Daryl Cagle: Hi, I'm Daryl Cagle and this is the CagleCast where we're all about
political cartoons and today we have three brilliant Canadian cartoonists.
Gentlemen, thank you for joining me.
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: Thanks for having us.
Good to see you, Daryl.
Daryl Cagle: Terry, this is your cartoon.
Terry Mosher is also known as Aislin.
He comes from Quebec and draws for the Montreal Gazette and he's won a
bunch of awards, including Canada's National Newspaper Award twice.
So, you've got Canada building a wall that Trump will eventually pay for.
That's funny.
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: Well, there's a double entendre here because he wouldn't
pay for it now, but eventually, I mean, this is a very complicated issue,
the business of issuing tariffs and, uh, there are many opinions about it.
But the bottom line, Daryl, is that Canadians are truly, really pissed off.
With, uh, not Americans so much.
We love you all.
but Donald Trump and these, things that he's trying to pull off.
So using of course, exaggeration and hyperbole, I'm suggesting here that a
beaver's building a wall between the two of us, uh, and that eventually.
this is going to backfire on Trump for the whole business of tariffs and
therefore he will be paying for the wall eventually That's the suggestion.
This is actually in today's paper.
So you're quite right.
You're very up to date.
Daryl Cagle: Here's another one of yours
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: Yeah, that was fun.
This really exploded.
I took the Canadian flag and played with it This was fun because it
only took me about 15 minutes to do
So just a question of stylizing a fist I heard from a lot of American readers
saying, you're using a communist fist here I said Screw you, it's a fist.
We're really angry.
And, uh, and there you go.
And that, that traveled.
What do I mean by traveled?
It was picked up all over the place.
Dave Whamond: You could put that on a t shirt, I think, Terry.
Or posters.
You'd sell out.
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: You know, Graham, what people have suggested
is put it on a bumper sticker and then drive across the border.
Daryl Cagle: okay.
Dave Whamond hails from Calgary, Alberta, and he's an
incredibly prolific cartoonist.
He draws two comics, Reality Check and Day by Dave.
Dave is also a prolific illustrator who does puzzles, greeting cards, and
lots of top selling children's books, and he's won a bunch of awards too.
Welcome, Dave.
Tell us about this one.
Dave Whamond: Yeah, so this was kind of when he first Trump first
came out making these, I don't know if they were threats at the time.
We thought he was just kind of kidding around and then they became more
than, uh, jokes, I guess, and, uh, first thought that entered my head
was the beavers building a dam and, did a little pun with the damn word.
Damn.
Was it something I said?
But, uh, after I drew this, of course, you know, Everybody had memes out with beavers
building dams and so I guess never do the first idea that comes into your head.
When am I going to learn?
Daryl Cagle: I have noticed that, often the first idea that comes to
your head is the one that editors like best and they really don't mind
that other people are drawing it.
That's, that's something that annoys cartoonists and doesn't seem to register
with either the public or editors.
Dave Whamond: Yeah, a lot of times I'll say, Oh, everyone's going to do this.
And then you find out someone else did it.
And it's the top selling cartoon of the, of the week, you know?
So it's like, well, I don't know what to do anymore.
Daryl Cagle: So here you've got Trump and Trudeau, in the, Mafia restaurant
and, uh, Perhaps that's a mafia bar.
Trump says, nice place you got here.
It'd be a real shame, tarr-IF
, Dave Whamond: if something were to happen to it.
I think this is, yeah, we sort of, it seems like a mob threat in some ways,
you know, and, uh, I just, uh, Trump's has sort of united the right and the left
on in this country and the ways that it brought us all together in the ways that
no, movement or prime minister ever could.
So, uh, thanks.
eh?, you know,
Daryl Cagle: well, you know, we're doing a podcast just about Trump
and Canada, but it is, Trump and really the rest of the world, Canada
doesn't seem too unique in this.
Dave Whamond: Yeah.
Yeah.
When, when it's funny too, we had a, a lot of people call him a Trump lite,
conservative candidate coming up, who was way ahead in the polls when, uh, this
all happened, his name's Pierre Paglia, we call him kind of a maple syrup MAGA.
And, uh, so he was way ahead in the polls and he was, life was good.
And then everyone wanted Trudeau out and which he already is going on his way out.
But, now the polls are, Like the, uh, the liberals have come back and
it's, uh, so Trump kind of did all this, uh, I'm sure Pierre Paglia
of is not, not thrilled right now.
So
Daryl Cagle: that's interesting.
So the right in Canada is, hurt by this, but, Everybody
is united in not liking this.
Dave Whamond: Yeah, there's a real national unity I find now.
You know, there's still some people who are, you know, wanting to join the U.
S., think it's a great idea, you know.
Daryl Cagle: Well, I welcome you guys.
I think,
I think Canada is very
nice.
It would be lovely to have a 51st state there.
