Toronto Star – mackaycartoons

Tuesday January 23, 2024

January 23, 2024 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday January 23, 2024

Trudeau’s Let-Them-Eat-Cake Moment

January 9, 2023

Oh, how heartwarming to see Justin Trudeau, the self-proclaimed master of understanding the masses, grace us with his presence in an interview with Susan Delacourt. In a stunning display of Trudeau’s exceptional grasp of reality, he assured us that he comprehends the deep-seated grumpiness of Canadians – as if he’s the empathetic therapist of the nation.

Susan Delacourt: Mad at Justin Trudeau? Tuning him out? The prime minister says he hears you — and he gets it

In this riveting exchange, Trudeau skillfully evaded any discussion about the plummeting poll numbers and the rising star of Pierre Poilievre. Why bother addressing the elephant in the room when you can just pat yourself on the back for running a country “in a really, really complex time”? Bravo, Mr. Trudeau, for your unparalleled ability to state the obvious.

Septemebr 30, 2023

Trudeau’s response to tough times? “Define ‘tough times’ because that sounds like Monday to me.” Ah, yes, just another Monday in the glamorous life of our dear prime minister, juggling scandals, protests, and a general sense of public resentment. How relatable.

Delacourt seems content to let Trudeau ramble on about the intricacies of immigration and the challenges of governance without bothering to challenge him on the real issue – his staying power. It’s almost like watching a magician perform, distracting the audience with sleight of hand while the real trick is happening behind the scenes.

Trudeau’s musings on the challenges faced by a “centre-left party” are truly enlightening. Apparently, being in the middle is tough because you can’t fire up the fringes. Newsflash, Trudeau: maybe it’s not about being in the middle; perhaps it’s about the lack of innovative leadership and fresh ideas.

January 20, 2023

Oh, but let’s not forget Trudeau’s profound analysis of opinion-as-identity politics. Yes, because the real problem is that people have opinions, and these opinions form their identities. It’s almost as if that’s how democracy works. But fear not, for Trudeau, the defender of institutions, expertise, and authority, will guide us through these tumultuous times with his unparalleled wisdom.

And, of course, Trudeau casually dismisses his unpopularity with a wave of the hand, attributing it to the collective grumpiness of the nation. How magnanimous of him to take responsibility for everything, even if it’s just to say, “It’s gotta be the prime minister’s fault.” Bravo, Trudeau, for your unwavering commitment to self-awareness.

In the grand tradition of Marie Antoinette, Trudeau seems blissfully unaware of the growing resentment and disillusionment among Canadians. But hey, who needs a leader with a fresh perspective when you can have a prime minister who’s mastered the art of brushing aside criticism and deflecting blame? The Trudeau magic show continues, and we’re all invited to marvel at the spectacle of a leader who’s impervious to the woes of his own making.

Duncan Macpherson, a Toronto Star editorial cartoonist, gained notoriety for his sharp and pointed cartoons in the post-Second World War era, particularly taking aim at Canadian political figures. One of his most celebrated cartoons featured former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker during the 1959 Avro Arrow crisis. In this cartoon, Macpherson depicted Diefenbaker as a toothy and bejeweled Marie Antoinette, famously exclaiming, “Let ’em eat cake.”

The cartoon satirized Diefenbaker’s decision to cancel the Avro Arrow project, resulting in the loss of 14,000 jobs. Macpherson’s illustration was a commentary on the perceived callousness of the prime minister towards the economic consequences of his actions. The cartoon is often credited with marking the beginning of the country’s disillusionment with the Diefenbaker government, as it highlighted the impact of political decisions on the livelihoods of ordinary Canadians.

Pierre Berton, a historian, noted that Macpherson’s portrayal of Diefenbaker as Marie Antoinette played a significant role in diminishing the prime minister’s revered status up to that point. The cartoon, by bringing attention to the Avro Arrow crisis and its consequences, is considered by some as a factor contributing to Diefenbaker’s decline in political popularity.

