BEATON Kathyrn “Kate” Moira
Broadview, March 2025: 34
“They [The Rankin Family] were stars. It was like, they grew up in that house and now they’re on TV. It was really a big deal to someone like me just to have an example. … Maybe without them I would have been a bit more hesitant.” Kate Beaton about the inspiration of having the Rankin Family as members of her community. “If Monty Python did Heritage Minutes”.
Born 8 September 1983 in Mabou Cape Breton.
She attended Mount Allison University where she graduated with a double degree in history and anthropology. During her last two years she began drawing humorous cartoons based on her interest in literature and history for The Argosy, the university paper.
After graduating from Allison, she moved to Fort McMurray, Alberta, looking for work to pay down her student loans. She “lied” her way into a job at one of the mining sites. She told them her dad owned a Home Hardware and that she knew a lot about tools. She worked in the oil sands for about two years. Years later she produced a webcomic, Ducks, and subsequently and book in which she described her experiences there. Kate describes it as “… a story about the East Coast but it was about being uprooted from that community.” But in the “Afterword” in the book she produced her remarks reveal a more profound and universal observation.
“This was also a time when discussion surrounding the mental health of workers – especially itinerant male workers in a hypermasculine environment like the oil sands work camps – barely existed. Camp life fosters a certain unique set of mental health challenges in an environment that is probably the least suited to contend with them. The boredom, isolation, loneliness and depression add up for many – and for some are too much to bear. Few resources existed on the site and in reality, they were nothing more than lip service. Instead the industry prized itself on having millions of hours without lost time incidents while hiding away the human wreckage. Anecdotally in researching for this book, I rarely found this topic researched or reported on, and for an industry as large and far reaching as the oil sands, I found that very alarming.”
“The book won the 2023 edition of C.B.C.’s Canada Reads.
In 2006 she moved to Victoria, B.C. and got a job as administrative assistant at the Victoria Maritime Museum in British Columbia, where her work ranged from grant applications to fund raising. There she met artist Emily Horne to whom she showed some of her work. Horne recommended that Beaton post them on her website.
A watershed moment occurred for Beaton in 2007. One day “she drew a gaggle of squealing 19th- century teens throwing their bloomers at inventor Nikola Tesla, then posted the illustration on her website.
I was reading about Tesla, and the book mentioned that he never married, though there were people interested. He chose to be celibate because he thought that love addled your brain,”… So I wrote a comic where he’s trying to show everyone his invention, but women are throwing their underwear at him. He’s like, ‘Ladies, please,’ but they’re just screaming at him like he’s Elvis.”
This strip caught the attention of thousands of new readers worldwide and established her as a cartoonist to be noted. She self-published Never Learn Anything from History” in 2009. For that she received the Doug Wright Award for “Best Emerging Artist”. Her cartoons have appeared in the New Yorker, Harpers, National Post and anthologies The Best American Comics and Marvel Comics Strange Tales.
In 2011, Drawn & Quarterly published Hark A Vagrant a collection of her online cartoons. The book was launched at San Diageo’s Comic-Con to which they brought 300 copies. They began selling it Wednesday night and were sold out by Thursday morning. Drawn & Quarterly immediately ordered a second print run. It won the 2012 Doug Wright Best Book Award. Earlier she received the 2011 Harvey Award “Best Online Comics Work”, Then in 2012, she again received the Harvey Award for “Best Online Comics Work”, plus awards for “Special Award for Humor in Comics” and “Best Cartoonist”.
In 2015 Drawn and Quarterly published her third collection, Step aside Pops, Drawn & Quarterly printed 50,000 copies the largest first printing in the company’s history. In the same year, she published her first children’s story The Princess and the Pony for which she received the CBC Children’s Choice Book Award: Illustrator. This was followed in 2022 by the afore mentioned Ducks for which she received the Harvey Book of the Year Award . In 2025 Shark Girl was released. Based on Hans Christian Andersen’s mermaid tale, Kate describes it as although “… not explicit, but as you read it you see it is a Nova Scotian book.”
As of 2025, she was again living in Cape Breton which she describes as a place “… full of stories of people coming and going and wanting to come home. There’s always this grand narrative arc of wanting to come home.”
