The End of the Seventies by Michael Kluckner, a full page editorial cartoon from the December 29, 1979 issue of the VancouverSun. Michael reminisces about his early cartooning career here on his site. About the cartoon, Michael writes:
The managing editor bought the original (I wonder if it still exists?) which was a large, about 20 x 30 inch, pen and ink drawing on illustration board. So many faces and events: (from the top including) Vietnamese boat people, Jane Fonda, Kent State, starving Indians, Bill Vanderzalm, Pat McGeer, Dave Barrett, Bill Bennett, the Bee Gees, John Travolta, Rod Stewart, Henry Kissinger, Nixon and Watergate, Gerald Ford, Tom Campbell, Rene Levesque, Pierre Trudeau, the FLQ, Peter Lougheed on the big car (“Let the Bastards Freeze in the Dark”), the oil crisis, Joe Clark, Jimmy Carter, the Jonestown mass suicide, Edward Kennedy, Jerry Brown, Jackie Onassis, Ayatollah Khomeini, Margaret Trudeau (& Mick Jagger – should’ve drawn Ronny Wood), John Diefenbaker as Brutus, Robert Stanfield, David Lewis, Jean Drapeau and Robert Bourassa and the Montreal Olympics, Jean Chrétien, Ian Smith of Rhodesia, Willy Brandt and Brezhnev the Russian premier …. and “Jaws.” The Air Otto reference was for Liberal cabinet minister Otto Lang, one of the pigs at the trough of that era. The only glitch was the blank banner at the bottom, which was supposed to read “How Soon Could We Forget?” in red ink, but it got stripped out of the black plate and not put into the red one by the Sun production crew. Oh well….
Though Michael ultimately never pursued the path of the newspaper cartoonist, we’re grateful for the many contributions he has made to the community since these early days. Heritage advocacy, a lifetime of fine art, and writing and illustrating some 15 books - all of these amount to no small feat! Thanks, Michael!