Tag: Perspective

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Post Expo Perspective


The Calgary Expo is always exhausting but usually a positive overall experience.

This year, I went into it feeling burnt out, mainly because of how closely I’ve had to follow the rapidly changing news lately and how much it has personally bothered me. I think I foolishly thought Expo might fix that.

Many things that could have gone wrong in preparation and execution went as well as expected. I got my hotel and booth early, load-in went well, there were no problems with setup, and it seemed off to a good start. Even my new payment system worked flawlessly all four days.

But earlier in the week, I realized I wasn’t looking forward to Expo like usual. I went into it feeling a little desperate for a good show. So, when sales were slow, and the whole vibe felt off, I considered it might be my fault, that I was failing to project the right attitude.

Talking with other vendors throughout the weekend, however, with a noticeable drop in customer traffic, it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t just me.

We couldn’t help but speculate amongst ourselves — what was going on?

Was it the new layout? The events portion of the show moved to the second and third floors of the new BMO Centre. In previous years, attendees would end up in retail spaces while moving between panels and talks. When people left those scheduled events this year, it seemed like many just went outside or crowded the exterior aisles on their way to somewhere else.

Perhaps it was the economy. With all the bad news flooding across the border these past few months, people are nervous and watching their money. It seemed like many had less to spend, and I saw far fewer new people in my booth than I’m used to. I’ve never seen a quiet Saturday at the Calgary Expo; it’s usually a crazy busy day. My best sales day this year was Friday. That has never happened before.

I’m used to each year proving as good or better than the year before. I’ve never had a down year. My friend Ryan had a booth a couple of aisles away from me. He was right when he said, “Every year can’t break records.”

Because I keep meticulous records and inventory, I know that this year’s sales were down 16% over last year. That may not seem like much, but this is an expensive show. The price of my booth, electrical, insurance, parking and hotel all went up this year. So, depending on the year, the first 35% to 50% of sales cover that initial expense. That’s before I factor in the cost of my product.

For this show, 16% off the top is significant. I didn’t talk to one vendor who said their sales were good this year.

The show was still well worth my time and investment, and on the last day, I rebooked for next year as I always do.
At the show’s end, tearing down took about an hour and a half. But the line-up of cars to access the loading docks was ridiculously long. I have a sturdy hand dolly that transforms into a robust cart. It was quicker for me to haul my booth out in three trips through two large halls to the other side of the building where I had parked my car. That took another hour, but it was better than sitting in a long line of vehicles for all that time.

I’ll admit that I felt a little sorry for myself on the drive home Sunday night, that the show wasn’t as good as I’d hoped or expected. But after some sleep and time to reflect, I have corrected my perspective.

While the goal is always to introduce my work to new people and find new subscribers, and there weren’t as many of those opportunities this year, the best part of Expo is all of you who keep coming back to see me year after year.

With a sincere hand-on-heart, I want to thank my many repeat customers, collectors, subscribers and supporters who showed up this year.

I met several people who came to the show just because they read about it in A Wilder View, some of whom I met for the first time. I often think what I write on my site and in my emails is self-indulgent drivel, but you keep telling me that you look forward to each email and enjoy what I share.

One enthusiastic subscriber who’s been buying my calendars from Australia for several years just immigrated to Canada and came to Expo to meet me for the first time. In an email exchange after the fact, he said, “You’re such a positive and inspiring person.”

Feroze, are you sure you’re reading MY emails?

I kid.

Even though this is precisely what I always wanted, I’ve never been comfortable with so many of you having my art on your walls or stickers on your cars, kayaks and water bottles and that you say such nice things about my work and writing.

Many of you have way more prints, stickers, magnets, coasters and other pieces than I thought you did.
Though I saw them all weekend, Tracy and Sheldon took these photos of their collection Saturday night and shared them by text. They rotate their prints in what they call Critter Corner. When I saw these photos, I joked that I felt like a drug dealer and it might be time for an intervention, especially since they bought more prints and tote bags this weekend.

