OFF TO EUROPE
Visit led to a history of Canadian cartooning
Terry Mosher’s editorial cartoons, penned under the name Aislin, have been a fixture of the Montreal Gazette for 50 years. We take a weekly look back at some memorable cartoons in this impressive and vast body of work.
By 1970, I was a reasonably wellestablished cartoonist, working full-time at The Montreal Star and freelancing elsewhere. Enough money was coming in that my first wife Carol and I were able to buy a small house in lower Westmount, where we could raise our two daughters.
In the early morning of Sept. 24, 1970, (our younger daughter’s second birthday), I sat bolt upright in bed with a startling realization: we had a house and a nice life, but I had never visited Europe!
Over the next three days, we hatched a plan: our family plus Carol’s brother, Sean, would tour Europe for a year before the girls started school. I negotiated advance agreements with several publications to tide us over. Frank Walker, my mentor and the Star’s editor, was especially amenable, agreeing to pay me for a weekly travel sketch and to provide letters of introduction to a number of European editors. That led to my producing a two-page spread about Canada for Britain’s venerable Punch Magazine.
In May 1971, we set sail for Liverpool on The Empress of Canada. Once in England, I bought a white Austin Mini for £200. Our first destination was Mordecai Richler’s place in Surrey. He and his wife Florence thought we were a little mad but provided a very nice lunch anyway. That little car got us all around the U.K., through much of Europe and parts of North Africa.
Several good things came of that family trip.
First, my daughters Aislinn and Jessica developed a real taste for travel, which they maintain to this day.
Second, my $4,000 Canada Council grant to study cartooning in Europe became a springboard for a bigger project. In libraries and archives all over the continent, I found wonderful histories of political caricature. Imagine — a 10-volume set on cartooning in Poland! I continued to explore the history of my profession once I got home. Masters like Robert LaPalme, Jean-Pierre Girerd, Duncan Macpherson, Len Norris and Roy Peterson were all still working; for the next eight years, I travelled around Canada when I could, talking to these elders and scouring libraries and museums. I developed some expertise on the subject and collaborated with Peter Desbarats on a book titled The Hecklers, a definitive history of Canadian political cartooning. (The National Film Board produced a movie by the same name.) Our European sojourn was in all ways a great success.