Category: Life Lessons

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The Insurance Company Hit-and-Run

This post has nothing to do with cartoons, painting, creativity, art, the business of art or anything in that orbit. But I still wanted to share it, because it could easily happen to you, if it hasn’t already.
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On June 11th, my wife and I drove to Calgary to see a matinee of Top Gun: Maverick on a beautiful sunny day. After shopping at Chinook Mall, we returned to the car in good spirits as the movie exceeded our high expectations. We decided to go for an early dinner before the drive home to Canmore.

Leaving the parking lot, Shonna stopped at a Yield sign to wait for traffic to clear so we could head west on Glenmore Trail. Suddenly we heard a crash to our left as a large red Buick smashed into a large black Volvo. There was nothing Shonna could do as the Volvo jumped the curb and collided with her side of the car.

After making sure Shonna was OK, I got out of the car to check the other drivers. The airbags had deployed in both of those vehicles, and I couldn’t get the doors fully open. The woman in the Volvo was dazed and frightened for her child in the car seat behind her. Thankfully neither was hurt. The woman in the Buick said she was OK.
I could already hear sirens. I don’t know who called 911, but fire, ambulance and police were on scene in a ridiculously short time.

I’ll spare you the play-by-play of the usual post-accident exchange of statements and information, but a couple of standouts are worth sharing.

Calgary EMS firefighters and paramedics were fantastic, but that’s hardly surprising. Likewise, the Calgary Police Service members on scene were friendly, helpful, and empathetic. I talked to three or four of them while Shonna was calling insurance, and while a collision like this is no doubt routine for them, their roadside manner was considerate and appreciated.

One member told me we were lucky. He had attended a similar incident the week before, where a car ran a red light, sending another car into a cyclist standing beside his bike, waiting to use the crosswalk. The cyclist broke both his legs and was currently in the hospital.

Then he told me that even though we weren’t at fault, not to trust our insurance company. “They’re working for themselves, not for you.”

The last time we saw Shonna’s car, it was on a flatbed tow truck.

While I don’t know the outcomes for all involved, everybody walked away. However, I won’t say Shonna and I are ‘fine’ because some injuries take time to appear, which is why you have two years from the time of the incident to make a personal injury claim.

I also don’t want to write anything that gives an insurance company more disproportionate power than they already have. I’m not going to tell you the company’s name because from what I’ve read; this is an industry problem.

On the phone, the insurance agent said we should take a cab to the airport, where a rental car was waiting for us.

“So, it’s booked? There’s a car there?” I asked Shonna.

With the well-publicized rental car shortage, I was pleasantly surprised.

We took a $60 cab ride to the airport, arrived at Enterprise, and told them our situation. The gentlemen looked at us like we were speaking in tongues. There was no car booked for us and none available.

Another call to the insurance company.

The agent had made the booking for Monday at a different Calgary location. It was Saturday, and we were an hour and a half away from home.

I suggested we take the Banff Airporter shuttle home, but the next one didn’t run for another two hours. So with the Calgary Airport food court closed, we walked to an airport hotel, had a beer and ordered a pizza we had no appetite to finish.

A couple of friends generously offered to come to Calgary to pick us up, but we didn’t want to ruin their Saturday as well. My parents even offered to drive from Red Deer to get us back to Canmore, which would have been a round trip of 6 hours for them. Not an option.

We did accept a ride from the shuttle drop-off in Canmore from our friend, Michelle. At 10:30 pm, we had no energy left to resist.

The next morning, I took Shonna to Banff to get assessed by a doctor because if you don’t get looked at right away and try to make an insurance claim later, they’ll use any excuse to deny it. It’s easy to find stories on the many ways your insurance company is going to screw you on a technicality.

Another call to the insurance company, and they promised a car would be available here in Canmore the next day. On Monday, however, the rental car company had never heard of us. We finally got one on Tuesday.

Over the next five weeks, dealing with the insurance company proved more traumatic than the incident itself.

The body shop and the impound lot in Calgary both called to ask what they were supposed to do with the car because they hadn’t heard from our insurer. When we finally talked to an adjuster, we soon realized how little we mattered to him or the company.

We sent multiple emails and left several phone messages to get the adjuster to even communicate with us, both at the beginning and throughout the process. Finally, after more than a week of unanswered emails and calls, Shonna complained to somebody else, and they reassigned the case to another adjuster.
Shonna’s car was a 2012 Mazda3 GS Sport. It had a leather interior, 154,000km on it and was in immaculate shape. She had just put brand new tires on it the month before. This car was supposed to last another ten years.

Anyone who has bought or sold a car this year understands it is a seller’s market due to the worldwide shortage of new and used vehicles. If you can find a car, it will cost you a lot more. Insurance companies base their reimbursement on market value, so we figured we at least had that going for us.

How naïve.

They finally notified us that the car was a total loss and offered an embarrassment of a settlement.

Did you know that you don’t have to accept the insurer’s first offer and they’re well known for lowballing their own customers? So the police officer’s words were prophetic.

When Shonna wouldn’t accept their first offer, they abruptly cancelled her rental car on the July long weekend. But, of course, they didn’t bother to tell her. She found out when Enterprise called on Monday asking how long she intended to keep paying for the car on her own. She immediately returned it, and they didn’t charge her for the extra couple of days.

To craft a reasonable counteroffer, Shonna found multiple listings for the same vehicle, similar mileage and condition, and provided links for the adjuster. In addition, a friend who works at a car dealership generously provided more listings from their network. All showed that the insurance company’s valuation of her vehicle was well below reasonable.

As advised by related articles, we wrote a detailed narrative of the hardship incurred by losing the vehicle in the current market during the waning days of a pandemic and the financial difficulties that came with it. After several hours of research and due diligence, we felt we made a good case for an increase in compensation.

More than a week after our submission of the counteroffer, the insurance company responded that they couldn’t use the listings we had provided as evidence because they no longer existed. In the hottest vehicle market in recent history, they expected those vehicles to be still available a week later.

Of course, they had no response when Shonna pointed out that the vehicle listings they used to justify their compensation offer were from three weeks before the collision.

But they made it sound like a generous gesture when they agreed to adjust the settlement to account for the new tires.