You two would be dangerous if you weren’t such lovely people.

I was reminded this weekend that so many of you have large collections. You know who you are, and I only refrain from listing all your names because I would forget somebody, and I don’t want to offend anyone.
Long-time collectors also bought canvas, metal and acrylic prints this weekend. I have more of those orders to fill this week. I talked with former commission clients and ones whose paintings I’m just about to start. I got the usual gentle pressure about the book, which I never seem to gain traction on, and a few offered welcome suggestions on which animals I might consider painting next.

I can’t adequately express how humbling it is that you enjoy my artwork this much.

So perhaps I needed a lesson this year at Expo that even when sales are down, it is just one event in one year, and it comes and goes so quickly. All of you who continue to allow me to do this for a living, whether you can show up to Expo to show your support in person, were already here before the show, and you’re still here afterward.

I need to remember that it’s a gift that, once a year, I get to see so many of you in person. Because every time I do, you make me want to make more art.

Thank you.

Cheers,
Patrick

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A Wilder View on Awards

I’ve been drawing and painting my whimsical wildlife art for 16 years. Licensed internationally on several products, I also sell prints and stickers wholesale to places like the Calgary Zoo and Discovery Wildlife Park, in my online store, and at live events like the Banff Christmas Market and the Calgary Expo.

Most people subscribe to A Wilder View to see new paintings and hear the stories behind that work. So, it often surprises some and occasionally annoys others when I write the odd post about politics or things going on in the news. What does that have to do with funny-looking animals? Does everybody have to share their political opinion these days?

It’s usually that many people don’t know that I’ve been a syndicated editorial cartoonist for over twenty years. But if it weren’t for the political cartoons, there wouldn’t have been any animal paintings.
In 1998, while managing a waterslide facility at a hotel in Banff, I drew my first cartoon for the Banff Crag & Canyon. Many editorial cartoonists get into the profession because they’re political junkies who can draw. I liked to draw, and I figured I could learn to follow the news and politics if I had to.

I was 27 at the time. I had never been to art school and didn’t know the difference between right-wing and left-wing politics. But hey, it was a small weekly paper, and $30/week gave me a little beer money.

In 2001, I was invited to join the Rocky Mountain Outlook; about the same time, Shonna and I moved to Canmore. It was an upstart weekly newspaper looking to compete with the Banff Crag & Canyon and the Canmore Leader.

Today, the Outlook is the newspaper of record for the entire Bow Valley; those other papers are gone. It is a point of pride that I have had a cartoon in every issue for 24 years. While most Outlook cartoons have a local theme, they sometimes run one of my syndicated cartoons if a local toon doesn’t work that week.
So, what’s a syndicated cartoon? I get that question a lot.

Each week, I draw five to seven more cartoons on regional, provincial, national or international issues and submit them to newspaper clients across Canada. I follow the news every day, come up with ideas and draw them. If a publication prints the cartoon, they pay me.

Many of my clients are weekly publications, and several are under monthly contracts. That means they only print my cartoons. They only need one cartoon each week, but because I also supply dailies, they have several cartoons to choose from.

While some daily newspapers still have editorial cartoonists on contract, many have a few available spots each week or only use syndicated. Several daily papers in Canada run my cartoons, but they also print submissions from other cartoonists, so it’s a daily competition.

Early in my career, I wanted a job with a daily newspaper. But as we learn in life, sometimes the best thing for you is not getting what you want. Had I got a daily newspaper gig, I would have been laid off in budget cuts years ago, a fate that has befallen many cartoonists in the struggling newspaper business.

Because syndication was always my business model, I never had to face losing my day job and scrambling to pivot. It also meant I had to draw every day, without fail, or I didn’t get paid. I learned early the discipline it takes to run your own business, that you work even when you don’t feel like it because you have to. It’s a lesson I try to share with anyone who asks for tips on making art for a living. As any self-employed person will tell you, you’ll never work harder than working for yourself.

