News From The Association of Canadian Cartoonists

An article by Daniel Leblanc published in Saturday's Globe and Mail.

...and I also have my senior's card! (cartoon by Serge Chapleau in Montreal's La Presse)

For Quebec comedy writers, the brouhaha in the NDP this week offered a clear indication that humour is finally on the comeback in Ottawa.

The province’s comedy industry has a large number of stand-up artists, impressionists and writers who regularly tackle the lighter side of politics on radio, television and stage. But these humorists saw their world fall apart in the May 2 general election when the Bloc Québécois essentially disappeared from the federal arena and the Liberals were replaced by a cast of unknowns from the NDP as the Official Opposition in Ottawa.

Suddenly, favourite targets such as Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe left the scene, with no one jumping in to replace them in the public eye. The long-standing Conservative/Bloc/Liberal confrontations – a steady producer of comic fare in recent decades – were a thing of the past, replaced by a blank slate.

“In politics, jokes can grow stale very quickly. Suddenly, all our long-standing references disappeared,” said Martin Petit, an acclaimed stand-up comic who tries to infuse a steady dose of politics into his routines.

Serge Chapleau at the Montreal daily La Presse, the province’s top cartoonist, is also the brains behind a Sunday night show on Radio-Canada that features a full cast of computer-animated politicians and a fictional anchorman called Gérard D. Laflaque.

Mr. Chapleau said he is looking to add new characters, such as NDP House Leader Thomas Mulcair and interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae, to adapt to the new reality. He might dispatch newly retired politicians like Mr. Duceppe to what he has dubbed the “USS Entercrisis,” a spaceship on which the likes of ex-prime minister Paul Martin and ex-Quebec premier Jacques Parizeau roam the universe looking for somewhere else to run for office.

Mr. Chapleau said it will take time for his viewers to adapt to today’s reality and for the show to develop the comic traits of its new characters, such as anger-management issues beneath Mr. Mulcair’s silky public persona.

The award-winning cartoonist said that until recently, most NDP jokes revolved around the fact that its Quebec caucus was populated by unknowns “asking for a recount, to make sure that they had really won.”

With NDP Leader Jack Layton once again fighting cancer and therefore off-limits, the fall was expected to bring little new material for comics.

“In cartooning, we have to wait for something to happen. People have to start screwing up,” Mr. Chapleau said.

Humorists said this week’s revelations about interim NDP Leader Nycole Turmel’s recent affiliation with the separatist Bloc and Québec Solidaire, as well as her own federalist party, offered much-needed comic relief.

“The fact that Nycole Turmel seemed to have been collecting membership cards, that was pretty hilarious,” said Stéphane Laporte, a prolific writer involved in a variety of projects, including working with renowned impressionist André-Philippe Gagnon.

In his Friday cartoon, Mr. Chapleau portrayed Ms. Turmel behind the podium of the Leader of the Official Opposition with, at the bottom, logos for the NDP, the Bloc Québécois, Québec Solidaire, Costco, the Canadian Automobile Association and Air Miles.

“I also have my senior’s card,” the 68-year-old interim NDP Leader says in the cartoon.

Mr. Laporte,who writes a daily one-liner for the front page of La Presse,

said he has had fun joking about the Bloc’s demise, but added that he

has confidence in the NDP’s comic potential.

“This new partnership between the NDP and the people of Quebec, this new cohabitation, should provide material for a long time to come,” he said.

Mr. Petit said it’s still easier to joke about a tunnel collapse in Montreal than the “orange wave” that swept Quebec last spring. Still, he said, Quebeckers will eventually come up with a clear sense of what happened in the province in the last election, and humour will creep back into the world of federal politics.

“To do political humour, there needs to be a common understanding of events out there,” Mr. Petit said.

The most popular radio show on the French-language equivalent of CBC Radio One, airing on Saturday mornings, is an hour-long series of skits and impressions called À la semaine prochaine. Philippe Laguë, the show’s creator and host, said he is saddened by the loss of a character like Mr. Duceppe, but upbeat at the challenge.

“For new characters to come to life, others have to die,” he said.

Mr. Laguë said he started analyzing Ms. Turmel as soon as she was appointed as Mr. Layton’s interim replacement, and that after this week’s events, he can’t wait for his season to start next month.

