Cartoonist satirizes nation

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This article was published 30/06/2017 (3030 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There might be no more distinctly Canadian way to mark the country’s 150th anniversary than to gently poke fun at the entire nation in a book of editorial cartoons.

That’s the strategy of cartoonist Michael de Adder, whose new book You Might Be From Canada If… (MacIntyre Purcell Publishing, $20) has rocketed up the non-fiction bestseller charts during the buildup towards Canada Day.

The book includes about 120 cartoons and has several digs at Canadian cultural touchstones — our annual battles with winter weather, classic Canadian television shows such as The Beachcombers and The Friendly Giant, TV commercials and alcohol-laced Canuck phrases such as two-four and 40-pounder. De Adder also includes many reverential drawings of important moments in Canadian history, such as the Oka crisis, or several honouring Canada’s soldiers’ sacrifices during the world wars.

“At first there were obvious things that make it into the book like Mr. Dressup and Terry Fox. You never got over Wayne Gretzky getting traded and things like that,” de Adder says in a telephone interview. “As you ran out of the obvious stuff, you had to delve into and write about things that weren’t so obvious and that’s when it got a little more difficult.”

De Adder got into political cartooning almost by accident, he says. He was taking an arts degree at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, with an eye at becoming a painter, when he decided to draw cartoons for the student newspaper.

“When I moved to Halifax I was painting and drawing cartoons at the same time and I decided whatever took off first I would pursue and cartooning took off first,” he says.

He gained inspiration from longtime Montreal Gazette cartoonist Terry Mosher, who writes the foreword of You Might Be From Canada If… He points to one cartoon by Mosher, who draws under the pseudonym Aislin, in particular.

“One of his cartoons really stood out for me, during the FLQ crisis,” de Adder recalls.

“I think his name was (Jean) Marchand, and he drew a picture with Marchand saying ‘We now have a list of suspects in the bombing’ and he was holding a (Montreal phone book). That cartoon in its brilliance led me to be a cartoonist (more) than any other cartoon I ever saw. It just hit at the right moment.”

De Adder started drawing cartoons for Halifax newspapers and since then has been syndicated in newspapers across North America. The cartoonist says there is a definite Canadian style of political cartooning. He believes it’s a blend of British tradition along with the ever-present effect of American culture being on our doorstep.

“There’s a certain way that American cartoonists draw and there’s a certain way that the Canadian cartoonists draw,” de Adder says. “We actually, I think, are very strong at political cartooning, because we don’t just want to have a silly cartoon, we want a hard-hitting cartoon. The Brits are good at hitting their politicians hard. We still as Canadians we want to be somewhat silly, but we hit harder than the Americans.”

He expects that one of those targets of hard-hitting cartoons will be Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whom de Adder says Canadian cartoonists are just getting used to portraying.

“When you draw a politician, it’s not just the way they look, it’s their attitude, the way they are,” the cartoonist says.

“Look at Pierre Elliott Trudeau. He was a dream for cartoonists in the ’70s, and it wasn’t just because what he did or how he looked.

“It was everything. He was flamboyant and kind of an air of an aristocrat and an intellectual and it lent to great cartoons.

“Some of the best cartoons in Canadian history were from the Trudeau years, and I think that same thing will happen in a different way with Justin. It just didn’t happen right off the bat because when a politician is as popular as Justin has been, it’s hard for cartoonists to find an angle, and I think they are now. We’ll see some great cartoons come out of this government.”

alan.small@freepress.mb.caTwitter:@AlanDSmall