I have earned my living for the last 16 years drawing editorial cartoons for the National Post. I wake up every day, go through my morning routines, scan the news online, send a sketch or two to my editor, and then file my cartoon. Not particularly exciting stuff, and definitely not anything that could even vaguely be considered life-threatening. Until this week, that is. 

I awoke Jan. 7, like everyone else in this part of the world, to the hard news from Paris, and I suspect my first reaction – a mixture of horror, shock and revulsion –was similar to everyone else’s. My second reaction, one shared, I’m quite sure, by political cartoonists around the world, was an awareness that my job that day demanded an appropriate response in cartoon form.

But before I could get to that, I had to field a number of media interviews and found myself being asked the same questions repeatedly: Will you change the way you do things? Will you start to self-censor more rigorously? Will your editor and publisher exercise greater caution when it comes to publishing your cartoons?

I couldn’t immediately answer any of those questions with any certainty. But I stated then – and still believe – that I will continue to work as I have always done and leave it to others to edit or censor. I also understand that my editor and publisher, like editors and publishers around the world, are facing a new reality in which they must carefully weigh the benefits of publishing potentially inflammatory material against the danger of imperiling the lives of their staffs. I do not envy them this task.

But I had other thoughts on my mind that day as well.

Over the years, I have struggled with the nagging suspicion that political cartoons don’t matter quite as much as they used to. We are, after all, competing in a world where endless varieties of political satire exist across an array of media platforms. Add to that the notion that the aura of the political cartoons is increasingly old fashioned, as rapidly declining as print media itself.

The carnage at Charlie Hebdo overturned that old suspicion. The paper’s cartoonists and editors were murdered for doing, more or less, the same thing that I do. The ideas and images that flowed from the pens of my fellow artists had sufficient power. They were considered dangerous enough to provoke an outburst of unprecedented violence.

I was going to end that paragraph with “senseless violence.” But it wasn’t senseless at all, at least not to the gunmen. They knew exactly what they were doing. They knew what they wanted to accomplish. Their goal was to intimidate anyone who wished to express opinions freely and openly on any matter they choose. Their aim was to shut down dissent and criticism, to silence, permanently, any idea not in agreement with their own ideas. They did not only seek vengeance, they sought to spread fear and terror. They wanted people like me to stop doing what I do.

Deciding to cartoon professionally has never struck me as an act of heroism. It’s not a feat of bravery. The toughest thing I’ve ever had to face is an angry letter to the editor and maybe a couple of cancelled subscriptions. I didn’t know any of the Charlie Hebdo artists personally and had only a passing acquaintance with their work, but I feel certain none of them got into cartooning to become heroes either. It was just what they did. It was their calling. And they most certainly did not deserve to die for it.

That’s why I won’t change what I do. To do any less would be to dishonour the memories of the 12 victims of unreasoning fanaticism.

 Gary Clement is the National Post’s editorial cartoonist.