Category: Illustration Page 1 of 14

This illustration accompanied an article by Gil O’Mourne about the number of sandwiches Torontonians eat.

This illustration accompanied an article on the High Park Zoo.

Jim illustrated this story by Frank Mann Harris (also known as “Six-bit” Harris), who was a regular contributor to the Star Weekly in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He wrote often of small town life and this story outlines his first time hunting.

By Robert Reade, October 18, 1930.

“Let’s go fishing,” said Jim. “It’s the last day for muskies.”

“Muskies,” I protested, “should at this time of year be as extinct as dinosaurs or side elastic boots. These are the duck days, not the fish days. Seasons, like drinks, should never be mixed.”

“I’m not mixing them,” said Jim, reaching for his hat and turning a half-finished sketch to the wall. “The legal season for muskies does not expire until sunset. I haven’t had a muskie all summer and I know this is my lucky day.”

When Jim feels his luck is in the whole Hamilton Tiger line¹ couldn’t stop him from testing it. By this time he had affixed a sign to his door, “Back in half an hour,” and was down the hall and in the elevator. I tagged after him, still remonstrating though I knew it was hopeless.

“You’re the world’s greatest last-minute optimist,” I jeered. “Always on the last race of the last day of racing you have an over-powering hunch that you are going to pick the winner. And then you have sift ashes all winter to economize on the coal. I’ve got a hunch that your muskie hunch is just another one of your self-deceptions. Muskies, I am told, can only be caught by experts and I’ve never heard of you as a fishing expert.”

“I’ll put it over the experts to-day,” said Jim defiantly. “This morning a fellow paid me back $10 I lent him two years ago at Dufferin Park. I tell you this is my lucky day.”

As we walked down Bay St. to his garage people stared at me. I was hanging on to his arm, gesticulating and urging him to forget this muskie madness. They thought I was panhandling him, telling a hard-luck tale with outstretched palm.

“Jim,” I pleaded, “if you won’t listen to me at least think of your public. You are famous as a Nimrod, not as an Izak Walton or a Gregory Clark. Your public have been taught to expect from you ducks in their season and rabbits in their season. Here it is a month since the duck shooting started and you haven’t yet fired a shot. Your admirers can’t understand what has gone wrong and are blaming me for failing to tell them about the phenomenal slaughter you must have made on opening day.”

Hereupon Jim made, a confession. “I forgot to tell you I was out on opening day. I slipped down to Turtle lake marsh and I missed plenty.”

“Jim,” said I sadly, “the man who holds out on his biographer is as foolish as the man who holds out on his lawyer. What difference would it make to me if you did miss? You are forgetting that the pen is mightier than the pump gun. And you have kept me from making all the unlucky duck hunters, and that means most of them, feel happy. When I tell them about your big bags it restores their faith that there are still ducks in the world. But I can’t do that with the muskies. I can’t credit you with more than two, the legal limit. And the experts won’t believe you caught two.”

“I’m going to catch ’em,” said Jim.

“You’re going to waste a perfect day for duck hunting,” said I.

“We can talk about that as we run along,” said he. “Jump in. We’ve got 110 miles to go.”

I noticed on the back seat a pump gun and a bag of decoys alongside the casting rod in its canvas case.

I was greatly pleased at this evidence of his affinity, which I had begun to suspect.

“Aha,” said I, “you’ve just been having a little joke with me.”

“No,” said he, stepping on the gas, “when I said muskies I meant muskies. But that’s no reason if we see some ducks in the dusk coming home why we shouldn’t go after them.”

The Experts Dispute Violently

It certainly was his lucky day. As he sped down the Montreal road he just missed six chickens and two pigs and slowed down in time to give a motor-cop a life-like imitation of a tortoise.

After we had turned north to the Kawartha district we skirted Rice lake. From the rice beds with contented quacks a flock of spoon-bills splashed along the surface of the water.

“Look, Jim,” I cried.

His foot shot automatically to the brake. His right arm shot over his seat in the direction of the pump gun. We almost skidded into the ditch.

But it was only for a second that he was. tempted to abandon his hunch.

He turned his wheel to the skid, gave her gas and with his exhaust drowned out the siren quackings.

“No,” said he firmly, “it’s lunge to-day. I dreamed last night I hooked a big muskie and played him for an hour. When I got him in he weighed 35 pounds and I had hooked him by the tail. I was lucky even in my dream.”

