Norris insists he has no hobbies -- except loafing. Above, he relaxes from his "five cartoons a week" contract on the balcony of his west Vancouver home, keeps a keen eye cocked on activities in the harbour which sprawls below.

Len Norris is a mild-mannered, droll Canadian who regards the quirks and eccentricities of his fellow countrymen with an amused if disenchanted eye. For the past 20 years he has used his sharply satirical cartoonist's pen to poke good-humoured fun at the foibles of Canadians and to underline with a wit that may be barbed, but never vicious, some of the old world threads which run through contemporary Canadian culture. He was born in London, England in 1913, "within the sound of Bow Bells if the forecast was rain"; emigrated to Canada, settling in southern Ontario, when he was 12. Like most artists in the uncertain days of the '20s, he worked at a vast array of jobs from draftsman for the Port Arthur City Engineer to workman on Toronto's coal docks. During the war he served with Army Headquarters in Ottawa, created and edited an army manual, sweetening difficult technical information with a lavish sprinkling of zany cartoons. For his efforts Norris was later awarded an M.B.E. In 1950 he moved to the West Coast where he works for a large Vancouver newspaper. Norris avers he knows nothing about politics; refuses to turn out political cartoons. He prefers to depict the comical in the commonplace, with a born humorist's unillusioned eye for seeing the ridiculous in the sublime. In 1951 he was unanimously awarded the National Newspaper Award in Cartooning. Norris has created a wonderful world of waspish women, walrus-moustached men, and fiendish little children, in whom thousands of Canadians daily see, if not themselves, at least their friends and neighbours.

Although he is largely self-taught, Norris' drawings are greatly admired for their technical excellence.