The other benefit was that you can’t help but improve if you’re drawing daily, so my cartoons quickly got better. My early pitiful caricatures, where nobody could tell who I was drawing, became one of my best skills. I used to dread drawing real people, but now I enjoy that part of the work, even though those cartoons take longer.

Best of all, my years of learning to be a better cartoonist led to the work I enjoy most: my funny-looking animals. If I hadn’t been a cartoonist first and still somehow stumbled into painting wildlife, they wouldn’t have that ‘cartoony but real’ look that so many people enjoy.

I’ve been fortunate to receive some awards in my career, but not many. Artists only need one award to add ‘award-winning artist’ to their bio. They’re kind of like high school diplomas. Employers look for them on your resume, but how many ever ask to see one?

To think, one lie and I could have skipped those three years and started work early.
I’m most proud of the awards I received at Photoshop World Las Vegas in 2010 and 2014. The first year, I won the Illustration and Best in Show awards for some of my early animal paintings. That recognition was important to me because it was from an organization full of people I liked and respected. They were an encouraging group of talented artists and teachers, and they helped me become a better artist.

That award also opened doors at Wacom. They make the drawing tablets and displays on which I have created all my cartoons and paintings since the late 90s. I’ve worked with them several times on promotional projects over the years, and it’s been one of my favourite professional relationships.

In 2014, the last year I attended Photoshop World, I won the Best in Show award for my One in Every Family painting. The prize was the Canon 5D Mark III camera I still use today to take reference photos. Just like my car, it may not be new and pristine anymore, but it gets me where I need to go, and I will be truly upset the day I no longer have it.

That organization and event no longer exist, but it ended on a high note, and I look back on that time with fond memories. Many of those friends and acquaintances still follow my work in A Wilder View.

I have won several Alberta Weekly Newspaper Awards and Canadian Community Newspaper Awards for my local cartoons in The Rocky Mountain Outlook. The Outlook enters my work for those, and that recognition does more for the newspaper than for me. But I’ve been happy to be part of the team effort.

This brings me to the National Newspaper Awards. I think I tried to enter once in 2006 but found out I wasn’t eligible because I wasn’t attached to a daily newspaper. Sure, many dailies ran my work, but they most often sponsored their own cartoonists for the NNAs.

So, I didn’t try to enter again and figured I never would.
The Calgary Herald has been publishing my cartoons for twenty years. During that time, they’ve gone through several editorial page editors, and I’ve had a good relationship with most of them. But as is the case for all art, some liked my work more than others. So, some years, I might get published only once or twice a month.

A change in editor at any newspaper can be the end of a cartoon contract or the beginning of a new one. They all have their favourite cartoonists, and when an editor goes from one newspaper to the other, they’ve often brought me with them or replaced me with one of my competitors. It’s the nature of the business.

These days, I’ve got a great relationship with the Calgary Herald. The now Editor-in-Chief, Monica Zurowski, has been encouraging and supportive of my work and runs my cartoons around ten times a month.

So, while the Herald does not employ me, they run my cartoons more than any other daily newspaper in Canada. Last year, Ms. Zurowski asked if they could sponsor me for the National Newspaper Awards for editorial cartooning. It was a big surprise because the NNAs hadn’t been on my radar for almost twenty years.

Because the Herald had published so many of my cartoons in 2023, I could choose five cartoons I liked from a large enough selection, and they submitted them on my behalf. I didn’t expect much, so I wasn’t disappointed when I didn’t get a nomination.

In January of this year, The Herald again asked if I wanted to submit and said they would sponsor me. The editor chose five cartoons she liked from those they’d published and said I was free to make any changes. I suggested two substitutions, and they submitted another five-cartoon portfolio for the 2024 competition. Again, I went in with low expectations. You can see those five cartoons throughout this post.

