Wicks, Ben, 1926-2000 : Born in England in 1926, Ben Wicks married Doreen Curtis, a nurse, in 1957 and later that year they immigrated to Canada, initially settling in Calgary where Wicks worked as a milkman. Wicks had freelanced funnies to the London Daily Mirror before coming to Canada, but made his first sale as a cartoonist in Canada to The Saturday Evening Post in 1962. He subsequently provided the Calgary Albertan and other western newspapers with political cartoons and by the mid-sixties had moved to Toronto and joined the Toronto Telegram, which syndicated his drawings. In the late sixties Wicks' cartoons were syndicated to over fifty Canadian newspapers and a hundred American ones.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Wicks also became involved in Canadian radio and television. He appeared regularly on CBC radio, as a guest on both Bruno Gerussi's morning show and Max Ferguson's afternoon show. He was host of the World of Wicks, a half-hour interview show on Global Television in the mid-seventies and also had a CBC television show in the late seventies. In 1975 Wicks began his long-running cartoon strip, "The Outcasts", on which his son Vincent, also a cartoonist, now works with him. Co-author with journalist Peter Worthington of a tongue-in-cheek cookbook, The Naked Gourmet (1970), Wicks published Ben Wicks Canada in 1976, the first in a series of humorous books incorporating his drawings and his own texts. It was followed by Ben Wicks Women (1977), Ben Wicks Book of Losers (1978), Ben Wicks Book of Etiquette (1980), More Losers (1982) and Ben Wicks Book of Dogs (1983).
In 1988 Wicks departed from his usual style and published No Time To Wave Goodbye, a collection of reminiscences by former British schoolchildren evacuated from London during WW II, which was on the bestseller lists in both Canada and Britain. Wicks, who was himself an evacuee, published a second book on the same subject, The Day They Took the Children (1989).
Wicks and his wife Doreen, a medical worker, have long been involved in charitable work in Canada. They are the founders of Global Ed-Med Supplies (GEMS), a Canadian non-profit organization which helps provide educational and medical supplies to developing countries. In 1986 the Wicks were behind the book Dear World: the Canadian Children's Project, a collection of artwork and writings by Canadian schoolchildren selected by Ben Wicks, assisted by Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton, Mila Mulroney, Knowlton Nash, Maureen McTeer and others, and sold to raise money for GEMS.
Ben Wicks who received the Order of Canada in 1986, died on September 10, 2000.