So Shonna did more research and found several more listings, all showing that the insurer’s offer was well under the current market value. She resubmitted and advised that they’d also be gone if they waited a week to assess these listings.

They declined any further negotiation and said we were free to hire a lawyer and take it to arbitration.

As a legal battle with an insurance company would be like trying to punch your way into a bank vault, Shonna took the settlement, feeling well and truly violated by her own insurer. That’s what years of premiums buy you.

They’ve recently sent Shonna multiple form emails asking, “How did we do?”

Shonna is going to wait to replace the car until availability increases, and prices come down. She’s not interested in buying the first overpriced lemon on four wheels she can find, and I don’t blame her.

So we bought electric bikes, which I’ll write about in another post. A significant investment, but we’ve each put over 300 km on them in just under a month. Shonna takes hers to the gym and commutes to work, and I run most errands on mine; plus, we’re biking for recreation together and enjoying it a great deal. Our busy tourist town has difficult traffic and paid parking, but plenty of bike trails. Now we get everywhere faster than we used to, and our remaining car should last even longer. Provided somebody doesn’t hit us.

When we told people about the collision, we heard many variations of ‘it could be worse, it’s just a car, at least you’re OK, and be glad you weren’t hurt.’

Yes, of course that’s accurate, and we’re grateful we weren’t injured or worse. Time and distance do offer that perspective. But on the day of a traumatic incident like that and in the days that follow, where somebody else’s negligence has derailed your financial stability, future plans, and any sense of security you had on the road, those dismissive sentiments only made us more bitter and angry. It felt like we should be ashamed for being upset.

When somebody has just been through a horrible experience, put yourself in their shoes and ask if what you’re about to say will make them feel better or worse.

I don’t know what was happening with whoever ran that red light, but one person’s carelessness dramatically altered our lives. I’m not mad at her. We’ve all been guilty of careless driving. She’s human, and people make mistakes, but it was preventable, like almost all vehicle collisions.

We see it every day. People fail to signal, mess with their music, drive too fast, roll through stop signs, pass on solid lines, and narrowly miss pedestrians in crosswalks. Tailgating, texting, speeding, aggressive lane changes, road rage and the myriad other failures of attention and selfish behaviour where a lack of consequences makes us forget that most of us are driving one to three tons of metal, plastic and glass at high speeds.

It takes a second to end or ruin somebody else’s life.

Then you have to live with it.

Allow a few extra minutes to get there. Take a deep breath when that person in front of you is going slower than you’d like. It could be your friend’s Mom who just got bad news from her doctor. Or your neighbour is taking their sick dog to the vet. It could be some kid the same age as yours learning to drive and scared shitless about it. Or it could simply be that someone is lost and hasn’t realized they should pull over somewhere.

Minutes later, that delay likely won’t matter to you. Ads on Youtube probably cost you more time. But if you get impatient and do something stupid behind the wheel, it could matter for the rest of your life.

Drive safe and expect that others will not.

Take care,
Patrick

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Cocky Cartoonist and COVID

After two-plus years of wearing a mask, staying home, the shots, booster, and trying my best to avoid the plague of the 21st century, that sumbitch finally got me.

I’ve always had a sound immune system and rarely get sick. I can go two or three years at the best of times without a cold or flu. I imagine much of that has to do with no kids and working from home, so I don’t get exposed to every virus making the rounds.

But when I get sick, it’s a knock me on my ass, man-cold. I become Cameron at the beginning of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Shonna and I had a frightening, stressful experience on June 11th in Calgary, a story for another time. Still, I’m guessing the flood of adrenaline from that and the subsequent let-down effect scuttled my immune system and opened me up for attack.

I got a tickle in my throat last Saturday, and the test returned negative. When I woke Sunday morning feeling congested, I took another test and sure enough, it was positive. I felt OK and hoped my adventure with COVID would be like Shonna’s earlier this year.

She had the sniffles for two days, worked from home and felt fine, said it was the easiest cold she’s ever had.

Shonna and I can’t keep our distance in our modest home, but I slept on the couch since I still get up earlier than she does most days, and she slept in that week. Thankfully, it’s a very comfortable couch.

Still, I expected I would get it from her then, and we both isolated, just in case. But I never caught it, or I have been operating under the false assumption that I probably got it and was one of those lucky ones who didn’t have any symptoms.

When I tested positive last Sunday, I thought, “OK, I’ll have what she had!”

Cocky cartoonist. It even inspired this cartoon.
I warned a few people I’d seen days before that I’d tested positive and settled in for what I assumed would be a mild cold. Instead, by Sunday evening, I felt like absolute dogshit.

Runny nose, congestion, headache, muscle and joint aches, chills, etc. I’ve managed to work every day and get my cartoons out, even worked several hours on a painting, but there weren’t any long workdays. I didn’t have the energy.

The literature on this version of COVID, which I suspect was a variation of Omicron, is that it’s mild compared to the ones that came before. Upon further investigation, what medical professionals mean by ‘mild’ is that you’re unlikely to require a hospital visit. But the mild experience can be anywhere from one sneeze to “didn’t I see you on The Walking Dead?!”

I slept on the couch again last week, and it looks like Shonna avoided it, or her previous infection of hopefully the same variant is protecting her. We both know you can get it again.

Wait…when she’s sick, I sleep on the couch. When I’m sick, I sleep on the couch. This is bullshit!

Over-the-counter cold meds helped, plenty leftover from Shonna’s experience because she barely touched them. I drink plenty of water at the best of times, but I must have been downing 3 litres a day last week, especially if you factor in all the tea and soup.

As I publish this on the 9th day after my positive test, I feel pretty good. From what I’ve read, you can test positive for up to 90 days afterward, even though you’re no longer contagious. It’s an antibody thing. But I’ll take a test tomorrow anyway.

An unfortunate side effect is that my sense of smell has been altered. This happened to me after a bad cold years ago, and the problem lasted for months. Hopefully, this won’t be a repeat performance. It has something to do with the inflammation traumatizing nerves in smell receptors and is relatively common. As smell is a big part of taste, certain foods are unappetizing right now, and there’s an underlying constant weird smell to everything.

