Remembering Mike Constable

 

It is with great sadness that I learned that cartoonist Mike Constable lost, last Friday, his battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

In keeping with Mike’s preference for informality, and to celebrate him in a place he spent a lot of time, a memorial get-together will be held, from 3-6 pm, this Sunday at Last Temptation, 12 Kensington Avenue, Toronto.

Here are a few remembrances about a dear friend.

I first became aware of Mike Constable’s work in a page of cartoons entitled « E=mc2 » some time ago in Today magazine.

The cartoons were quite sophisticated and reminded me of the work of Saul Steinberg, famous for a much imitated New Yorker cover.

"Old news", Report on Business Magazine, June 1996

A few years later, as I was assembling cartoons for Portfoolio, an annual collection of editorial cartoons which I edited, I contacted Mike to find out if I could include some of his work in the book.

It was quite startled when we finally met.

Instead of the suave sophisticate I had imagined, I came across a jovial down to earth character.

We ran several of his South Africa cartoons in the first edition of the book and countless Conrad Black and Mulroney the following years.

When Portfoolio started out, I had to fight to have his work included, as it did not meet the standard editorial cartooning format.

"Jihad Joe", Piranha magazine.

All these qualms were dashed when a great number of us gathered in Winnipeg, in the summer of 1985, to found the Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists.

I was quite startled to find that he had hit it off with the suave and sophisticated Sid Barron of Toronto Star fame.

As I was making numerous visits to Toronto at the time, Mike invited me to crash at his place .

The mornings would be quite startling as I would wake up to either a papier-mâché sculpture of Uncle Sam or a fat cigar-chomping capitalist staring at me.

With time, I got accustomed to his agitprop bric-à-brac.

My best memory of Mike was an interview he gave to Canada AM to promote Portfoolio.

He showed up on national TV with a cardboard contraption around his forehead representing the Skydome.

He then proceeded to demonstrate how it could hold both a hot dog and a cup of beer on either side of his head.

It even had a retractable top!