Halloween is a special boon to political cartoonists

Cartoonists love that scary season falls during busy time for politics

Terry Mosher’s editorial cartoons, penned under the name Aislin, have been a fixture of the Montreal Gazette for 50 years. We take a weekly look back at some memorable cartoons in this impressive and vast body of work.

Quebec’s second referendum on sovereignty was held Oct. 30, 1995. Had the Oui side been victorious, the cartoon at right of Lucien Bouchard as a witch would have appeared on the editorial page of The Gazette’s Halloween edition.

Seasonal celebrations and other annual public events make great settings for cartoons since so many of us participate in these rituals. Halloween is a special boon to cartoonists because of the colourful costumes and accessories, and because the holiday comes right in the middle of the busy fall political season, when many elections are held. Dressing electioneering politicians in scary Halloween outfits is cartoonists’ bread and butter.

In 2002, The Gazette asked me to switch from drawing in black and white to creating colour cartoons for the editorial page. As I learned how to do this properly, colour started to become an important, distinct feature of the cartoons: now I could show people blushing, stop and go lights, seasonal décor and so on. Autumn is fairly easy to depict through the changing colour of foliage, but what a revelation when I discovered that a winter cartoon’s mood could be subtly conveyed through my choice of one of the many tints and shades of snow!

Colour can also be a strongly identifying factor when portraying individuals. For example, on last Friday’s editorial page, newcomer Nicole Fisher offered us an immediately recognizable Donald Trump as one orange pumpkin in a pile. (We will be introducing Nicole to you in more depth at a later date.)