Random Access

If the first thing you do when you pick up The Mississauga News is to flip to the editorial page and check out the cartoon, you are in good company.
That’s because Steve Nease rules the page, just as he has lo these many years. Steve’s political cartoons provide some of the most acerbic, trenchant, and just plain bang-on commentary on life in our community, our country and our world that you will find anywhere.
It is amazing that Nease, who began working at the dearly departed OJR (Oakville Journal Record) at the end of 1978 and still does page and advertising design for the Oakville Beaver, is still with the chain of community newspapers owned by Metroland Printing and Publishing.
Why hasn’t a big daily paper recognized his immense talent and whisked him off to the big city?
Last year, in Portfoolio — the annual collection of the best political cartoons in Canada — Nease had 15 cartoons published, the most by any of the 42 artists represented. His cartoons are syndicated across Canada.
One done a few years ago touched a nerve that reverberated around the world.
Under the title, Canada’s Worst Nightmare, he drew a caricature of a cow with mad cow disease, wearing a SARS mask and being bitten by a mosquito carrying West Nile virus.
“That one took on a life of its own,” said Nease. “It was on thousands of websites around the world. People in our office were getting it e-mailed to them by people from outside the country saying ‘I thought you might get a kick out of this — not realizing that it was created at a desk about 15 ft. away,’’’ he laughed.
Some of Nease’s very biggest fans have been some of his favourite targets over the years. There are lots of originals of his cartoons hanging in the homes of Don Blenkarn, Carolyn Parrish and Mike Harris.
In one of his many classics, Nease portrayed Blenkarn, looking ever-so-much like W.C. Fields complete with bulbous blinking red nose, in a cheerleader’s outfit leading a cheer for the GST.
Parrish used his cartoon of her as an rogue Canadian missile ready to be deployed against the Bush administration, as a fundraiser on T-shirts she had printed.
Harris may have the biggest collection of all, including the send-up of the Wizard of Oz with the former Tory Premier as the Tin Man. The Cowardly Lion, Dorothy and the Scarecrow diagnose his problem: “No Heart.”
But the “ultimate compliment” is when Nease walks into a house where people have no idea who he is and he sees his cartoons or his Pud strips lovingly posted on that household spot of honour, the front of the refrigerator.
It’s unspeakably unfair that someone who is such a good political cartoonist should also be so talented at the cartoon strip, which is really quite a different form. Through Steve’s paternal pen, we have watched he and his wife navigate the mindfield of child-raising, from cradle to university (Pud is now 23).
Life lessons never seemed so real or so funny.
Instead of buying scads of “parenting” how-to books, prospective parents who want to know what it’s really like should just get a collection of Pud cartoons.
Incredibly, Nease has never had a collection of his cartoons or his strips published.
Since Metroland just celebrated its 25th anniversary, such a volume would be a perfect quarter-century anniversary gift to the community, wouldn’t it?
Maybe we should be thankful, after all, that the world hasn’t figured out just how good he is and beaten a path to Steve Nease’s door.
This way, we get to keep him all to ourselves.