Dave Whamond: Well, you know, If we came up with the idea, that would be We're
doing fine we kind of like like the way things are going up here on our own
Graeme MacKay: I was thinking about that just the other day.
There are certain states like California.
You're in California Daryl and We'd be happy to have you join us.
I don't know if we'd want, you know, Arkansas to join us, but we'll,
we'll take California and well,
Daryl Cagle: we feel that way about Arkansas in California.
Graeme MacKay: You do have that, but we have our own Arkansas
is here in Canada as well.
So.
ask Dave, he'll know, he's, he's close to them there.
Dave Whamond: No comment.
Daryl Cagle: This is Patrick Corrigan and, uh, I guess this is an oldie
cause it's got COVID in it, but this one really made me laugh and it's,
it seems very appropriate right now.
I enjoyed that one.
Graeme MacKay: We've been through this already with Donald Trump and
our gate was closed for an inordinate amount of time because of his
silly rhetoric against vaccines.
And our universal healthcare system was at peril because his messaging
was sort of destroying or overloading our ERs and we had to keep it closed.
We didn't want to.
We had our borders open with, you know, I had a daughter who flew
to Denmark in the middle of the pandemic and she had no problem.
You could fly to the United States.
I had in laws in Ohio, but but I'm not going to like pay 300 to
fly from Toronto to Cleveland.
I couldn't go on a land border for 18 months because of the nonsense that
Trump had gone on about during the whole pandemic, our gate was closed for a good.
18 months, mostly because of his nonsense that he was spewing.
Dave Whamond: Yeah, it's still hard to
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: We'd like to think that this is going to pass at some point.
we have to patiently wait to see what happens with your midterms, I suppose.
I mean, how many things can he screw up between now and then?
I'm talking about Trump.
Uh, and also, this is very curious.
You know why, Daryl?
There are 193 countries in the world.
191 of them don't like you much in the States.
Here we are who, how would you put this, don't like you all the time
either, but hate you the least of all the countries in the world.
And we have this wonderful dynamic and always have between the two
countries, Canada and the United States.
So why is he doing this to his best friend?
It's really a puzzle.
Anyway, everything about Trump is a puzzle.
I think the bonus here is that he's, you'll love this story.
When Trump was elected, November the 5th.
I was at a function here, a fundraiser here in Montreal at the library, and my
editor was there, and the editor walked up to me and said, With Trump being elected,
Terry, You're guaranteed a job here with the newspaper for another four years.
So he keeps us in work and it's quite a wonderful thing, really.
Daryl Cagle: Well, the only podcasts that we do that get much traffic
at all are Trump themed podcasts.
It's like, people don't care about anything else.
you know, I'm not really concerned about that.
Going to concede that Trump is good for cartoonists because I'm tired of him.
anyway, this is one of my oldies and I thought I'd bring it back as kind of
appropriate today, but I had to, uh, alter it to add, uh, puddles of pee
on Canada, Greenland and Panama canal.
So this is actually a revised.
To be current cartoon.
Graeme MacKay: that's a great thing is that we can all these cartoons
along we've done in the past.
So it's just a matter of, you know, doing a few changes, stuff that we drew in
2017, 18, we can now bring out in 2025.
Daryl Cagle: It often takes just the tiniest little bit
of pee to make it current.
Exactly.
Yeah, it looks like he's got it covered now, the whole map.
He's got it covered.
So I've got the couple sitting on the couch, and she says, When
we get Canada as the new 51st state, I think it'll be great.
Make the other 50 states more polite.
And, it would, we're a heck of a lot more rude than Canada.
Graeme MacKay: Well, we're, we're kind of rude when it comes to some of the hockey
games recently, when we boo your hand.
So we're not so polite there.
Yeah.
Next few days,
Dave Whamond: just, just for the record, we're not booing Americans.
We're booing Trump and MAGA.
I think if the situations were reversed and you got, we were 10 times the size
of you guys and we had the huge military and we were threatening to annex you,
you guys might, uh, respond the same way.
So I think it's, uh, we're just little pissed off and kind of, uh,
a little bit betrayed right now.
So,
Daryl Cagle: we don't see much nationalism from Canada.
It's, it's an interesting, different point of view.
Dave Whamond: Well, Trump brought us back together, like I
said, so, huge nationalism now.
Daryl Cagle: So, Graham McKay is the brilliant cartoonist for the Hamilton
Spectator in Ontario, Canada, and he's won a ton of awards too, so Graham,
Graeme MacKay: So last January, or just a month ago, we've been
going through this sort of national introspection into foreign meddling.
You, I'm sure you've been dealing with the United States, with
Russia and China and Iran, sort of mixing it up in social media.
And we've done a big investigation and we found that there's actually assassinations
that have happened on our soil.
And there's been, Members of Parliament who've been strong armed by, the diaspora.
in particular, there's Michael Chong who was terrorized by Chinese police
that are based here in, in Canada.
