Portfoolio 13: The Year's Best Canadian Editorial Cartoons

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

The first-rate offerings in the latest edition of Portfoolio are proof
that 13 is not always an unlucky number. Once again, Canada’s
editorial cartoonists give us some great belly laughs.

The cartoons were chosen by Guy Badeaux, the editorial cartoonist the
Le Droit in Ottawa. Jay Stone, the movie critic for the Ottawa Citizen,
supplied the text. His concise and humorous commentary helps jog the
reader’s memory on some of the more obscure issues being discussed.

Stone credits the 1997 federal election for supplying the cartoonists
with most of their prime ammunition for the year. While the election did
provide many opportunities for well-deserved broadside, 1997 was also
the year of the Brian Mulroney–Skybus debacle, the Liberal flip-flop
on the GST, Preston Manning’s makeover, the squelching of the Somalia
inquiry, the Bre–X gold scandal, Canadian politicians embracing Third
World dictators, the cloning of Dolly the sheep, and the Manitoba flood.


Besides 1997 cartoons, the volume also includes the winner and
runners-up of the 1996 National Newspaper Awards. Even the
“Unpublishables” section of cartoons is much improved over last
year’s collection: instead of gags about Lucien Bouchard’s missing
leg, this year the fainthearted can be offended by dead-politician jokes
and toilet humor. Most of the unpublishables are actually quite tame,
and the fact that these cartoons were rejected perhaps tells us more
about the newspapers’ editors than about the cartoonists or their
audience.