After emigrating to Canada in 1938, Wright worked as an illustrator at an insurance company before serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War Two. It was here that his cartoons of fellow servicemen first drew the eye of a magazine editor. After freelancing in Montreal for a few years after the war, Wright took over Juniper Junction in 1948 after its creator, Jimmy Frise, died suddenly. Within a year, Wright launched a wordless and untitled gag strip about a little boy for the Montreal Standard (called The Weekend magazine after 1951). Eventually entitled Nipper, the strip switched to The Canadian, another national weekly newspaper supplement, in 1967 and the name was changed to Doug Wright's Family. Wright suffered a stroke in March 1980, and had another stroke on January 3,