Armchair Editorial Cartoonists

After sharing the Macpherson editorial cartoon on Facebook, it was disheartening to see that many people either didn’t know or were pretending not to know about what is arguably Canada’s most celebrated editorial cartoon. Whether it was a genuine lack of familiarity or a deliberate choice to ignore any criticism of their admired Prime Minister, the outcome was disappointing.

As a side note to this frustration, there were plenty of hyper-critical comments from individuals with clear partisan biases, which isn’t a new thing for us editorial cartoonists. However, when they take it upon themselves to snipe and lecture an editorial cartoonist with their wrongheaded notions of what satire actually is, questioning with snarky quips like “where’s the joke,” “not funny,” and insisting that editorial cartoons are supposed to be funny. While the often nauseating right-wing quip, “the left can’t meme,” didn’t appear under this particular cartoon, it likely would’ve had it been Poilievre or Trump portrayed as Marie Antoinette. Surprisingly, there were no, “now draw Poilievre”, or “now draw Trump”, or, “now draw ______,” banalities by partisan trolls chirping under commentary they don’t approve of. It is all a never-ending cycle of tediousness on social media, which leaves one to wonder why even bother posting when it’ll just be fodder for mindless banter.

Kate Beaton’s cartoon, here, accurately reflects much of thought that goes into a the progress of any editorial cartoon. The irony of this being many out there likely ignorant of the cartoon being parodied! I tried this parody out in 2008 only to face the same sort of rejection from my own editor.

Moving on, while some might recognize renowned cartoonists like Honore Daumier, Thomas Nast, or Ralph Steadman from other countries, there seems to be a lack of awareness about Duncan Macpherson, who could be considered Canada’s greatest editorial cartoonist. It’s a sad reflection on Canadian culture that satire doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. Even with numerous Orders of Canada awarded to editorial cartoonists in the past 50 years, the majority of people can only name two—Aislin and Donato* (oddly, Donato does not have an OC). Sadly, even that knowledge is fading, with only a few remembering cartoonists like Len Norris in Vancouver, Yardley Jones in Edmonton, Blaine in Hamilton, or Bob Chambers in Halifax.

The great editorial cartoonists of Canada are left to be remembered by a small group of enthusiasts and present-day cartoonists. The fact that Duncan Macpherson is slipping from collective memory is disheartening. Figures like John Wilson Bengough, Arch Dale, and Albéric Bourgeois, and their contributions to Canadian democracy, are now just footnotes in history textbooks. It’s a failure of Canadian education and culture, as if the only way to gain attention and respect in Canadian society was to play hockey on the rink rather than sketch with pens and ink. (Graeme MacKay)

Thursday, June 6, 2013

June 6, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Thursday, June 6, 2013

Rob Ford crack scandal: Video might be “gone”

Gawker.com, the U.S. website that raised more than $200,000 to buy a video apparently showing Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine, is reporting that the video might be gone.

An intermediary who initially contacted Gawker about the cellphone video now says its owner went underground after the story attracted worldwide media attention, John Cook, Gawker’s editor in chief, wrote Tuesday.

Gawker reached its fundraising goal on May 27. But until Friday, Cook says, he hadn’t heard back from the go-between.

After weeks of silence, Cook says the owner contacted the intermediary and that person reported back to Cook on Friday.

“His message was: ‘It’s gone. Leave me alone.’ It was, the intermediary told me, a short conversation,” Cook wrote.

Cook says “a fear of being identified, and a strong desire from the Somali community to make the whole thing go away” caused the owner to go silent.

Cook has watched the video once, while two Star reporters, Kevin Donovan and Robyn Doolittle, watched the video three times.

