When Egerton Norman shot himself in a Cairo hotel room, James Reidford responded in his
usual manner. He pulled out his pencil and started to draw.
What he came up with was a picture of the Statue of Liberty with her head drooping, the
flaming torch hanging limply by her side. It would come to be one of Mr. Reidford's most
famous political cartoons, entitled, Egerton Herbert Norman (1909-1957).
The next day it ran on the editorial pages of The Globe and Mail and enraged lovers of the
United States everywhere. The day after, it elicited a wave of hate mail from readers who
accused Mr. Reidford of virulent anti-Americanism and just as virulent pro-socialism.
The cartoon depicted the U.S.'s role in prompting the Canadian ambassador's suicide. It was
the era of McCarthyism, and Mr. Norman, who was Canada’s ambassador to Egypt at the
time, was one of its victims. He killed himself after a U.S. Senate committee revived old
charges of Communist associations.
Back in his Globe office in Toronto, Mr. Reidford decided he couldn't let the moment pass
without comment. It was his style to highlight important events in sometimes humorous,
sometimes whimsical ways, but, also, to make a meaningful statement without overdoing it.
And that's just what the Norman cartoon did for those who saw it, including the National
Newspaper Association, which awarded Mr. Reidford a National Newspaper Award for the
image, the most coveted of awards in Canadian journalism.
The man who would come to be known as one of the best political cartoonists of his era died
July 31. He was four weeks shy of his 90th birthday.
In his lifetime, Mr. Reidford won three NNA awards. Each time, he gained praise for the clear
way he communicated complex political issues in a simple language everyone could
understand—a picture.
"As our readers know, [Mr. Reidford's work] ranges from the pleasantly amusing to the
stirringly dramatic," The Globe wrote in a profile of its star cartoonist. "[He] has a vigorous
personal belief in liberty and justice, and when it guides his pencil, the results are in the
best traditions of North America’s free press."
During his career at The Globe and Mail (from 1953 to 1970), and, previously at The Montreal
Star, Mr. Reidford estimated he had drawn more than 5,000 political cartoons. Some of them
made people laugh, some got people annoyed. Others did both at the same time.
One famous drawing in the late sixties made him a hero to the federal Opposition and a
villain to the ruling Liberal government. Mr. Reidford had drawn a picture of the Peace Tower
at the House of Commons with a guillotine poised inside, ready to drop.
That drawing was inspired by a government move to Invoke closure on parliamentary debate
over a bill on natural-gas pipelines. At the time, Liberals were so enraged by the cartoon that
MP Norman Schneider stood up in the House among much applause from his colleagues, and
lambasted the artist. "Is nothing sacred to cartoonist Reidford in expressing his dislike of
everything pertaining to this duly elected Government of Canada? » he asked.
The remark elicited the Opposition's response of, "Perhaps Mr. Speaker, it might have been
well if the honourable member who has just spoken added, 'Is nothing sacred to this
government?"
It was a type of reaction that Mr. Reidford enjoyed. He had gotten into political cartooning
almost by accident, and with some reluctance, in the hopes of deriving a sense of meaning
from his artwork.
Born in Scotland, Mr. Reidford came to Canada when he was only six months old. He grew up
dreaming of being an architect. But when he graduated from the Ontario College of Arts in
the 1930s, there was little work for architects since it was the Depression and the housing
and building industries were not doing so well.
He entered commercial cartooning to make a living by drawing advertisements, and even
worked as an animator with the Walt Disney company for two years in Hollywood. But Mr.
Reidford found that the work lacked meaning.
"The work was interesting and proved to be good experience. But it somewhat lacked
purpose. I fin ally made up my mind to become a political cartoonist," he said in an interview
in the sixties.
Though he became widely respected in his field, Mr. Reidford was never known as a hard-
nosed cartoonist. Instead, he usually pursued a sort of soft humour in his political satire.
"He managed to prick bubbles, but his cartoons were often done in a whimsical fashion. They
didn't beat you over the head," said former colleague Michael Moore, who worked briefly in
the same newsroom as Mr. Reidford. Mr. Moore recalls Mr. Reidford's cartoons as striking a
fine balance between hard-hitting stuff and more subtle, softer humour.
It was a style the cartoonist developed over years. In most of his cartoons, Mr. Reidford
used few words, and not so much caricatures of people but rather symbols of events or
things. Mr. Reidford himself once commented on his style in a profile done after he won his
third NNA award.
He lamented that images such as Uncle Sam which represents the United States, and the
donkey and elephant, which represent Democrats and Republicans, were overused in
political cartoons.
Instead, he said he took pride in finding fresh ways to make fun of the same old people.
"Once you feel you've arrived, you're headed for trouble," he said.
Mr. Reidford continued to come up with original, award-winning material late into his career.
