Fonds consists, primarily, of editorial cartoons published in the Kingston Whig-Standard. Also included is a small sampling of medical illustrations done for the Medical Faculty of Queen's University. Works have been arranged chronologically.
Editorial cartoons span the entire career of Frank Edwards. Predominantly national in scope, the works lampoon every Prime Minister from the short-lived reign of Joe Clark, in 1979, to the return of the Liberal government under the leadership of Jean Chrétien. Prime Ministers include Pierre Elliott Trudeau, John Turner, Brian Mulroney and Kim Campbell. All relevant issues of national importance, covering 1979-1994, are investigated including those relating to the economy, social programs, foreign policy, education, health, fisheries, employment, government spending, arts and culture, transportation, aboriginal concerns, national unity, immigration and defence. All leaders of national parties in Canada are portrayed including Ed Broadbent, Audrey McLaughlin, Preston Manning, Lucien Bouchard and Jean Charest.
Liberal federal Ministers of note are Marc Lalonde, Donald Macdonald, Flora MacDonald, Allan MacEachen, Jean-Luc Pepin, Lloyd Axworthy, Robert Kaplan, Eugene Whelan, Perrin Beatty, Mark MacGuigan, Sheila Copps, Sergio Marchi, and Paul Martin. Prominent Conservative Ministers include Don Mazankowski, Erik Neilsen, John Crosbie, Michael Wilson, Pat Carney, Sinclair Stevens, Tom Siddon, and Barbara McDougall.
International leaders include Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Yasser Arafat, Fidel Castro, Jimmy Carter, Ayatollah Khomeini, Menachem Begin, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Leonid Brezhnev, Nelson Mandela, Yuri Andropov, Indira Gandhi, Konstantin Chernenko, Idi Amin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Moammar Gaddafi, Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos, George Bush, Saddam Hussein, Boris Yeltson and Bill Clinton.
International subjects frequently relate to armed conflicts, foreign economies, repressive régimes, foreign elections, peacekeeping, N.A.T.O., the U.N., stock markets, trade and tariffs, nuclear arms production, the environment, disasters and famine in third world nations.
Provincial leaders include Bill Davis, Robert Nixon, Frank Miller, David Peterson, Bob Rae, Mike Harris, René Lévesque, Robert Bourassa, Jacques Parizeau, Pierre-Marc Johnson, Daniel Johnson, Peter Lougheed, Don Getty, Bill Bennett, Bill Vander Zalm, Frank McKenna, Clyde Wells, Gary Filmon and Sharon Carstairs. Provincial subjects of note are the Constitutional wranglings and federal and inter-provincial relations.
Also included are 25 illustrations of medical procedures, bones, joints and tendons used to complement lecture series and publications by the Medical Faculty of Queen's University.
