The mysterious illustrator behind a popular political cartoon account on Twitter has revealed herself to be B.C. Legislature intern Zo茅 Duhaime.
Duhaime, who was Victoria鈥檚 Youth Poet Laureate in 2015, became more involved with the legislature this year when she did several readings celebrating women in politics. She was then offered a position as a non-partisan intern, where her main role was preparing speeches.
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鈥淒uring my breaks I started sketching the people around me, and when I cam back from work one day my colleague said 鈥榦h, I have an idea for you!鈥欌�� Duhaime said. They set up a Twitter account called , and soon the sketches got popular.
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Duhaime said that she鈥檇 never really used Twitter before, and was surprised when people took notice.
鈥淚 never expected that cabinet members would respond to my crummy little drawings,鈥� she laughed. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think I understood how close B.C. politicians are to Twitter.鈥�
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Duhaime drew portraits of politicians and media personnel (and would sometimes send them birthday greetings!), and also drew quick sketches alluding to events happening during meetings.
鈥淚鈥檝e actually really enjoyed it,鈥� she said. 鈥淎nd I鈥檝e been exploring the history of political cartoons, which I鈥檝e never done before.鈥�
Duhaime said one of her favourite parts of the account was listening to people talk to her about it, not knowing she was the doodler.
鈥淚t鈥檚 pretty cool walking the halls of legislature and have people discussing your project in front of you,鈥� she said. 鈥淧eople I admire would guess wildly wrong, or pretend to be me.鈥�
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While it was all for fun, Duhaime later made an interesting personal realization: her father, who passed away in 2016, had conducted his own parliamentary pranks when he was an intern under the Mulroney office in Ottawa by writing a book exploring 鈥渢he funny and great things鈥� happening in parliament at the time.
鈥淚 guess it鈥檚 a tip of my hat to my dad,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a delight to know that we crossed paths鈥� I knew he wrote the book, but I didn鈥檛 know he did it during downtime on his internship.鈥�
Now that the legislative sessions have wrapped up for the summer鈥攁nd internship programs have come to an end鈥擠uhaime thought it would be a good time to reveal her identity.
鈥淚t鈥檚 definitely not the same joke as being anonymous,鈥� Duhaime said. 鈥淏ut now I have people asking me for portraits, so that鈥檚 fun.鈥�
Duhaime isn鈥檛 sure she鈥檒l keep up the doodles in the future, but she hasn鈥檛 dropped the idea entirely. She plans on moving to Montreal in the summer to work on a novel, but said that the new province offers many more people to doodle, including federal politicians in relatively close proximity.
鈥淚 thought it might be fun to draw people in the House of Commons鈥� she said. 鈥渟o you never know.鈥�
