'This Sporting Thing!'
Maurice MacDonald was a staff cartoonist for the Winnipeg Free Press during at least the 1940s. He was the creator of the sports feature 'This Sporting Thing!', which ran in the Free Press Prairie Farmer Weekly from May 1946 onwards. The strip was possibly a local continuation of Lang Armstrong's US cartoon panel 'The Sporting Thing' (1939- March 1946), which ran in Canada through the Dominion News Bureau.
Sports cartoon from the Winnipeg Free Press (25 January 1946), depicting hockey player Don McRae.
Not much is known about the man, except that he was apparently also a spokesperson and promoter of cartoons and comic strips. According to an article in the Winnipeg Tribune of 13 April 1946, he spoke at the Assiniboia Community Forum in the Winnipeg public library on 10 April. MacDonald predicted that cartoons "will probably dominate the newspaper of the future". He also referred to Walt Disney when addressing the educational value of cartoons.
'This Sporting Thing!'.