The Editorial Cartoons of Cam

John Wright is Documents Librarian at Queen’s University.

Reviewing editorial cartoons combines the difficulties of describing
visual art with the problems of explaining a joke: words won’t do; and
either you get it or you don’t. What you should get is this collection
by Cam, editorial cartoonist at the Regina Leader-Post.

Cam is a relative newcomer to one of Canada’s great traditions. From
Bengough, Julien, and Moreau in the nineteenth century through to today,
our caricaturists have been internationally admired—perhaps because
Canadian politicians, the Canadian political system, and, to be honest,
Canadians themselves provide excellent fodder for the cartoonist’s
pen. Cam certainly made the most of last year’s bumper crop: Meech,
gst, hockey, pollsters, and a host of other irritants populate this
book.

In his humor, Cam lines up with Aislin, King, Gable, and Raeside, as
well as Wright and Oliphant from the United States. Cam is a master of
juxtaposition and allusion. He can be very subtle, and he is very funny,
but he is rarely gentle. Like all good satire, Cam’s editorializations
are obviously based on a strong sense of morality. Where the subject
requires, his humor is savage and dark. On apartheid and the Tiananmen
massacres, for example, he uses pictures to an effect words cannot
match.

We look to editorial cartoonists to provide a sense of proportion to
public life. Political cartoons don’t just make us laugh: they are
true editorials. They provide commentary on current events, commentary
that places those events in the context of a society’s preoccupations
and priorities, fashions and fads. As such, they are worthy of study by
political scientists and historians. And of course, it won’t hurt any
scholars or future scholars that Cam’s commentary is wickedly
entertaining.