GOLDSTEIN: 'Cartooning genius' Andy Donato shaped Toronto Sun for the better
· Toronto Sun
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Andy Donato was ‘the franchise’ when it came to the Sun ’s success
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When word spread that Andy Donato, at age 89, had died of a heart attack doing what he loved — golfing — just 10 days after his retirement from the Toronto Sun , the one word that best described our reaction was “heartbroken.”
Andy wasn’t just a great cartoonist.
He was instrumental in the success of the Sun and Sun Media from the first day it published on Nov. 1, 1971, part of the small band of “Day Oners” who created the tabloid newspaper chain that gave so many of us our jobs, careers and countless friendships.
Would you look at that
As the Sun ’s art director, Andy designed the first Toronto Sun logo, front page and the overall look of the paper — on his kitchen table in the weeks leading up to the Sun ’s first edition, following the death of the Toronto Telegram , where he had worked as the paper’s art director and an editorial cartoonist.
Andy played a similar vital role at every new paper the Sun acquired in the years that followed.
We called him “the franchise.”
The reason was, as our former colleague Jean Sonmor wrote in the Toronto Sun ’s biography, The Little Paper That Grew : “he so perfectly typified how the paper saw itself; fun, hard-hitting, irascible and brightly original … it was always his cartoon, his front page, or his inspiration that sprinkled the magic and added the unique Sun verve.”
At the Sun we often talk about “the three wise men” who led the creation of the paper — Doug Creighton, our founding publisher, Peter Worthington, our founding editor and Don Hunt — our first general manager, or as we referred to him in the newsroom, “the money guy.”
Looking back on it, though, we had a fourth wise man — Andy — without whom the paper would not have succeeded as it did, if it had succeeded at all.
We are sad to announce the passing of legendary Toronto Sun cartoonist Andy Donato. Our sincere condolences to his family and friends. Andy recently retired from the Toronto Sun following 55 years of cartooning. This was his last cartoon. pic.twitter.com/iIlBYEwarQ
— Toronto Sun (@TheTorontoSun) September 16, 2026
Original court jester
Andy was the Sun ’s court jester but in the original meaning of the term, which goes far beyond playing the fool.
Court jesters were witty, wise and talented confidantes of the monarch, whose task was to be a social commentator and gadfly, mocking the nobility, including the monarch, when it was warranted, with humour, wit, satire and exaggeration.
Andy did that like no one else for more than five decades with the Sun .
Worthington called him “a priceless asset” and “a cartooning genius” in his autobiography, Looking For Trouble , noting: “He devised advertising schemes, promotion stunts and layouts and drew what his fans consider the best, most provocative cartoons in the country.”
Creighton called Andy one of his “All-Stars” in his memoir Sunburned , recalling that over the decades they worked together, “I only killed two of his cartoons. He was furious, naturally, but emerged victorious anyway. He sold them as special collector’s items at a charitable auction for $1,000 each.”
Andy was adored by our readers. In the annual reader surveys we used to do, his editorial cartoons were always at or near the top as our best-read feature.
He was respected by his peers, serving as president of both the Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists and the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.
Prime ministers and premiers asked for the originals of his cartoons even when he nailed them, he won Canadian and international awards for his cartooning and became a talented and respected painter as well.
But beyond all that, for those of us who knew him, he was just so much fun — ready to talk about anything and everything with his great sense of humour.
Loved mischief
He was also a perpetual mischief maker, which I must admit occasionally drove his editors to distraction.
On the day I became the Sun ’s comment editor years ago and technically Andy’s boss, his cartoon — complete with his famous bird — was a letter to then Sun publisher Hartley Steward.
He wrote that after working with great Sun editors like Worthington, Barbara Amiel and John Downing, there was no way he was going to work with “Larry Goldstein … or Barry Goldberg or whatever his name is” and that he was going into federal politics.
I had family members as far away as Ottawa so upset that they were phoning into the Sun newsroom on my behalf to complain, before I was able to explain to them that Andy was just joking — I think.
On another occasion Andy did a cartoon of Brian Mulroney where he spelled out an obscenity on his tie, I won’t repeat here, if you looked at the first letter of every sentence on the tie.
It ran because I missed it and spent the next day on the phone with other media basically answering questions about how could I have been so stupid. I told them to ask Andy.