolers and lawn chairs to sit and watch along the railway tracks and grassy knolls around the Wellington Street North Plastimet Inc. plant. It seemed more like Victoria Day fireworks than a fire disaster. People Ooooooh'ed and Ahhhhh'ed when walls started to collapse, or when the thick smoke coming from the fire scene temporarily changed from black to light grey and then back to black. Area residents spilled on to their porches and tugged on beer and cola. An enterprising ice cream vendor peddled into the area. Dogs caught Frisbees. People laughed. Some children cried. Driving was a nightmare as rubberneckers spent more time gazing at the plume of smoke than on the road, and the streets and sidewalks were jammed by people following the towering inferno to find the source of the fire. A threesome of young pedestrians, picking their way along Barton Street towards the fire, were excitedly guessing the cause of the blaze. "Maybe it's a bomb! Or a plane crash!" offered

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday July 12, 1997

BURNING DESIRE TO WATCH

Everyone’s an armchair fire chief. As the plastic recycling plant burned to a shell, heaving an Apocalyptic cloud of smoke skyward, it seemed half of Hamilton gathered Wednesday night to gawk — and offer their firefighting expertise to anyone within earshot.

Hamilton Spectator photo

“What nimrod would put a hose right there? The smoke’s coming from over there, ” said one man, pointing agitatedly to where he felt Hamilton’s smoke-eaters should be paying attention.

“Why aren’t there any hoses along that wall? They should be hosing down the walls near that smokestack, ” said another, as he settled into a comfy patch of grass off of Ferguson Avenue North with his family.

But along with the complainers came an enthusiastic crowd of onlookers who were treated to one of the biggest and most spectacular fires in the city’s history as free entertainment.

Children played, families sat on blankets, others brought coolers and lawn chairs to sit and watch along the railway tracks and grassy knolls around the Wellington Street North Plastimet Inc. plant.

It seemed more like Victoria Day fireworks than a fire disaster.

People Ooooooh’ed and Ahhhhh’ed when walls started to collapse, or when the thick smoke coming from the fire scene temporarily changed from black to light grey and then back to black.

Area residents spilled on to their porches and tugged on beer and cola.

An enterprising ice cream vendor peddled into the area.

Dogs caught Frisbees. People laughed. Some children cried.

Driving was a nightmare as rubberneckers spent more time gazing at the plume of smoke than on the road, and the streets and sidewalks were jammed by people following the towering inferno to find the source of the fire.

A threesome of young pedestrians, picking their way along Barton Street towards the fire, were excitedly guessing the cause of the blaze.

“Maybe it’s a bomb! Or a plane crash!” offered one.

“Maybe the Mars probe crashed!” enthused another.

And with officials keeping mum on what might have sparked the fire causing all this commotion — who can argue with the Mars probe theory?

(Source: By Adrian Humphreys, Reporter Hamilton Spectator)

 

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