Terry Mosher | The Canadian Encyclopedia

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Terry Mosher

Terry Mosher, OC, political cartoonist (born 11 November 1942 in Ottawa, ON). Known by his pen name Aislin, Mosher is one of Canada's leading newspaper editorial cartoonists.

Aislin, Untitled, 1983.
Originally published in the Montreal Gazette, 1983. Image: \u00a9 Aislin, reproduced with permission. \r\n
Aislin, Untitled, 1972.
Originally published in Maclean's Magazine, 1972. Image: \u00a9 Aislin, reproduced with permission.
Aislin, Somebody Pay the Babysitter, 1979.
Originally published in the Montreal Gazette in 1979. Image: \u00a9 Aislin, reproduced with permission.

Terry Mosher, OC, political cartoonist (born 11 November 1942 in Ottawa, ON). Known by his pen name Aislin, Mosher is one of Canada's leading newspaper editorial cartoonists. His irreverent, acerbic sketches appear regularly in many Canadian dailies and in periodicals in the United States and abroad.

Aislin

Mosher studied art at the Ontario College of Art and L'École des beaux-arts in Québec City, and began his career as a sidewalk artist doing street caricatures.

He joined the Montreal Star newspaper as a staff cartoonist in 1969 and The Gazette, Montréal's largest English-language newspaper, in 1972. Mosher adopted Aislin, his elder daughter’s name, as his professional signature.

In 1993, Mosher became the first artist to have his cartoons denounced by a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons (by Bob Layton, the Progressive Conservative Member for Lachine, Québec). Layton called Mosher's cartoons "a crime against fundamental Canadian values of decency and mutual respect."

More recently, author Douglas Coupland called Mosher "wickedly funny, with a king-sized heart."

Books

In addition to his newspaper work, Mosher has illustrated three covers for TIME magazine, and his cartoons have been published in more than 40 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), One Oar in The Water (1997) and The Wrecking Ball (2014).

Awards

Mosher has twice won the Canadian National Newspaper Award, and at 43 was the youngest member inducted into the Canadian News Hall of Fame. In 2012, he was inducted into the Canadian Cartoonists Hall of Fame, and as of 2014 he was president emeritus of the Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists.

In 2003, Mosher was named an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2007, he received an honorary Doctor of Letters from McGill University.

Other Work

A baseball enthusiast, Mosher is a member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America and a jury member of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

He has volunteered for many years with The Old Brewery Mission, a Montréal homeless shelter. In 2001, he was appointed to its board of directors.

Mosher is a regular speaker on the subjects of humor, history and cartooning, and has appeared at Ideacity Conferences and the Banff Centre's arts festival.

Selected Works of
Terry Mosher

External Links