Stewart Cameron (1912 – 1970) was a Canadian cartoonist best known
for his cowboy cartoons and his
editorial cartoons lampooning
Alberta Premier William Aberhart.
Born in Calgary
, the son of
prominent lawyer J. McKinley Cameron, he studied art at Mount Royal
College
, running a pack-string in the Rocky Mountains during the summers, before
taking a job with Walt Disney
Studios working on Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs in January 1936. At the same time, he
drew some editorial cartoons for the
Calgary Herald. The
Herald was
opposed to
Social Credit
League leader William Aberhart, and Cameron's cartoons
reflected this. After Aberhart won the
1935 election, the
Herald hired Cameron as its first full-time editorial
cartoonist in 1936. His cartoons alienated the Social Credit
faithful; his house was once bombed while he was away from
it.
Cameron left the newspaper to serve in the
Canadian Army during
World War II. Upon his return to the
Herald in 1945, he found that new Premier
Ernest Manning provided less fertile ground
for his cartoons than Aberhart had, and moved west in 1947 to take
a job with the
Vancouver
Province He returned to Calgary in 1949 because of ill
health, and spent the rest of his life drawing cartoons
free-lance. He died in 1970.
Cowboys and horses were a favourite subject of
Cameron's—
Alberta Cowboy Country Magazine has called him
"a cowboy at heart but a cartoonist by profession"—and after his
death his family published four volumes of his cowboy cartoons:
What I Saw at the Stampede,
Let the Chaps Fall Where
They May,
Weep for The Cowboy, and
Pack Horse in
the Rockies.
References
Notes
- Elliott 193, 240
- Elliott 240