This week, I received a call from Ms. Zurowski telling me I’m one of three finalists for the National Newspaper Awards. The other finalists are Michael de Adder for his work in the Halifax Chronicle Herald/Globe and Mail and Gabrielle Drolet for the Globe and Mail.
I’ve got some mixed feelings about this unexpected nomination. I’m pleased at the recognition, of course. It’s a bit of validation in a profession where I’ve often felt like an outsider.

As someone who started relatively late in the profession, when the newspaper industry was already struggling, I often felt too far behind and that my cartoons didn’t measure up. Even when I hosted the Canadian Editorial Cartoonists Convention in Banff in 2008, I felt significant imposter syndrome. And in the aftermath of that event, of which I have no fond memories, I resigned myself to the fact that I was not part of that club. And I moved on. I have had little contact with that community since.

Instead, I have focused on the work, improving my skills, and keeping my business adaptable and sustainable. As newspapers have sold, floundered and folded, I have positioned my other artwork to take up the slack. Financially, 2018 was my best year for editorial cartooning, but each year since then, as more newspapers close, that side of my business has shown a steady decline.

Fortunately, my whimsical wildlife work continues to grow, allowing me to continue to make a good living as an artist. But I’m still drawing a local cartoon for The Outlook and five or six syndicated cartoons each week. I’m just getting paid less now for that same cartoon output.

I wondered this week if the NNA award carries the weight it used to. There are fewer cartoonists on the playing field, and some of the giants of the profession are now gone, out of work, or drawing fewer cartoons. Would a National Newspaper Award mean more to me if more cartoonists were in the race? I think so.

Or perhaps, even twenty-seven years after that first editorial cartoon became a career of thousands more, I still feel that imposter syndrome, that I never was a part of that club. Our demons never leave us, do they?

They will announce the winners of the National Newspaper Awards in Montreal on Friday, April 25th. It’s an appropriate irony that I will be very busy that day, selling my whimsical wildlife art at my biggest annual event, The Calgary Expo. It will be my tenth year at the show, introducing people to the artwork I love most, that wouldn’t have happened without newspapers and political cartoons.

Whether I win a National Newspaper Award or not, I’ll be right where I belong.

Cheers,
Patrick

One more thing

Several metal prints arrived this week for The Calgary Expo next month, the first time I’ve seen some of my newest paintings on metal. Unpacking new prints never fails to put a smile on my face as my work always looks best in print.
When I finished this Ringleader painting, I wrote, “I have no idea how I feel about this painting and probably won’t for a while. I feel more relief that it’s finally over than satisfaction with the result.”

Just over a month later, now that the perfectionism for the piece has subsided, I can honestly say this is one of my favourite paintings. It’s so delightfully ridiculous and I laughed out loud after unpacking it. Because of the detail and so many faces, I printed it larger at 18”X24” on metal and I’m looking forward to hanging it in my booth.

As I’ll be busy every day for the next month, signing and packing new stock, organizing my booth hardware and equipment, drawing cartoons and trying to get a video recording finished, I wanted a break before all the chaos. So, my buddy Darrel and I spent four nights last weekend at the cabin we often rent in the foothills of Central Alberta.
There was still plenty of snow on the ground, on the colder side of March, and we didn’t see any wildlife. But we did what greying old men like us usually do; played cards and games, went for walks around the property, napped and played guitar. This was a selfie I took for a text reply to Shonna one afternoon when she asked how we were doing.
She complimented our usual black T-shirt matching ensembles. I told her I suspected she might be making fun of us, to which she replied, “Nailed it!”

As I finished writing this, an email alert came in that Prime Minister Mark Carney will call a snap federal election this weekend, and Canadians will go to the polls as early as April 28th. That’s the day after the Calgary Expo, which means April just got a whole lot busier.

I’m glad I took the break when I had the chance. 

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Where’s the Camera?

