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| - The second of six children, John Wilson Bengough was born into a deeply Protestant family on 7 April 1851 in Toronto, Province of Canada. His parents were John Bengough, a Scottish immigrant cabinetmaker, and Margaret Wilson, an Irish immigrant. The family soon moved to nearby port town Whitby, where job opportunities beckoned surrounding the construction of Trafalgar Castle, the residence of Nelson Gilbert Reynolds, Sheriff of Ontario County. The elder Bengough later opened a shop in Whitby.
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| - The second of six children, John Wilson Bengough was born into a deeply Protestant family on 7 April 1851 in Toronto, Province of Canada. His parents were John Bengough, a Scottish immigrant cabinetmaker, and Margaret Wilson, an Irish immigrant. The family soon moved to nearby port town Whitby, where job opportunities beckoned surrounding the construction of Trafalgar Castle, the residence of Nelson Gilbert Reynolds, Sheriff of Ontario County. The elder Bengough later opened a shop in Whitby. Bengough attended Whitby Grammar School, where he was an average student. He was an avid sketcher, a talent which caught the notice of his teacher, who presented his student with a set of paints one Christmas. This act Bengough credited with setting him on the career path of an artist. He described himself as a "voracious reader", particularly of the Whitby Gazette, a didactic weekly that stressed Christian values. [[wikipedia:File:Tammany Ring, Nast crop.jpg|thumb|left|alt=Black-and-white caroon of a ring of men, each pointing to the next in the ring. At the bottom is written "Tammany Ring".|"Who stole the people's money?" — "'Twas him."Thomas Nast's cartoons of the corruption in Tammany Hall contributed to the fall of Boss Tweed, and inspired Bengough to bring political cartooning to Canada.|]] After graduation, Bengough tried his hand at a number of jobs, including photographer's assistant, and he articled to a lawyer for some time before getting a typesetting job at the Whitby Gazette. While there, he submitted short, local-interest articles. In mid-1870, Gazette publisher George Ham issued a four-page daily to capitalize on interest in the Franco-Prussian War, and commissioned Bengough to provide a serialized novel for it. The popular reception of The Murderer's Scalp (or The Shrieking Ghost of the Bloddy Den) encouraged Bengough to devote himself to a journalism career. The papers and magazines that came into the Gazette offices, in particular Harper's Weekly, introduced Bengough to the growing field of cartooning. Bengough reminisced, "I divided my time between mechanical duties for sordid wages and poetry for the good of humanity, and meanwhile I kept an eye on Thomas Nast the cartoonist." The politically and socially aware cartoonist of Nast he considered a "beau ideal"; Nast's "moral crusade against abject wrong"—in particular his relentless Boss Tweed cartoons—inspired the young Bengough to "emulate Nast in the field of Canadian politics". At twenty he moved to Toronto and became a reporter on politician George Brown's newspaper The Globe. He was disappointed in the lack of cartooning opportunities, and enrolled briefly in the Ontario School of Art, whose pedantry he found stifling. A caricature of editor James Beaty of the conservative Toronto Leader won Bengough praise, and rather than give up on seeking cartooning jobs, he had "a happy thought ... Why not start a weekly comic paper with lithographed cartoons?" A raven character in the Charles Dickens|]] novel Barnaby Rudge inspired the name of the magazine Grip. Its pages carried political and social commentary and cartoons, and its 24 May 1873 debut issue declared: "Grip will be entirely independent and impartial, always and on all subjects." Bengough set the editorial policy and was the lead cartoonist. [[wikipedia:File:John Wilson Bengough 1873-08-16 Whither are we drifting.jpg|thumb|alt=A black-and-white cartoon of a late-middle-aged man standing atop a woman labeled "Canada". His arms are spread and he smiles. On one hand is written "I need another $10,000", and in the other hand is a piece of paper on which is written, "Prorogation and suppression of the investigation".|"Whither are we drifting?" (16 August 1873)John A. Macdonald proclaims "These hands are clean!"—scrawled on his hand is the message "I need another $10,000" that he had written to Hugh Allan.|]] Grip's early issues attracted little notice. Events arising from the Canadian federal election of 1872 shortly gave Bengough sufficient popular material to lampoon: accusations of bribery and other improprieties involving prime minister John A. Macdonald and business magnate Hugh Allan inflated into the Pacific Scandal, the most closely followed scandal in the young nation's history. Macdonald's features lent themselves easily to caricature and gave Bengough the chance to proselytize. A 23 August 1873 cartoon entitled "The Beauties of a Royal Commission: When shall we three meet again?" drew praise from newspapers across Canada, as well as from Liberal MP Lucius Seth Huntington in a speech to the House of Commons. After the early 1890s depression drove Grip to cease publication, he worked for the next quarter-century as a newspaper cartoonist for the Toronto Globe, Toronto Daily Star, Saturday Night and the Montreal Star. Bengough died of a heart attack at his drawing board at his home while working on a cartoon in support of an anti-smoking campaign.
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