WORK:
CARTOONIST:
BOOK GRAPHIC COLLECTION:
Content story & Cover book front & back:
Hark A Vagrant. Drawn & Quarterly, September 2011.
Step Aside Pops. Drawn & Quarterly, September 2015.
Content memoir & Cover book front & back:
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands. Drawn & Quarterly, September 2022.
BOOK TEXT & GRAPHIC ANTHOLOGY:
Content story:
Drawn and Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years …. Drawn & Quarterly, May 2015: “No Problem/Just Kidding” : 58-59. “Canadian Stereotypes”: 592. First appeared on harkavagrant.co, then in Hark A Vagrant, 2011. “Great Gatsbys”: 593-595. “Raskolnikov”: 596-597. “Goreys”: 598-601. “Jane Eyre”: 602-603.
PERIODICAL TEXT & GRAPHIC ANTHOLOGY:
Content story:
Canadian Notes & Queries, 89, Winter/Spring 2014: “The North Wing: Selections from the Lost Library of CanLit Graphic Novels Episode Ten, Alistair MacLeod’s, No Great Mischief”, as adapted by Kate Beaton”: 64-65.
WRITER & ILLUSTRATOR:
BOOK TEXT & GARPHIC:
Content story & Cover book & dust jacket front & back:
The Princess and the Pony. Arthur A. Levine Book/Scholastic Inc, July 2015.
Shark Girl, Roaring Brook Press//Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings, 2025.
MERCHANDISE:
Calendar:
Beethoven Birthday Party: A 2013 Hark! A Vagrant Literary Calendar. Montréal: Drawn & Quarterly,
There She Blows: A 2013 Hark! A Vagrant Literary Calendar. Montréal: Drawn & Quarterly,
Tee Shirt:
“In Shatner Canada We Trust.” (Coat of Arms). American Apparel.
SOURCE:
Article book:
Canadian Alternatives: Cartoonists Comics & Graphic Novels. Ed., Dominick Grace & Eric Hoffman. University Press of Mississippi, 2018: “Hark Anachronism: Kate Beaton’s Historiographic Metafiction.” Writ., Daniel Marrone: 176-188.
Drawn and Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years …. Drawn & Quarterly, May 2015: No title. Writ., Kate Beaton: 480-481. “Kate Beaton: an appreciation.” Writ., Margaret Atwood: 590-591.
Hark A Vagrant. Car., Kate Beaton.: Drawn and Quarterly, Sept. 2011: “Biography”: 168.
Article periodical:
Quill & Quire Oct. 2011: “Drawn to History: How a 28 Year Old Wunderkind Became the Next Big Thing in Comics.” Writ., Micah Toub. 12-13.
Walrus, November 2022: “Lines in the Oil Sands”. Writ., Gabrielle Drolet: 66-69. A book review of Ducks.
Article newspaper:
The Globe & Mail, 26 Sept. 2015: “If Monty Python did Heritage Minutes.” Writ., Mark Medley: R7
Interview periodical:
Broadview March 2025: “Spotlight- Art of Place”: 34-35.
Memoir book:
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands. Drawn & Quarterly, September 2022. “Afterword”: 433-435.
Internet:
“Kate Beaton” Wikipedia. Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia. 10 July 2015. Accessed. 4 Aug. 2015.
GALLERY:
Hark A Vagrant. Drawn & Quarterly, September 2011: Front cover.
Canadian Notes & Queries, 89, Winter/Spring 2014: “The North Wing: Selections from the Lost Library of CanLit Graphic Novels Episode Ten, Alistair MacLeod’s, No Great Mischief”, as adapted by Kate Beaton”: 64.
Canadian Notes & Queries, 89, Winter/Spring 2014: “The North Wing: Selections from the Lost Library of CanLit Graphic Novels Episode Ten, Alistair MacLeod’s, No Great Mischief”, as adapted by Kate Beaton”: 65.
Step Aside Pops. Drawn & Quarterly, September 2015: Front cover.
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands. Drawn & Quarterly, September 2022.
Shark Girl, Roaring Brook Press, 2025: Dust jacket.