Category Archives: Uncategorized

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Lynn's Comments: Having purchased a house in North Vancouver, I understand the merits of working with a good real estate agent. If an agent knows the area thoroughly, listens well and really cares about what you need, he or she can be a lifesaver. The trick is to find someone with whom you click!

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Lynn's Comments: Strips like this allowed me to vent to the fullest: to really let my feelings out. It was great to write, wonderful to draw, and then joyfully sent to the syndicate. When it was finally released in the papers, I had a chance to feel good all over again! I knew that letters would come from moms all over the place telling me I was right on track. Yeah. The strip, sometimes based on fantasy, made real life easier for me.

Friday, December 25, 2015

Lynn's Comments: This was me exactly; standing in the early hours of the morning staring at all the gifts under the tree and wishing they were all for me. I wonder when greed changed to giving? Somewhere between the ages of 5 and 15, I became someone who thinks about others. Whenever it was, I'm grateful.

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Lynn's Comments: My mom made bread every two weeks. Being a kid, I figured I was missing something by not having store-bought Wonder Bread, and eagerly traded my school lunch with friends. The weird thing about the commercial bread was that you could press it flat and fold it up like cardboard. It tasted like cardboard too unless you put lots of margarine on it. (Few families could afford butter.) One of my friends made his own lunch every day, and the things he found to press between slices of bread varied from garlic cloves to dill pickles to just plain sugar.

Sometimes I traded with him, sometimes I didn't, but I was always envious of his store bought bread and the way he was allowed to make his lunch any way he wanted to. What we didn't know about each other was that my mom couldn't afford to buy commercially made bread, and his mom went to work before he got up. He had to dress himself and his brother, make both their lunches, walk his brother to a neighbour's house, and then get himself to school. With nutritious meals to look forward to and a mom who was home to look after me, I was the lucky one.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Lynn's Comments: The North Bay Capitol Centre was almost torn down but was saved by a group of very determined people. After its restoration, it became something the politicians liked to point out as the "jewel in the crown."

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Lynn's Comments: When I worked with advertising agencies, one of the things I liked to do was to come up with slogans and catchy commentary. I never took the products as seriously as I took the marketing of them. I doubt that I could do a good job of this today--I'm far too cynical!

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Lynn's Comments: I was often asked to champion women's rights in the strip; to reinforce feminism. I never felt comfortable with the word "feminist "; it's a word that to me suggests a negative attitude towards men. Rather, I preferred the word "equalist, " and I thought Elly and her friends were smart and independent and funny enough to show they were indeed equal to the men.

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Lynn's Comments: As one of the few female syndicated cartoonists, I was often asked how I was treated by the men in the profession. Like every other woman, I'd been targeted (by a few people) with the usual crap and I learned to live with it. My revenge was to do a better job than my detractors.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Lynn's Comments: At home we all waited for any news of the lost men. We had the radio on and suddenly the CBC programming was interrupted by a bulletin: the men had been found safe and alive! How could the radio have received the news before we did? Joy and relief overcame any concerns we had about how the information had been delivered. I called the other women and told them what we had just heard. None of us could put our feelings into words. The shock of the entire situation was now something we could deal with. All we could do was wait for the men to come home--this kind of waiting was wonderful.

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Our kids fought over the family hammock, and we knew it would be a bone of contention until: 1) they grew up, or 2) one of the trees fell down. In a storm one night, the problem was solved; the bigger of the two trees was uprooted and had to be removed. The irony was that both kids were grown and gone by then.

Saturday, August 8, 2015

Lynn's Comments: I don't remember the date. All I remember is that on the evening of the third day, the guys heard the sound of an aircraft. The first thing the Search and Rescue spotters saw were white parallel shapes under the surface of the water (not smoke). They had seen the pontoons of an overturned aircraft before. Technicians began to prepare for what they believed was the recovery of four drowned men, but something caught their attention on the shore. Overwhelmed and exhausted, the men had just enough energy to stand and wave as the Hercules circled overhead.

