For the Broken Pencil staff and volunteers, the last week has been a whirlwind of late-night emails, tweaking of excel sheets, stuffing of gift bags and loading of tables. Yesterday it was all worth it, seeing close to 200 exhibitors invade the 918 Bathurst Centre, stealing the show with amazing work.
Thank you to our amazing volunteers who helped us lug tables and stuff bags: without you guys we would have many paper cuts and bruised muscles so thank you!
In the events room, we owe a huge thank you to the many participants who kept us entertained and informed: Evan Munday, Fiona Smyth, Amy Logan Holmes for their amazing hosting of the 1-2 Punch Book Pitch; Skot Deeming for his VJ workshop, Andrea Manica, Chris Landry, Leopold McGinnis –best name ever – Naomi Skwarna, Nicholas Boshart, Marta Ryczko, Becky Johnson – a serious sweetie pie – for taking part in the wild experiment of the Hollywood Piracy Zine Challenge; Dave Cave, Maranda Elizabeth, Alex Jansen, Ellen G. Levine for the insightful panel on mental health issues in zines and Danila Botha, Ethan Rilly and Jonah Campbell for their deeply radical readings.)
Awesome work as always from our art room creators: Trash Palace and the charmingly offbeat Typewriter Orchestra presented by Ian Hanna. Thank you to the Toronto Underground Food Market (Elle Cuisine, Rossy Earle, Bistro Filipino, Sullivan & Bleeker, Big Smoke Coffee and Beau’s Lager) who kept everyone full on pulled pork po’boys, chorizo stew, mini-cupcakes and, in a Canzine first, coffee with tasting notes.
We’ll end this post with some Canzinefic stories:
– BP Editor in Chief Lindsay Gibb heard someone say that this year’s Canzine felt like the dearly departed Cut n’ Paste Festival. It warmed her heart.
– Canzine volunteer Aki, only recently arrived from Japan, found the Toronto photozine Blood of the Young in his hometown’s bookshop and it got him intrigued by the underground art and culture in Canada. Only two months in Toronto and hard at work learning English, he showed up on Saturday afternoon to volunteer, having read on Blood of the Young’s blog about the festival. When we heard his story on our pizza break, we decided we had to introduce them all. So, during the Great Hollywood Piracy Zine Challenge we brought the Blood the Young boys, Dimitri and Reilly on stage, to meet Aki and give him a zine and they all shook hands. Later, Aki reported back, “that was cool.”
– Aaron Levin, of the awesome music blog Weird Canada and formerly of Edmonton, moved to Toronto on Friday. Yesterday, he attended Canzine and opened the latest issue Broken Pencil he received at the door to find a complimentary review of his blog. “What a wonderful welcoming. Thank you,” he wrote to us.
– And thank you to Kathleen Banville for sharing her wonderful photos with us!