And all of this has been kept very secretive with our
security and intelligence.
And now it's all sort of coming, over the course of the last two years, it's been
sort of The narrative in this country, and we've had a parliamentary discussion and
it even like involved the next governor general and he kind of flubbed it.
And it's just a, it's just become this horrible mess of politics.
And the final report came out just, it was either before or
right after Trump was inaugurated.
And it just kind of fell in the background because all the rhetoric
with Tariffs and I think he was even starting the 51st state nonsense
was starting to get whipped up.
And so this stuff happening, on the national scale with,
with the, commission to foreign interference was kind of drowned out.
And, you know, right before our eyes, we're seeing our entire, like, agenda
in Canada being sort of co opted by what's happening in Washington.
I mean, I'm in a province here where we're having an election based on Trump.
And this has not happened before and everything, we're in prorogation,
which means the parliament you see burning is, is closed.
And it's basically because of what's happening in the United States and
we have a leadership going and just everyone's kind of freaking out here.
And so that's sort of.
covers the monster that we we had down south attacking our Our peace tower
our parliament buildings in odwa and I happen to put in there King Elon
because uh, and this is like a month ago and i'm seeing all kinds of great
cartoons on on The Cagle Cartoons website that i'm i'm way behind because
I got to deal with provincial stuff.
I got to deal with Canadian stuff.
There's too much going on.
Stop it.
Make it stop.
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: Yeah, Graham has a point there about too much going on.
I mean, I'm known for drawing cartoons on Canada Quebec, which is a fascinating
scenario that's been going on since the country was first created in 1867.
The dynamic between Quebec and Canada, and sort of the duality, so there's
this new thinking in Canada and you should be paying attention to this.
Daryl Cagle: We just had Michael de Adder join us Nice to see you, Michael.
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: Nice to see you.
Daryl Cagle: Michael is here from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and he draws
for the Globe and Mail in Canada.
Nice to see you, Michael.
Dave Whamond: Nice to see you all.
Good to see you, Michael.
Hello, Michael.
Oh,
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: uh, Terry.
What were you saying?
Okay.
There's this fascinating new dynamic happening here in Canada where we're
so irritated and pissed off with what Donald Trump is, trying to do.
And we're not pissed off with Americans so much as this, this, this.
puzzling thing, situation you're trying to deal with down there.
But what's happened is there's a new nationalism and even Quebec, which
ordinarily is against everything that Canada tries to do, is climbing on board
with the idea of separating to a certain extent from the United States, creating
pipelines that go to the West coast.
And then we start to feed oil, which ordinarily would have gone to
you in the United States to Japan and China where they can use it.
Even talk of us joining the European Union, which would not
please your Donald Trump very much.
So, there's a spirit of, let's tighten our belts and get together and spend
some money and build this new Canada.
Daryl Cagle: You know, we hear a lot from Trump and his acolytes about how, without
all of the subsidies from America, that Canada would not be a viable country.
What do you guys say to that?
Dave Whamond: He just makes stuff up, you know, it's like, he says they have
a huge 200 billion deficit with Canada.
We sell our oil at a discount to America.
They have refineries built.
Specifically to refine our oil and that's what the deficit is.
I think it's 20 billion and if without that, we'd be in the, in the deficit,
but we're giving you guys a deal.
So I don't know why where he gets this from.
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: There was a joke during the rounds just a few weeks
ago and Quebec where they said, look, we supply many of the Northern United
States with electricity, let's cut it off at 5:30 on Superbowl Sunday.
And see how happy Trump is with that, you know, so it's
created some gallows humor here.
Graeme MacKay: Well, if I could add, we're, we're all starting to join
Facebook groups to find out where do we get the Canadian made products and
things like that, and that's like, I've never seen anything like that before.
Like, we're going down the nitty gritty of, well, where do you find like, baked
beans that are Canadian and we're almost becoming experts at, because there's a
lot of cross border stuff that happens, like cans might be made here, and then
the, the food comes up from the United States and then it's canned somewhere.
So we're, we're strategizing, we're trying to find a way of, of kind of.
Nailing the business sector in the United States by, I guess you could say it's
boycotting of certain American products.
We'll take Peruvian blueberries over blueberries that are grown
in Georgia or somewhere like that,
Michael de Adder: here's the confusing thing, Boston pizza is
Canadian, eating a Boston pizza is a form of Canadian patriotism.
That's right.
you gotta go through all the different companies
Daryl Cagle: okay, well back to the cartoons.
Graham, this is a lot of fun.
I like this cartoon.
Graeme MacKay: Me want Canada, yeah.
Well, isn't the first time I put him in a toddler high chair, You
know, in his first incarnation as Trump, I put him in the high chair.
I think we've all done that.
Daryl Cagle: Mm-hmm . There have been a lot of Trump
as a
baby cartoon, so there's that wonderful, big balloon of Trump as a baby and
Graeme MacKay: Yeah.