When I was in my early twenties, at the end of my five years in the Reserves, I had the opportunity to work as a paid extra on the movie Legends of the Fall.

It was a fantastic experience, full of great stories. I’ve written about this before, here’s the link if you’re interested.

If the story is moving and you’re captivated, a good movie should allow you to suspend your disbelief. Sure, there might be continuity errors from time to time, and we all know that the science behind a lot of movies is pretty loose. But a good story should keep you interested, a willing participant in the fantasy delivered on screen.

Even movies based in reality will stretch and squash the truth to tell a better story. We welcome the lie because even with amazing real-life stories, the movie version will be better.

People will say they want to know how the magician performs his illusions, but it’s almost always disappointing when you do. The fun lives in the fantasy and when that’s gone, it’s just a trick.

When filming began on Legends of the Fall, there were about 1000 extras. It might have been 600-700, but it was a lot. As it was a First World War epic drama, we were all young men, each in period uniform. We filmed each night, all night long, and while there was plenty of downtime on set, it was exciting when the cameras were rolling.

After the first few days, the main army was sent home, and there were 60 of us left for the next two weeks, all of whom required military experience. The reason was that we fired authentic Lee Enfield rifles in successive scenes and even blank rounds can kill if used irresponsibly.

The main battlefield looked as you would imagine. Mud everywhere, large craters, uneven terrain, burnt trees, and rows of barbed wire fence, with meandering trenches along either side. For the first few nights, all we did was run back and forth across the field, an army whose only enemy was time and money.

We did quite a few rehearsal runs, choosing our routes to minimize collisions, or tripping on obstacles in the way. Before each run, an Assistant Director would walk down the line, pointing to every second, third or fourth man and say, “Dead.”

This meant that at some point during your run, from one side of the field to the other, you were to fall and stay still. No theatrics, no crying out, drop and don’t move. If you weren’t supposed to die, but you tripped and fell, or an explosion went off near you, you were to consider yourself dead, resurrected only when the director yelled, “Cut!”

A few from the larger group were kicked off the set for goofing around. One guy ran across the front of the camera, looked right into the lens and gave a big smile. They dismissed him.

There were huge stadium-style lights on stands, pointed toward the field. We filmed all night long but it was almost like daylight. When you see a night scene in a movie, it’s quite bright so that the camera can see everything. Sometimes they’ll add a deep blue filter to the camera so that a scene filmed during the day looks like night. One of the giveaways for that trick is a landscape scene where you can see shadows or light details in the distance.

In those battlefield scenes, with the cameras on a hill, facing east, all the viewer would see is an army running across a field. There’s smoke, explosions, yelling, screaming, and it looks like chaos.

But that’s not what we saw.

Take another camera, position it on the eastern edge of the field and turn it west, and you’d see another army of production people, lights, tents, vehicles, cameras, and activity just behind the camera. You would also see several figures in bright orange jumpsuits, sitting in front of built-up mud mounds all over the battlefield. In front of them were control boards, their job to set off the pyrotechnics while we ran around them.

If the main actors were involved in any of the scenes, you would see a sawdust trail in the mud, the path they were supposed to run, and the rest of us were to avoid.

When I watch a movie today, if the pace is slow and my mind wanders away from the illusion, I’ll often think about how it was made and ask myself, “Where’s the Camera?”

They film quite a few movies around here in Canmore and Banff. A favourite is The Edge with Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins. I watched it again recently and there are many scenes where they’re supposed to be lost in the wilderness, far from civilization. But if you’re from around here, knowing the true locations is amusing.

One particular scene was filmed just around the corner from where we live, in an open field called Indian Flats. In the movie, they’d just killed a bear, were exhausted and wondering if they were going to make it back to civilization. The mountains loom high above them, and it looks like extreme wilderness.

If the camera were raised just ten feet higher or turned 45 degrees left, however, you would see Highway 1A right beside them, the TransCanada less than a kilometre away, the light industrial area of Canmore and no shortage of local infrastructure.

