In Spring 2009, Drawn and Quarterly Books published the first volume of a retrospective of Wright's life and career. Wright himself was amongst the inaugural inductees into the Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame (also known as Giants of the North). In 2005, the Doug Wright Awards, named in Wright's honour, recognizing Canadian cartoonists and graphic novelists, were founded. Wright moved from Montreal to Burlington, Ontario in 1966. Wright also drew several other strips, including Max & Mini, Cynthia and The Wheels, and a series of editorial cartoons which were collected during the seventies. Nipper was a wordless masterpiece, capturing suburban Canadian life with wit and a keen eye, and ran uninterrupted for more than three decades. He died the next day in hospital at the age of 65. Wright suffered a stroke in March 1980, and had another stroke on January 3, 1983. 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.

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). 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. It was here that his cartoons of fellow servicemen first drew the eye of a magazine editor. 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.

Nipper, 1963-1964 by Doug Wright