Inklings II: Cartoons and Caricatures

J.L. Granatstein is a history professor at York University and the
co-author of the Dictionary of Canadian Military History and Empire to
Umpire: Canada and the World to the 1990s.

Halifax Chronicle-Herald and Mail-Star cartoonist Bruce MacKinnon is
less well-known outside the Maritimes than he deserves to be. He has won
his share of prizes, but MacKinnon’s cartoons—unlike those of his
cartoonist colleagues in the central Canadian media—have not yet
attracted a wide national audience. They should. He has a wicked eye,
the distinctive Canadian knack for skewering the great and powerful,
puncturing pomposity, and standing up for the underdog. George Bush, for
example, is a baseball pitcher (number 00, of course) pitching the world
at a bat labelled Iraq. Paul Martin, smiling cheerfully with his
“budget boots” up on his desk, has Atlantic Canada squashed on his
sole. Kim Campbell is a relief pitcher (numbered 0) with “Wild
Thing” on her uniformed back, watching a home run sail out of the
park. That splendid juxtaposition of the Blue Jays’ World Series win
and the Tories’ election slaughter would justify buying the book all
by itself, even if we did not have a number of splendid Mulroney
cartoons. The former and despised prime minister is all jaw, surmounted
only by glazed, piglike eyes. Devastating.