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Here we are, looking at the fancy brass sign on The Georgia Straight newspaper's current offices on the South-West corner of West Broadway Avenue, and Pine Street, in a richly refurbished 1948 building. The Straight's tremendous success makes me feel good. I worked for the newspaper, full-time, for nearly 10 year; then they were a major freelance client for another 12 years; my last piece, was a January, 2004 cover illustration showing George W. Bush looking up the word "moron" in a dictionary.

I started at The Georgia Straight in 1983, as something of a Wunderkind. The gig was to save the paper. It had published for some years under it's publishing company name: The Vancouver Free Press. In 1983, I was part of a small team that was supposed to reboot it again, as The Georgia Straight. I wasn't the Editor, or Art Director. I was a witchy little sh*t who, apparently ate, slept, and pooped clever design. My colleagues gave me an awful lot of rope.





I assume it was 1984, 1985; The Straight was located on 4th Avenue. Behind the office area, we had a warehouse space with a big loading bay door. I had acquired a jigsaw! This caused some concern. My co-workers watched silently as I scrounged plywood, brushes, three colours of paint, and shelf brackets. Oh, and I had, what was surely a World War II surplus overhead projector -- "The war's over, we can't make tanks any more. Let's make A/V equipment for schools!"

No one quite understood what I was doing -- Art Director, Bob Mercer, had created a bold new Georgia Straight logo. Years before, Illustrator Rand Holmes, one of the Straight's most important contributors, designed a mascot for the paper, a newsboy called "Mr. Wuxtry." I wanted to reinvigorate this brilliant icon, and part of my plan was to make a life-size version.

[caption id="attachment_2622" align="alignright" width="193"] Georgia Straight publisher Dan McLeod posing with Mr. Wuxtry in 2013. -- photo: The Province[/caption]

I explained to one and all that Mr. Wuxtry would have a two-piece hand to hold the current issue of the newspaper. He'd stand, and hold that paper, at any event we sponsored; he'd be synonymous with The Georgia Straight! Smiles and nods. I finished him, and he was an instant hit. When he wasn't attending movie premieres, he stood in the lobby, holding the current issue for all to see. He made the move from 4th Avenue to new digs on Pender, from Pender to Burrard, and, from Burrard to his current home, on West Broadway, and Pine.

It's weird to see my Mr. Wuxtry. he's near-on 30-years-old; quite tatty, and can't even stand up properly anymore. The weirdest thing is that of all the things I did at The Straight -- the covers, the inside illustrations, the page layouts, the articles -- he's the thing that lasts. That is so funny! Click the images to enlarge them.

The Georgia Straight is a solidly established critic of the Establishment -- go figure. The Straight started in 1967, at a time when hippies were starting counter-culture newspapers all across North America. Nearly 50 years later, The Georgia Straight is, I believe, the last one standing; that's down to the indomitable publisher, and original member of the founding collective, Dan McLeod. It's true also that a steady stream of young talent helped keep it going. It's well-known that Boomtown Rats' Bob Geldoff served as a music critic briefly in the 1970s; less well-known that Doug Bennett, of Doug and the Slugs, art-directed the paper for a while, also in the 1970s. A lot of local writers, such as Tom Harrison cut their teeth at The Straight.