I have plans to go away for a guy’s weekend later this week. The friend I’m going with isn’t concerned, mainly because he’s pretty sure he recently had it himself, and I’ll be past the ten days when I see him. While I could have done without this infection, I am grateful that this bout with the plague didn’t cancel this trip we’ve booked for months.

Bottom line, this felt like a nasty cold or flu. Survivable, sure, but not an experience I care to repeat anytime soon. Regardless of where you sit on the vaccine argument (and no, I don’t care to discuss it), I’m glad I got mine. Because given how bad this felt, especially for the first three days, I don’t want to know how much worse it could have been.

Cheers,
Patrick

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Painting a Dog’s Best Life


Late last year, one of my subscribers inquired about a commission of her dog, Santé. Sadly, Suzanne lost her much-loved pup to osteosarcoma at the end of November, and she wanted a painting to remember her.

The initial back and forth conversation is an essential part of every commission. It allows me to get to know both the person and the subject, and it helps me decide if I’m the right artist for the job, especially for a memorial piece.

While I can paint both in portrait style and my signature whimsical style, I’ll admit to preferring the latter, but most people who hire me for memorials choose the portrait style.

Suzanne, however, wanted to remember Santé at her best, and as she’s followed my work for some time, she requested the whimsical style.

Initially, Suzanne sent me a photo of Santé running through the water with a stick in her mouth and asked if I could paint her like that. I was reluctant for a couple of reasons.

My style is about the face and expression, best revealed by a large headshot painting, like much of my work.
Also, I haven’t painted many full-body action poses, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. Fear of failure is a powerful demotivator.

As part of her grieving process, Suzanne wrote a long essay about her life with her dog and shared that with me so I could get to know her as well. So I made a cup of tea one afternoon and sat down in the kitchen to read it.

I don’t mind admitting that it got me right in the heartstrings, and I had to wipe away tears. But, sad ending aside, it was a good story, and Suzanne is an excellent writer.

She is an outdoor enthusiast, frequently mountain biking and hiking, with Santé by her side. After reading about Santé’s adventurous nature, her boundless energy and obsessive love of sticks, I couldn’t imagine painting her any other way. That dog lived her best life.

Suzanne provided plenty of photos, but the first was the best, Santé running in the water with a stick in her mouth.

But I don’t just want to copy an image, especially in the whimsical style. I want to make it my own. So, I exaggerated her expression and gave her a big grin. You can’t see Santé’s teeth in the reference photo, so I found additional reference for that, as it helped a lot with the smile around that stick. I also exaggerated the size of the stick and changed its shape for a better overall composition.
The water spray from her feet was one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced in any painting I’ve done to date. It took many hours to get it right, not to mention all the tiny droplets to add action to the scene.

Instead of filling the entire background, I created a graphic shape of the water and painted Santé so that she was running out of it, adding to the illusion of action.

This painting took a long time, but it was well worth the effort. Not only did it stretch my skills, but necessity forced me to learn a few new techniques to bring this to life. It was overcoming the challenge that made the final piece so satisfying.

I’m a frequent proponent of printing my work on canvas. It brings out the textures and richness in many paintings, especially the detail I paint in my work. But I gave Suzanne another option, and after providing her with more information, she’s chosen an 18″ X 24″ matte aluminum. Given the dynamic nature of this painting, I think it was the best choice, and I’m looking forward to seeing it once it arrives.

When I shared the final image with her Saturday morning, less than an hour after I finished it, Suzanne told me that it was the 11th anniversary of the day she brought Santé home at eight weeks old and shared a pic with me. That puppy didn’t yet know she had won the lottery and was about to have a grand adventure.

Of the painting, Suzanne wrote, “I love it. It’s perfect. You added the whimsy and didn’t lose an ounce of “her” in the process. Thank you so much for making the effort to know her to paint her.”

Cheers,
Patrick

Please visit this page if you’d like to know more about my pet portrait commissions.

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Silly Monkeys


As a perfectionist workaholic with unreasonable personal expectations, my past year reflecting most often reveals that I didn’t get enough done.

I’ve wanted to create an art book of my work for years with little progress. Almost a decade ago, I recorded two training DVDs for painting and cartooning that did well, so I’ve been planning an updated online painting course.

Two years ago, right before all plans went to hell, my friend Serena and her family went on African safari for a few weeks. She brought home plenty of reference for me for an elephant I’ve wanted to paint for years. I still haven’t started it.

I’ve been procrastinating, making excuses that I’m too busy with other work. There’s no profound psychological mystery as to why.

If I never complete these things, they can’t suck.

The holidays are always a low point for me. We don’t celebrate Christmas for various reasons. While I genuinely did enjoy the three recent holiday markets, they wore me out. In addition, earlier deadlines for Christmas and New Year’s cartoons and fewer publication dates meant less revenue from the daily papers.

As I write this, I’m in a creative rut, unmotivated to draw, paint, or write anything uplifting. In recent days I’ve still been up at five and sitting at my desk before six, googling articles and watching videos about art marketing, an exercise in desperation.

There are more online listicles on how to create a successful art career than anyone could read in a lifetime, often written by those with little experience. The same regurgitated tips and tricks, all revealing the same truth, that there is no map to get there.

Not that long ago, society’s idea of a good career was picture perfect.

Go to college, university or learn a valuable trade, and get a job with a good company. Then, over the next thirty or forty years, advance through middle-management, then management, earning enough to pay off a mortgage in the suburbs, provide for your family of 2 kids, get a dog, and have BBQs on the weekends with neighbours you’d live beside for decades.

Sometime in your sixties, the company (really, we’re a family!) will throw you a party, give you a gold watch, and you’ll retire with a comfortable pension, spending your weekends playing with the grandkids on the porch. Then, one day, at a ripe old age with a smile on your face, you’ll pass away comfortably in your sleep.

That story starts with “Once upon a time” and ends with “happily ever after.”

Because it’s a fairy tale.

Before I found any direction in my early 30s, I tried a few different things. I spent five years in the Reserves, two of those as a full-time instructor, and thought I might join the military like so many in my family. I went to school for EMT training, got my license, but never actually worked on an ambulance service. Before that, I spent two and a half years in college because that’s what was expected. I moved to Banff, worked in hotels and retail, got married, moved to Canmore and here we are.

I don’t regret any of those choices, but none of it was part of any plan.

