James Llewellyn Frise (, 16 October 1890 – 13 June 1948) was a Canadian cartoonist best known for his work on the comic strip Birdseye Center and his illustrations of humorous prose pieces by Greg Clark. Born in Scugog Island, Ontario, Frise moved to Toronto at 19 and found illustration work on the Toronto Star`s Star Weekly supplement. His left hand was severely injured at the Battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917 during World War I, but his drawing hand was unhurt, and he continued cartooning at the Star upon his return. In 1919 he began his first weekly comic strip, Life's Little Comedies, which evolved into the rural-centred humorous Birdseye Center in 1923. He moved to the Montreal Standard in 1947, but as the Star kept publication rights to Birdseye Center, Frise continued it as Juniper Junction with strongly similar characters and situations. Doug Wright took over the strip after Frise's sudden death from a heart attack in 1948, and it went on to become the longest-running strip in English-Canadian comics history.

Life and career

James Llewellyn Frise was born 16 October 1890 near Fingerboard in Scugog Island, Ontario. He was the only son of John Frise (d. 1922), who was a farmer, and Hannah Barker (d. 1933), who had immigrated with her family from England to Port Perry when she was two. He grew up in Seagrave and Myrtle and went to school in Port Perry. There he struggled with spelling—even with his own middle name—and developed an obsession with drawing. Throughout his teens, friends and teachers encouraged Frise to move to Toronto to pursue a drawing career. In 1910 he moved there, though without aiming to develop his art—rather he sought work and found it as an engraver and printer at the Rolph, Clark, Stone lithography firm; he spent six months drawing maps for the Canadian Pacific Railway company indicating lots for sale in Saskatchewan. While seeking another job he read in the Toronto Star an exchange between a farmer and an editor in which the editor extolled the virtues of farm life only to have the farmer rebut him and challenge him to try out farming. Frise drew a cartoon of the editor struggling to milk a cow and a farmer as an editor; he submitted it to the Star, where it appeared in the Star Weekly supplement on that 12 November. He visited the Stars offices the following Monday and the Editor-in-Chief hired him immediately. He began by lettering titles and touching up photos until the Star Weekly's editor J. Herbert Cranston enlisted him for his drawing skills. Frise illustrated news stories and the children's feature The Old Mother Nature Club, and did political cartoons. His cartoons also appeared in publications such as the [Owen Sound Sun](https://bliptext.com/articles/owen-sound-sun). Frise took a job at an engraving firm in Montreal in 1916 and in the midst of [World War I](https://bliptext.com/articles/world-war-i) enlisted in the military that 17 May. He had had two years previous experience with the [48th Highlanders of Canada](https://bliptext.com/articles/48th-highlanders-of-canada) and served at first served in the 69th Battery of the [Canadian Field Artillery](https://bliptext.com/articles/canadian-field-artillery). He was deployed overseas that September and by November was serving in the 12th Battery at the front, where he employed his farm experience driving horses to move artillery and ammunition. At the [Battle of Vimy Ridge](https://bliptext.com/articles/battle-of-vimy-ridge) his left hand was severely injured when an enemy shell exploded at an ammunition dump where he was delivering loads of shells. The Star reported its anxiety over the possible loss of "one of Canada’s most promising cartoonists", but his drawing hand—his right—was uninjured. He was discharged after recuperating in [Chelmsford](https://bliptext.com/articles/chelmsford), England, and arrived back in Toronto on 1 December 1917 and returned to work, first at the Star and shortly after at the Star Weekly again. Canadian Field Artillery's 43rd Battery approached Frise in 1919 to illustrate a book on the history of their unit. The volume appeared later in the year under the title Battery Action!, written by Hugh R. Kay, George Magee, and F. A. MacLennan and illustrated with Frise's light-hearted, humorous cartoons rendered in accurate detail. As the Star Weeklys circulation grew, so did its comics section. Cranston encouraged Frise to create a Canada-themed comic strip in the vein of W.E. Hill's Among Us Mortals, a Chicago strip which also ran in the Star. Frise protested he could not keep up with a weekly schedule but nonetheless began At the Rink, which débuted 25 January 1919; it became Life's Little Comedies on 15 March. The strip proved popular and evolved by 1923; it had taken on the influence of John T. McCutcheon's depictions of a fictional rural town in the American Midwest called Bird Center. Frise turned his focus to humorous and nostalgic depictions of rural life and on 12 December 1925 renamed his strip Birdseye Center, whose setting he described as "any Canadian village"; its lead characters included bowler-hatted Pigskin Peters, Old Archie and his pet moose Foghorn, and lazy Eli Doolittle and his wife Ruby. The strip grew in popularity and in 1926 was voted favourite comic strip in a readers' poll—as a write-in, since the strip did not appear in the list of options.

Personal life

Frise stood 5 ft. He enjoyed the outdoors and pursued fishing and hunting. He often returned to the Lake Scugog area and sometimes spoke about his career there. He was a Methodist Christian. After returning from his service in World War I, Frise began courting Ruth Elizabeth Gate, who had been born in the US and grew up in Toronto. She worked at an advertising agency, and co-published with her father a magazine in braille and a braille bible. She married Frise on 21 February 1918 and the couple had four daughters, Jean, Ruth, Edythe, and Betty; and a son, John. Frise often featured his spaniel Rusty in his strips.

Legacy

The Montreal cartoonist Doug Wright (1917–83) took the reins of Juniper Junction, which went on to become English Canada's longest-running comic strip. In 1965 the Canadian publisher McClelland & Stewart printed a treasury of Birdseye Center with commentary by Greg Clark and an introduction by Gordon Sinclair. Clark continued publishing his tales for a time with illustrations by Duncan Macpherson (1924–93), but soon moved on to different topics. Scugog Shores Museum in Port Perry holds some samples of Frise's original artwork, and the Province of Ontario erected an Ontario Historical Plaque in front of the museum to commemorate Frise's role in Ontario's heritage. In 2009, Frise was inducted into the Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame.