For 40 years, Terry Mosher has skewered the rich, famous and powerful with his provocative and entertaining political cartoons, which offer pointed commentary about Montreal, Quebec and Canada.

Over the weekend, comic fans celebrated the man best known as Aislin by inducting him into the Giants of the North: The Canadian Cartoonists Hall of Fame, part of the annual Doug Wright Awards.

"The fact of the matter is: what we do is work in basements all over the place, trying to come up with ideas...and try to keep people amused and hope that what we do is relevant in one way or another," he told CBC News.

"My challenge every day is not what to draw, but what not to draw."

Mosher's influence over the years cannot be underestimated, according to Senator Joan Fraser, his former editor at the Montreal Gazette.

"Particularly in the years when the English community in Quebec was in a state of turmoil... his work was a focal point for the community," she said.

"He got us up every morning and helped us to laugh — and there were days in those years when being able to laugh was a good and helpful thing."

Mosher said he learned a lesson about his job early on: political cartoonists play the valuable role of poking and prodding those in power, as a representative of the general public.

"I got into it and discovered [cartoonists] are average people [who] understood the frustration of the average person and their frustration with the institutions," he said.

"All I had to to do was reflect the frustrations of dealing with bureaucracies or the arrogance of politicians, as best I could, and people could relate to it."