On Oct. 5, Canada Post released a new collectible series of stamps to honour Canadian editorial cartoonists.

Among them is Brian Gable, who hails from Saskatoon and began illustrating in 1966, after a classmate saw him doodling in an English lecture and recommended he contribute to the Sheaf. He later taught art in Brockville, Ont., while creating cartoons for the local paper, the Recorder & Times. Through the 1980s, he worked at the Regina Leader-Post until he was offered his current job at The Globe and Mail in 1987.

Gable told the Sheaf that he “absolutely never ever thought about that possibility” of being recognized by Canada Post.

“When I got a call, I was thoroughly surprised. And then I realized that they were quite serious about it and that it was really a project that we were going to actually work on together,” Gable said.

Gable searched through the cartoons he had drawn in the past for the stamp, eventually settling on a simple graphic extracted from one he did for the Montreal Gazette. In it, a beaver reclines in an Adirondack lounge chair with a bottle of beer in one forefoot and a Canadian flag in the other.

“He’s just kind of a good old boy, a Canadian friendly guy,” Gable said of the beaver.

”At the end of it, I was quite happy with the whole process and I went and bought a couple of packages of stamps. It was pretty exciting to see my cartoon images on a Canadian postage stamp!” 

Gable’s choice for the stamp that will grace the top right corner of envelopes reflects his decades spent learning his artform — learning to visually communicate humour and a message..

Though he could have retired years ago, Gable prefers to continue working on self-improvement through his career.

“It’s an exciting way to wake up in the morning. You don’t feel like, ‘Well, I’ve done it and I’m not going to get better’,” Gable said.

“I think eventually, potentially, you really do stop getting better. It’s just the way nature works. It’s called aging and all of that stuff. But I would like to keep pushing as hard as I can, as long as I can.”

Gable says that prior to becoming an editorial cartoonist, he intended to become a freelance painter. He eventually let go of this objective in favour of refining his existing skill set.

“I discovered that to be successful at anything, you really have to focus on what you want to be good at, and I made the choice that I wanted to get as good as I could get at editorial cartooning.”

Over those forty years, Gable has experienced significant changes in the field of journalism. He believes the profession that today’s journalism students are entering has been transformed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which altered both the political landscape and the culture of newsrooms. He also says the advent of the digital age has had a large impact on the field.

“It’s going to be a different career than I had in print journalism. But, I hope that people who love to write and love to communicate, that they’ll find a space somewhere that they can make a living at, and that they can practice their craft,” Gable said.

“I’m very optimistic. I do hope that happens.”

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Sandra LeBlanc | News Editor

Graphic: Supplied by Brian Gable