But I mean, every
Daryl Cagle: standard for us now,
Graeme MacKay: I, I think it needs to be sort of highlighted the fact every time he
says, Canada should become the 51st state.
Every Canadian just wants to punch him in the face, and by now, it's like,
he would be pummeled if he had, like, 40 million people in front of him.
Because we all just want to punch him in the face every time he says that.
Daryl Cagle: I should say there's a rule among cartoonists that if two
cartoonists draw it, it's plagiarism.
If three cartoonists draw it, the cartoonist is a hack.
And if four or more cartoonists draw it, it's a great tradition.
Dave Whamond: Let's go with that.
Yeah.
the thing that's mind boggling is Trump didn't mention the whole blame
Canada thing before the election.
It just kind of happened the day after he was elected.
Inaugurated, or even when he was running up to the inauguration,
Daryl Cagle: Graham, this is really very funny.
Graeme MacKay: Again, that's a beaver.
Um, And we've seen many examples of beavers being used.
And, you know, I remember, I remember talking to Mike many years ago, and
we, we both kind of vowed not to use beavers, but, you know, it's pretty much
Michael de Adder: Hey, hey, listen.
Since I went to the Globe and Mail, I've drawn beavers like five or six times.
Graeme MacKay: Well, it's Gable.
It's sort of an homage to the great Brian Gable.
Michael de Adder: Well, it wasn't really an homage.
I told her I don't like to draw beavers, but they keep picking.
I always have one sketch that's a beaver and they always pick it.
I don't know what it is.
We're the only country in the world to pick the largest
rodent in the world as a symbol
Graeme MacKay: it's not nice they do horrible things to our landscape
Anyway, can I i'll talk about this if you want just briefly I come
from hamilton hamilton is the steel manufacturing city in Canada And, this
was actually, this came out, in 2018.
So here's an example of something that I got to rehash a couple of
weeks ago and send it to you, Daryl.
And, um, this is where we're kind of quaking in our boots here in
Hamilton because we've gone through this, we went through it in 2018.
There are a lot of layoffs.
There was a lot of pain inflicted on my poor little city.
And we're looking down the pike at another horrendous kind of period of time.
We don't need it in this city, and it's going to be potentially devastating.
Michael de Adder: I would like to add that the city from Hamilton is basically the
Pittsburgh of Canada, so That's right.
Daryl Cagle: Tell us about this one, Graham.
Oh, this is like the old saying, I
Graeme MacKay: mean our neighbors downstairs are nut bars and
this is yet another one.
This is from, and it's a little old fashioned because, Trudeau is
basically, the one who's afraid.
He's actually, playing a figurehead role now because he's a, I
guess the term you use in the U.
S. is lame duck.
He's finished his job here, March 9th or so, next month.
so this was done actually in, in 2018 or so when he dropped the first tariffs.
And, um, I think it still applies to this day.
He still is our prime minister and you've got the nut bar down there.
Who's, uh, putting, putting the flame to the, to the ceiling.
Michael de Adder: He needs some work on the foundation.
Daryl Cagle: I don't quite see why you guys are so unhappy with Trudeau.
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: Well, wait a minute.
Let me jump in here.
I don't agree with Graham.
I'm going to draw a cartoon at the end of the month saying the Canadian of
February, the Canadian of the month.
Justin Trudeau, because he's the guy who's been jumping in
and saying all the right things.
He had an ad that they put on the Super Bowl in favor of Canada, so suddenly,
even though he's redundant in terms of not being our prime minister in
the short period of time he has left, he's done a magnificent job of running
with the ball on this whole issue and confronting Trump and that sort of thing.
So I don't agree with Graham at all on that.
Graeme MacKay: Well, because he's leaving, that's why people love him.
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: Well, that;s not quite right, Graham.
Graeme MacKay: But no, I'm serious.
I mean, I think we love our politicians once they're,
they're done doing their damage.
And he, he has done a lot of bad things in this country.
He hasn't been the most terrific prime minister.
I mean, he should have resigned probably two years ago, but you
know, we're getting into it.
Heavy duty domestic politics and differences opinion.
But, you know, I agree.
He's actually been, he's probably done a lot better in the, in the last month or so
than he might've been doing the previous.
Two years.
I think he was a, was a, was a car wreck for the last year or so.
Dave Whamond: I agree, but I think we're second guessing himself now.
He's like, oh, why did I resign last month?
He's popularity is probably at an all time high now.
you know, with the nationalism.
Daryl Cagle: Michael.
So these are their dreams.
And, uh, this is a lovely cartoon.
Graeme MacKay: Oh,
Michael de Adder: thank you.
Yeah, it just seemed to go together.
Daryl Cagle: Very good.
That is a a wonderful crowd scene of, scary guys on the
other side of the border.
