The face of Toronto food safety turns the CNE Cronut Burger fiasco into a comic strip

Jim Chan, the city health inspector who saw Toronto through 2002’s SARS outbreak, 2010’s Pusateri’s rat infestation and, of course, 2013’s maple-bacon jam fiasco, is retiring from his post. Luckily, he’s taking with him three decades’ worth of material to fuel his new passion: drawing cartoons about food safety. In his online comic strip, The Health Inspector’s Notebook, Chan (with the help of son Christopher, a digital artist) chronicles his 36-year career in the sanitation biz with an anthropomorphic cast of mischievous rodents and googly-eyed microorganisms. As for the source of his motivation, Chan explains, “[A]fter thirty years of working as a public health inspector, I am still trying to figure out what’s going on in the society of rats.” Aren’t we all.