It’s not something we think about while watching the movie, because we’re invested in the lie. We want to be entertained.

A side effect of that long-ago experience is that I find myself asking the same question in other areas of life as well, where the lie is not so obvious or welcome.

Where’s the camera? What am I not seeing?

While we recently killed our cable because we found we were primarily watching streaming services, I hadn’t been a fan of reality TV for this very reason. When you see people arguing, a scary suspense-filled moment, or a near-death experience on one of these shows, it gives you a whole new perspective when you start thinking about the camera and crew filming the scene. Suddenly, it seems more like a bad performance, not scary at all, and nobody is even remotely close to injury or death. The insurance people would hate that.

These shows not only film conflict, but they try to instigate it. It’s entertainment, but not reality.

The same can be said for all of the selfies and carefully curated images and videos posted on social media.

One of the most visited locations around here is Moraine Lake, near Lake Louise. It gets so busy in the summer that they periodically close the road and limit traffic, because there are so many people up there, taking photos of the Valley of the Ten Peaks.

It’s easy for one person to stand near the edge of the water, take a photo and have it look like they’ve just completed this arduous hike and are in this serene location all by themselves. But move the camera back thirty feet, and you’d see hundreds of other people taking the same photo, right beside a parking lot full of cars and buses.

You’re likely familiar with the beach feet photo, where someone takes a picture of their own feet stretched out before them on a towel or deck chair, the beach and ocean filling the rest of the scene. The caption usually reads, The Good Life or Lost in Paradise.

Meanwhile, move the camera back twenty feet, and they’re one of many people on a crowded beach, at an all-inclusive resort complete with loud music, gangs of drunken college kids and screaming children who’ve had too much sun.

Did you know that you can take a perfect picture of the Sphinx and pyramids while standing in front of a Pizza Hut in Cairo? It’s right across the street. It’s now become an online gag to take the photo from inside the Pizza Hut to capture the scene with the logo on the window. Google ‘pyramids Pizza Hut’ and you’ll see.

My favourite would have to be the one where somebody shows themselves at the gym, or in a contemplative moment looking out at the ocean, or sitting in a Zen-like lotus pose trying to convince you that they’re one with the universe. It becomes completely ridiculous when you consider that they had to set the camera/phone up, put it on a timer, rush back to pose to show you how Zen and peaceful they are before they check the photo, decide they look fat in that one and try it all over again.

Add in photo filters to change the weather or light, some feature manipulators, and a softening filter to make you look younger, which most of the time makes you look plastic.

These exercises in camera trickery happen for two reasons. One, to convince others that our best-laid plans are even better than they appear, and two, to make us feel a little better about our own lives that aren’t quite measuring up to unrealistic expectations.

And while we’re making ourselves feel better, we’re making others feel worse, and they do the same in return when they post their own staged photos. No wonder we’re all so miserable, angry and dissatisfied with life.

Whether it’s movies, reality TV, social media, the news, politics, or any other information we’re fed daily, realize that it’s all designed to sell you something. It could be a product, an experience, or an illusion, but simply put, it’s a manipulation.

A friend’s vacay pics making you jealous? Ask yourself how much time they spent snapping and uploading filtered photos instead of enjoying where they were. They were probably looking at their phone more on vacation than they do at home.

The perfect family Christmas dinner photo? The credit cards are all maxed, the turkey’s overcooked, Grandpa’s drunk and being racist again, and the dog just threw up under the table.

The politician blaming everything on his opponent and promising you he’ll fix all that ails you? That always changes right after the election, no matter who is in power. The same middle-class family he posed with at that campaign rally now can’t make ends meet, because that same politician eliminated their jobs in his first budget.

Now with deep fake technology and other software, a photo or video is no more evidence of truth or fact than a nosy neighbour gossiping over the back fence.

Fake news works because we choose to believe it.  It’s designed to spread because it plays on our bias. When one person believes one of these lies, they share it with others, and as Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels once said, “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.”

