Glenbow exhibit highlights political cartoons
Cartoonists document our history through skewed lens of satire
Political cartoonist Vance Rodewalt can only remember ruffling the feathers of Ralph Klein once.
Unsurprisingly, the colourful former Alberta premier was the subject of Rodewalt’s pen for hundreds of political cartoons over the years. But he knew what the longtime Calgary Herald political cartoonist did for a living so didn’t make a fuss, perhaps because Rodewalt never seemed particularly hard on him. Rodewalt depicted him as King Ralph, the smug and generously proportioned bozo; oblivious to environmental issues and the plight of the homeless and often lording over piles of money in the lazy and regal manner befitting a province that has lucked into oil money.
But, surprisingly, it wasn’t a cartoon that had Klein “slightly taken aback.”
At a fundraiser in the 1990s — held to battle homelessness of all things — they both found themselves at the same table. Rodewalt was asked to introduce someone to the Premier, who was sitting with his wife Colleen.
“I introduced Ralph as my favourite cartoon character,” says Rodewalt, who now lives Invermere, B.C. “That annoyed Colleen quite a bit. Because she always was very protective of Ralph’s image and wanted him to be seen less as a buffoon and more as a statesman.”
Politicians being buffoons, of course, is the bread and butter of the political cartoonist. Thousands of Rodewalt’s newspaper offerings are part of the Glenbow Museum’s archives in downtown Calgary. On Saturday, the Glenbow will open Political Satire in Alberta, an exhibition of political cartoons from Wild Rose Country artists that highlight our history through the skewed lens of satire.
“It’s funny how distinct the personalities can be,” Rodewalt says. “A creative person would have to sit down a long time to come up with characters like these guys turned out to be. They invented themselves. Who could invent Ralph?”
Rodewalt, who worked at the Herald from 1983 until 2008, has more than a dozen cartoons on display at the exhibit, alongside those by: his predecessor Tom Innes; Stuart Cameron (a Herald cartoonist from the 1930s and 40s); Edward G. Hansell (who worked for the Calgary Daily Tele- gram in the early 20th century); and, Everett Soop, best known for his scathing cartoons that ran in the Kainai News throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.
The exhibit will even include a few illustrations circa the early 1900s from Alberta’s original feather-ruffler, Bob Edwards.
Glenbow’s archives offered a bounty of political cartoons, with a mind-boggling 6,000 to choose from. Paring them down to 60 was “an excruciating process,” says curator Aimee Benoit. The exhibit still manages to cover 100 years of Alberta’s wild political history, with special focus on topics such as western alienation, aboriginal rights and the environment.
“I started going through all the cartoons and tried to keep an eye out for some of the broad themes that started to emerge and the things that stood out as important topics and issues in Alberta,” says Benoit. “I think what is really interesting and unique about these cartoons is that even if they are portraying events and affairs that are happening around the world or at a national scale, they really give a local flavour to those events.”
But when focusing on domestic politics, there is a cyclical nature to the things that concerned Albertans and Alberta newspapers. Western alienation can be found prominently the work of Innes, Rodewalt and even Edwards, who published an illustration entitled “Albertans ... slaves” in an 1905 edition of the Calgary Eye Opener.
“The cartoons from the late ’80s could have almost have been drawn last year,” says Benoit. “The are some themes around oil revenues that are very specifically Albertan. There’s one actually showing Ottawa with its hands on Alberta’s cookie jar. So there’s that idea that we have to protect our oil royalties.”
The exhibit also highlights another reality about the form itself. While certainly not extinct, the number of political cartoonists has been waning for years, weakening what has for centuries been a reliable outlet for often irreverent satire in daily newspapers.
“In the golden era, any newspaper that considered itself anything at all would have its own cartoonist,” says Rodewalt, who still contributes to the Herald as a freelancer. “If they were larger, like the Montreal Star or Toronto Star or Telegram or Vancouver Sun, they might have two. Those days are gone.”
From Our Collection: Political Satire in Alberta runs until Sept. 27 at the Glenbow Museum.