Montreal cartoonist features 50 years of work at City Hall
By Gregory Guevara
A half-century’s work of acclaimed and controversial Montreal Gazette cartoonist Terry (Aislin) Mosher is to be featured at City Hall Art Gallery starting Oct. 12.
To celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday, Mosher, 74, has handpicked 150 of his favourite satirical cartoons for the exhibition.
The exhibit is called “From Trudeau to Trudeau: Fifty Years of Aislin Cartoons.” Mosher, whose pen name “Aislin” comes from his eldest daughter, is one of Canada’s most distinguished cartoonists. He has been in the game long enough to start his career mocking former prime minister Pierre Trudeau in the late 1960s, and continue it critiquing his son, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
One of Mosher’s best-known sketches appeared on a 1969 issue of Time magazine. It showed Pierre Trudeau stitching up a beaver, starting with its mouth. The sketch symbolized the public view at the time that Trudeau was repairing Canada but also silencing any dissent.
When Justin Trudeau took power nearly 50 years later in 2015, Mosher was still around to poke fun at him, too, drawing a cartoon of the younger Trudeau driving his father’s sports car shirtless towards Parliament.
Mosher said it’s important that cartoonists be a voice for the public and a check on those in power: “We draw for people; we don’t draw for politicians,” he said in an interview.
“Other cartoonists can draw better than me,” Mosher said, but he attributed his success to his willingness to speak his mind and push controversial boundaries.
When Mosher started out as a cartoonist, he says it was seen as taboo to make a cartoon about the Queen. Naturally, it wasn’t long before Mosher was satirizing her with his creations. “I was one of the first to establish beachheads,” said Mosher, referring to the controversial ground he broke with what you could talk about in cartoons, allowing other satirists to follow suit.
Controversy, he said, is essential. “If you’re going to take a strong position on something you’re going to ruffle some feathers. But if I wasn’t ruffling feathers I would quit.”
TimelineJS Embed
TimelineJS Embed
Nicole Zuger, program manger for the city’s arts department, said she isn’t worried that the Aislin exhibit will upset anyone. “Canada has a long tradition of political cartoonists, and we don’t anticipate any controversy,” she says.
The opening address will be delivered by Graham Fraser, the former federal commisioner of official languages, Graham Fraser. Fraser is also former journalist who worked with Aislin at the Montreal Gazette.
In an email exchange, Fraser said he was a fan of Mosher before he met him.
He said he remembers the night in 1976 when the separatist Parti Québécois was elected, an event that plunged Canada into anxiety over the possibility of Quebec pulling out of the Confederation.
Mosher “came in with a copy of his cartoon for the next day’s paper, and laid it out on the bar. It was (the newly elected Parti Québécois leader) René Lévesque… saying ‘Take A Valium!’”
That caricature would go on to solidify Aislin as a force in Canadian political satire.
The City Hall exhibit runs until Oct. 29. Mosher was born in Ottawa, so visiting the capital will be a “homecoming,” he said.
The artist has drawn more than 13,000 cartoons in his storied career, but after this final exhibition, he said, is looking forward to a nice, long vacation.