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The strip chronicles the lives of a Canadian family and their friends. The father, John Patterson, is a dentist whose hobby is model railroading; he appears less often than the mother, Elly, a housewife turned store-owner. The happy couple have three children:
The characters age in real time; fans have been known to express surprise and dismay at passing time in the story, such as "Michael is married?! He can't be that old!"
Some of the comic's characters were based upon Johnston's real family. However, the characters are substantially different from her real family. When her children were younger, she asked their permission before depicting events from their lives; and she only once used a "serious" story from their lives. [1]
The strip is now seen in over two thousand newspapers throughout Canada, the United States, and about twenty other countries and translated into eight different languages.
It is now an animated series broadcast on Canada's Teletoon.