Preface

I wasn’t first choice. Political cartoonist Mike Constable was trying to locate Cy Morris to resume his cartoon panel Spotlight on Labour History for the cartoon syndicate Mike had co-founded, Union Art Service. When he couldn’t find Cy, Mike asked me to take on a similar project and make it my own. From out of our Past was the result. After twenty- seven years I think I’ve got the hang of it. Mike and I met in the early seventies while working on the Toronto “underground” paper Guerilla. Those years were the wild west of alternative journalism. The stuff we got away with! Anyway, I did get a career out of it as a layout artist and illustrator thanks to Mike who being more experienced, showed me the ropes and lent encouragement for which I’ll always be grateful. The Union Art Service was the brainchild of Mike and several left political cartoonists, principally Jim Kempkes and Jerry Lee Miller who stayed with it for decades. In 1976, the time was right for a cartoon service that could fill the need opened up by a major expansion of the Canadian labour movement. With changing provincial and federal legislation in the sixties and early seventies, whole new classes of workers swelled union membership, adding white collar workers and professionals in the private and public sectors. Mike and fellow artists had a lot of contacts in the union movement, and subscribers lined up. My idea for From out of our Past was a Ripley’s Believe it or Not-style panel that dealt with a single incident or situation in what I considered people’s history. A few words on this. Traditional academic history has always relied on primary written sources and official documents. This inevitably led to “great man” interpretations of history and litanies of treaties, wars and constitutional arrangements. Not that that narrative isn’t important, but in the 1950s a new contingent of British, mostly Marxist historians, such as E. P. Thompson told the story of ordinary people both affected by and affecting history. This meant that oral histories and the daily social life as it was lived were given credence. History was claimed for the vast majority, not just the elite. It took many years for the historical establishment to see people’s history as legitimate, but it is now recognized in the academy. I envisioned From out of our Past as dealing with social issues and distinct communities as well as Labour. The idea was to be entertaining and populist rather than didactic. That explains several comic conventions like the flash with ID, comic-strip drawing style and the catch line, “Stuff they don’t tell you”. One element of this is what I call “the telling detail”. When I read about the unionizing campaign of the railway porters, one thing stuck out: organizers passed along rolled-up newspapers containing notices of union meetings to avoid detection. That makes for a compelling image without relying on clichés like picket lines and raised fists. I also use elements like vehicles and buildings to locate the content in a particular time and place. The subject matter needs a few words. There was never any intention to do a definitive “Peoples’ History”. There are a few obvious omissions and and some that are, um, “questionable”. I cast my net pretty wide. Our subscribers lived in all parts of the country and from varied constituencies. They weren’t all white guys from Toronto like me. The challenge was to represent as broad a cross section as possible. The women’s movement, the struggles of people of colour and indigenous issues are dealt with as though they matter to everyone, which they do. Although the emphasis is in Canada, other countries and different time periods are also covered. About the two different titles. As I’ve written, the panel started as From out of our Past, but a few years ago I thought about it. The word “past” is just as much poison as “history” to most readers. I toyed with a few ideas and came up with Our Story. Who doesn’t like stories? It also seemed I’d forgotten what I’d learned working in advertising. Say it fast and hit ‘em over the head. OK, that’s a bit vulgar, but the panel had become wordy and cluttered with dates and timelines and the graphic suffered as a result. So I standardized the type face, made it bigger and reduced the lineage. This also made the graphic bigger. Shortening the text had the interesting effect of sharpening its impact. The hard discipline of seven lines still left room for a catchy opener, often with a colourful detail, a few lines describing the incident and a clincher to sum up the historical significance. The emphasis shifted from “heritage moment” stiffness to a breezier entertainment approach. This led to a lighter tone with headlines frequently commenting on the graphic with some wordplay or a pop culture reference. The item on the “first strike” in ancient Egypt wrote itself. Of course, I had to do a version of wall paintings of Egyptian kings and priests with picket signs, and a headline referring to the Bangles’ novelty song, which became ‘Walk out like an Egyptian”. The observant reader may notice a few examples of authorial self-indulgence in pet concerns like comics and film noir, for instance. But the panel “Force of evil” is about the film of the same title from 1948, and referred to capitalism itself. It defined a crucial period of cold war cultural repression. That too is part of Our Story. Of course nobody does anything totally alone and I’ve received help and encouragement from the start. Without the offer from the larger-than-life Mike Constable I wouldn’t be writing this. Others who showed an early interest include Shlomit Segal and Maxine Hermolin of the United Jewish People’s Order, who arranged a show at the UJPO’s Winchevsky Centre. Colleagues on the Union Art Service Mike Zuharuk and Jerry Lee Miller often invited me to be guest cartoonist in their night courses at Ontario College of Art and Design and the Toronto District School Board. Also, long-time bookseller and man about town Charlie Huisken urged me to consider a book and pointed me in the right direction. My incredibly energetic publisher, Ron Weihs and his amazing partner Judith Sandiford had hired me to provide artwork for one of their plays. They later mounted an Out of our Past show of prints in their late lamented Artword Artbar in Hamilton. If Ron hadn’t held my feet to the fire this book probably wouldn’t have been published. And above all, my life partner in crime, the fabulous Miss Debbie “Doom” O’Rourke, urged me for years to consider a book when I wasn’t sure. But she was and she prevailed. She always does. John Williams June 2023