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LEVEL OF DESCRIPTION: Fonds
No.: PR1884
TITLE: Stew Cameron fonds
CREATOR: Cameron, Stew
DATE RANGE: 1926-1972
EXTENT: ca. 1800 drawings and other material
Includes ca. 100 photographs, ca. 1.00 m of textual records, 56 objects, 32 posters, 23 negatives, 7 transparencies, 1 sketchbook and 1 film.
ADMINISTRATIVE
HISTORY/BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: Henry Stewart (Stew) Cameron was born March 28, 1912 in Calgary, Alberta; he was the son of J. McKinley and Ethel (Munro) Cameron. Encouraged by his father, Stew developed an early interest in cartooning and submitted drawings to the Calgary Herald while still in high school. He studied art at Mount Royal College, where his cartoons illustrated the student newspaper and advertised campus events. In 1934, he produced a series of cartoons on trail riding for the Canadian Geographical Journal. Beginning in 1935, he produced a number of anti-William Aberhart and anti-Social Credit drawings for pamphlets and the Calgary Herald. Stew spent some time in the United States in 1936, working for Disney Studios, though soon returned to Calgary and became the Calgary Herald’s first staff cartoonist. A series of Stew’s Aberhart-targeted cartoons were published in 1938 as No Matter How Thin You Slice It. In 1942, Stew enlisted in the army, serving with the Public Relations Office for Military District No. 13, where he drew cartoons on military life published in army paper Khaki and in the Calgary Herald. From his experiences in basic training, he produced the cartoon set Basic Training Daze. Stew returned to work at the Calgary Herald after the war, but in 1947, accepted an offer to work for the Vancouver Province. He resigned from the Vancouver Province in 1949 and returned to Calgary. Between 1949 and 1955, Stew produced three Calgary Stampede cartoon sets, What I Saw at the Calgary Stampede (1949), Let the Chaps Fall Where They May (1950), and Weep for the Cowboy (1951), and one trail riding cartoon set, Pack Horses in the Rockies: Dudes, Denims & Diamond Hitches (1955). He spent his next years marketing these sets, as well as preparing cartoons for advertisements and friends. Stew Cameron died December 11, 1970.
CUSTODIAL HISTORY:The Provincial Archives of Alberta purchased the records from Thelma Cameron, Stew Cameron’s wife, in 1978. Dr. Leonard Leacock deposited 3 cartoons in the Archives in 1977; these were incorporated in PR1978.0063 as items 2784, 2785, and 2786.
SCOPE AND CONTENT: The fonds consists of the cartooning records of Stew Cameron, and includes rough sketches, ink drawings, and copies of press prints of cartoons created from his time as a student, as an employee of the Calgary Herald, the military and the Vancouver Province, and as a freelance cartoonist. The fonds also includes correspondence with parents, his wife, friends and business associates, other records relating to Stew’s life and work as well as a number of published volumes of other editorial cartoonists, some of whom influenced Stew’s work.
DATE NOTE: Records created after Stew Cameron's death relate to the re-publication of his works.
ARRANGEMENT NOTE: Published works have been arranged chronologically and a cross index has been prepared to correlate the different formats.
ASSOCIATED MATERIAL: See also the Stewart Cameron fonds at the Glenbow Archives in Calgary, Alberta.
RELATED RECORDS: See also the Darlene Skaer collection.
GENERAL NOTE: Information for the biographical sketch is taken from the records. Thelma Cameron also deposited the records for the Peter McGregor fonds (PR1883) and the Thelma Cameron collection (PR1648).
RELATED FILES: Display FileList
RELATED ITEMS: A3421 (Stew Cameron)
A3422 (Stew Cameron)
A3423 (Lake Minnewanka, Alberta)
A3424 (Lazy J. L. Ranch, Cochrane, Alberta)


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