BACK IN SCHOOL...

You may have noticed a lack of posts over the last few months. Bjoern is back in school to get his degree. Unfortunately, the work I have to do for the remainder of my BA in illustration doesn't really involve any illustrating. But you know what they say: You can take the... drawer away from drawing, but you can't take the drawing out of the.. There's probably a better saying for this. Anyway, here is a sentence I had to write describing the focus of my next essay (pictured above). My thousands of American readers will probably recognize their master of hoax and humbug: Mr. Phineas T. Barnum.

For my Canadian audience, Barnum was a 19th century showman who’s brand of deceptive marketing has often been imitated. Recently this was done here in Canada by the Suzuki Foundation and their "Save the 'bou" hoax. The people responsible for this recent campaign had to apologize after they drew a large number of members to their facebook group under false pretenses. They were making a fuss about the Canadian mint’s alleged plans to take the caribou off our quarter, but it turned out that they really just wanted people to sign a petition about land conservation for B.C. caribou. I got to say… though the idea was Barnumesque, they didn’t have a smidge of his style, which is why they ultimately flopped. And an apology? Barnum would be ashamed!