“We’re looking at Ms. Turmel to see how we’ll approach her. The trick now is to find a running gag,” Mr. Laguë said. “We’re especially looking forward to when the House of Commons will come back [on Sept. 19]. It’s going to be crunchy.”

Political punchlines

Recent one liners from Stéphane Laporte, published in a vignette on the front page of Montreal daily La Presse

“Who would have thought that one day, there would be more members of the New Kids on the Block than Bloc Québécois MPs?”

“What’s the similarity between the heat wave and the orange wave? They both make Gilles sweat.”

“Temporary leader of the Liberal Party – now that’s a redundancy.”

Standup comic Daniel Lemire at the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal

“The new NDP MPs really didn’t expect to be elected. In fact, it’s the first time that the winners of an election asked for a recount.”

Longtime Spec cartoonist Blaine dead at 74

Blaine/The Hamilton...

One of The Spectator’s most colourful and well-known personalities of recent decades has died.

Blaine, who was the newspaper’s editorial cartoonist for 30 years until his retirement in 1993, had been in poor health in recent years after heart surgery and a stroke and was living at Macassa Lodge. He died at Juravinski Hospital Sunday evening.

He was born in Glace Bay, N.S., with the name Blaine MacDonald. But as he gained profile in the world of cartooning, adopting a style that was strongly influenced by the great Toronto Star cartoonist Duncan Macpherson, he legally changed his name to Blaine.

Blaine was anything but bland. He had a black belt in karate, played guitar and sang, liked wearing cowboy boots and jewellery and was remembered for driving motorcycles and a Corvette Stingray monogrammed with a drawing of a butterfly on the hood.

The story goes that he once picked up an injured butterfly by the side of the road, nursed it back to health, and then used the experience of releasing it for inspiration to buy lottery tickets. He matched numbers to the letters of the song Butterflies are Free (B=2, U=21 etc.) and won $15,443 in Lottario.

But that wasn’t the only thing he won during his life. For his editorial cartooning, Blaine received National Newspaper Awards, a Reuben Award and a Salon of Cartoons Grand Prize. Blaine created a national profile for himself and the paper through the syndication of his work.
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Roy Carless, a local cartoonist who died in 2009, once described Blaine as “probably the most brilliant caricaturist that I ever met. A lot of artists were jealous of him.”

Other Blaine admirers included Pierre Trudeau, who wrote to Blaine in May 1969, saying: “I am not sure whether it is more foolhardy for a politician to praise the work of a cartoonist, or to refuse to do so — particularly when the cartoonist holds a black belt in karate. In any case, I freely admit to enjoying your drawings, both the lifelike pencil portraits and the imaginative political caricatures. Keep that pencil sharpened. My fellow politicians and I will keep you well supplied with material.”

But actually it was Blaine who owed thanks to the former prime minister. Trudeau was one of the cartoonist’s favourite subjects and Blaine won a National Newspaper Award by depicting him putting his middle finger into a light socket with one hand and holding an illuminated light bulb with the other. The caption: Finger Power.

Blaine’s caricatures of Trudeau have a special meaning to The Spec’s current editorial cartoonist, Graeme MacKay. Years ago, as a Grade 10 student with a sketchbook tucked under his arm, MacKay went into The Spec’s newsroom to meet Blaine.

MacKay says he remembers the five-minute meeting with his hero in such detail that he can still play it like a short movie inside his head. It ends with Blaine grabbing a blue pencil and a piece of paper, and in a matter of seconds drawing a cartoon of Trudeau.

“I thought, ‘This guy is incredible,’” MacKay says. “I still have the drawing.”

Blaine’s wife, Ildiko Horvath, said Blaine was “a very hard worker. Sometimes he would get an idea and draw it and later on think of something else. He’d tear it up and start again and he would come home at 10 o’clock or 11 o’clock when he was finally finished.”

Former MP and cabinet minister Sheila Copps said: “He was an unbelievably talented artist, and a great motorcyclist. He gave me my first ride on a bike, home from my summer job at The Spec. His cartoons really captured the essence of the moment. Several of his cartoons about my time in politics are framed prized possessions.”

