The archives of Canadian cartoonist Ben Wicks have found a home.
The Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collections at York University will house almost 2,500 cartoons drawn by Wicks in the late 1960s and early ’70s.
Wicks’s cartoons, once carried in more than 200 newspapers, featured his irreverent take on world events, including the Vietnam War and famine in Africa, and political figures including Pierre Trudeau, Joe Clark and Richard Nixon.
Wicks was born in London in 1926 and immigrated to Canada with his wife, Doreen, in 1957. He worked as a milkman and musician, and served in the Canadian Army before finding fame for his drawings. He died in 2000.
The collection of his cartoons had been mistakenly left behind when a Wicks family member moved homes in the 1990s. The collection became the subject of a legal battle between the family and the home’s buyers.
The Wicks family was awarded ownership of the cartoons and donated them to York.
“It was my parents’ hope that the cartoons could be shared with as many people as possible, so we are thrilled that an institution such as York University was able to take on this collection for us,” daughter Susan Wicks said in a release. “York just felt right, like the type of place where my dad would want his work preserved.”
