Former L-P cartoonist draws an honour

Just as Brian Gable’s cartoons reveal universal truths of life, the honourary degree he receives from the University of Saskatchewan at Saturday’s convocation exposes one of the great secrets of newspapering.

It is not reporters, nor photographers, nor editors nor publishers who have the toughest job at the newspaper. The most difficult daily task is done by the solitary cartoonist — if they do their job well.

Former Leader-Post cartoonist Brian Gable has always done his job well — extraordinarily well. So well, it can be said, with the empirical evidence of National Newspaper Awards (won four, nominated for many more), Gable is the best cartoonist in the land.

Born in Saskatoon, Gable was hired by the Leader-Post in 1980 and his work also subsequently appeared in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix. It was immediately evident something very good had happened. In 1986 Gable landed the prestigious National Newspaper Award (NNA) for Cartooning. As a former chair of the NNAs, I know there is no issue more annoying than the big papers, with their vast resources, dominating the annual awards. It was almost unheard of for a small or medium-sized daily to receive a NNA. From his Saskatchewan perch, Gable landed the national gold.

No matter what his popularity with readers, staring at a blank sketch pad every morning was, and is, a tough job. Finding that magic intersection of humour, public affairs, art and punch, with the use of few or no words, is not only cartooning, it’s fine art.

The late Ed Sebestyen, who distinguished himself as the StarPhoenix’s longtime cartoonist before rising through the ranks to become publisher, talked of “terror at sunrise.” There were a few brief moments every morning where the blank paper caused cold sweats at the prospect of no cartoon emerging for the next day’s paper.

Much like Gable, Sebestyen shouldn’t have worried.

Former Saskatchewan Premier Allan Blakeney later invited Sebestyen to a U of S class he was conducting on the history of medicare and the doctors’ strike of 1962. Blakeney made clear he disagreed utterly with the opinions expressed in Sebestyen’s cartoons about medicare. But Blakeney allowed there was no more compelling, interesting and human history of the issue and the times than a book of Sebestyen’s cartoons about the medicare crisis.

As much as the single dimension of an editorial cartoon has endured, another of Gable’s gifts is his willingness to innovate. Conventionally, a black-and-white medium, Gable was an early — and effective — adopter of colour in cartoons.

Earlier this year, he seized the power of technology with a brilliant convergence of cartooning and animation on the Globe and Mail’s website. He sketched his way through Venice in what amounts to a cartoonist’s version of a Much Music video. The end result, still posted on the Globe’s website under videos, clearly positions Gable as a pioneer of his art form with a platform to reach the world.

Shortly after Gable relocated to the Globe in 1987, I travelled to Toronto to meet him over lunch. Naively, I told him if things didn’t work out in the big city he was always welcome back home. That was somewhat understated: I would have traded my first born to have him join the StarPhoenix team.

With characteristic modesty, Gable thanked me and said if things didn’t work out he would take me up on the offer. He told of accepting the Globe job offer and then retreating, with his wife, to their hotel room. They wondered, with some panic, what they had done by agreeing to uproot their lives and head to the big smoke.

Well, Dr. Gable, it appears you did exactly the right thing!