TERRY MOSHER a.k.a. AISLIN
Often called Canada’s nastiest political cartoonist, Terry Mosher was born in Ottawa within sight of the Parliament Buildings on Remembrance Day 1942. Mosher attended 14 different schools in Montreal, Toronto and Quebec City, where he graduated from the École des Beaux-arts in 1967. He supported himself through art school by drawing portraits and caricatures of American tourists on Quebec City’s artists’ alley, Rue du Trésor.
After graduation, Mosher worked as a cartoonist for The Montreal Star, emigrating to The Gazette in 1972. During the 1970s, he associated with a group of energetic and talented Montreal downtowners – read Rounders – who had a collective reputation for not always making it home in time for dinner. Consequently, Mosher spent much of the 1980s dealing with and overcoming the personal fall-out from that earlier self-indulgent period.
Aislin has traveled extensively on assignment for The Gazette and other publications, writing and drawing interpretive sketchbooks throughout Canada, the US, Ireland, Japan, Russia, Cuba and North Africa. His cartoons are syndicated to numerous newspapers across Canada. His cartoons are also distributed to publications around the world through The New York Times by the Los Angeles-based Cartoonists & Writers Syndicate.
The recipient of two National Newspaper Awards and a member of Canada’s News Hall of Fame, Mosher has free-lanced in the US and abroad for such publications as The New York Times, Time Magazine, The National Lampoon, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly and Punch. An avid baseball fan, Mosher has been a member of The Baseball Writers’ Association of America for more than 20 years, which allows him to vote for entries to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Thirty-eight Aislin books have been published, either collections of his own work or books written by a variety of authors and illustrated by him. In the fall of 2004, Mosher’s latest collaboration with Irish poet and broadcaster Gordon Snell appeared. Further Fabulous Canadians is the fifth of their series of tributes in cartoon and verse to notable Canadian figures.
Mosher also co-authored The Hecklers with Peter Desbarats. Published in 1979, this book is a history of political cartooning in Canada. A film version of the book, also entitled The Hecklers, was produced by Canada’s National Film Board in 1980. The National Film Board also released an hour-long bilingual film in 2003 entitled Ya Rien de Sacré/Nothing Sacred. The film is an engaging look at the professional lives of Aislin and his colleague Serge Chapleau, the editorial page cartoonist for Montreal’s French-language daily, La Presse.
In 1997, Montreal’s McCord Museum hosted an extensive exhibition of the work of Aislin and Chapleau. Both cartoonists were well-pleased with the retrospective, given that neither of them was actually dead yet. The Museum now has a large collection of original drawings by Aislin. The McCord also offers a web tour of 27 key Aislin cartoons with the cartoonist's commentary.
Reflecting his keen interest in the application of new technology to his art form, Mosher’s Gazette home page, which features his daily Aislin cartoon, was judged the most entertaining Canadian web site when it first appeared in 1996.
Mosher is married to Mary Hughson, a graphic designer, watercolourist and illustrator in her own right who designs all Aislin books.
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