In 1967, he won an international award for humour with his depiction of the U.S. space
program. He drew an American spaceship landing on another planet — and promptly
stepping on the toes of one of the inhabitants.
It was this kind of humour that warmed the hearts of many fans, including his long-time friend
Gerald Prodrick of Oakville, Ont. After meeting Mr. Reidford at a costume party where
everyone was dressed in Mexican Revolution gear, Mr. Prodrick became one of Mr.
Reidford's closest friends. "He came in wearing just this marvellous costume," he recalled.
Mr. Prodrick is putting together an illustrated index of all of his friend's cartoons so that they
will not be lost to future generations. He hopes it will be done by the end of this year, though
he is saddened that Mr. Reidford will not see the finished product.
"I think Jim was looking forward to it," Mr. Prodrick said, adding that the index will be a way
to immortalise the man he admired so much.
Mr. Reidford was predeceased by his two eldest sons, Philip and Jimie. He is survived by
his wife and his son David.
usual manner. He pulled out his pencil and started to draw.
What he came up with was a picture of the Statue of Liberty with her head drooping, the
flaming torch hanging limply by her side. It would come to be one of Mr. Reidford's most
famous political cartoons, entitled, Egerton Herbert Norman (1909-1957).
The next day it ran on the editorial pages of The Globe and Mail and enraged lovers of the
United States everywhere. The day after, it elicited a wave of hate mail from readers who
accused Mr. Reidford of virulent anti-Americanism and just as virulent pro-socialism.
The cartoon depicted the U.S.'s role in prompting the Canadian ambassador's suicide. It was
the era of McCarthyism, and Mr. Norman, who was Canada’s ambassador to Egypt at the
time, was one of its victims. He killed himself after a U.S. Senate committee revived old
charges of Communist associations.
Back in his Globe office in Toronto, Mr. Reidford decided he couldn't let the moment pass
without comment. It was his style to highlight important events in sometimes humorous,
sometimes whimsical ways, but, also, to make a meaningful statement without overdoing it.
And that's just what the Norman cartoon did for those who saw it, including the National
Newspaper Association, which awarded Mr. Reidford a National Newspaper Award for the
image, the most coveted of awards in Canadian journalism.
The man who would come to be known as one of the best political cartoonists of his era died
July 31. He was four weeks shy of his 90th birthday.
In his lifetime, Mr. Reidford won three NNA awards. Each time, he gained praise for the clear
way he communicated complex political issues in a simple language everyone could
understand—a picture.
"As our readers know, [Mr. Reidford's work] ranges from the pleasantly amusing to the
stirringly dramatic," The Globe wrote in a profile of its star cartoonist. "[He] has a vigorous
personal belief in liberty and justice, and when it guides his pencil, the results are in the
best traditions of North America’s free press."
During his career at The Globe and Mail (from 1953 to 1970), and, previously at The Montreal
Star, Mr. Reidford estimated he had drawn more than 5,000 political cartoons. Some of them
made people laugh, some got people annoyed. Others did both at the same time.
One famous drawing in the late sixties made him a hero to the federal Opposition and a
villain to the ruling Liberal government. Mr. Reidford had drawn a picture of the Peace Tower
at the House of Commons with a guillotine poised inside, ready to drop.
That drawing was inspired by a government move to Invoke closure on parliamentary debate
over a bill on natural-gas pipelines. At the time, Liberals were so enraged by the cartoon that
MP Norman Schneider stood up in the House among much applause from his colleagues, and
lambasted the artist. "Is nothing sacred to cartoonist Reidford in expressing his dislike of
everything pertaining to this duly elected Government of Canada? » he asked.
The remark elicited the Opposition's response of, "Perhaps Mr. Speaker, it might have been
well if the honourable member who has just spoken added, 'Is nothing sacred to this
government?"
It was a type of reaction that Mr. Reidford enjoyed. He had gotten into political cartooning
almost by accident, and with some reluctance, in the hopes of deriving a sense of meaning
from his artwork.
Born in Scotland, Mr. Reidford came to Canada when he was only six months old. He grew up
dreaming of being an architect. But when he graduated from the Ontario College of Arts in
the 1930s, there was little work for architects since it was the Depression and the housing
and building industries were not doing so well.
He entered commercial cartooning to make a living by drawing advertisements, and even
worked as an animator with the Walt Disney company for two years in Hollywood. But Mr.
Reidford found that the work lacked meaning.
"The work was interesting and proved to be good experience. But it somewhat lacked
purpose. I fin ally made up my mind to become a political cartoonist," he said in an interview
in the sixties.
Though he became widely respected in his field, Mr. Reidford was never known as a hard-
nosed cartoonist. Instead, he usually pursued a sort of soft humour in his political satire.