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Lynn's Comments: What they wanted most was warmth, shelter and food. Nothing else was important. They just wanted to survive. It surprised them all to think that days beforehand, they had been thinking about luxuries. This experience changed them all.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Lynn's Comments: I thought about my children. I thought about the three other families who were now gathered together to wait for news--anything that would tell them what had happened, and what was going on. I called them every two hours. I called them just to let them know that everything possible was being done. I felt guilty for being so close to the scene and the first to know. It was all so surreal.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Lynn's Comments: An enormous Hercules Search and Rescue plane arrived from Alberta along with a helicopter and a Twin Otter outfitted with bulging Plexiglass side-windows where spotters would sit. They set up a military style office at the Lynn Lake airport. Enormous maps of the search area were put up on the walls. There were pilots, co-pilots, SARTECHS (search and rescue technicians), spotters, and others. Everyone was serious, focused, and prepared. What surprised me was the way they treated me. Rather than shooing me away, they sat me down and explained with kindness and courtesy exactly what they were doing and how the operation would proceed. I felt relieved and comforted. They knew exactly how to treat people in crisis and in shock. I was surprised by how coherent and calm I was.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Rod turned the plane into the wind as the canoeist passengers fastened their seat belts. In the arctic, there are no trees and nothing to break the wind. Great gusts buffeted the side of the plane. With a heavy load and an inexperienced pilot at the helm, the small plane tipped into the waves. The weight of the water pressed down on one float and the plane rolled helplessly upside down.

Monday, July 20, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Back to the wilderness story.
Rod's first attempt to fly to Yathkyed Lake ended when he ran into a snow squall and had to put down on a lake halfway to his destination. Not knowing a lake on which you are going to land can sometimes kill you. Rock, debris, and other obstacles are often obscured in bad weather, and even though you are in the air, it's hard to judge the exact direction of the wind.

Saturday, June 27, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Itinerary for the trip was carefully planned. Rod’s father, Tom Johnston, knew the area and had the planned location of the canoe party marked on a big aerial map. Their trip was to end at Yathyked Lake, where Rod could ease the plane into a bay and pick them up. It was going to be a long flight…much longer than expected. (To be continued…)

Friday, June 19, 2015

Lynn's Comments: These days are gone. Few parents will send their youngsters out to play now with a lunch bag and instructions to be home by six. But, this is how it was when I was a kid growing up in North Vancouver. We all played up and down the street until dark; until our mothers were hoarse from shouting.

I got some criticism for doing this strip, but at the time, my kids were quite free to roam too. We lived in a tiny rural town, and I could watch the lane from my kitchen and most of the neighbours' houses from my front window. I always knew where they were, and if I didn't, someone else was on the job. We moms were careful and the kids, we thought, were safe. Even so, I'm reminded of a story: Katie, who was perhaps 4 years old, had been playing in the lane with some friends. I lost sight of her and decided to go and see where she was. I found her in the hall of a neighbour's house. One of the boys, a 6 year old, was holding a rifle saying, "I know where the bullets are! I know where the bullets are!" His parents were at the bar and had left their oldest child in charge--she was 8. I asked the boy to give me the gun. I placed it back on the rack in the hallway. I took Katie home and told her she could play with those kids any time, but it had to be at our house.

Friday, June 5, 2015

Lynn's Comments: The first time I ever gave a presentation, it was to a group of doctors who had just come from a meeting that had not gone well. Many of the delegates had gone away angry leaving a few disgruntled people hoping for a talk that would lift their spirits. At the time, I was being shadowed by the National Film Board of Canada, which was doing a documentary on For Better or For Worse. The director asked the "crowd" (assembled in the auditorium of the Winnipeg Art Gallery) to move up to the front and fill the empty seats so it would look like there was a bigger crowd. Nobody moved. I was so nervous I was almost sick. The cameraman, who always had a flask in his jacket, offered me a stiff drink, which I took thinking--it would calm my nerves. I rarely drink, so the effect was horrible. I stammered, apologized, forgot what I was going to say, and made a fool of myself. Later, I was found sitting on the floor beside a table of half finished sandwiches singing to myself. It was a good lesson: booze and public speaking don't mix. It also helps to have no distractions, and a friendly audience!

Saturday, May 30, 2015

Lynn's Comments: The punch line in this strip isn't original. "Jocks vs Smocks" was a kvetch invented when I was in high school. All the grant money seemed to go towards sports with the arts left sadly behind. Sports always seemed to be highlighted and I don't think anything's changed! I'm as supportive as anyone when it comes to seeing our young people exercise, learn to work with a team, and enjoy competition, but what about the artists and actors, dancers, writers, and musicians out there? If you don't believe these essential skills and creative abilities are as important as sports, you're not thinking. Come on, Jocks! Look at it this way: you're leaving the people who create the arenas, the lighting, the seating, the music, and the half time entertainment behind!

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Lynn's Comments: Any time I have done a presentation and felt that I had screwed up terribly, I think about the times when I have had to cover for someone else. After I leave the stage, my head spinning with "Why did I say that?" or "How could I have forgotten such an important point?," I simply say to myself, "Well, at least I showed up!"