With a new year upon us, I would make a simple suggestion. No matter what you read, see, hear, or experience, take a moment to consider that you do not see the whole picture, especially if it’s something you want to believe. That should be your first clue.

Ask yourself if the camera is showing you something real.

Ask yourself what it’s not showing you.

Then ask why.

© Patrick LaMontagne
@LaMontagneArt
If you’d like to receive my newsletter which features blog posts, new paintings and editorial cartoons, follow this link to the sign up form.

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Out of the mouths of editors

About ten years ago, I couldn’t think of anything I would rather be doing for a living than editorial cartooning. I had a full-time office job, and I was working my ass off to try and leave it. It wasn’t a bad job; in fact it was a pretty good one. My boss was a decent guy (still is), he paid me well enough, and I wasn’t expected to work overtime or on weekends. But it just wasn’t what I wanted to do.

Without boring you with all of the details, I was eventually able to leave that job with the blessing of my employer and I often tell people that it was the best last job (and boss) to have. It was very scary, but exhilarating.

Fast forward eight years and editorial cartooning is now ‘the job.’ I don’t really enjoy it as much as I used to, but there are plenty of worse ways to make a living. While I’m still trying to be original and do my best, I’ve often said to people that the job can be emotionally taxing and I wonder if any of these smartass illustrated comments even matter to anybody.

I’ve likened following politics and the news for a living to getting out of bed every day, having a shower, then wading into raw sewage. The animosity and venom online that accompanies any news story (don’t read the comments, don’t read the comments…), the general distrust of elected officials, the hypocrisy of entitled federal politicians who will walk across the aisle and hug after a national tragedy, but then will say the most horrible things about and to each other just days and weeks afterward, thinking we’re all too stupid to notice, (take a breath!) it’s a little much to take sometimes. They’ll all campaign for more civility in the House of Commons, but their actions rarely match their words.

Ask them about this behaviour and they’ll tell you that it’s all part of the game and you find out that a lot of these people in opposing parties are quite civil and friendly with each other when the cameras are off. Somehow they figure that they can justify these actions at taxpayer expense, with “Oh, we’re just playing.”

Follow politics long enough and you realize that it doesn’t matter who is in power. They’re all playing the same shell game and Canadians are the dupes who continue to put down the money, only to have it taken away. And of course, the game doesn’t work unless we believe that one day we’ll be quick enough to beat the shifty con man on the other side of the apple crate.

See? I’m well into a rant I had no intention of writing. But it’s because I get worked up about it. While I do try to use it to my advantage and see the humour in it, tell myself that it’s all part of the job, I also become angry about it, a lot more often than I want to.

Clearly, I take this job way too personally. But as the scorpion said to the frog, “I can’t help it. It’s my nature.”

Remembrance

What brought this all to mind today was something one of my editors said to me about my Remembrance Day cartoon I sent out this week, the one shown here. It’s a topic on which I must draw each year, and I’ll be honest, I dread it. This year was especially difficult given recent events.

I’ve often used quotes in these more serious images, so this particular editor asked whose lines I’d used in the cartoon. I think he thought I might have forgotten to credit them appropriately. When I told him that the words were mine, he was complimentary and I thanked him, explaining that with a military family background on both sides, and five years spent in the Reserves, I always try to be as respectful and original as possible with this particular cartoon without being maudlin and trite.  I usually spend a lot of time on it, both in thought and on the artwork.

On that point, he said something that made me stop and think, not just about the Remembrance Day cartoon, but about editorial cartooning in general. He said, about his own job, “I try my best with my limited abilities, and I plan to come to work every day until they tell me to stop. Once in a while, though, those of us who do this sort of thing for a living, like you, create something that DOES matter, that DOES resonate with people, that DOES meet our own expectations. Not always, but sometimes. And it’s worth it, you know?”

Thanks, Steve. I think I needed that.