With no further duck temptations we reached our destination. At the water’s edge the fishing fleet was ready to loose the painter. On the dock were several experts wise in casting lore and even wiser in muskie lore. I could give their names, but as later I must give their scores I shall refrain. Suffice to say they were men high up in the casting world, men who can throw a plug into a plughat at one hundred feet or flick the ashes off your cigarette at fifty.

They stood in a circle uttering words of muskie wisdom, while around them clustered the lesser throng eager to catch the crumbs that fell from their tablets of memory. I, who until that day had thought that a plug is an electrical contrivance you stick into a slot in a wall, stood humbly on the outer edge, but I noticed that even Jim was abashed in the presence of fishing greatness.

The experts disputed about plugs.

“The only thing that can do the trick,” said one very dogmatically, “is a red and white jointed pikie.²“

“Not bad,” admitted another expert, “but my choice is a pearl bassoreno.”

“You’re both wrong,” said the third champion caster. “The swimming mouse is the hot stuff. I caught a fifteen-pounder with it last week end after I had tried both the jointed pikie and the mouse without results.”

“All of you are wrong,” a fourth bait heaver burst in. “The only thing they’ll rise to on this lake is a silver and bronze minnow.” They disputed violently about baits, but they were unanimous on one thing. That was the autumnal habits of the muskallonge.

While the others solemnly wagged their heads in agreement the smallest but the most vocal of the experts said, “It is utterly no use at this time of year to cast in deep water. That’s all right in July, but it’s no good in October. Right now they’re in close, right up against the shore, with their nose in between two stones and their backs almost out of the water. You’ve got to cast about three inches from the water line.”

“About four inches I should say,” interrupted one of the other experts.

“Have it your own way,” said the man who had the floor, “but in my opinion three inches is nearer the facts.”

“You’ve got to throw your plug,” he went on, “between the muskie’s nose and the shore. If you land it around his tail he’ll just give a swirl and that will be all there’ll be to it. But if you get it right in front of his nose he’ll go for it like a cat for catnip.”

The Fella With Duck Eyes

I had a brilliant idea which I felt it to be my duty to impart to the company regardless of the fact that I had no professional standing. I lowered my voice so that I could not be heard by the Indian guides, each standing patiently by his canoe waiting for the end of the age-long preliminaries of talk which I understand are inevitable whenever experts foregather.

“Gentlemen,” said I, “times are hard and we should do all we can to lower the high cost of fishing. I have a scheme by which we can dispense with these guides, who will cost us $5 a day plus their food. Why go out in canoes at all? Since the fish are close in shore why not walk along the shore and drop the plug into their mouths close at hand from behind the shelter of a bush? It seems to me that three inches is a very small margin to work on and that we, or at least I, will get better results operating from a close range.”

The experts were so speechless with indignation that they could do nothing but glare at me. Even Jim, who is indulgent of all the follies of his fellow-beings and slow to reproach, cast at me an irritated look and said, “Sh-“

I subsided, but I felt a little hurt that my obviously sound idea should be so unanimously rejected. I was to learn before the day was out that to the true bait caster the casting is everything and the fish nothing. They could be just as happy at home in the backyard with a bird’s bath as their target.

It also seemed to me that they go fishing just to get together and exchange reminiscences, a thing they could do much more comfortably and cheaply at home.

The experts began to compare notes on the fish they had caught in times past, in some cases ten years past. They told each other how much the fish had weighed, how many times they had leaped and how high, and also how long it had taken to reel them in. It looked as if the whole day would be spent in anecdote, when one of them said, “Hey, fellows, let’s do a little fishing,” and the embarkation commenced.

While the theorists were in session Jim who, to give him credit, is a practical fisherman had strolled off to a rock to make some practice casts. The Indian selected for us had a name suited for a water voyage. It was Noah.

As one by one the canoes rounded a rocky point and disappeared Noah said to me, “Where’s your friend, the fella with the duck eyes?”

I have heard that men in time look like what they eat. Great heavens, thought I, has Jim I come to look like what he shoots at!

“He might have dove’s eyes,” I said to Noah, “but he hasn’t got duck eyes.”

“Oh yes, he has,” said Noah, pointing to the bag of decoys in the boat. “There’s the duck eyes.”

The puzzle was explained. Noah pronounced “decoys” “duck eyes.”

