Andy Donato Retires
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Toronto newspaper artist, art director, and editorial cartoonist Andy Donato is calling it a day after 65 years.
Denette Wilford for The Toronto Sun profiles the long career of Donato.
Donato began his newspaper career in 1961 with The Toronto Telegram as a staff artist eventually becoming the paper’s art director and occasionally contributing editorial cartoons filling in for Al Beaton.
From The Sun profile:
“The first cartoon I drew was in 1964 on the Canadian flag debate in Ottawa. I still have the original of that,” Donato recalled. “The editor saw it and said, ‘Oh, good, I can run that.’”
The infrequent Telegram political cartoons didn’t satisfy his hankering for editorializing and he got permission from his bosses to moonlight at the new Bramalea Guardian, a weekly for the Toronto suburb.
Also in 1964 Donato created a weekly comic panel/strip for The Telegram. It ran from February 13, 1964 to 1966 with (self?) syndicated reruns running for years after, even showing up in a few U.S. newspapers.
Donato continued on staff at The Telegram until it shut down in 1971 at which point he immediately was hired by The Toronto Sun as art director. The Sun began the month after The Telegram closed.
The Sun again:
He went from two cartoons a week, alternating with cartoonist Yardley Jones, and by 1973, when the Sunday edition began, Donato moved from three a week to five once Jones left.
“It was hard enough coming up with one idea, let alone three, four, five,” he laughed.
Donato became a full-time editorial cartoonist for The Toronto Sun, where he remained on staff until 1997.
Back to The Sun article:
And who can forget Donato’s bird, his infamous signature image that accompanied his cartoons.
“The bird started back in the ’80s, by 1984, it had become reasonably popular by then,” he recalled of the first time he used it. “I just happened to draw it in a tree I was doing as a cartoon. And I kind of liked it, so i kept drawing it.”
In 1997 Donato retired from his staff position at The Sun but continued as a contract cartoonist until this year.
A recent Donato cartoon archive at The Toronto Sun.
Andy Donato as a sports (hockey) artist and as a landscape artist.
above: Toronto Sun cartoons by Donato: “The American Dream” (1979) and “The Canadian Dream” (2025)
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