The notion that we’re supposed to decide the rest of our lives while in high school is ridiculous. We’re still children but are somehow supposed to have the foresight to know what we’ll want to be in our forties.

I was an idiot at 18, and I suspect many of you were as well, with no idea how the real world worked. I took foolish risks and did very stupid things, convinced I was immortal. I’ve often mused, “thank god we weren’t taking photos with our phones all the time and posting every moronic thought that crossed our pea-brains.”

Although frankly, plenty of people my age and older still haven’t learned that lesson.

We’re all victims of our own cognitive biases; errors in thinking, logic, and interpretation that influence how we perceive the world. We can easily spot them in others but often fail to acknowledge our own, even though we all exhibit these behaviours.

Cognitive bias is the fuel that runs the social media machine.

There are many on the list, but one is called “Rosy Retrospection.”

We remember the ‘good old days’ with a sigh, when everything was easier, cheaper, people treated each other better, and the world was a nicer place.

It’s why “Make America Great Again” worked so well as a campaign slogan. Nostalgia is powerful even though it takes minimal surface scratching to reveal that our wistful memories are largely edited and wildly inaccurate.

There has never been a golden age of sustained prosperity, freedom and peaceful coexistence in the United States, Canada, or anywhere else.

I look back on the early days of my professional art career and remember my tenacity and motivation, working mornings, evenings and weekends on the side to build up my business so that I could one day take it full-time and SUCCEED! (whatever the hell that means.)

However, my nostalgia wants to leave out that I was drawing three to five syndicated cartoons a week for only two weekly papers for a few years. Paid $10 each; I was essentially making pennies an hour, eating up all my free time.

I came VERY close to pulling the plug several times in those early years, asking myself why I bothered to work so hard for no money. I constantly wanted to quit, convinced I was wasting my life.

That was almost 20 years ago.

Following the news every day is a dangerous game when things are normal. If it bleeds, it leads is the very foundation of news media. We might be at the top of the food chain, but we’re still animals, barely out of the trees on an evolutionary timeline. We say we want to hear good news, yet we focus all our attention on the bad. Our actions speak louder than our words.

We are emotional, scared little monkeys who react to anything remotely threatening with a fight, flight, or freeze response. We imagine ourselves incredibly intelligent, but the evidence doesn’t support our hubris.

For example, everybody knows the basic rule of investing. Buy low, sell high. And yet, all it takes to throw the market into a tailspin of frantic trading and panic is one billionaire tech mogul to tweet something silly while he’s sitting on the john.

And it’s not just those Wall Street types. One need only look to the rest of us glued to our screens and devices, slaves to social media, eating garbage food, drinking too much, failing to exercise, and wasting our lives watching forgettable TV for hours on end every night.

This past year, I’ve found myself skimming the employment section of our local paper more than once. I’ve been here before, walking this familiar territory. It doesn’t take a leap of logic to realize this behaviour comes from fear.

But I also know that the greener grass is simply a trick of the light.

There’s a severe staff shortage in this valley. If I did get a job, it wouldn’t be the one advertised. It would be longer hours covering the other positions they can’t fill, for less money than the job is worth. The cost of living in this community is one of the highest in the country, even though wages are not.

Logically, I know that leaving this long art career experiment and going back to a ‘real job’ won’t solve any problems, financially or otherwise. And further down that well, I also know that taking the difficult steps toward worthwhile change never happens until you’re really uncomfortable.

Because otherwise, why would you change?

My business has suffered the last couple of years. Newspapers were already struggling before the pandemic, still operating under last century’s business model. The other half of my business depends on tourism and people with disposable income, both in short supply.

I don’t write this to gain your sympathy because everybody is suffering right now, in one fashion or another. We’re all dealing with a whole lot of unexpected, uncomfortable shit.

You can blame the media, politicians, bureaucrats, or run down the long list of ridiculous conspiracy theories. However, it still doesn’t change that we must deal with the circumstances before us, and complex problems rarely have simple solutions.

Our nostalgia filter might tell us otherwise, but the normal we yearn for wasn’t the utopia we pretend it was. We took for granted all that we now pine for, complained about everything, and blamed whatever we could find for our lives not living up to our expectations. We did it before, and we will do it again. It’s our nature.

We spend a lot of time wishing other people would change, but the only thing we can ever change is ourselves.

I’m very uncomfortable right now; professionally, emotionally, financially, and spiritually, which means I’ve got to change. My focus for the next year is on diversification, making my income dependent on more revenue streams so that when one suffers, it doesn’t threaten the foundation. Some of those projects are underway. For others, I need to stop procrastinating and light fire to kindling.

I’m no longer willing to accept poor treatment simply because somebody doesn’t agree with my perspective. I don’t need everybody to like me. It’s a fool’s errand because it won’t ever happen.

I will put less energy into trivial pursuits and more time into riskier endeavours that may or may not work. That’s what got me here and what will move me beyond. Unplanted trees don’t bear fruit.

I will try to treat myself better, stop beating myself up over every stumble, perceived shortcoming, and soften that hard-edge perfectionism. Because I will never live up to my own ridiculous unattainable standards, making me miserable.

I will likely fail at some or all these things because I have failed before. But you know what they say about trying again.

Life is tough. It will still be tough when this pandemic is over, just as it was before.

So rather than pretend that turning a calendar will solve our problems, I’m going with a more realistic view of the new year.

2022. Shit will happen. Deal with it.

© Patrick LaMontagne

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A Light on the Darkness

Sometime in the late 90s, my grandmother and her husband were clearing out some things, and my Dad acquired a Nazi flag that John had brought back from World War II. My father thought it was an interesting artifact, but it spent the next several years in a plastic Hudson’s Bay shopping bag in their basement.

Years later, it came up in conversation while visiting my folks. As Shonna and I are both interested in the period, and I had been reading Richard J. Evans’ Third Reich Trilogy, we asked if we could see it.

I volunteered to do some research and eventually try to find a place for it in a museum. My mother was glad to have it out of the house. For the past few years, it sat in our basement, tucked away on a shelf, folded up in the same Hudson’s Bay bag.

