Patrick LaMontagne – 25 Years at The RMO, Week In and Week Out
Skip to comments
25 years and a few weeks ago a small group of people a couple dozen kilometers west of Calgary started a small weekly newspaper, The Rocky Mountain Outlook (RMO). The first edition was dated September 20, 2001 and included in that issue was a cartoon by Patrick LaMontagne. LaMontagne will tell us that it wasn’t his first cartooning job and in the two and a half decades since that time he has become a nationally syndicated political cartoonist and famous worldwide as a painter of “whimsical wildlife portraits” of animals both foreign and domestic, with a preference for the local creatures.
Still every week LaMontagne makes time to draw a cartoon with a local angle for his hometown paper as he has done since that very first edition.
As part of their silver anniversary celebration the Sept. 24 RMO contains a brief article by LaMontagne.
“I’ve been a self-syndicated editorial cartoonist for most of that time, drawing five or six other cartoons each week for newspapers across Canada. As the industry changed, my art business changed with it, eventually expanding to include whimsical wildlife paintings. Those are sold in places like the Toronto and Calgary zoos, licensed on products around the world, and at venues like the Banff Christmas Market each year.
“But through it all, there’s been the cartoon every week for the Rocky Mountain Outlook. I have never missed an issue in 25 years.”
We are fortunate the RMO is not above embarrassing LaMontagne by posting that first edition.
LaMontagne expands on his thoughts about his 25 years contributing local cartoons to the paper on his blog.
“In hindsight, it was one of the best decisions of my life.”
“Were it not for the Outlook, I likely wouldn’t have self-syndicated. Without syndication, I wouldn’t have been able to leave my full-time job in 2006 and become a full-time artist. And without that, I may not have created my first grizzly bear painting in 2009.”
“So when it came time to draw a cartoon for this week’s anniversary, I made it about me, without apology, because I’ve had that cartoon space on the editorial page every week for 25 years.”
LaMontagne includes his autobiographical Rocky Mountain Outlook column as a postscript to his blog post.
Comments