Item! Charlie Bell, one-time cartoonist for the Regina Leader-Post, died January 28 at the age of 94. Bell started as a political cartoonist with the paper in 1947, moved sideways into reporting, and eventually became managing and then associate editor before retiring in 1982. Official obit.
Item! Writing for The Walrus, Jeet Heer examines the history of Canada Reads in the context of Canada’s middlebrow bookchat culture, providing a tonic to all the hype: “Rarely discussed in the populist hubbub of Canada Reads is the idea that difficult writing can be deeply pleasurable. A knotty piece of prose is like one of the gymnastically challenging sexual positions in the Kama Sutra: difficult to master but, if you can pull it off, intensely gratifying.”
Item! Writing for Montreal’s Westmount Examiner, Wayne Larsen reviews at collection of editorial cartoons from the 1940s by a cartoonist I had never heard of. Very interesting. Cartoon Review of the War: Louis Baratgin’s World War II Album, by Robert Bruce Henry, is published by Véhicule Press.
Item! Both the L.A. Times and Toronto Life have picked up on a possible film deal for a Captain Canuck movie. Justin Bieber is mentioned somewhere in there.
Item! We can all breath a collective sigh of relief now that “The Senator” hockey hero mascot has finally been revealed.
Item! Toronto Public library’s list of challenged books includes Tintin.