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Saturday August 24, 2013

 

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday August 24, 2013

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday August 24, 2013

Lightfoot added to Greenbelt lineup

Neil Young’s out, but Gordon Lightfoot’s in.

Lightfoot, a Canadian folk-music legend, has been added to the Greenbelt Harvest Picnic lineup, organizers announced late Thursday.

The Orillia, Ont. native rose to fame with such hits as Sundown, If you Could Read My Mind, Early Morning Rain and Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald.

“We are very excited by the addition of Mr. Lightfoot and will be making more announcements in the coming days,” Jean-Paul Gauthier, producer of the Greenbelt Harvest Picnic, said in a press release.

The daylong festival at Christie Lake Conservation Area on Aug. 31 was to be Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s first stop on a four-city North American tour.

But Young pulled out of the third annual show because of an injury to guitarist Frank Sampedro’s hand.

This week, organizers offered a partial refund of $40 to concert goers, reducing ticket prices to $99.50.

Buyers of tickets from consignment locations can pick up their refund beginning Saturday, Aug. 24 at 10 a.m. They must produce photo ID and their tickets to do so.

The concert also features Emmylou Harris, Daniel Lanois, Pegi Young and the Survivors, Trixie Whitley, Rocco DeLuca, the Arkells, Harlan Pepper, Basia Bulat, Whitehorse and Harrison Kennedy.  (Source: The Hamilton Spectator)

NEIL YOUNG CARTOON from wes tyrell on Vimeo.

 

 

Thursday August 22, 2013

Thursday August 22, 2013

Information watchdog blasts bureaucrats who ‘misled’ her

Information commissioner Ann Cavoukian has tabled a scorching addendum to her headline-making report on Liberal staffers illegally deleting gas plant emails.

Cavoukian on Tuesday released a 30-page supplement to her earlier 35-page report castigating Grits for apparently destroying emails related to the $585-million cancellation of controversial power plants in Mississauga and Oakville before the last provincial election.

In June, the legislative watchdog blasted Craig MacLennan, a former chief of staff to past energy ministers Brad Duguid and Chris Bentley, and David Livingston, former premier Dalton McGuinty’s last chief of staff, for failing to preserve records.

“In light of the information I now have, I would have arrived at a different conclusion regarding the ability of MGS (Ministry of Government Services) staff to retrieve the relevant emails from Mr. MacLennan’s email account,” she wrote Tuesday.

“However, the other findings in my report were not affected and remain accurate.”

In her appendix, Cavoukian maintains that bureaucrats “misled” her when they claimed MacLennan’s email account could not be retrieved then later found 39,000 emails either sent or received by him on a backup computer drive.  (Source: The Toronto Star)

 

KATHLEEN WYNNE CARTOON from wes tyrell on Vimeo.

 

March 26, 2007

The future is animation…

For more than a year I’ve been dabbling in the animation of my editorial cartoons. Actually, the real hard work in bringing life to my cartoons is done by longtime friend Scott Blackett. We’re both rather new at this and we’re learning about it and getting better as we go.

The seal hunt was our first animated movie. At 30 seconds, it’s also our longest. It’s a bit graphic but it puts out a clear message about the seal hunt with great effect. White backgrounds, it seems, work best in terms of clarity with our type of animaton. Another cartoon about Victoria and David Beckham meeting the press after arriving in Hollywood came out rather blurry after it was uploaded to YouTube.

My end of the job is pretty easy, although there are extra steps taken as l execute each cartoon if an animated clip is in the offing. Specifically, the background and features need to be drawn separately. If a lot of movement is required, extra limbs need to be created.

Once all the parts are drawn and separated they’re shipped off by email to Scott who’s based in Toronto. I don’t know exactly what he does to bring about the magic of the movement but I always get a huge kick out of the end result. I’ll let him explain the process later.

So we’ve begun uploading these videos onto YouTube with hopes of getting some hits and feedback. You can find our profile here.

FEEDBACK

Newfies are an easy target. I don’t agree with all aspects of the seal hunt, but there are many worse culprits — like the shark hunt which is decimating the ocean’s eco-system.

Here’s my take on the seal hunt, with Pamela Anderson being clubbed instead.

http://www.weltschmerz.ca/blog/2006/04/thwunk_1.php

Still, technically, I think that animation really works well. And it’s always fun to draw blood.

– Gareth Lind (April 3, 2007)

March 19, 2007

I threw this one out to the for the little papers across Canada to run if they want it. It’s a revision of a cartoon I drew for budget day during the Chretien era which predated my syndication days:

It worked better as Chretien’s time in office was winding down, but I’d say given the enormous size of the federal surplus the cartoon could apply to Harper as well. I’ll be working on a brand new one for tomorrow’s Spec.

* * * * * Update * * * * *

It’s experimental, a bit crude, but today’s cartoon is animated:

FEEDBACK

Graeme, I just discovered your blog. Hadn’t visited your site in a while. Your work makes me chortle more than that of most other editorial cartoonists. (Even the stuff I disagree with vehemently. It is possible to chortle loudly about a cartoon whose viewpoint you oppose?)

And your drawing style rocks. Love your Harper.

– Gareth Lind (March 22, 200)

 

Friday January 31, 2003

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday January 31, 2003

The Excess Information Age

Imagine a Canada in which every citizen is finger-printed and retina-scanned.

Imagine massive government databases that use these biometric identifiers to catalogue people’s travel habits at home and abroad, their Internet usage, their e-mail and cell phone conversations and even videotapes them as they converse on a street corner. Such a nightmare scenario was tabled Wednesday in the staid House of Commons by the federal ombudsman appointed to safeguard Canadian privacy. And George Radwanksi says this Orwellian society could be the natural evolution of the Liberal government’s “unprecedented assault” on privacy rights. 

“A year and half ago, if anyone had described the measures now being introduced, no one would have thought it would happen,” the federal privacy commissioner told a news conference after he submitted his report. 

“It’s easy in a country like Canada to say bad things don’t happen, nobody would intrude on our rights … (but) all we have to do is look back at history.” 

Whether it be the internment of Japanese Canadians in the 1940s or the RCMP opening mail and torching barns in Quebec in the 1970s, “we’re not immune from excesses by the state,” said Radwanski (Source: Injustice Busters)