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Sun cartoonist Roy Peterson dropped as 'too expensive'

VANCOUVER - After 47 years of brilliant editorial cartooning, Roy Peterson has been dropped by the Vancouver Sun.

“They told me they couldn’t afford me,” Peterson told The Tyee. “They gave me three months’ notice.” Having worked contractually for the Sun, Peterson has no pension or other benefits.

“They ran a story in the Saturday Sun ,” Peterson said. “But it didn’t say I’d been fired.” The Sun also declined to run his farewell cartoon.

Peterson has won seven National Newspaper Awards and many other honours. He’s been president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists and was founding president of the Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists. He is also an officer of the Order of Canada.

In addition to his Sun cartoons, Peterson published in all major Canadian periodicals and many US and European media. Between 1978 and 2001, he supplied a cartoon for each of Allan Fotheringham’s columns in Maclean’s—surely the longest collaboration in history between a columnist and cartoonist

What’s next? Peterson said he plans to explore a couple of book ideas over the next year or two. The book series he did with Stanley Burke in the 1970s, including Frog Fables and Beaver Tales and The Day of the Glorious Revolution, was some of the best political satire Canada’s ever seen. And Drawn and Quartered was a highly irreverent cartoon history of the Trudeau years

Hundreds of Roy Peterson’s classic cartoons are available online at Artizans.com.

Contributing editor Crawford Kilian is a longtime Peterson fan.

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