It’s a square flag made of canvas, well stitched, 2 feet on each side. It’s red with a white circle in the middle, containing a black swastika, the traditional Nazi flag with which we’re all familiar. Three sides have gold collared braided fringe. The top edge has three sets of evenly spaced canvas ties.

There are dark stains on one side. It would be easy to imagine that it’s blood, making for a better story, but I suspect it’s likely grease or rust.

I’ll only share a photo of the corner of the flag. I don’t want somebody to Google my name and have a Nazi swastika come up in the images, alongside my editorial cartoons and whimsical wildlife paintings.

In our current online culture of ‘shoot first, ask questions never,’ my art career would likely be damaged or concluded faster than I could say, “wait a minute, I can explain.”

So you’ll have to use your imagination.

My research revealed that this flag was most likely a banner tied to a fanfare trumpet or bugle. There were similar banners online, but I failed to find an exact match.

When I came to the end of my desire for specifics, I turned my attention to finding an appropriate place for it. There is a brisk online trade in these items, but for reasons I hope I don’t have to explain, I didn’t want to make any money on this artifact, given its dark past. Nor did I wish to keep it.

It’s a cliché to say that those who forget their past are doomed to repeat it, but that doesn’t make it any less accurate.

If we discard these artifacts, it makes it easier to forget. The sacrifices made to stop Hitler and the Third Reich, the millions murdered in concentration camps, and the lives destroyed in World War II become statistics, without other means of refreshing our collective memory.

Despite the historical weight of this banner, it’s not a rare piece. Soldiers bring home war souvenirs, and their children and grandchildren find themselves the inheritors of these items, with no idea what to do with them.

I offered this piece to the Holocaust Museum in Ontario, the Military Museums in Calgary and the Bomber Command Museum in Nanton, Alberta. Unfortunately, each declined the offer because they either didn’t have space or had enough similar artifacts.

If I couldn’t find a place for it, I was ready to burn it, but that presented another problem. We live in a townhouse condo complex with no firepits. I could take it with me to the cabin we occasionally rent or on a camping trip, but my overactive imagination doesn’t have to work hard to picture it found in my belongings after a collision. Or perhaps somebody walks by while I’m unfolding the banner at a campsite, quick to record a video on their phone.

A couple of weeks ago, while browsing the morning news stories looking for cartoon ideas, I came across an article. Someone discovered that an Ontario man had displayed several Nazi artifact images on Facebook some years ago. He was in a position of authority on a hospital board and was called upon to explain the photos. His motives unclear, the conclusion was that he showed poor judgment for a person in his position, resulting in his dismissal.

The journalist sought the opinion of Valerie Hébert, Ph.D., an associate professor of history with Lakehead University in Orillia. Dr. Hébert is an expert in Holocaust education.

Figuring she would have some solid advice for me, I sent her an email explaining my dilemma.

Dr. Hébert provided links and options for me but also cautioned that there are “expenses that go along with authenticating, restoring, accessioning, and storing items. If what you offer duplicates something they already have or doesn’t fit with the goals of their collection, they may turn it down. It seems strange to us that historical artefacts would be refused, but so it goes.”

However, at the end of her reply, she presented me with an option I hadn’t considered.

“Should these places decline the donation, but you still wish for it to be preserved, I could use it in my teaching. I teach a 2-semester course on the Holocaust, and a 2-semester course on the Hitler state in alternating years. I would not display the banner in my office but would bring it out in the classroom. Few of my students have personal connections to this period in history and I know from my use of other artefacts that the item itself can make this history come alive in compelling and constructive ways.  I think the banner would also work well to prompt discussion around what we should do with sensitive historical artefacts, particularly those which symbolize such terrible human suffering.”

It didn’t take long to decide that this would be the best use for the banner, and I told Dr. Hébert that I would be happy to send it to her at my expense. It arrived this week.

History is replete with examples of monuments, artifacts and valuable manuscripts destroyed by conquering armies and short-sighted governments. While one might look at the atrocities committed by the Nazis and think it best to wipe it clean from our memory, there is no better teacher than our past mistakes.

One need only look to the rise of the Trump administration in the United States, the misinformation tactics, the artful sowing of division and hatred to see how a culture can become quickly divided and pit against each other. The events of World War II did not happen because of one man’s ambition for conquest and genocide; it happened because the populace not only allowed it, but supported it.

We see it on Facebook, Twitter and in the Comments sections of myriad news and fake news sites, polarized opinions turning people against each other. We surround ourselves with those who agree with us and paint everybody who doesn’t as the enemy, defining ourselves by our politics at the expense of our humanity and empathy.

My father served 31 years in the Canadian Armed Forces. His three brothers served, as did their father. My mother’s parents both served, as did her three brothers.

I grew up as a base brat, spending ten years of my youth in West Germany. I spent five years in the Reserves, and Shonna was in for three, which is where we met.

You could say that the military was the family business, though I decided on a different path. It says a lot about Canada that I grew up in a family where we followed orders, and my Dad worked for the government, but my profession involves calling out that government for its current failures.

I can draw an unflattering caricature of the Prime Minister, criticize his decisions and leadership, without worrying that thugs in jackboots might break down my door in the middle of the night and take me away for re-education. Or worse.

That’s freedom. And we take it for granted.

I visited Dachau concentration camp on a school trip. I have looked upon the ironwork sign that reads, “Arbeit Macht Frei.” I have seen the hundreds of boots and shoes preserved behind glass, the photos of real people so emaciated it was a wonder they were still alive. I have seen the ovens.

It had a profound effect on me and still gives me chills. It’s supposed to.

Words on a page do not carry the same weight as seeing the evidence in person, holding it in your hands, considering its history, allowing it to make you uncomfortable so that it is never allowed to happen again.

That’s why I didn’t want the banner destroyed.

That’s why we remember.

__

© Patrick LaMontagne

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Whoever Fights With Monsters

(If you’re easily offended by profanity or negativity or just don’t want to deal with somebody else’s crap today, turn back now.)
I’m prone to rumination; deep, dark swan dives into the abyss. It’s a byproduct of my particular brand of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I’m not going to go into a long boring history of it because people have seen too many movies, and most think it’s just about germs, lining up stuff in the fridge and avoiding cracks in the sidewalk. I have none of those traits.

