Johnston, Lynn, 1947- : Cartoonist. Lynn Johnston (née Ridgway) was born in 1947, in Collingwood, Ontario and spent her teenage years in British Columbia. She attended commercial art classes for three years at the Vancouver School of Art but quit when she was hired by the animation studio Canawest Films. In 1967, Johnston married Doug Franks and moved to Hamilton, Ontario, where she was initially employed as a medical artist at McMaster University Medical Centre. While pregnant with her first child in 1975, she was encouraged to publish a collection of humourous cartoons dealing with her pregnancy. Shortly thereafter she divorced and later married Rod Johnston, a student of dentristy.
In 1979, after her book publisher (David We're Pregnant 1975) submitted examples of her work to various syndicates, Johnston received the offer of a 20-year contract from Universal Press Syndicate for a cartoon strip based on a contemporary family. The same year, she and her family moved to Lynn Lake, Manitoba, from where she produced the strip until 1984 when they resettled in Corbeil, Ontario. For over two decades, the strip increased in popularity until it was carried by over 2,000 newspapers world-wide. Her characters have also appeared in several animated televised specials, funded in part by Telefilm Canada and the C.T.V. Television Network. Later in 2000, Johnston worked with Fun Bag Animation Inc. to produce sixteen Patterson family episodes.
During her long career, Johnston has received numerous honours from her peers and her readers. Lakehead University awarded her an honorary Doctor of Letters. She was the first female recipient of the National Cartoonists Society's prestigious Reuben Award in 1986. In 1992, the cartoonist was made a Member of the Order of Canada and was a 1993 nominee for the Pulitzer Prize. Her cartoon strip has not been without controversy. In 1993, Johnston created a storyline in which a teenage friend of one of the Patterson main characters reveals himself as gay. Many newspapers reacted to customer complaints and cancelled the strip for the duration of the storyline. Other readers fully endorsed her sensitive treatment of the subject. A 1995 storyline featured the death of the beloved family dog, Farley. A later story which precipitated an outburst of sympathetic readers' reactions involved the death of Elly Patterson's mother.
In 1998, Johnston was inducted in the International Museum of Cartoon Arts Hall of Fame in Florida. Although the continuing lives of the Patterson family ended in August 2008, Johnston decided to re-visit her old characters by creating several new cartoons each week. The strip returned to straight re-runs in 2010. Her strips have been republished in over thirty-five best-selling annuals and special collections. In 2010, Johnston published a collection of the new and old storylines in "Something Old, Something New". Johnston also maintains her own website at http://www.fborfw.com which includes a daily strip, favourite classics, her own archives, additional storyline details, merchandising, games for children and newsbytes.
Although Johnston and her husband Rod divorced in 2008, she continues to live and work in North Bay, Ontario. Her philanthropic efforts made possible the Farley Foundation which pays the veterinary bills for seniors and those with disabilities on fixed incomes. The Foundation recently reached $1,000,000 in disbursements.