Michael de Adder: Yeah, that's another, another good reason why sketches have
changed the work of it is because the Globe and Mail wants sketches the
day before I draw it, and it gives me a lot of time to draw my cartoons
now, so my cartoons have more detail
this one, that's ridiculous, the amount of detail put into it
Daryl Cagle: So this one is from Guy Parsons, another Canadian cartoonist
with our group, and he's got the beavers at their dam, and one says,
frankly, I'm just impressed that he even knew there are 50 states.
That's good.
Daryl Cagle: And another Guy Parsons, there's no way Canada could become the
51st state, we couldn't afford the debt.
Dave Whamond: I think you guys are doing pretty good in the debt department.
I'm not sure.
The other thing that I always think as Trump says, you guys
will have better health care if you join us, it's like, what?
Daryl Cagle: Yeah,
Dave Whamond: where did that come from?
Yeah.
Daryl Cagle: Oh, you might get a huge crush of people moving up
to Canada for the health care.
Graeme MacKay: But we apparently will tilt the Congress to
vote Democrat all the time.
If we become your 51st state, apparently.
Daryl Cagle: Well, I don't know.
I'm in California, which has just about the same population as Canada.
And we've only got two stinking senators.
Uh, the same as, uh, Wyoming.
So, uh, yeah, it doesn't, work out too well.
Graeme MacKay: You know, you know, what bugs me about this rhetoric
about the 51st state is that there's actually many provinces up here and,
uh, for Trump to actually suggest that we just are in one big lump.
It's crazy because, you know, British Columbia has a lot more in common
with California and, uh, you know, Nova Scotia would have more in
common with the new England States.
So we.
Michael de Adder: We've become the 51st
state to the 63rd state.
Graeme MacKay: Yeah, exactly.
Daryl Cagle: Well, California could make the same argument.
We should be seven states.
And with that
many new states that are, that I've, Alberta would be a red state, the rest
of our provinces would be red states.
So that's a lot of Electoral College, I think that's all I'm saying.
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: You know, a lot of this, too, is a great deal of
fun for us to play with as cartoonists and poke fun on this and the other.
But it's redundant in a way because it's just impossible for
it to happen, create a 51st state.
I mean, that would require the cooperation of every country in the world.
Daryl Cagle: How
so?
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: After, after World War II, it was established that there
was no country in the world was going to put up with the change of borders.
Now there are small exceptions of little places in Europe, but
they did that with approval.
it's just clearly internationally illegal for the United States to
make any kind of claim on Canada.
Daryl Cagle: Oh, I think we're all ready to ignore all of those precedents.
Dave Whamond: Yeah, I agree.
Donnie's not a rule follower, I don't think so.
So here is Dale Cummings, another, excellent Canadian cartoonist in
our group, the Eye in Tariffs.
Yeah, that's great.
The FFS can stand for something else too, so.
At the end there.
Daryl Cagle: Steve Nease with another, lovely border cartoon.
And Steve Neese has the family saying, During the Trump tariff
threat, I'm only buying Canadian at the grocery store for meals.
Now eat your maple syrup.
So, uh, are there enough products in Canada for You to do all Canadian.
Dave Whamond: Oh, yeah, I think so.
The thing is, our, economies are so integrated.
So, like, product could be made with products from the U. S. But
it's made in Canada, you know, so it gets pretty confusing.
Daryl Cagle: Sunday, a Canadian beaver will emerge from its snowy burrow, and
if it sees Donald Trump's shadow, it will then retreat into its den below ground,
hiding out for four more desperate years.
This is your Groundhog Day cartoon?
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: Well, ordinarily it would be, but I was, I, uh,
maybe too clever by far, but I was, I turned it into a beaver because
it was on Groundhogs Day weekend.
Uh, and the business of seeing the shadow.
So, uh, you know, we get creative, but sometimes a little too creative.
Uh, and it confused people, so I got all kinds of emails saying,
but that's not a groundhog.
Daryl Cagle: Dave, talk to us about this one here.
You have, Trump saying, I'm going to make Canada the 51st state and
Puerto Rico and DC say, um, hello.
Dave Whamond: Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, you know, for years they've been talking about, we, you know, Puerto
Rico and DC should, uh, the district of Columbia should be made states
because they're, uh, American territory.
And, they said that would flip the vote probably, uh, Give them the blue states
or two more blue states and if they get Canada, that'll three be three probably
blue states I think Puerto Rico and DC is just feeling a little left out here
Daryl Cagle: Well, it's really only the Democrats that have been
talking about making them states
Dave Whamond: true Yeah,
Daryl Cagle: So here you got the two guys on the couch at Super Bowl time.
First one says, please tell me Trudeau didn't just cut off our power
right before the Super Bowl kickoff.
Other one says,
well played Canada.
Well played.
Dave Whamond: So we were just talking about this.
Someone mentioned that that people were, joking about cutting off the power.
And I did this one, um, before the Super Bowl, obviously, and then, of course,
everyone starts talking about it.
