Series comprises, primarily, original editorial cartoons by Duncan Macpherson which were published in the Toronto Star. The works examine issues of national, international and provincial interest as well as the local Toronto arena. Federal politicians include Prime Ministers Lester B. Pearson, John Diefenbaker, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Joe Clark and John Turner as well as their most senior Cabinet members. Also parodied are opposition leaders Tommy Douglas, David Lewis, Réal Caouette, Ed Broadbent and Robert Stanfield. Canadian topics of note are federal-provincial relations, defence spending and the military,elections, budgets, social programs and leadership races. American Presidents portrayed include Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Most major international politicians from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s are caricatured. These include Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, European statesmen General Charles de Gaulle, Harold Macmillan, Edward Heath and Harold Wilson, Middle East politicians Golda Meir, Yasser Arafat and Anwar Sadat, and Cuba's Fidel Castro. Macpherson tackled such contentious international political issues as enrivonmental concerns, the oil industry and O.P.E.C., nuclear weapons, foreign aid, apartheid, and the Vietnam War.
Provincial leaders include W.A.C. Bennett, Bill Davis, Leslie Frost, René Lévesque, John Robarts and Joey Smallwood. Provincial coverage encompasses inter-provincial relations, elections and budgets.Some municipal leaders portrayed are David Crombie, Fred Gardiner, Phil Givens, Alan Lamport, Nathan Phillips, and John Sewell. Municipal topics of note are urban development, government spending, election results, administration scandals, zoning by-laws and public transportation.