The reason Hollywood has perpetuated that stereotype is that they can SHOW it. But anybody who lives with this nasty roommate will tell you that the worst of it plays out in their head. It’s a constant internal argument between a rational, logical realist and a batshit crazy lunatic.

The short version is that every so often, I’ll backslide into a period of doom, gloom, and depression.

Artists. We’re all so fucking mercurial.

Last night, I spiralled for most of the evening, went down the Google rabbit hole, looking for some relief from the dark thoughts, regret, and pervasive shame. When Shonna went to bed, I grabbed spare sheets, my pillow and made up the couch. No reason for the both of us to be tossing and turning all night.

I’ve slept on the couch more in the past two years than in the rest of my life. Before you read anything into that about my marriage, I do this voluntarily. With the constant barrage of pandemic news porn, my brain doesn’t easily shut down.

While lying awake most of the night, frustrated by insomnia, my mind went to all sorts of things, none of them good. Were I to detail the endless list of irrational fears and worries, you’d quickly get bored if you’re not already.

This morning, I woke at 4 am with no motivation to draw or paint. Thankfully, I have a cartoon ready to send that I finished late yesterday afternoon.

In an exercise in distraction, I decided to clean up my website and went through old blog posts. There are more than 600 posts from as early as 2008, detailing my focus at that time. I barely remember much of that work, and a lot of it is tough to look at since my skills have significantly improved.

There were posts about illustrations I did for board/card games, caricatures of celebrities and commissions, and several on a Flash animation series I created when it looked like editorial cartooning was heading in that direction.

There were even more irrelevant posts about new releases of Photoshop and videos I shared that no longer exist online, so they’re just broken links. I wrote posts about new business cards, websites, projects, and my complicated relationship with social media.

It’s not like anybody is going through my blog posts from more than a decade ago and spending weeks reading them. There is no good reason to keep this digital history.

But on more than a few posts, I lingered and gave them a quick scan. I’m a much better writer today than I was then. I’ve written many thousands of words between the first post and this one, so I’ve had plenty of practice.

While I deleted the first year of posts with barely a thought, I got a little pickier around the time I painted that first grizzly bear in 2009, and the posts revealing many of the animal paintings that followed. I’m not ready to get rid of those yet. There’s some relevant history there and fodder for the book I’m not writing fast enough for my liking. (cue the chorus of self-loathing).

I found some other posts that could use a rewrite, words of advice for other artists, warnings about dealing with disreputable people and how to recognize and avoid being scammed. I’ve learned a lot in the decade since then, and if I can spare some newbie some harsh lessons of experience, I’d like to.

I’ve got many more blog posts to go through and discard, but just like spring cleaning, it needs doing.

On days like this, the really dark days, I would much rather just curl up on the couch and zone out on Netflix, but it’s not in my nature. I’ll just feel worse at the end of the day for being lazy. So, I’ll spend it cleaning up my office closet, bookkeeping or on some other mindless chore that needs doing but doesn’t require any creativity.

I’m fully aware that this post is not inspirational, celebratory or positive. I almost didn’t share it, but that’s part of the bullshit we feed each other online that makes so many miserable. Everybody shares their best days and hides their worst, putting a false front out into the world. And even though we all know the warning about comparing your behind-the-scenes to somebody else’s highlight reel, we still play the game and fall for it. It doesn’t take much mindless scrolling through the social media curated gallery of somebody else’s greatness to end up feeling like garbage.

This is where I’m supposed to end the post with a cheery, upbeat turnaround, say ‘oh well’ and acknowledge that things could be worse and others in the world are having a much rougher time and, and, and…

Any psychologist worth their salt will tell you that failing to feel the bad shit, dismissing it, and shoving it aside will just make it worse, as will making yourself feel guilty for expressing it.

Over the years, I’ve talked with therapists, read a whole library of self-help books, listened to hours of podcasts, politely listened to unwanted advice about essential oils, mindfulness practices, apps, vitamins, medication and every suggestion under the sun, including the oh-so-helpful, “Hey, cheer up!”

The truth is, from time to time, you just find yourself travelling through hell. And over the past year and a half, we’re each experiencing our own personal brand of it.

So yeah, this too shall pass.

But probably not today.

__

© Patrick LaMontagne

P.S. While looking for an image in my archives to go with this post, I discovered that this is Mental Illness Awareness Week. Well, at least that gave me a chuckle.

 

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Learning, Listening, and Rising Together

Early in this editorial cartoon profession, somebody once told me that editorial cartoons are supposed to make you laugh, think, and hopefully do both. I think it was Terry Mosher (Aislin).

I have repeated that line often. In interviews, blog posts, talks to school kids or simply as an explanation when somebody challenges me on the content of a cartoon.

As we’re all now attuned to our individual offensensitivity meters, convinced that if something makes us uncomfortable, it must be inappropriate; I’ll often get emails chastising me for drawing a cartoon, telling me, “that’s not funny.”

Cartoons aren’t always meant to be.

Several times a year, I’m required to draw cartoons for tragedies, recurring events, serious moments and on topics where any levity would indeed be inappropriate by any metric.

Nobody drew funny cartoons the day after 9/11. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a knee-slapper in any newspaper in Canada on Remembrance Day. And there’s nothing funny about what went on for decades in Canada’s Residential School System.

When the federal government announced that September 30th would mark the first annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, I knew I’d have to draw something.

An editorial cartoon isn’t unbiased. I don’t consider myself a journalist. While I do try to consider all sides of an issue, my cartoons are my illustrated opinions. So when you see them on the editorial page, it means the editor shared my opinion or at least thought that many of their readers might.

I can’t just spout off and draw something about whatever might cross my mind. I must consider whether it’s fair comment, reasonably concluded, and if it might get myself or my client in trouble. The standards for your local newspaper are a lot higher than Facebook or Twitter.

When it comes to residential schools, the last thing an indigenous person needs is yet another colonial descendant analyzing their history, whitesplaining it and offering up his conclusions. So, I won’t.

But I still had to draw a cartoon because it’s my job.

I’ll admit that my more serious cartoons have a distinct look to them. Often a more painted illustration, rather than a crisp ink line cartoon, accompanied by some text. Sometimes I’ll use a quote, especially if the cartoon is about a notable person who has just died, some of their own words or song lyrics.

