Andy Donato

Who is Andy Donato?

Andy Donato is an editorial cartoonist for the Toronto Sun newspaper chain.

He was born in Scarborough, Ontario. He graduated from Danforth Collegiate and Technical Institute in 1955 and worked at Eaton's as a layout artist. He joined the Toronto Telegram in 1961, working as a graphic artist in the promotion department. In 1968, he was appointed art director and began cartooning on a part-time basis. After The Telegram folded in 1971, he joined The Toronto Sun. In 1974, he started cartooning full-time. In 1985 and 1986 he served as president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

He is well known among Sun readers for his signature image of a bird, "Donato's bird." Finding the bird, lost in the newspaper, has been a common device in Sun promotions through the years.

Some of his most famous work was done when Pierre Eliott Trudeau was Prime Minister, and Joe Clark was leader of the official opposition. As the two leaders battled it out, Donato lampooned both of them extensively. For years, Joe Clark was drawn wearing children's mittens, a reference to the time his luggage went missing on a trip to Israel. The final cartoon of the series appeared after Trudeau's airplane was hit by a bus while on the tarmac. It showed a puzzled Trudeau staring at the bus while one of his aides held up Clark's mittens and said: "We don't know who the driver was, but we found his mittens."