Well, this cartoon might have had the shortest shelf life on record. This morning the Liberals launched its Green Plan.

Oh well.

Anyway, this is the first St. Patrick's Day editorial cartoon I've ever drawn. With all the talk of green this and green that over the past 3 or 4 months I've been waiting for the arrival of this day to feature some politician dressed up as a leprechaun. This is the second time within 6 months... the last (and probably first ever leprechaun I've drawn since probably grade 4) was in this cartoon related to Toronto's Simcoe Day.

Many people think that because I've got a pretty celtic name... my middle name is Patrick, by the way, I'm one of those Celtic-philes. Especially one of those North American 'celts' who try hard to understand their heritage by scoffing at the notion of green beer and acting like they really enjoy stout beer... and not necessarily Guiness, but one of those micro brewed Irish stouts. Scottish wannabes will act like haggis is the greatest delicacy on Earth. And of course extreme Celtic-philes will listen to obscure celtic music and set aside time on Saturday mornings to watch television highlights of British and Irish soccer... I mean, football. Every few years they'll go over to the old country and wander around cemetaries looking for long lost relatives just to assure themselves that their backgrounds go beyond their large suburban garage doors in Blandville, North America.

I've been to both Scotland and Ireland on a couple of occasions. I lived in London for nearly two years in the 1990's. I was one of those Celtic-philes, and my life in the U.K. gave me enough exposure to the ways of life over there that I'm more than happy to be back here. I think it was the aftermath of downing 7 pints of Guiness in a row at that St Patrick's night party at the Irish Club in Sloane Square 14 years ago when I realized Celticmania wasn't all the 'craic' I had been lead to believe.

My grandfather, the MacKay one, emigrated to Canada from Scotland in 1885. That's 1885. He'd be 129 if he were still alive. Needless to say I'm pretty far removed from the Celtic world. So if we ever bump into each other in person don't be surprised when you don't see me in a gaelic kilt and speaking with a heavy Scottish brogue.

...And these are just the waterfront proposals. There's a whole bunch more which could be recognized in, say, a downtown proposaleum. A new city hall, a rebuilt Lister Block, a new market, a naturopathic college, a downtown casino. All types of bold headline making ideas with splashy architectual/conceptual sketches that have gone no where.

Today's cartoon is actually a revision of a cartoon I did way back in 1999:

This is not to say all new ideas for advancing innovative plans for Hamilton are stupid. I actually like Bob Bratina's idea after you get past what sort of lake smell will be wafting down-breeze from the fountain, and maybe some more pressing needs like actually doing something about the toxic goo laying in the harbour's Randle Reef. And while Councillor Bratina sounds very worldly pointing out Geneva's Jet d'eau as an example, he needn't look further than Peterborough's own Centennial Fountain. So before he and a couple other councillors venture off on a fact finding trip to Switzerland they might instead consider a day trip to Peterborough.

Yeech! Doesn't that look awful. Like a badly printed illustration from a 1950's Bible comic book. Unfortunately that's what happens when:
1) The weather people announce that a huge ice storm will be hitting your city at 3:00 in the afternoon;
2) Everyone around you at work is scurrying to get out of the office;
3) Managers are giving up to the minute reports on when the ice storm is going to hit;
4) You hear your wife, who happens to be the family chauffeur of the family's only vehicle, is picking up the kids early to go home;
5) You opt to have her pick you up for fears of having to take shelter at work for the night;
6) You email the line drawing home and finish it off using a clunky PC with an older version of Photoshop;
7) You email it back to work in as a JPEG image rather than in the EPS format that you're accustomed to.

Oh well, I guess. Here's how I intended it to look:

Today's cartoon is local, pertaining to the appointment of the retiring bishop of the local Anglican diocese. He's well known for his huge flag collection and his knowledge of badges, seals, and coats of arms. Ralph Spence is Canada's leading Vexillologist, and the Governor-General even bestowed upon him the title Heralds Extraordinary last year. Today's cartoon is a bit of a roast. I don't know the man personally but given the fact that I'm a fair-weather parishoner of the Anglican Church I can poke fun at my Anglican authority figures.

There's nothing new about drawing parodies of common logos and advertisements. The most popular thing to do these days is to satirize well known current movie logos and add a humourous political or social twist. The most recent parody I drew came when the mostly forgotten remake of that campy classic movie the Poseidon Adventure hit the theatres. With regard to ad parodies, off the top of my head I recall Osama de Toilette products, and East End Hamilton cereal.

I couldn't help but recall as I drew today's parody of Downy Fabric Softener some stickers that I vaguely remember as a kid growing up in the 70's. Until I did a Google search using keywords like 'sticker', 'ad', 'parody', and '1970's', I never even knew that the things I was recalling in the deep recesses of my childhood memories actually had a name: Wacky Packs. Here are some examples:

Yep, cheesey, gross, kinda dumb, but a nice introduction to innocent youthful rebellion against mass marketing in the 1970's. And there are hundreds of them, many of them created and drawn by an artist working for the Topps bubblegum company -- Art Spiegelman -- which quite frankly, is news to me.

From the website, wackypackages.org, there's a reprint of an article in the Oct. 1, 1973 issue of New York magazine which best describes what Wacky Packs were all about. Here's an excerpt:

What are Wacky Packages?, you may well ask. Putting it simply - too simply in fact - they are a new twist on the classic bubble gum card, that hoary ruse created to sell the uneatable to the unbearable. They are also, in a time when polls show public belief in institutions at an all-time low, seedling skepticism in its purest form. If a stick-on bubble gum card can take an old faithful cereal like Cap'n Crunch, change it into Cap'n Crud, and become the Munchkin madness of the year, maybe somebody up there better take a long look at what's turning the kiddies on - and off.

In their minor art form, Wacky Packages are revolutionary. Gone are the jocks and rock stars, the traditional card ploys. Wacky Pack puns are the Mad magazine effect leaking sideways into the under-culture. Yet when they were tried out by the Topps Chewing Gum Company six years ago, under the guidance of former manager of product development Stan Hart (a regular contributor to Mad), they went nowhere. Now the times are obviously right. Watergatian Weltschmerz is nibbling the collective unconscious, and Wacky Packages are selling rampant with their put-downs of products that kids have had thrown at them and into them daily by TV and Mom. From air-ball breakfast cereals to dishwashing detergents that make ladies beautiful, familiarity seems finally to be breeding contempt - and a generation of gripers.

Be sure to checkout the many more examples of wacky packs / vintage ad parodies on the Internet.

It all began one year ago when native protesters from the Six Nations began a demonstration to raise awareness about a land claim in the small town of Caledonia, Ontario, about a 30 minute drive south of Hamilton.

At the centre of the dispute was a 40 hectare plot of land which was to be developed into a residential subdivision. This was a fragment of a much larger chunk of land known as the 'Haldimand Tract' which was granted to the Six Nations by the British crown back in the 1700's. It is argued that the Six Nations surrendered the land back to the crown in 1841. 150 or so years later the Canadian federal government sold the land to Henco Industries Ltd., the developer intending to build houses on the property.

In June of 2006, the Province of Ontario purchased land from Henco. At present the natives continue to occupy the land.

There's a lot of stuff that happened in between now and a year ago but there you get the condensed story in a nutshell. The above cartoons illustrate some of the highlights of the Caledonia standoff, a story I wish would go away soon, but will probably keep going for years to come.