But I prefer to use my own words, a couple of lines to complement the artwork so that the entire piece is my own creation. And these always take a lot longer to draw.

I’ve drawn cartoons about this topic before and wanted to avoid the same imagery. I avoided using the recently revealed Survivor’s Flag, as it felt like I would be appropriating the artwork painstakingly created by those who directly experienced this dark history.

We all have our own ways of connecting to what I call ‘the other.’ For some, it’s through organized religion, or it might be an individual faith and relationship with their god, whatever that means to each person. For others, it might be the connection they feel when they volunteer, do charitable works, or anything that makes them feel that there’s more to the world around them than what they see, hear, smell, touch, and taste.

While I don’t believe in a god, heaven or hell, or practice any organized religion, I frequently feel connected to something I can’t define. I most often feel closest to that when I’m painting, and I’m grateful to that something else for granting me the ability and the means to create.

I feel it most when I’m painting my whimsical wildlife paintings. It’s what I imagine Maslow meant when he defined the peak experience.

When I first created my animal art, I called them Totems but stopped the practice a few years ago.

About the change in 2018, I wrote, “What (totem) meant to me was paying homage to the animal spirit meaning of the word. The personality and character I paint in these animals make them feel alive to me. I’ve had some unique and special experiences with animals in recent years and can’t help but feel a connection with them, so it’s for personal reasons that I decided on that name.”

But as I explained in the post, having read and learned more about the difficult conversations surrounding cultural appropriation, I didn’t want the work I enjoy most to be tainted by misunderstanding. I didn’t want to imply or claim any connection to native culture, so I no longer refer to my animal paintings as Totems.

And yet, it’s through this work and these animals where I feel the most tethered to that something I can’t explain.

When I had the opportunity to create this cartoon, I felt that the sincerest offering I could make to this difficult discussion was to combine all my skills into one image.

In much of First Nations culture, the eagle is a sacred image. In my most basic understanding, it represents the closest connection to the creator, and it’s a conveyor of messages and prayers.

To illustrate just how sacred the beliefs surrounding this animal spirit are, it is illegal in Canada and the U.S. for any non-indigenous person to own any eagle parts, including feathers. I’ve learned more about this from my visits to the Birds of Prey Centre in Coaldale, Alberta, where they rescue and rehabilitate eagles, among other species. It’s also where I took the photo reference for this eagle image.

Any eagle feathers dropped by the birds at their facility are collected and sent to Alberta Fish and Wildlife. After examination for conservation research and screening for disease, they’re distributed to different tribal councils.

The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is about honouring the children who died in residential schools, healing for the survivors and promoting understanding and education about our history. So the eagle image seemed the best fit for what I wanted to say.

Whether it resonates with my editors or their readers is beyond my control. But hopefully, I did my job.

 If not, then I will try harder next year.

___
© Patrick LaMontagne
To find out more about The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, please begin here.

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A Different Kind of Canada Day

Drawing an editorial cartoon or illustration for Canada Day is usually fun, and most of the time, without controversy.

This year, however, with all we’ve been through living with the virus and coming to terms with the darkest parts of our nation’s history, July 1st will no doubt be a day of reflection for many.

With the discovery of more unmarked graves at former sites of Indian residential schools, Canadians are once again coming to terms with our past.

We have long pretended that we walk the high road, especially when comparing ourselves to other countries. We have prided ourselves in being polite, friendly, and first to come to the aid of others in need, even when we weren’t any of those things.

But we were never on firm ground while walking that road because we’ve always known our own history, even when we chose to ignore it. These graves might be new physical evidence, but what went on at residential schools was never a secret.

In 1922, Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce wrote a whistle-blowing book entitled “The Story of a National Crime: An Appeal for Justice for the Indians of Canada.” He had submitted a report in 1907 to the Department of Indian Affairs that was largely ignored.

It wasn’t until 1958 that Indian Affairs regional inspectors recommended the closure of all residential schools. The last one didn’t close until 1996.

One of the most overused clichés surrounding Remembrance Day in Canada, when we remember our fallen service members on November 11th, is the phrase ‘Lest We Forget.’

It has become more of a tagline, something companies can put on their ads, and individuals can share online because they’re supposed to. It almost feels like saying ‘Bless You’ when somebody sneezes, a courtesy without meaning. It’s just something you say.

But Lest We Forget is important. It’s about remembering your past so that you don’t repeat it.

Despite our bad habits on social media, where we are quick to point out the failings of others, comparing our best traits to their worst, there isn’t one of us who would have all of our past sins laid bare for public scrutiny. We are fallible and damaged; we are human.

We tear down statues and spit on the ground when we say the names of the architects of the residential school system, but we conveniently forget that Canadians elected these people. Many of those native children are alive today, and they’re not as old as you might think.

This is not ancient history. It happened in our lifetime, much more recently than the world wars we remember each year without fail.

We point the finger at our past leaders and say that they should have done something, but that’s the easy way out. It’s also easy to blame the current leadership and say that it’s their fault, but most of the time, that’s simply partisan politics. We switch political parties in this country more than we switch vehicles.

A hundred years from now, our descendants will not look kindly on our inaction. Such is the luxury of hindsight.  Our behaviour during the pandemic, how we treat our most disadvantaged citizens, our obsession with moral grandstanding on social media, and our disregard for the threat of climate change, the ground on which we stand is indeed shaky.

But we can change. We can have more empathy for our fellow travellers. We can try and put ourselves in another’s shoes before passing judgment on the narrow snapshot we might see of them. These are choices.

Some municipalities have cancelled their Canada Day events, others are going ahead with the party, and more are still on the fence. Individuals must decide for themselves.

I don’t agree with scrubbing away our history, nor do I support daily self-flagellation. Neither accomplishes much of anything. We should know our nation’s past, reflect on it, and learn from it.

Remembrance is not just about the wars we won, but our collective history as a nation, the good and the bad.

Lest we forget.

© Patrick LaMontagne

 

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Standing Room Only – Find Your Audience


Finally writing this post makes my day because I’ve wanted to share this news for quite some time.

