Terry Mosher

Terry Mosher, political cartoonist (b at Ottawa 11 Nov 1942). Known by his pen name, Aislin, Mosher is considered one of Canada's leading newspaper editorial cartoonists. His irreverent, acerbic sketches appear regularly in many Canadian dailies and in periodicals in the US and abroad. He studied art at the ONTARIO COLLEGE OF ARTand L'École des beaux-arts in Québec City, and began his career as a sidewalk artist doing street caricatures. He joined the Montreal Star as a staff cartoonist in 1969 and The Gazette in 1972. He has twice won the Canadian National Newspaper Award and at 43 was the youngest member inducted into the Canadian News Hall of Fame.

Mosher has done three covers for TIME magazine and his work has been published in at least two dozen books including The Hecklers: A History of Political Cartooning (1978), The Anglo Guide to Survival in Quebec (1983), Drawing Bones: 15 Years of Cartooning Brian Mulroney (1991), Hysterically Historical Rhymes (1996) and One Oar in The Water (1997). A baseball enthusiast, he is a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America and a jury member of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. He has also drawn interpretive sketchbooks of his travels in Russia, Northern Ireland and North Africa. He adopted his daughter Aislin's name as his professional signature when she was born in 1965.

In 1993 Aislin became the first artist to have his cartoons denounced by an MP in the House of Commons (Hon Bob Layton, PC Member for Lachine, Québec) as "a crime against fundamental Canadian values of decency and mutual respect." In 1997 he and his counterpart at La Presse, Serge Chapleau, were honoured by the McCord Museum in Montréal with a major joint exhibition.

Author ALAN HUSTAK

Links to Other Sites
Decoding Political Cartoons
Find out what goes on between the lines in Canadian political cartoons. From Library and Archives Canada.

Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists
The Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists, a professional association concerned with promoting the interests of staff, freelance, and student editorial cartoonists in Canada. Check out their links to websites for past and present Canadian editorial cartoonists.