I told Jim the jest and added a warning, “Lay off the lunge or to the duck eyes you’ll add a muskie nose.”

“It’s my lucky day,” said Jim for the hundredth time.

When we were ten yards from the dock I thought I would try my first cast. I flexed my arm back to my shoulder and gave the gentle flick of my wrist which I had been instructed was all that was necessary.

I felt resistance. I gave a tug. I felt more resistance. Then the marvellous glow came over me which I had been told would come over me when I had hooked my first muskalonge.

“It’s not your lucky day; it’s my lucky day,” I shouted to Jim, reeling my line in furiously until the steel pole bent in two. “I’ve got a muskie with my first cast.”

“Let out your line,” yelled Jim.

“Not a chance,” I retorted. “He might get away.”

“Stop reeling,” screamed Jim again. “You’ve hooked Noah.”

Sure enough I had. Right through the back of his sweater coat with all three of the gang of hooks. We had to return to the dock to cut him loose.

A Big League Fishing Contest

A friend of mine who once, only once, fished the Restigouche for salmon had a somewhat similar experience. His first cast caught the guide in the ear.

“He paddled straight back to the bank,” said my friend, “and though the hook came out of his ear without any trouble the lazy fellow wouldn’t work any more that day. I had to get another guide.”

Noah was made of more industrious stuff. He bent stolidly once more to the paddle, for Jim was in a state of panic because the rest of the fishing fleet was out of sight. It seems that every muskie fisherman likes to keep his rivals in view, so that if, by any chance, a fish is hooked he can paddle over quickly and drop a plug on the same spot. The theory, seldom borne out by facts, is that muskies, like misfortunes, never come singly.

It is also consoling to know that the other fellow is just as much out of luck as yourself. But it is maddening, if he is out of sight, to feel that while you yourself are making futile cast after cast he is filling his canoe with forty-pounders.

This was a big league fishing contest, as important in its way as world series baseball. Four of the champion bait casters of Toronto were with keen rivalry putting their theories into practice and Jim, in his confidence that this was his lucky day, had wagered on himself at odds against this high-class field. Naturally he was eager to know the score, but in that labyrinth of islands never once that afternoon did we catch sight of another boat.

I prepared to make another cast, but he said, “Just watch me for a while until you see how it’s done.”

We drew near shelving rocks that looked just the place for muskies to sleep on.

“Just watch me,” said he, “put the plug right in that crevice.”

“Don’t be more than three inches away,” I implored.

“Don’t worry,” said he. “It will be right on the water’s edge.”

His red and white pikies floated through the air like thistledown, but he was slow in putting on the brakes and it fell into a bush six feet from the water’s edge. He gave a tug, but it held as fast as my plug had in Noah’s coat.

“Jim!” I remonstrated, “you don’t need to teach me that bush league stuff. I can do it myself.”

Noah, with a stroke of his paddle, sent the canoe in shore and at that moment I noticed a slight whirlpool about three inches from the water’s edge.

“What was that?” I exclaimed.

“That,” groaned Jim, “was a muskie, just where my plug should have lit.”

Then he brightened up and said, “It’s, after all, something to get a swirl. Lots of fellows are not even lucky enough to get that.”

The whirlpool I had seen is what is known technically as a “swirl.” It is caused by the muskalonge making a complete revolution and flicking his tail in disgust at the inexpertness of the caster who can’t get his plug three inches of the shore. But when an angler makes a perfect cast the fish to show his admiration for such skill jumps right up in the air like a college cheer leader at a football game. That is what is known technically as a “rise.”

“Perhaps,” said Jim hopefully, “next time I’ll get a rise.”

So we went on from rocky ledge to rocky ledge. Jim’s plug caught in the bushes or bounced off the rocks or fell short, but he never hooked Noah as I did. Occasionally he made the perfect cast, but as it was followed by neither a swirl nor a rise it was clear that there was no lunge there, or else one too comatose to feel any emotion whether of praise or of blame.

Torn Between Two Improbabilities

So Jim began to get skeptical of the theory of the rocky shore and be willing to accept the heresy that, there are in October, as in mid-summer, muskies at the edge of the reed beds.

He appealed to Noah to support him in repudiating the experts and said, “Surely there might be a lunge in there, mightn’t there, Noah?”

And Noah, detecting the yearning in his voice, said, smiling, “Sure, muskie in there. I once catch him there.”

Jim cast in and caught a long water weed that came foaming to the boat like a sea serpent.