"He managed to prick bubbles, but his cartoons were often done in a whimsical fashion. They
didn't beat you over the head," said former colleague Michael Moore, who worked briefly in
the same newsroom as Mr. Reidford. Mr. Moore recalls Mr. Reidford's cartoons as striking a
fine balance between hard-hitting stuff and more subtle, softer humour.
It was a style the cartoonist developed over years. In most of his cartoons, Mr. Reidford
used few words, and not so much caricatures of people but rather symbols of events or
things. Mr. Reidford himself once commented on his style in a profile done after he won his
third NNA award.
He lamented that images such as Uncle Sam which represents the United States, and the
donkey and elephant, which represent Democrats and Republicans, were overused in
political cartoons.
Instead, he said he took pride in finding fresh ways to make fun of the same old people.
"Once you feel you've arrived, you're headed for trouble," he said.
Mr. Reidford continued to come up with original, award-winning material late into his career.
In 1967, he won an international award for humour with his depiction of the U.S. space
program. He drew an American spaceship landing on another planet — and promptly
stepping on the toes of one of the inhabitants.
It was this kind of humour that warmed the hearts of many fans, including his long-time friend
Gerald Prodrick of Oakville, Ont. After meeting Mr. Reidford at a costume party where
everyone was dressed in Mexican Revolution gear, Mr. Prodrick became one of Mr.
Reidford's closest friends. "He came in wearing just this marvellous costume," he recalled.
Mr. Prodrick is putting together an illustrated index of all of his friend's cartoons so that they
will not be lost to future generations. He hopes it will be done by the end of this year, though
he is saddened that Mr. Reidford will not see the finished product.
"I think Jim was looking forward to it," Mr. Prodrick said, adding that the index will be a way
to immortalise the man he admired so much.
Mr. Reidford was predeceased by his two eldest sons, Philip and Jimie. He is survived by
his wife and his son David.
| JAMES REIDFORD: 1911-2001 Three-Time Winner of the NNA BY JOSIPA PETRUNIC, The Globe and Mail, September 3, 2001 |
| REMEMBERING JAMES REIDFORD by Norman Webster |
Jim Reidford died this summer. He was 89, one of the country's premier cartoonists in his
day and for a while, in another age, a next-office neighbour of mine at the Toronto Globe
and Mail. I liked him a lot.
After reading his obit in the Globe, I went to a downstairs wall in our house and looked over
his work. I have a small selection of it framed and hanging there—cartoons of Dief and
Pearson and Tommy Douglas, Paul Martin (Sr.), Daniel Johnson (Sr.) and the awesome
Charles de Gaulle.
He drew them all with his trademark pipestem legs and long noses. De Gaulle's was as huge
as the man's character and vanity combined.
I got these original drawings one day when long after Reidford had retired, a successor was
cleaning out the cartoonist's den and throwing these old boards out wholesale. I grabbed a
few from the pile.
One that I especially like shows how he worked. It depicts Ontario Premier John Robarts as
a bit of a roué, with black hat, cane and twirly moustaches, putting a move on the sweet,
innocent Quebec of the 1960s. Reidford tries different caption lines at the bottom of the
drawing.
"You've got me all wrong, ma chérie/ma'moiselle," Robarts says, before Jim crosses it out.
"I'm very much misunderstood, ma chérie," he tries; also scored out.
He finally settles on "Isn't there some place you'd rather be, ma chérie?" Perfect.
WORKED FOR WALT
Reidford had an interesting history. During the Depression, he worked for a time for Walt
Disney in Hollywood. He was an "in-betweener" for Disney films, someone who did the
drawings between the moment when Mickey would launch a punch and when it landed on
someone’s jaw.
It was not deeply fulfilling work. There was also the proprietor. To emphasize that he was
just one of the boys, he insisted on being called “Walt�- and fired you if you didn't. Jim
came back to Canada.
An important point to be made here is that Reidford was not one of the last of the old-time
cartoonists, with the implication that those good old days are gone forever. On the contrary;
he was one in a continuum of remarkable artists who have made, and continue to make,
Canadian cartooning as good as any in the world. Maybe better. This is, a subjective
judgment, but it is based on careful study of English-speaking countries and some years of
foreign corresponding in others.
Canadian greats range from Reidford and the Toronto Star’s Duncan MacPherson,
nemesis of John Diefenbaker (and hard liver who once, refused admission to an exclusive
restaurant because he was wearing neither shirt nor tie, took a marker and drew a tie on his
bare chest), through Peterson in Vancouver. Serge Chapleau at La Presse and three other
stars I have worked with myself—Ed Franklin and Brian Gable at the Globe and Aislin (Terry
Mosher) here at The Gazette.
Cartoonists work in different ways. Reidford saw his job as illustrating the editorial stand of
the newspaper He would attend the editorial board meeting, sketching madly throughout,
then give the editor a choice of drawings and captions.