And now I feel like I probably would have ditched this one.
But, it is a funny, funny idea.
I think Trump thinks it's a one way thing.
Like he's going to punish us.
And he's always says we don't want anything in Canada anyway.
You know?
So it's like, be careful what you wish for.
Cause sometimes it can come back on you.
Okay.
So here you have Trump with his, shopping cart, with all of these, places that Trump
would like to aggregate And, actually this turned out to be kind of a meme.
Here's Dick Wright with, much of the same thing.
he is kind shopping around here.
Terry, I thought this was very funny.
Is that really your house?
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: Well, it's close.
I have a little bungalow, nice little bungalow in Montreal.
I have a little bungalow.
suits myself and all of us very well.
So it came out of that because I'm hearing from a lot of American friends.
And by the way, it's a cliche, but I love to say this.
Some of my best friends are Americans.
so we start hearing as every time there's a crisis, I hear from these
American friends moaning and groaning all over the place saying, have
you got room in your house for us?
Or can you shop for a house for it?
So the whole cartoon grew out of it.
So I thought, well.
Look, add a little addition to my house to hold the people, but then maybe a
second house and then it turned into a whole condo tower, if you will, to
put up with my friends who are going to arrive, after the election of Trump.
Yeah, it was a very successful cartoon, that got a lot of play.
Daryl Cagle: This is from Harley Schwadron, a new cartoonist we
just added to Cagle Cartoons.
And you've got the two ladies going down the jogging trail.
One says, My friends talk about moving to Canada, but I wonder if
under Trump, Canada moves to the U.
S. That seems to be the discussion.
And here's John Darkow, and they're building a snowman, and he says,
where are we gonna threaten to move if Trump annexes Canada?
You know, this is a kind of a standard thought.
I'll move to Canada if Bush is elected, I'll move to Canada if Trump is elected.
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: Well, it's, it actually started when
Trump was first elected, there was all of that talk and I think
Daryl Cagle: it started when I was a kid, people moved to Canada to avoid the draft.
Dave Whamond: True.
Yeah.
I actually, I have a lot of American cartoonist friends that have, I've
said that I want to move up to Canada, you got a space for me and, if all
the poop goes down and I, so I'm starting to charge now to be, so,
you know, you can make a few bucks.
Graeme MacKay: Yeah, I propose a flop house here in Hamilton.
Now we've, pretty close to Niagara Falls.
So at least there's that charm.
Daryl Cagle: You know, as I look at your cartoons, accounting for size, it
looks like there's a better cartooning situation in Canada than down here.
Would you agree with that?
Hmm.
Well,
Daryl Cagle: I don't know.
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: it is actually, if you, you know, you have to separate
the wheat from the chaff in any kind of discussion like this, Daryl, it's
very important, but if you look at the numbers, uh, you crunch the numbers,
when I, look, I've been cartooning here a long time, coming up on 60 years.
When I joined, you had 350 cartoonists in your association
down there in the United States.
You did.
You had 350 cartoonists.
We had approximately 30, 35 cartoonists who were making a living at it.
Now, how many do you have down there who are actually making a living?
35, 40, something like that.
Daryl Cagle: I think at the peak in America,
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: I'm talking about almost 60 years ago.
These were all legitimate, uh, salary card bonuses.
60 years ago,
Daryl Cagle: I think there were about 170 that had jobs in America.
Okay,
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: but that was the membership at the time.
But anyway, what I was trying to say was that, now in Canada,
of course it's fallen off.
We have our problems.
Michael's had to deal with it.
and, you know, in terms of cutbacks and this, that, and the
other, there was a situation, but still number wise, we still have.
Approximately 15 or so cartoonists who are actually making a
living from it in Canada.
So that's, what, a cut of 15%?
Nowhere near.
Granted, please, let me qualify this, that there are extreme problems because
of the takeover of PostMedia, the biggest, largest chain in Canada, which
is basically owned by bean counters in the United States, and conservative editors
are being, , Uh, appointed all over the place, and, silly situations evolving.
But nevertheless, if you're looking at the and Michael can speak to this
very well because he had experience on both sides of the border.
It is a better situation here in Canada.
I feel eventually within 10 to 20 years, of course, print cartooning will be, will
have evolved on to the internet full time.
Daryl Cagle: Well, if you compare Canada to California.
having roughly the same populations.
I think there are no editorial cartoonists that have jobs in California.
Wow.
Pick any, uh, equitable area of population in the United States.
Canada has, a hell of a better, cartoonist situation than America.
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: But we don't have a one cartoonist west of Hamilton.
Graham Mackay, if you go across the map, is the last full
time cartoonist in Canada.
And you go west and there's not, there, where there aren't any.
Graeme MacKay: Graham Harrop,
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: No, Harrop is on a small contract.
Graeme MacKay: Malcolm Mayes.
Michael de Adder: Is Malcolm Mayes
on a small contract too?