Former Mayor Bob Morrow said: “He had a following that would turn to see what he had drawn in the paper before turning to anything else. He was a very nice fellow and a great depicter of the events of the day.”

Jack MacDonald, who died in 2010, used to say he treasured the political cartoons that Blaine drew of him during his time as mayor. His favourite was published after an election win and pictured the new mayor crawling into bed with a big ceremonial chain around his neck and his wife, Jessie, remarking, “You can’t wear that thing to bed.”

MacDonald — who wrote a regular column for The Spec in the 1990s, working out of the same editorial page office as Blaine — once told a reporter: “If you knew him, you knew he was a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. If you crossed him, he would be very upset about it. But there was no malice in him. There was humour.”

MacKay says Blaine had a different sense of humour than political cartoonists today.

“His cartoons weren’t nasty,” he says. “He used more of a whimsical approach. It was kind of a Rich Little kind of humour compared to the more cutting, crass things you see on late-night television.”

Horvath said recent years had been difficult for Blaine. He couldn’t speak and suffered from partial paralysis. He had been admitted to the Juravinski Hospital because he was having trouble breathing. He died at about 8 p.m. after watching part of the Super Bowl on television.

“You know how some people can predict things? He always used to say that he wanted to live to 74,” she said. “And he did.”

As well as Horvath, Blaine is survived by a daughter, Tana, and son, Kirk. Visitation will take place Thursday from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. at Bay Gardens Funeral Home, 1010 Botanical Dr., Burlington. The funeral will be held there at 11 a.m. Friday.

mmcneil@thespec.com

1. Le thème du 12e Concours: Le pouvoir au peuple : les citoyens et les médias sociaux.
On se souviendra de l’année 2011 comme de celle où les médias sociaux – notamment grâce aux téléphones intelligents, à Twitter et à Facebook – ont enflammé la lutte pour la démocratie partout sur la planète. Les images de rage en Tunisie après qu’un jeune vendeur de fruits se soit immolé par le feu pour protester contre les actions policières, de brutalité policière sur la place Tahrir en Égypte et du cadavre du dictateur Mouammar Kadhafi se sont répandues en quelques minutes sur le Web. Les « messages textes » ont entraîné une mobilisation éclair lors des émeutes à Londres, à Madrid et à Athènes. Enfin, Internet a permis d’alimenter le mouvement Occupons Wall Street ainsi que les protestations contre la fraude électorale en Russie. Quelle influence ont les médias sociaux sur notre monde?

2. Prix : trois prix seront attribués : un premier prix de 1 500 $ accompagné d’un certificat de la Commission canadienne pour l’UNESCO, un deuxième prix de 750 $ et un troisième prix de
500 $. Toutes ces sommes sont en devises canadiennes. Dix dessins additionnels recevront un Prix d’excellence. Malheureusement, aucune somme d'argent n’accompagne ces derniers.

3. Chaque dessinateur ne peut soumettre qu’un seul dessin. Il peut être en couleur ou en noir et blanc, mais il ne doit pas avoir déjà gagné de prix.

4. La dimension du dessin ne devrait pas dépasser le format A4; 21 par 29.2 cm; ou 8.5 par 11 pouces.

5. Le nom, l’adresse, le numéro de téléphone et une courte biographie du participant doivent accompagner la soumission.

6. Le Comité canadien de la liberté de la presse mondiale se réserve le droit d’utiliser les dessins soumis pour faire la promotion du Concours international de dessin éditorial du Comité canadien de la liberté de la presse mondiale.

7. Les noms des lauréats du concours seront annoncés lors du déjeuner de la Journée mondiale de la liberté de la presse qui aura lieu au Centre national des arts à Ottawa le jeudi 3 mai 2012. Les récipiendaires seront avisés par courriel. Les noms des lauréats de même que leurs dessins seront affichés sur le site web du CCLPM : http://www.ccwpf-cclpm.ca/

8. Une exposition des dessins gagnants aura lieu lors du déjeuner.

Les dessins doivent nous parvenir avant 17:00 le vendredi 30 mars 2012.
Soumettre par courriel à : info@ccwpf-cclpm.ca
Les dessins devraient être en format jpeg et ne pas dépasser 300 ppp

Longtime Spec cartoonist Blaine dead at 74

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