Walter Ball (cartoonist)

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Walter Ball (born 1911 in Cookstown, Ontario) was cartoonist for the Canadian comic strip feature Rural Route, which became a familiar fixture in the Toronto Star Weekly between 1956 until the publication's demise in 1968.

Ball, who grew up on a farm near Cookstown, originally looked at electrical engineering as a career, but it was his application to the Toronto Daily Star, with only a few sample correspondence school art lessons under his belt, that got him hired as a graphic artist in 1932.

Early in his tenure at the Star, Ball (not yet a cartoonist) befriended legendary Canadian artist Jimmy Frise, who accepted a more lucrative offer from the Montreal Standard in the late 1940s. When the Star Weekly made a format change from broadsheet to tabloid in 1956, an editor asked Ball if he knew a cartoonist interested in creating a comic feature for the new publication. Ball suggested some names, but having always had a desire to enter the field, worked concurrently on his own strip. It was quickly accepted and one month into the new format, a reader survey indicated Rural Route had become the most read feature in the publication.

Featuring the woodsy adventures of a small town youth named Willie and his farm-dwelling Uncle Elmer & Aunt Myrtle, Ball drew largely on his own childhood farm experiences in creating and developing Rural Route. It could be argued that Ball, Frise and cartoonist Doug Wright are co-creators of a distinct Canadian comic strip style of that time, with ornately detailed drawings and a simple, folksy humour style.

When Rural Route and the Star Weekly folded in 1968, Ball continued in the Star's art department, being promoted to art director in 1970. He retired in 1976 and, with his wife, resided in the Toronto, Ontario suburb of Richmond Hill until his passing.

[edit] References

• Walter Ball (The Canadian Comic Art Centre)
• Article: "Introduction to the Canadian Newspaper Comic" by Kenneth S. Barker (INKS, May 1997)
• Strickler, Dave. Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists, 1924-1995: The Complete Index. Cambria, CA: Comics Access, 1995. ISBN 0-9700077-0-1.
• Walter Ball (CBC Radio Archives - June 21st, 1982 interview with reporter Arn Saba, Don Harron's Morningside)