Graeme MacKay: Malcolm Mayes, uh, we were talking about this because
he's, he's still a staff cartoonist.
I'm still, I actually get benefits with my job surprisingly.
And I think he does too.
So we're like the last holdouts there.
But, you know, as I say, satire is not gonna die.
I look at, uh, I Mike, Mike is doing a good job, not only with
the Globe and Mail, but he's supplementing his income with Substack
and he's inspiring a lot of us.
And so good for Mike.
I think the newspaper's dying, obviously.
The old paper print thing is going.
Maybe there'll be some fumes left in the virtual world.
But we, we're just gonna have to find another place to post our cartoons.
And we're looking at the United States and I see people like Jack Ohman and
various other cartoonists down there who are doing Making a good go with
Substack and other digital platforms.
And everyone's, we're surviving.
And that's a good thing.
Michael de Adder: Well, I see a lot of zombie newspapers out there.
Like what I call zombie newspapers.
Like the Herald that let me go.
They're being run by, you know, hedge fund out of the United States.
States.
They're just, they're not operating like a newspaper.
they pretend to operate like a newspaper, but there's no opinion.
There's no cartoon.
There's, you know, it's no, anything that you would call it a newspaper.
The mayor's race happened this summer and there were no reporters covering it.
It was almost like the mayor's race had a life of its own.
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: Getting back to your original point, Daryl, the question
about is it a better situation in Canada.
I'm not suggesting that it's ideal in Canada, but in Quebec
alone we have seven working cartoonists who are making a living.
Wow.
Uh, and that's because there's still so much political discussion
and an interest in newspapers and Quebec is a communication tool.
Remember, it's primarily French speaking and therefore
there's a lot of communication.
CBC, which is called Radio Canada in Quebec, is the most popular.
television network in all of Canada.
So there's a great discussion, political discussion, that carries on in Quebec.
It's a tradition.
People are talking to each other.
And humor.
Wonderful humor.
These other guys will tell you that some of the humor coming out
of Quebec traditionally has always been the best, poking fun at the
politician Serge Chapleau, who had his own television satirical show,
much like, uh, that popular one in, uh, what was it, in England?
Spitting Image Yeah, exactly.
so it's not all bad and what cheers me up is this, that the
tradition is changing platforms.
Yeah, it's no longer in print, but one of the best comics in Canada
presently developing an international, uh, Sugar Sammy is his name.
And he's appearing in Vegas, he's appearing all over the place.
so the tradition of really strong humor and satire, and I tag along
being an English guy with this, uh, so that it carries over and that the
English population is still involved very much in the political discussion.
That's probably why I still have work.
Anyway, I think that's a very important point that I'm
trying to make about satire.
Uh, carrying over under different platforms and Michael's trying to do it.
Graham is certainly trying to do it, trying this, that, and the other.
so for a younger generation, satire will survive.
Daryl Cagle: Gentlemen, here's Chris Wyant and the family at the dinner table.
Dad says, depending on how tonight goes, this year our family vacation
will either be two weeks on the Cape or four years in Canada.
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: Yep.
Daryl Cagle: Graham, this is fun.
Graeme MacKay: Toddler Trump
Daryl Cagle: again.
breaking all of his toys.
Graeme MacKay: Yeah, well, he's obviously throwing a whole bunch of toys behind him
too, I mean, obviously it was after he was elected, but before his inauguration.
So he was, he's just kind of like hiding out in the background, kind of like toying
with different countries at the time.
And Canada was just becoming, part of the rhetoric of 51st State.
This one actually makes a little bit more sense now.
This was done, maybe a month ago.
When he was starting to piss off the world, but now more so than ever,
especially after, J. D. Vance was in Europe on the weekend and what he said
to so called allies in Europe, you guys are becoming more and more isolated.
With every day.
And, this is just a play on the old scientific continental drift thing.
Dave Whamond: And one thing I think that makes the U. S. uh,
so powerful is, is its allies.
Like we all get on board with you, and going to wars, whatever.
But if you're without the allies, if you've pissed everybody off, you're,
you're going in alone, which I think loses your power of quite a bit.
Daryl Cagle: Graeme, this is, this is, very funny.
Graeme MacKay: Well, Dave, Dave sort of covered this before with, the guy
waiting in the wings, the, um, the wannabe prime minister, Pierre Paglia.
And, He's still, you know, he's changing his slogans.
His big slogan was Axe the Tax, which was our carbon tax that everyone
now is on board getting rid of.
but now he's using the rhetoric of, uh, Canada first.
And he's even talking about axing foreign aid, which is just out
of the Donald Trump playbook.
And so this came out about a month ago, when he was still high in the polls.
As Dave pointed out, his polls are, are tanking now.
and we got a guy, a former governor of the Bank of Canada, and who
happened to also be a former Bank of, of England, uh, Mark Carney.
He's starting to rise in the polls, and he's probably going to be
the successor to Justin Trudeau.
