Lögberg-Heimskringla - 28.01.2005, Blaðsíða 11

Lögberg-Heimskringla • Föstudagur 28. janúar 2005 • 11
Always hits
the bullseye
Canada’s Game
ILLUSTRATION COURTESY OF ROY PETERSON
Top: Roy Peterson’s take on the NHL strike.
Above: Peterson and Governor General Adrienne Clarkson
share a laugh as she presents his award, making him an Of-
ficer of the Order of Canada.
Steinþór Guðbjartsson
Vánccouver, BC
When Roy Eric Peterson
of Vancouver was made an Of-
ficer of the Order of Canada
last year, he was described as
one of Canada’s finest editorial
cartoonists. “Expertly blending
humour and satire, he has pro-
vided insightful commentary
on our political landscape,” as
was stated in the announcement
from Governor General of Can-
ada Adrienne Clarkson.
Recently widowed, Roy
raised five children with his
wife and business partner Mar-
garet. He was born in Winni-
peg, son of Ethel and Lárus Pe-
terson (bom Magnússon). His
father emigrated with his par-
ents from Akranes, Iceland in
the early 1890s, and his mother
was 16 years old when she emi-
grated from England.
In 1948, when Roy was 12
years old, his father — whose
playmate as a boy was William
“Intrepid” Stephenson — was
offered to work for Sigurdson’s
Millwork in Vancouver and
since then Roy has lived there.
“I’m very proud of my Ice-
landic heritage,” he says, add-
ing that a lot of people of Ice-
landic descent have settled at
the west coast. “Once I was in
this restaurant with my wife in
Bellingham,” he says. “There
were five other couples at their
tables. Somebody at one of the
far tables was talking to his
table-mate and she mentioned
Iceland. People at the next table
then said: ‘Oh, are you Icelan-
dic?’ ‘Yes,’ the first couple an-
swered. Then people at another
table said: ‘Oh, our family
cornes from Iceland too.’ As
it turned out people at all six
tables had roots in Iceland.”
Roy has worked as a free-
lance editorial cartoonist forthe
Vancouver Sun since 1962. He
worked as an illustrator for Al-
lan Fotheringham’s back page
column in Maclean’s magazine
for 25 to 26 years — the lon-
gest collaboration in Canadian
journalism — and his cartoons,
illustrations and magazine cov-
ers have appeared in all major
Canadian and many American
and European newspapers and
magazines.
“I always wanted to be
a cartoonist,” he says, point-
ing out that when he got out
of high school he worked in
the advertising departments of
Woolworth’s and Eaton’s, four
years at each store. “All that
time I was trying to break into
cartooning. I was drawing car-
toons and sending them to all
major magazines and got about
four to five years of rejections.
“As it turned out, my wife
phoned me and said there was
mail from three magazines and
it looked encouraging. I got an
okay from the Montreal Maga-
zine, theSpectator 'm Britain and
a men’s magazine in the United
States. They all came in on the
same day and I thought, this is
it. I’m going to go freelance.
The man next door thought that
I was crazy because really I did
not have any money, we had
two kids and one on the way.
As it tumed out, we were able
to make a go of it.
“I got a freelance job at
the Vancouver Province for a
while. Then they said that they
would like to give me ideas for
my cartoons. I said no, I don’t
think that would be very good,
and went over to the Vancou-
ver Sun to see if I could get a
job there. They had Len Norris,
the great Canadian cartoonist,
working for them, and there-
fore there was no need for an-
other one. But the editor took
the change and it worked out.
I was doing the cartoons from
the standpoint of the people
who made the laws ánd he was
doing the carloons from the
'standpoint of the people that
had to live by those laws.”
In 1983, Roy became the
first Canadian-bom editorial
cartoonist to be elected the
president of the Association of
American Editorial Cartoonists,
an association comprised of
American, Canadian and Mexi-
can editorial cartoonists. He
was a founding member of the
Association of Canadian Edito-
rial Cartoonists and served as
the president in 1990. He has
travelled the world and visited
Iceland, among other places.
“I have used vikings in the odd
cartoon and God help me, I do
them with homs on their hel-
mets,” he says. “I did one car-
toon of Reagan and Gorbachev
at their meeting in Iceland in
1986 and I sent a cartoon from
Iceland after 9/11.”
Selections of his cartoons
are in the collections of the
National Archives in Otawa,
Simon Fraser University, Ohio
State University and the Li-
brary of Congress in Washing-
ton. He has illustrated many
books including the popular
Frog Fables and Beaver Tales
series. “Three of the six books
went to 100,000 copies,” he
says. “In Canada, if you have
5,000, that’s looked upon as a
good sale.”
Roy has won many awards
the most recent of which was
the Order of Canada. “When
I went up to receive the award,
Adrienne Clarkson, Govemor
General of Canada, said: “‘Oh,
I’ve seen your cartoons.’ Then I
said: 'Do you want me to retum
this, then?’ That broke her up
and that’s when a photograph
of us was taken.”
WKKKKKKKKKM ll!ll!l!ltltl[lll!lll!
ROYALLePAGE
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