Most artists hate marketing. Hell, most people who are self-employed hate marketing. While it’s a necessary evil to let people know what you have to offer, self-promotion often feels like begging.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

I’ve written a few posts over the past several months on David duChemin’s impact on helping me expand and improve my marketing. What I haven’t shared is that in addition to a couple of incredibly informative personal calls, David has been working hard on a new course called Standing Room Only.

I’ve been part of a group of a dozen or so creatives who’ve taken and completed this course in recent months.

Regular readers will know how little respect I have for business promotion on social media. It has been indescribably frustrating how much energy, time, and money I’ve spent on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram over the years, receiving very little in return.

As David wrote in one of his recent Audience Academy e-mails, “I’m on social” is not a marketing plan.”

Regular followers of A Wilder View have seen some of the changes I’ve made in recent months. The fact that I no longer call it ‘my newsletter’ is just one of them.

The colouring pages, free wallpapers, positive changes to my website and online store, the new look to A Wilder View and a sharper focus on where I want to take my work — all of that is thanks to David and this course.

And I’ve just barely scratched the surface on the changes that are coming.

NONE of this course is flowery self-help crap, nor is it empty “you can do it” motivational pablum. David isn’t offering a list of tips and tricks; he’s teaching a perspective and offering a viable alternative to spinning your wheels on social media.

It’s not about getting people to just give you their money; it’s about serving your audience, to make them want to follow your work because you’re giving them something they can’t get somewhere else.

We all complain that so many businesses have forgotten about customer service, and I agree.

I remember Shonna and I going to a restaurant in Calgary a few years ago for lunch. Our young server was attentive, efficient, friendly, and it was remarkable how that stood out as unusual.

We told her how much we appreciated her efforts, and she started to tear up, telling us how much she needed to hear it. Because get this—she was having a bad day!

What was she like when she was having a good one?!

Her gratuity reflected our appreciation, and I made a point of finding her manager before we left to tell him how her efforts were responsible for our positive experience.

The food was good, but I don’t remember what we ate that day. I do remember that we felt like valuable customers.

THAT’S how I want my followers to feel, that their experience here matters to me.

David’s Standing Room Only course is all about teaching people how to do that.

I am not being paid to promote the course, I don’t get any kickback if you say you heard about it from me, and there is no affiliate link you need to click.

I’ve spent a lot of time and money reading books, articles and watching videos that promised results and delivered nothing, ones that talked about how to outsmart the social media algorithms, how to trick people into buying your work or employ various cheesy used-car sales gimmicks.

This isn’t that.

This is about changing how you look at promoting your business, taking a long view of where you want your work to take you, and how to invite people to come along for the ride by making it fun for them, whether they buy something or not.

I’m promoting this course because it’s hands down one of the best investments I’ve ever made in my business. And when I say investment, I mean time, money, and effort. Because I won’t lie, this course is a lot of work, and David doesn’t sugarcoat that.

Anything worthwhile is work.

But it’s rewarding work. I’m actually about to go through the resources again because I already need a refresher. There was so much information.

Now, I could go on and on, but I’ll wrap it up because if you need this — and if you’re a self-employed creative, you need this! — I’ll let David speak for himself on the Standing Room Only course site. Let me assure you, it may sound too good to be true, but he delivers more than what he’s promising.

It even comes with a money-back guarantee, and he’ll stand by it. Take the time to watch the video and read through the site. Please invest that much. Enrollment closes this Friday, so do yourself a favour and take a look. And if you know an artist, maker or creative, do them a favour and send them the link.

Cheers,
Patrick
© Patrick LaMontagne

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A Smiling Lion

To see all the little painted hairs I suggest watching this full-screen. Here’s the narrative from the video…

On a recent Saturday morning, I woke with no idea what to paint, which meant going through my photo archives, looking for reference.

None of the photos spoke to me and I began to feel uneasy.

A brown bear? No I’ve done a lot of those and just finished one. I’ve painted plenty of bears. An owl or an eagle? Painted lots of those, too.

On it went. Having painted more than 80 production pieces, plus commissions and portraits of people, finding something new is a challenge. I wanted to choose an animal I’d enjoy painting but would also appeal to others.

Was it just a bad morning or worse —the beginning of a rut?

The peanut gallery of internal critics, those loudmouths in the cheap seats, they love this stuff. Whenever self-doubt finds a foothold, that chorus of cretins is ready to attack.

“You had a good run. Time to go get a real job. You weren’t that good at this stuff, anyway. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

I tend to overthink these things.  Lately, I’ve been focused a lot on trying to figure out what my audience wants to see, the people who already follow me and support my work.

What I forget, however, is I didn’t know what they wanted to see in the first place. I painted funny looking animals and the people who liked them hung around for more. The more I painted what I wanted; the more people showed up. I don’t recall taking a poll asking if I was painting too many bears.

As I looked through hundreds of reference photos, I tried to ignore those inner voices telling me why each was not good enough, that I’m not good enough. They can’t be silenced, but they don’t deserve the spotlight or center stage.

A favorite line from the movie, Dr. Strange goes, “we never lose our demons, we only learn to live above them.”

In my frustration at failing to find the one reference image that spoke to me, the one with the perfect lighting, composition, that captured a moment, I stopped looking and started writing this narrative, instead.

And in the writing, I found a little clarity. The advice I would give another artist in this situation applies to myself as well.

Paint what you like. Stop worrying about the marketing, the likes and shares, the sales, the prints, the licensing, the niche, the pressure, the noise. Stop anticipating and giving in to the critics, real or imaginary.

If you’re creative for a living, the business stuff is important, no denying it. You can’t wing it and pretend that money is just going to flow to you. You must think like a business owner, treat it like a job, and remember this is how you pay your bills.

But not all the time.  Otherwise, what’s the point of being an artist for a living?

I went back to the archives with a different goal, to paint something for me. If other people like it, great. If not, I’ll paint something for them next time.

Once I got past all the critical voices in my head, I really enjoyed this piece. I immersed myself in the long hairs in his mane, the short hairs on his muzzle, the dark shadows that defined the larger shapes, the warm colours in the fur, the bright highlights, and that contented smile on his face, which put a smile on mine.

Sure, I’ve painted lions before.

I’ll paint lions again.

That’s OK, because each will be different than the last. And all will be time well spent.

© Patrick LaMontagne
Follow me on Instagram @LaMontagneArt