GIANTS of the NORTH:
The Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame

Welcome to Giants of the North, a virtual exhibit that celebrates singular, life-long contributions to the art of cartooning in Canada! 
The Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame was founded in 2005 as part of the Doug Wright Awards for Canadian Cartooning. 

Lynn Johnston
(b. 1947)

Over the last three decades, Lynn Johnston has earned a place among the world’s most successful and best-loved cartoonists thanks to her work on the internationally syndicated For Better or For Worse. The comic strip, which follows the trials and triumphs of the fictional Patterson family, appears in more than 2,000 newspapers and boasts millions of readers.

A gentle domestic drama in the estimable tradition of Gasoline Alley and Doug Wright’s Family, For Better or For Worse has accomplished something ineffable; capturing the texture of daily life in a way that has become so true-to-life to so many readers, that her characters have come to regard them as best friends.

Johnson was born Lynn Ridgway on May 28, 1947 in Collingwood, Ontario. When she was three, her family moved to British Columbia where she later attended the Vancouver School of Art. Prior to starting For Better or For Worse in 1978, she had a wide-ranging freelance career as an animator, illustrator, and gag cartoonist.

For Better or For Worse is cherished for its fundamental humanity. Unlike most comic strips creators, Johnston allowed her characters to age so they experienced life as real people do, with the kids growing up, going to school, falling in and out of love, and finding jobs. It’s a measure of Johnston’s achievement that when the Patterson’s dog Farley died in 1995, she got thousands of letters of mourning. (Even her good friend and colleague Charles Schulz threatened to have Snoopy hit by a bus in retaliation.) A pioneering woman in a field that was overwhelmingly male-dominated when she started cartooning, Johnston has expanded the artistic range of comics.

Learn more about Doug Wright and the Wright Awards...