December 9, 2009

Our cartoonist Gareth Lind

Our cartoonist Gareth Lind lives in Canada's royal city, Guelph, Ontario, a cultural city with a large university situated at the junction of the Speed and Eramosa rivers.

Our cartoonist Gareth Lind lives in Canada’s royal city, Guelph, Ontario, a cultural city with a large university situated at the junction of the Speed and Eramosa rivers.

Lind was born in Pennsylvania in 1964 and moved to Toronto in 1967. He has been drawing comics since age 10, and was first published as a teenager in Toronto’s Festival repertory cinema guide.

Lind’s comic strip Weltschmerz appeared in 1994 and ran in Toronto’s Eye Weekly from 1997 to 2008, as well as in several other papers and on the web. Called “a jolt of satire served up with a soothing cup of interpersonal angst,” (Exclaim) it became Canada’s longest-running satirical comic strip, archived at http://www.weltschmerz.ca

When approached by the founders of The Canadian Charger to contribute a regular political cartoon, Lind started drawing This Bright Future. The characters from Weltschmerz still make appearances, allowing Lind to tackle such issues as technology and the environment, which increasingly define our lives.

But his focus has shifted toward the politicians whose absurd policies and twisted egos pass for governance in Canada.

Distilled down to a four-panel format, Lind’s humour cuts to the chase, and with surgical precision skewers the powerful and turns a fun-house mirror on our attempts to grapple with an increasingly bizarre world.