Norris/LaPalme: The Canadian Museum of Caricature

John Wright is Documents Librarian at Queen’s University.

Cater-corner to the National Gallery of Canada is the best museum in
Ottawa—the Canadian Museum of Caricature. They have free admission;
their exhibitions, selected from the National Archives’ large
collection of political cartoons, are the most enjoyable history lessons
a person could want. Norris is a catalogue from one of these
exhibitions.

This catalogue fulfills the traditional role. It has brief analytical
essays—by Sylvie Gervais and Susan North—followed by annotated
reproductions from the exhibition. There are some one hundred political
cartoons in the volume, selections from the work of Len Norris and
Robert LaPalme. The catalogue is published in a tкte-bкche format.

Norris is a B.C. cartoonist whose style shows the distinctive influence
of Great Britain’s Giles. This is appropriate given that Norris was
born in England and worked for the Vancouver Sun from 1950 to 1989. His
work focuses on the politics of British Columbia (surely God’s gift to
cartoonists) and the Anglicisms of its inhabitants.

LaPalme is a caricaturist who worked in the Quebec media from the 1930s
on. This collection highlights his skill at caricaturing Canada’s
political figures. The main focus here is the national stage, rather
than Quebec.

And this points out the real advantage of the tкte-bкche. By binding
two together, the Museum introduces readers to works from the other side
of the cultural/linguistic divide. Norris’s and LaPalme’s careers
paralleled each other quite closely: both started working in the 1930s;
both drew caricatures in military outlets during the war; both have
covered the same postwar era. Yet it is unlikely that the reader of one
in the Vancouver Sun would have had much opportunity to compare his
contemporary in Le Devoir or Le Droit (and vice versa).

The Museum is to be congratulated for bringing us our history through
political cartoons, for bringing us Norris and LaPalme, and especially
for presenting them together.