INDEPENDENT AGENT
Franklin worked semi independently, coming in with a selection of roughed out ideas for the
editor's final choice. Aislin sees himself as a completely independent agent, similar to a
columnist; he stays out of the editor's way until the moment he arrives with a completed,
often outrageous cartoon that you can take or leave. His editors tend to grow old before
their time.
I remember rejecting only one Aislin cartoon during my time as editor. It was the opening
day of the Oka crisis, and he produced a cartoon showing the police acting like hilarious
clowns in their raid against the Indians.
The problem was that an officer had been killed in the raid, and it seemed like the worst
taste in the world to be hyucking and satirising when a young man had died. So I said no.
It probably was a bad decision. Cartooning has to have an edge if it is to be effective. Great
cartooning has to do more than just give people a daily chuckle. It has to push, jolt, disturb
and even outrage. Sometimes it goes too far, and the editor and artist take the brickbats.
It's not too big a price for the best cartooning in the world.
Norman Webster is a former editor of The Gazette.
day and for a while, in another age, a next-office neighbour of mine at the Toronto Globe
and Mail. I liked him a lot.
After reading his obit in the Globe, I went to a downstairs wall in our house and looked over
his work. I have a small selection of it framed and hanging there—cartoons of Dief and
Pearson and Tommy Douglas, Paul Martin (Sr.), Daniel Johnson (Sr.) and the awesome
Charles de Gaulle.
He drew them all with his trademark pipestem legs and long noses. De Gaulle's was as huge
as the man's character and vanity combined.
I got these original drawings one day when long after Reidford had retired, a successor was
cleaning out the cartoonist's den and throwing these old boards out wholesale. I grabbed a
few from the pile.
One that I especially like shows how he worked. It depicts Ontario Premier John Robarts as
a bit of a roué, with black hat, cane and twirly moustaches, putting a move on the sweet,
innocent Quebec of the 1960s. Reidford tries different caption lines at the bottom of the
drawing.
"You've got me all wrong, ma chérie/ma'moiselle," Robarts says, before Jim crosses it out.
"I'm very much misunderstood, ma chérie," he tries; also scored out.
He finally settles on "Isn't there some place you'd rather be, ma chérie?" Perfect.
WORKED FOR WALT
Reidford had an interesting history. During the Depression, he worked for a time for Walt
Disney in Hollywood. He was an "in-betweener" for Disney films, someone who did the
drawings between the moment when Mickey would launch a punch and when it landed on
someone’s jaw.
It was not deeply fulfilling work. There was also the proprietor. To emphasize that he was
just one of the boys, he insisted on being called “Walt�- and fired you if you didn't. Jim
came back to Canada.
An important point to be made here is that Reidford was not one of the last of the old-time
cartoonists, with the implication that those good old days are gone forever. On the contrary;
he was one in a continuum of remarkable artists who have made, and continue to make,
Canadian cartooning as good as any in the world. Maybe better. This is, a subjective
judgment, but it is based on careful study of English-speaking countries and some years of
foreign corresponding in others.
Canadian greats range from Reidford and the Toronto Star’s Duncan MacPherson,
nemesis of John Diefenbaker (and hard liver who once, refused admission to an exclusive
restaurant because he was wearing neither shirt nor tie, took a marker and drew a tie on his
bare chest), through Peterson in Vancouver. Serge Chapleau at La Presse and three other
stars I have worked with myself—Ed Franklin and Brian Gable at the Globe and Aislin (Terry
Mosher) here at The Gazette.
Cartoonists work in different ways. Reidford saw his job as illustrating the editorial stand of
the newspaper He would attend the editorial board meeting, sketching madly throughout,
then give the editor a choice of drawings and captions.
INDEPENDENT AGENT
Franklin worked semi independently, coming in with a selection of roughed out ideas for the
editor's final choice. Aislin sees himself as a completely independent agent, similar to a
columnist; he stays out of the editor's way until the moment he arrives with a completed,
often outrageous cartoon that you can take or leave. His editors tend to grow old before
their time.
I remember rejecting only one Aislin cartoon during my time as editor. It was the opening
day of the Oka crisis, and he produced a cartoon showing the police acting like hilarious
clowns in their raid against the Indians.
The problem was that an officer had been killed in the raid, and it seemed like the worst
taste in the world to be hyucking and satirising when a young man had died. So I said no.
It probably was a bad decision. Cartooning has to have an edge if it is to be effective. Great
cartooning has to do more than just give people a daily chuckle. It has to push, jolt, disturb
and even outrage. Sometimes it goes too far, and the editor and artist take the brickbats.
It's not too big a price for the best cartooning in the world.
Norman Webster is a former editor of The Gazette.