women – Page 2 – mackaycartoons

Thursday April 30, 2015

April 29, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 30, 2015

McMaster to boost all female faculty members’ salaries

McMaster University will add $3,515 to the base salaries of all full-time female faculty members to help correct what it calls “a systematic bias” in favour of male professors.

University officials announced Monday it will spend more than $1 million each year to ensure pay equity among its male and female faculty. The change will affect roughly 340 women — about a third of the university’s 1,000 full-time academic staff.

“It’s an equity issue we felt we simply had to address,” said David Wilkinson, McMaster provost and vice-president (academic). “How can we afford not to do it?”

The average salary of a full-time, permanent faculty member at the school (not including clinicians and clinical faculty) was $139,900 in 2013.

Michelle Dion, incoming president of the McMaster University Faculty Association, was part of the joint committee of faculty and administration members that endorsed the change.

“It would have been nicer to not find a gender pay gap,” she said. “The most surprising thing, I think, for most people, is that McMaster is doing something about it.”

The changes come out of a two-year study of Mac’s wages that found a gap between the salaries of men and women. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Friday January 9 2015

January 9, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

Friday January 9 2016

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, the Hamilton Spectator – Friday January 9 2015

Bill Cosby urges fans “to remain calm” if Ontario shows disrupted

Embattled comedian Bill Cosby is worried about protesters disrupting the three shows he has scheduled in Ontario this week as his international tour rolls on despite growing allegations of sexual assault.

Cosby issued a statement Tuesday urging people who attend his performances to remain calm if a show is interrupted and to “not confront the person making the disruption.”

The 77-year-old comedian is set to perform in Kitchener on Wednesday night, London on Thursday and Hamilton on Friday.

In Hamilton, protests are planned Friday at Hamilton Place. The Women’s Abuse Working Group says they will organize a “peaceful gathering”outside the theatre.

Claus Wagner, acting media relations officer for Hamilton Police, said officers will be keeping an eye on the protest to ensure everything goes smoothly. He couldn’t say yet how many officers may be needed.

He said charges will be laid if necessary but more likely protesters will be moved away to calm down if things get a little heated.

“We always allow people to protest peacefully,” he said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Premier Kathleen Wynne said she would not attend any of Cosby’s shows in Ontario because of the “very serious” allegations of sexual assault the comedian is facing.

Wynne says she would not go to any of his performances until the allegations against Cosby have been sorted out.

Since November, at least 15 women have come forward with claims Cosby sexually assaulted them decades ago — with some saying he drugged them before he assaulted them.

Cosby, who starred as Dr. Cliff Huxtable on “The Cosby Show” from 1984 to 1992, has never been criminally charged in connection with any of the allegations, and through his lawyer he has denied them.

At least 10 shows on Cosby’s current tour were cancelled or postponed because of the scandal, but his appearances in the three Ontario cities will proceed, despite local opposition. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Thursday June 26, 2014

June 25, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 26, 2014

Mother’s and Father’s Day emails from justice minister praise mothers as caregivers, fathers as role models

Justice Minister Peter MacKay has raised eyebrows once again over what some consider old-fashioned and patronizing attitudes toward women.

CBC News has obtained two emails MacKay sent to his staff, one marking Mother’s Day and the other Father’s Day.

The Mother’s Day email congratulates “colleagues” who have “two full-time jobs: as hardworking department of justice employees during business hours, and as dedicated moms and caregivers around the clock.”

Especially as he is now the father of an active toddler, MacKay wrote, he could understand, “By the time many of you have arrived at the office in the morning, you’ve already changed diapers, packed lunches, run after school buses, dropped kids off at daycare, taken care of an aging loved one and maybe even thought about dinner.”

The Father’s Day email had a different tone. In the message, MacKay praises male staff who are “dedicated fathers” and lauds them for “shaping the minds and futures of the next generation of leaders.” The words “mould,” “teach” and “guide” were employed to illustrate fathers’ influence on their children.

The emails were sent to CBC News by two employees of the Justice Department.

Erin Rizok, a lawyer with the Ontario provincial government who is currently on maternity leave with her second child, called the emails “fairly ridiculous” when she read copies of them.

To Rizok, the emails suggest that “only men are responsible for shaping the lives of our children and only women are responsible for the home.”

“I just think that Peter MacKay is completely out of touch with what women want to do generally,” she said.

In an interview in Toronto’s Monarch Park, she said, “In my house, me and my husband have not two jobs, we have dozens of jobs. We share everything in our house fairly equally.”

The emails surfaced in the wake of a Toronto Star story last week that quoted women who’d been at a meeting of the council of the Ontario Bar Association with MacKay. The article said that MacKay, when asked why there was a dearth of women and minority judges on federally appointed courts, said women just aren’t applying to be judges.

MacKay is said to have suggested that women might be reluctant to go for the jobs, because they had young children at home and worried about the extensive travel new judges often have to undertake visiting different regional courts.

He was reported as saying that women have a special bond with their children. (Source: CBC News)

Thursday, July 25, 2013

July 25, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday, July 25, 2013

Women run the show and the biggest provinces with 87 per cent of Canadians

The old boys’ club that once was the Council of the Federation is no more — women now run the show because they rule the biggest provinces.

When Canada’s provincial and territorial leaders gather for their annual conference this week in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., they will make some political history.

An all-male cast in 2007

More than 87 per cent of Canadians are governed by female premiers — in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nunavut.

“It makes it historic and I’m aware of that,” Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne told the Star on Tuesday. “I’d like to think we can do a great job because of who’s sitting around the table,” she said, with a laugh.

“But I don’t have a point of comparison, because when there were 13 men around the table, I wasn’t there. So I can’t really judge the quality of the discussion or the approaches.”

Wynne, as chair of the council, is hosting the meeting that gets under way Wednesday when the premiers gather with First Nations leaders to discuss education and other issues.

“I would hope that we’d find that there is an even increased ability to have a collaborative and frank discussion although I understand that these discussions have always been collegial and they are pretty open,” she said. (Source: The Toronto Star)

Friday August 3, 2012

August 3, 2012 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 3, 2012

Women claim Canada’s second Olympic silver in rowing

The night before they went for gold, the Canadian women’s eight met and made a solemn pledge.

Others might measure their success by a different standard. But as long as they maintained their trust in each other, as long as they performed as a team, and as long as they expended every last joule of energy in their beings, they would be satisfied with their race.

On Thursday, they met every one of their goals. The silver medals that hung around their necks was just a happy by-product of all that.

“I had so much trust in the work we’ve done,” said Richmond’s Darcy Marquardt, one of the boat’s leaders and a medalist, finally, in her third Olympics. “We’ve been so consistent day after day in training and racing this season. We laid it all on the line today and that’s an Olympic silver. We can’t be upset with that.”

Which was both an honest and realistic assessment of their race.

As much as the Canadian crew did everything in their power at Lake Dorney, they ran into a monster boat in the gold-medal crew from the United States. The Americans, who were the defending Olympic champions, were last defeated in international competition in 2005 and returned six of the nine crew members from Beijing.

They also looked every inch the favourite at the Eton College rowing basin.

In a wire-to-wire win, the Americans beat back an early challenge from the Dutch and a late challenge from the Canadians but never seemed particularly concerned about either boat. The Canadians made a bit of a move over the final 500 metres but still finished almost a second and a half behind the Americans. (Source: National Post)