And he's finally some kind of counterweight to The MAGA
nonsense that seems to be on fire.
Daryl Cagle: Graham, did you have in mind when you drew this little mouse
under the Canadian flag that readers would know who the mouse refers to?
Graeme MacKay: it's actually Justin Trudeau's dad made it very popular,
a saying, Being a Canadian is like sleeping with an elephant.
We feel every twitch and groan or whatever.
Maybe Terry, you know it better than I do.
It's inception was way back in the 1960s when he was speaking to a board of
trade in the United States or something.
And that's sort of been kind of like a saying ever since.
So maybe it went over the heads of a lot of Americans, but I think
Canadians will, will certainly get it.
it's like sleeping with an elephant.
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: Yeah, it's become a, yeah, Graham's right, it's a bit
of a historical drama that happened in Canada that most Canadians, if they
know their history, know all about.
So we think of you as an elephant.
It's a good symbol, stomping around.
But yeah, it was Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau's father, who was a very strong
Prime Minister who established that.
So Graham's absolutely right.
Any Canadian is going to understand this cartoon.
Graeme MacKay: If I could add one more, Canadianism, before we get on to that one.
I just heard it the other day and maybe this will remind you again Terry.
It was Peter Zosky who came up He wanted to come up with a slogan that was just
as kind of like cool as the american slogan American as apple pie because
we don't have that in canada It's like it shouldn't be like as Canadian as
the beaver as Canadian as maple syrup but it was a contest and all these
people kind of sent in their ideas and the one that one was as Canadian
as possible under the circumstance,
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: Yeah, I remember that.
Graeme MacKay: That's so funny.
And that was way back when and it's kind of died off.
I heard the other day and I,
Terry "Aislin" Mosher: I missed that kind of cleverness in the public arena.
Yeah.
Like Peter and people like that.
They were very clever.
I'm not going to comment on Canadian media, but there are still great people,
but my God, I miss the cleverness.
Daryl Cagle: Okay, Graham, tell us about this one.
Graeme MacKay: Well, we've seen many incarnations of the groundhog
being turned into a beaver, so there's not much more to say.
We all seem to have the same idea.
Let's just get this over with.
It's not like this is anything new coming from you.
I'm a beaver by the way.
So it's actually making fun of the whole thing about it being a beaver.
But, we sort of have the feeling here in Canada that we're
being beat up by this bully.
so some of us are starting to ask, well, where's our buddies in the Commonwealth?
Where are, where's our King?
Why are people like coming to our defense?
We're just kind of being left on our own to be beaten up by Donald Trump.
But when you think of it more like you guys are going through
so much torment right now, that.
I don't blame you if this is just sort of happening in the background
because he's decimating your, federal civil service and, he's doing all
these weird things across the planet.
So I get the sense that we're just kind of like an afterthought to you right now.
It is
Daryl Cagle: true.
The Canada story is just a teeny bit of the story on the news.
Overwhelmed by everything else.
Graeme MacKay: Yeah.
Well, we're kind of used to it from the United States.
Daryl Cagle: Okay, any last comments from everybody?
Graeme MacKay: I think at the top we were talking about how much
we really love the United States.
You know, I have many friends in the United States.
I am married to an American.
I have half American kids.
I go to the United States all the time.
we don't vote for your president, we didn't choose to get the
tariffs, we didn't choose to have a president that was talking about
making Canada the 51st state.
But we also understand that he only got got half the population voting
for him, and there's another half of American population who are in chaos
and crisis mode right now, and we feel for you, but we're also feeling it too.
Daryl Cagle: I don't think he's treating Canada any worse than the other 50 states.
No,
Graeme MacKay: good boy, but you guys got to vote for him.
We aren't, you can't blame us for voting for him.
You know,
Dave Whamond: blame Canada.
Graeme MacKay: Don't blame us.
We were saying, no part got it wrong.
We're just on the sidelines praying that we don't get sideswiped.
I would
Michael de Adder: add that when you.
See online Canadians booing the national anthem or if you see Canadians saying
anything derogative about Americans We're not really talking about Americans.
We're talking about Republicans.
We're talking about Trump.
so if you ever like see a Canadian, just say the most horrendous thing,
just replace it with Republicans.
Dave Whamond: And I also think like we've, we have this shared history,
you know, we fought in world wars together and in 9 11, uh, we We felt
it just as deeply as you probably, an attack on you was an attack on us.
you know, we just last month we had firefighters going down to L. A. to fight
your fires and we, as we do every year.
So we're just a little caught off guard by like, what's this, what did
we do, Donnie, you know, so, uh, that's why we're a little, pissed off now
and it's hard to get us pissed off.
We're, we're so polite, you know,
Daryl Cagle: that's where we are
Dave Whamond: now.
So
Daryl Cagle: you all are very polite gentlemen, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Oh, Canada.
See ya.
So.
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