Dave Elston is a semi-retired artist who lives in Calgary with his wife, Kaida, their cat, Annie, and their 26-year-old horse, Baby, whose residence in a nearby stable prompts Elston to affectionately describe him as: “The most expensive lawn ornament in the world.”
A wall in the basement of his home illustrates just how far his reach once extended, and not just to a barn across town, but to all of North America. For most of his career, Elston was commonly known as the only full-time editorial sports cartoonist in Canada, and has a galaxy of autographs and framed memorabilia on display from him. NHL personalities he was once paid to string.
His work appeared in Canadian newspapers as well as The Hockey News and, for a time, as animated shorts on the “Hockey Night in Canada” broadcasts. A two-time art school dropout, whose ability to tell a story in a single frame still makes his work instantly recognizable to readers of a certain age.
“He’s a brilliant guy,” NHL executive Brian Burke said.
“Wonderful,” retired forward Tim Hunter said.
“He should be a order of canada guy,” said TSN host Jay Onrait.
Elston, now 63, enrolled in what was then called the Alberta College of Art with dreams of becoming a commercial artist. He quickly felt out of place. Work deemed to contain cartoon imagery was criticized, rather than praised. And besides that, he also loved sports.
In 1980, he contacted his former high school football coach, who was an editor for the Calgary Sun, which had just launched. (Elston said he’s 5-foot-2, and when he was a runner someone nicknamed him “The Galloping Fire Hydrant.”)
The newspaper gave him $25 per cartoon.
Within a few years, Elston wanted to expand his reach by distributing his work across Canada. He sent packages of cartoons of him to small newspapers across the country. He had a package left after the mailing spree, and for fun he decided to send it to The Hockey News in Toronto.
Bob McKenzie was the editor in chief. He had still been on the job a couple of years when the package landed on his desk. He wanted to separate the publication from the notion that it was the editorial arm of the NHL (Ken McKenzie (no relation) founded the paper in 1947 while working in the league) and felt an editorial cartoonist would help that cause.
He hired Elston and gave him editorial freedom.
“He was a giant in terms of the impact he had on The Hockey News,” McKenzie, now a semi-retired member of the NHL, told TSN.
An unpublished Dave Elston cartoon by Connor McDavid. (Courtesy of Dave Elston)
His favorite Elston cartoon involved Wayne Gretzky and a coach who misjudged his own influence behind the bench. Robbie Ftorek was coach of the Los Angeles Kings in the late 1980s, and reduced Gretzky’s playing time, even reaching The Great Bank for part of a game in November 1988.
McKenzie can still visualize the cartoon. Ftorek was framed as one of the wise men, arguing as he gazed into the manger: “I don’t know, it looks like another baby to me.”
“It was absolutely fantastic,” McKenzie said. “It was one of the best cartoons I’ve ever seen.”
Hunter, the longtime NHL forward, was also a frequent muse. Now 61, he acknowledged that his “famous nose” made him an easy target. But he was also the star of his favorite Elston cartoon.
I was playing for him canucks that season In the frame, the Vancouver coach is looking at a box of Breathe Right nasal strips, which some players used because they believed it improved their performance on the ice. The trainer notices that the new box is empty and asks who took all the bandages.
“I’ve got about 10 on my nose and he’s holding an empty box,” Hunter said with a smile. “I mean, that’s just classic.”
A few years later, when Hunter was finishing his NHL playing career with the San Jose Sharks, Elston made an animated short appear on “Hockey Night in Canada” earlier in the season. With the theme song from the movie “Jaws” playing in the background, the cartoon showed what appeared to be a shark fin swimming through a swimming pool towards the Stanley Cup.
“This thing makes it to the Stanley Cup,” Hunter said. “And he appears to me: she was swimming on her back.”
“He does a brilliant job and he’s not bad,” said Burke, who is now president of hockey operations with the pittsburgh penguins.
Burke said he sent Elston a handwritten thank you note after watching a cartoon in 1989, following a hard-fought playoff series between Vancouver and Calgary. The Flames advanced after an overtime goal in Game 7, ultimately winning the Stanley Cup, but Elston’s frame showed how worn and battered both teams were.
It was a sign of respect to the Canucks, with whom Burke worked.
“He was making fun of someone, but he was doing it in a way that you couldn’t be mad at him,” Burke said. “He was really a gentleman in a business where you had to be a bit of a jerk.”
Burke is also now co-starring in his own cartoon series. With host Jeff Marek, he appears in the Sportsnet animated shorts “hello burkie”, which are available online. (Neels Britz is the artist behind the series, with Amil Delic and Jason Harding serving as creative leads.)
“I can ramble on in my stories,” Burke said. “I can explain things. Elston had a chance.”
“It was almost like an alternative comic, but in a mainstream publication,” said Onrait, the TSN host. “You couldn’t get past one of his comics without stopping and paying attention to him because of that unique style.”
Onrait has a custom caricature of Elston framed in his office. He said it was a gift arranged by his wife. He shows a man pushing a TSN-branded baby stroller under the text: “Baby Onrait says his first word.”
The speech bubble that comes out of the cart is a classic Onrait exclamation in bold: “Bobrovsky!!”
Onrait grew up in Edmonton during the height of the “Battle of Alberta,” when the oilers and the Flames would seem to meet every spring to decide which team would advance to win the Stanley Cup. Elston, he said, was an important component of that Calgary era.
“A very important artist in the history of that city,” he said. “I don’t think that’s hyperbole. I don’t think he’s exaggerating it. I really think that he was not only a great artist, but also a chronicler of that time, especially that time in the ’80s, when the teams were so good.”
If an NHL player reached out to ask for a print of his work, Elston said he would typically mail two copies: one for the player and one for the player to autograph and return. Most of his subjects, he said, seemed to get the joke.
Most of them, he said, but not all.
“I had this weird situation where someone came up to me and said, ‘Oh, you did a cartoon of me when I was playing football for the Stampeders,’” he said. “Then I’ll say, ‘Oh yeah?’ And they’ll say, ‘I didn’t like it.’”
He paused to laugh: “I’m like, ‘OK, you hit me now?'”
In 1991, Flames forward Doug Gilmour landed on a caricature of Elston after he was awarded $750,000 in salary arbitration. It was just before the December holidays and, according to the province of Vancouver, the cartoon showed Gilmour begging for charity with a sign: “Young couple, one son, father earning a lousy $750,000.”
Gilmour was reportedly unhappy with his portrayal but never approached the artist.
“His wife did it,” Elston said. “She was not happy. I’m going to leave it like that.”
He said that he still draws from time to time, mainly for his own amusement. He said that he is open to new projects, but is otherwise settling into a retired life. His wife, Kaida, is also retired.
“I am grateful that I reached that sweet spot where I achieved make a career out of it, and I came out of it in time with enough to retire,” he said, stopping to laugh again. “Or, I guess, I’ll find out.”
(Top photo: courtesy of Dave Elston)