Albert Chartier was one of the best Canadian comic artists. He turned to comics after studying fine arts. His first comic was the Sunday feature 'Bouboule', which appeared in La Patrie from 25 October 1936 through 21 March 1937. Around 1940, he moved to New York, where he worked as a humorous illustrator for the Columba Comics Corporation. During World War II, Chartier was a staff artist at the information office of Ottawa.
Albert Chartier created his most popular creation in Le Bulletin des Agriculteurs du Québec: 'Onésime'. This strip ran for 59 years on a monthly basis, from November 1943 through June 2002, although in the last couple of years updated versions of older strips were used. In addition to 'Onésime', Chartier created another comic for the same magazine, called 'Séraphin'.
Since the publication of Claude-Henri Grignon's novel 'Un homme et son péché' in 1933, the main character Séraphin became an icon in Quebec with adaptions on radio serials, plays and movies. Grignon wrote and Chartier provided the art for a monthly comic strip, also published in Le Bulletin des Agriculteurs from October 1951 through September 1970.
In 1963-64, he drew the bilingual historical strip 'Les Canadiens', which was distributed to several Quebec and Ontario newspapers through the Toronto Telegram News Service. Chartier also did a weekly panel gag strip for celebrity newspaper Radio-monde from 1940 until at least 1960 and he painted about 100 wonderful fullcolor covers for Quebec magazines Le Samedi and La Revue Populaire in the 1940s and 1950s. Albert Chartier died on 25 February, 2004.
