WORLD TRAVELS FOR THE GAZETTE
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.
In my early days at The Gazette, editor Denis Harvey encouraged me to experiment with my work so I could expand my horizons beyond the Editorial page. With his support, my sketches started to appear in other sections of the newspaper. He also let me go off — pencil and sketchbook in hand — to Northern Ireland, Havana and best of all, Expos spring training in Florida. Since then, I have travelled even farther abroad to produce sketchbooks for the newspaper.
In 2006, my wife and I accompanied a McGill University medical team to Tanzania to observe the doctors and nurses as they lent a hand at three hospitals in the poor, AIDS -ravaged province of Makete. Some of the scenes I sketched were quite joyful, others brutal. As implied in the accompanying drawing, grandparents were often forced to assume the care of children whose parents had died of AIDS.
The Tanzania sketchbook turned out to be my last major international one for The Gazette. Throughout the newspaper business, major layoffs were becoming the norm. I couldn’t in good conscience ask the paper to continue sending me hither and yon.
I looked around for other ways to extend my cartoon-related travel. After learning that many countries hold regular cartoon competitions, I began volunteering my services as a judge and taking every opportunity to promote the excellent quality of Canadian cartooning. In the last 10 years, these volunteer gigs have taken me to some fascinating places: Portugal, Turkey, Ireland, Cuba, China, Australia and Korea (that would be South, not North).
I have generally enjoyed very good relationships with the dozens of editors at The Gazette who have worked with me over the years. I am certainly grateful to them for having allowed me the leeway to explore new horizons as an antidote to the daily production of an Editorial page cartoon. I intend to keep on looking for intriguing new sketching opportunities for as long as I can hold a pencil.