At the next weed bed he said in a discouraged tone, “There are no muskies there, are there, Noah?”

And the obliging Noah echoed him, “Sure, no muskies there.”

I began to see that Lo the poor Indian is the original “Yes” man.

Noah’s motto seemed to be that the customer is always right. If Jim said, “That island looks pretty good,” he paddled toward it.

If Jim said, “That rock don’t look bald enough. There’s a couple of blades of grass on it,” Noah paddled away from it.

Never once did he say, “Cast there” or “Don’t cast there.” Yet if he had displayed authority or dogmatic assurances we would have bowed humbly to his superior experience of these muskie infested waters.

A man I know once trolled for lake trout in Algonquin Park. His guide would say, “Do you see that pine tree there?”

“Yes.”

“Well, when you get opposite it drop in your line. And do you see that big rock about a hundred feet ahead of the pine tree?”

“Yes.”

“Well, when you get to the rock you will have a fish.”

And it was so every time.

Why, I reflected, couldn’t Noah do something like that? A suspicion crossed my mind that Noah might have sold out to the enemy. Wherever there is wagering there is always a suspicion of such things in big league fishing. as in big league everything.

I wanted to communicate my suspicion to Jim, but one look at his bland cherubic face still radiating the glowing optimism of a belief in his luck told me he would entertain no bad suspicions.

And how could I tell that Noah would not yet lead us to the X that marked the spot? There was such heartiness in his assurance. “Yes. We get muskies. Plenty,” when Jim in momentary despair laid down his rod and picked up his gun.

He looked into the cloudless air. There wasn’t a duck in sight. I surveyed the horizon myself and neither saw nor heard any whirr of wings.

Seeing no chance of casting bird shot on the waters he once more cast his plug on the waters. At that moment six ducks coming out of the empty air like rabbits from a conjurer’s hat flew over us. Jim threw down the rod and picked up the gun, but it was too late.

The rest of the afternoon he was in the same state of uncertainty in which I have seen him at the races cruelly torn between two equally remote improbabilities.

Four Swirls and Two Rises

Lured on by Noah’s steady trickle of soothing syrup, “Yes, muskies. We get muskies,” again and again he cast his lure, now into the shadows and now into the sun, and whirled his reel until his wrist ached.

Through the golden autumn leaves the level sun the most artistic of all casters began to cast long shafts of golden light.

“Jim,” said I, “your pikie must look to a muskie like a gold fish and we haven’t the word of any expert that a muskalonge will take gold fish. Let’s quit fishing.”

Stubbornly he heaved his plug into another bush. Through a gap in the islands I saw I canoe flash by. And then another. The fleet was returning home. Each of the experts to doubt had his legal limit and another in his guide’s name and still another in his wife’s name.

“The jig’s up,” said I. “The last day of muskie fishing is as dead as a losing parimutuel ticket³. What’s the good of finishing lengths behind the field with the grandstand laughing at you?”

“All right,” said Jim sadly. “Let’s go. Dreams are the bunk.”

With short sharp jabs Noah made his ark

bound along like a power boat. The island danced by like fence posts on the highway. Rapidly we overhauled the fishing flotilla and entered the bay just as the first of the canoe were docking.

Jim’s first thought was of the scoreboard although it went without saying that he was beaten with all those experts against him.

“What luck?” he cried.

There was a chorus of answers.

“I had four swirls.”

“I had two rises.”

“I hooked into a big one, but he got away.”

“Any fish?” shouted Jim, shooting through the cloud of alibis right to the main point.

There was not one fish.

“I told you it was my lucky day,” he beamed exultantly. “I tied them.”

He picked up his rod and made the last cast of summer. The experts on the dock, unfastening their reels and putting rods in cases, laughed at him.

“What are you doing?” they jeered. “There can’t be any muskies here.”

“I’m just fixing a back lash,” replied Jim flushing a little at their ridicule.

He reeled in his line and put the rod behind him in the bow, with the plug trailing in the water. Then resting his head disconsolately on his hands he leaned forward to me and said wearily, “You were right. We should have gone after the ducks.”

I glanced forward and saw that the plug had been drawn under water and was moving away rapidly. There was a little way on the canoe as it drifted in, but it was not sufficient to explain the movement of the plug.

“Look! Look!” I cried.

