Montreal Memories of the Century from the Sketchbooks of John Collins

A longtime Gazette political cartoonist (William Weintraub, in his introduction, recalls his “many versions of the face of Joseph Stalin”), John Collins also kept his sketchbook poised for more prosaic depictions of Montreal streetlife. Rendered in spare, deceptively simple lines, they are collected in Montreal Memories of the Century from the Sketchbooks of John Collins (Shoreline, $19.95). While Collin’s accompanying eulogies to a “simpler, happier time” can get a bit annoying to those of us who weren’t around – were people really so much happier then? – the drawings, especially those of vanished objects like street lamps and horse-drawn sidewalk snow plows, possess an uncannily evocative charm. mRb