Dawn: Browse The Strips

Sunday July 23, 2017

Lynn's Comments: Puns were a favourite punch line. They were untranslatable, however, which made it difficult for my syndicate to sell my work to non-English-speaking countries. I knew that word play limited my sales, but if I could come up with a good pun, I figured it was worth the loss.

Thursday July 27, 2017

Lynn's Comments: When I was a kid, Camp Kawkawa was the name of the camp my family went to every year. The cabins we stayed in are still standing on Kawkawa Lake in Hope, BC.

Friday July 28, 2017

Lynn's Comments: Luccia Messina is the name of a good friend and neighbour who lived across the street from me in North Vancouver. She moved to Canada from Sicily with her mother and dad and older brother, Pedro, and we have been friends since grade one. This was my way of saying "Hi" to her when she read the strip. Cartoonists do this all the time. It’s great to know we can send out a "hug" that might appear in 1000 papers!

Monday August 14, 2017

Lynn's Comments: Every one of us can go back in time to remember a perfect starry night. Maybe it was on a camping trip or maybe on the edge of a city; looking up at the stars never gets boring, never gets old. How do you describe a perfect starry night? The over-used word "awesome" genuinely belongs here.

Wednesday October 11, 2017

Lynn's Comments: After I’d made some pretty sarcastic remarks, my dad asked me if I lay awake at night thinking of nasty things to say. I didn’t, but it was a great idea. After that, I did lie awake thinking of smart aleck remarks—my way of getting back at "the big kids." After awhile, I got pretty good at it and words were my weapon of choice. Sometimes they outlasted a bruising.

Sunday January 21, 2018

Lynn's Comments: One year, the snow in Lynn Lake, Manitoba was perfect for snow forts. The temperature was above -15C, a rare phenomenon in this northern town. My husband took a shovel and followed Aaron, who must have been about 6, out to where there was a snow bank piled up by the grader. He dug and dug, and was so excited about his snow fort that Aaron got cold watching him and came home. He continued to dig until he realized he was alone. Then he continued to dig. The fort had become his! It must have been funny to see a grown man out there happy as a clam, full of fantasy, just being a kid in the snow.

Monday June 4, 2018

Lynn's Comments: My mom used to hang the laundry on two lines in our backyard. Once, we were guilty of getting the sheets dirty by playing badminton. Another time was when my brother put the neighbour’s small dog into the hanging fold of a sheet and let him fumble his way out. It never occurred to us that we were ruining an expensive piece of fabric and wasting hours of hard work. We were kids. We just didn't think at all!

Sunday July 1, 2018

Lynn's Comments: My granddaughter draws M-birds now. I think it’s charming and I don't really want her to draw them realistically.

Wednesday August 29, 2018

Lynn's Comments: Whenever I added a new character to the strip, it added to the complexity of the story. Mrs. Grunion promised to be a lot of fun to work with, but she would have cut into the other characters’ roles. Since I only had one statement a day in which to tell a story, I had to gloss over some potentially great characters. After I retired and we were doing an assessment, my archivist, Stephanie, told me that during my career in syndication, I had created over 90 characters! Wow. This was something I never knew.

Tuesday September 4, 2018

Lynn's Comments: I was one to take a dare! I was dared to tell a classmate that she needed to wash more often. I wrote a note and stuck it on her locker. It said, "Veronica, you smell bad". She was devastated. The kids who dared me took her side and I was sent to the principal’s office. It was a mean thing to do, but I wasn't thinking about her, I was thinking about me. Here’s another lesson that has stayed with me since elementary school! The best lessons are often learned the hard way.

Sunday April 14, 2019

Lynn's Comments: I read somewhere that a composer looked at birds perched on wires and saw a musical pattern in the way they positioned themselves. He then set these patterns to music. Anyone know if this is true?

Monday June 3, 2019

Lynn's Comments: I loved referring to Canadian history, customs, places and geography. Before I signed my contract with Universal Press, one of the editors insisted I refer only to the United States—that the strip had to be about Americans. I asked him if he, born and raised in Kansas, could write knowledgeably and realistically about a family in New York. He admitted he could not. I said, if I couldn’t have my characters live in Canada and write what I knew, then I wouldn’t sign the contract.

Saturday June 15, 2019

Lynn's Comments: In the first panel, you can see Elly twisting Elizabeth's hair as she is getting it ready to put into a ponytail. I was able to draw things like this pretty realistically by using a Polaroid camera. I’d ask whoever was in the room to pose for me and I'd take the shot from the angle I needed. Somewhere I have an album filled with these crazy photographs!

Monday January 20, 2020

Lynn's Comments: This story gave me the opportunity to add something "Canadian" to the strip. One of my editors originally tried to discourage me from doing this, saying he wanted it to be seen as an American family. I refused to omit Canadianisms, and the result was that folks in the US enjoyed the chance to tell me about their trips to Canada, and Canadians appreciated the reference.

Tuesday July 21, 2020

Lynn's Comments: Harrison’s Pond was a small "bog" in front of our friend Doug Harrison's house. Every spring, when we heard the frogs singing in that pond, we knew the frost was gone and summer was on its way.