I tuned into the final period of yesterday's game 6 of the NHL playoffs. My wife and I couldn't decide which challenge was more exciting, the Edmonton Oilers bringing the Stanley Cup back to Canada, or the guy from Holmes on Homes doing a proper installation of a sauna on HGTV. We flicked the channel back and forth for a half hour watching each breathtaking outcome. Thank goodness we could celebrate the satisfaction of a job well done by the guy in the overalls.

Yesterday was one of those days when a cartoonist considers drawing on something that everyone will be talking about the following morning. I weighed the merits of cartooning on the Stanley Cup outcome, or the sentencing of Adscam fraudster Chuck Guite. Do I draw a generic hockey cartoon to accompany the mood of newspaper readers post game, or do I do something on the sentencing of someone involved in a scandal that has been talked to death?

I chose the boring subject. I think it represented the final chapter of a saga that's been going on for close to 3 years. While the names Chuck Guite and Carolina Hurricanes will quickly fade from our collective memories, the impact of the Sponsorship scandal will be with Canada forever. It has set the course for greater accountability in Ottawa, and it has tarnished the image of the Liberal Party at the expense of improving the fortunes of the Conservative party. Students of future history classes will have the Sponsorship Scandal added to their course outline of other notable Canadian low points, including: The Pacific Scandal of 1872, the 1925 King-Byng Affair, and the Gerda Munsinger scandal during the Diefenbaker years, to name a few.

Coming soon, "What to draw, Part II: The summer doldrums".