“It Sure is My Lucky Day”

Jim twisted around. By this time the steel rod was violently bent and if the butt had not caught under the thwart would have gone overboard.

He took one startled glance and grabbed the rod.

“A strike,” he shrieked. “I’ve got a strike.”

 He could not have let out a wilder yell if he had sat down on an open bait box full of plugs.

“A strike, my eye,” sneered one of the experts. “You’ve got a log.”

“The poor boob think’s he’s got a strike,” shrilled another of them, the little one, an rolled over and over on the dock in a paroxysm⁴ of laughter with his plus-sixes bellying out like a balloon jib.

The line darted in zigzags through the water like a beheaded chicken. It was obvious that there was something monstrous and alive at the end of it.

“It ain’t a bass,” said Noah. “It’s a muskie.”

The laugh froze on the lips of the experts. They began to shriek instructions, contradicting one another in a wild rabble of exhortations.

“Give him line.”

“Reel him in.”

“Keep him down.”

“Make him jump.”

“Bring him to the boat.”

“Keep him away from the boat.”

Obediently Jim tried to satisfy them all at once. He reeled and unreeled. He put the point of his rod in the water. He took it out of the water. Perspiration dripped from his brow. There was a light of ecstasy in his eyes, furrows of pain in his face.

Canoes put out from the shore and surrounded him. He was like Bobby Jones⁵ putting between hedges of spectators. Others, with their view blocked from the shore, climbed the rocks and surveyed the thrilling scene like Byron’s Persian king on the rocky brow overlooking sea-girt Salamis⁶.

Jumping like a salmon, leaping like tarpon, the fish was gradually brought close to the boat. There sullenly at bay he spun around, creating the greatest of all swirls. Jim tugged and tugged, but he could not lift the leviathan.

“Bring the landing net,” one of the experts commanded.

“Fetch me the club,” shouted Noah, suddenly ceasing to be a yes-man and becoming a dominating personality.

Hastily another Indian paddled from shore with a softball bat.

The fish poked his snout above the water. Noah swung the bat and, returning my compliment of the plug in his back by nicking the lobe of my left ear, smote the lunge right on the nose.

The fish floated, dazed. Jim snatched it into the boat, where Noah gave it the coup de grace. And then we saw an astounding thing. The plug was not in its mouth, but square across its head from one eye to the other.

Holding it up Jim exclaimed joyously, “It sure is my lucky day. I think I win the fur-lined: underwear with all the trimmings.”

“It’s some fish,” said one expert. “It weighs all of twenty pounds.”

“Eighteen, I should say,” retorted another wiseacre Walton.

Even in at the death they displayed their ruling passion of disputation.

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Editor’s Notes: This is one of those Pre-Greg-Jim stories (not by Greg). All sorts of writers would have their stories illustrated by Jim, and though I normally don’t reproduce them in full, I thought I would include this one since it includes Jim (and Greg – only referred to here at the “short” fishing expert. You can see him in the illustration too).

1. This is referring to the football team, before the merger in 1950 with the Wildcats to form the Tiger-Cats. ↩︎
2. All of these vintage fishing lures can be looked up as they come up for sale. I fear any links I might provide would soon disappear. ↩︎
3. This is a type of betting ticket. ↩︎
4. Paroxysm is “A sudden attack”. ↩︎
5. Bobby Jones was a professional golfer. ↩︎
6. From the poem, the Isles of Greece. ↩︎

This is an early Jim drawing with a story on Lyman Melvin Jones.

This illustration by Jim went with a story by John Herries McCulloch.

This illustration accompanied a story by Weare Holbrook, a columnist and cartoonist. It was a humourist take on the number of vitamins available at the time and the affects it could have on someone.

These illustrations accompanied a story by W.W. Winans about slang use in Toronto 100 years ago. I don’t have any information on the author. Some of the slang and their definitions in the images:

• Big Fish = Important person
• Bird = Person
• Thirty Seeds = Thirty dollars
• Kisser = mouth or face
• “Know your onions” = to be knowledgeable on a particular subject
• “Crying out loud” = expressing surprise or impatience
• Six-bits = 75 cents (also meaning “a lot”)
• Applesauce = nonsense

These illustrations by Jim accompanied an article on manners by Laura Mason. She worked for the University of Toronto Library and wrote a few articles for the Star Weekly from 1922-23, mainly travel stories. She later became head of the library, was a member of the editorial staff of Saturday Night magazine. She died in 1953.