Both say the video shows Ford inhaling what appears to be crack cocaine from a glass pipe and making homophobic and racially charged remarks. The Star couldn’t verify the video’s authenticity. (Source: Toronto Star)

Wednesday February 28, 1996

February 28, 1996 by Graeme MacKay

Pen & Ink caricature by Graeme MacKay – The Toronto Star, Wednesday February 28, 1996

Toronto Day of Action

(Story: Union and Harris repeat mistakes of the past, published: The Toronto Star, February 28, 1996) Can you believe or trust union leaders who have called a strike to save their members’ jobs right after having helped defeat a New Democrat premier who had tried to protect their members’ jobs by “Rae Days” that kept them all working by taking back a bit of their salaries?But can you either believe or trust a Premier who is making exactly the same blunder that his predecessor did when new in office?

Toronto Star – Feb 28, 1996

For about the first half of his term, Bob Rae governed almost entirely on behalf of those who had put him there, organized labor and the various special interest groups. Later, Rae changed radically, although far too late to save him politically. His “Rae Days” were part of an attempt to deal with a budget deficit for which all Ontarians were – and still are – paying a ruinous price.

What Rae once did, Mike Harris is now doing.

Any yielding to union demands would be “appeasement, ” says Harris. Triumphantly, almost boastfully, Harris has declared that the strike – more exactly, its eventual, inevitable, defeat – will send out a signal to potential investors that Ontario now offers “a better business climate.”

Beyond question, the condition of the province’s business climate matters a great deal. So equally, though, does the state of social cohesion among all its citizens. By ignoring this factor, by trying to depict public servants as enemies of Ontario’s collective interests, Harris is fracturing the province exactly as Rae did initially.

It’s neither here nor that Harris is repeating Rae’s original miscalculation from a different social-economic perspective – the neo-conservative one that whatever may be good for corporations has to be good for everyone.

Although he’s not much given to reading, you’d have though that by now Harris would have taken note of the speeches of Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan – his economic ones, not his cultural ones – and have wondered why Buchanan should be soaring in the primaries at the same time as he himself is tumbling in the polls.

Pen & Ink caricature by Graeme MacKay (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada). Illustrated in February 1996.

As for the union leaders, their calling of a strike on the basis of a modest 66 per cent vote and without having shown their members the government’s counter-offer to their own call for $1.5 billion in new payouts, confirms that they have learned nothing about contemporary reality.

That reality, for public workers as well as for all workers, is harsh and disagreeable. But it’s an unavoidable one, for at least the foreseeable future. All kinds of labels have been stuck on it, from Alvin Toffler’s “third wave” to “global post-capitalism.”

Perhaps the best comment about our present economic condition, most particularly so in the context of a strike by public workers to protect jobs that hundreds of thousands of others would dearly love to have, no matter with or without job security, is contained in American economic commentator Robert Samuelson’s recently published book, The Good Life And Its Discontents.

Samuelson’s theme is that we have entered the age of “the end of entitlements.”

It’s an excruciatingly painful change of life. Vast numbers of workers have had to accept downsizing and restructuring as the new norm. For many of the young, the new norm is unemployment (close to one in five), and after that an endless cycle of part-time jobs, short-term jobs, self-employment. For all, the new norm is shrinking social programs, longer queues for medical treatment, shrunken pensions.

Hamilton Spectator – Feb. 2, 1996

We are all angry and stressed out by these different forms of a loss of entitlements, that is of the abrupt loss of all that we all once took for granted.

Among all workers, only the publicly paid ones still are behaving as if the past was the present. The past, that is, not just of tenure but of barricaded tenure. To lay off Ontario Hydro employees required severance settlements averaging $100,000 – the highest in Canadian industrial history. To lay off all but the most junior of provincial civil servant takes, typically, two years.

Ontarians simply can no longer afford these kinds of entitlements by the few. As Management Board Chair Dave Johnson has observed, “The deficit does not go on strike. The debt does not go on strike.”

One half of the way this strike will unfold thus will be determined by how and when union leaders at last learn to cope with reality.

The other half will be determined by how, and when, Harris learns from Rae that to govern is to govern for all.

At a guess, it’s going to take each side a long time to learn what their job is.

Richard Gwyn’s column normally appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. (Source: Toronto Star)