Career
At his peak, Chambers produced nine cartoons every week: six for morning papers and three for afternoon papers. His career lasted 53 years. Born in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Chambers began drawing at an early age, and sold his first cartoon to the Halifax Chronicle in 1923.
While attending Horton Academy, he produced The Weekly Oriole, which was later sold to Acadia University.
By age nineteen in 1924, Chambers traded the Annapolis Valley for New York City where he took night classes at the Art Students League of New New York During the day, he drew cartoons.
He went on to work at Fables Pictures Incorporated. and illustrated Aesop"s Fables. After two years, Chambers worked for Paul Terry whose company Terrytoons produced feature length animations during the 1930s and 1940s.
To make ends meet, Chambers illustrated covers for sheet music and created drawings for tabloid magazines as well as United Features Syndicate and the New York Evening Graphic.
He illustrated the serialization of Erich Maria Remarque"s novel The Road Back for United Features in 1931. In 1932, Chambers returned to Nova Scotia, where he was hired yhe following year as an editorial cartoonist for the Liberal newspaper, the Halifax Chronicle. The defeated Conservative Premier, Gordon Harrington, told him, "You know Bob, you libeled me twenty-three times in twenty-three cartoons and I didn"t sue you.
But I sure thought about breaking your nose."
Chambers returned to New York for six months where he worked for the National Screen Service.
The two newspapers merged in 1949 and Chambers continued to work for the Halifax Chronicle-Herald for the rest of his career. His cartoons often featured Robert Stanfield, the Nova Scotia premier and leader of the federal Conservative party.
Gerald Regan. And G.I. Smith"s government in the late 1960s.
He was known for his depiction of the Little Manitoba, a regular citizen wearing only a barrel and dealing with life"s daily challenges. While working for the Chronicle-Herald, he published several anthologies of his editorial cartoons, as well as a small paperback booklet entitled Halifax In Wartime, A Collection of Drawings by Robert West. Chambers that was published in 1943.
In May 1976, Chambers retired at the age of 71, fifty-three years after publishing his first cartoon with the Chronicle on May 2, 1923. In 1979, he commented on the changing nature of cartooning through the years:
Chambers died in March 1996, two weeks before his ninety-first birthday.