On Oct. 1, I made the trip down to the Toronto Reference Library for the annual Canzine festival. It’s one of those things I’ve heard about, but never actually made the trip down to. But since it was a nice day, I went down with a friend of mine and checked it out.
Canzine’s been around since 1995 and it’s been held all over the country: Saskatoon, Halifax, Vancouver and elsewhere. But thanks to COVID, It was digital-only the last two years. This made last weekend’s event both a sort of homecoming and a festival for some of Canada’s indie comics and zine-makers.
It was nice. The first floor of the TPL was filled to the brim with vendors from all over. I spoke to expatriate Americans who hand-printed their wares, publishers from Montreal, and art students from Toronto. I picked up a little of everything: zines, postcards, a T-shirt and even commissioned a sketch of my gecko-sona. My big regret was not getting names on some of the stuff I bought: I got a nice postcard of Isabelle from Animal Crossing, done up like a Byzantine stained-glass window, but I neglected to get the artist to write her name on it. If you’re out there, your postcard is hanging on my fridge.
My favorite zine there is “Can’t Talk Right Now I’m Doing Hot Girl Shit,” published by The Sapphic Press. It’s 14 pages of lesbian joy: a mix of found photos, internet ephermia and art. It touches on queer-coded villains in cartoons, historical depictions of lesbians and domme/sub relationships. It’s steamy and angry, and it drips with eroticism. My copy says Volume 3, but I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for any further volumes.
But the afternoon’s highlight wasn’t a printed zine, but a small exhibit tucked away in a study room. “Go! Make Yourself Harder 2 Kill!” was a piece by Cleopatria Peterson, a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist and co-founder of Old Growth Press. Their piece was a collection of printed materials: posters, stickers and visual puns. It simultaneously poked fun at popular culture while also commenting on both the event’s venue and on how trans identity has been co-opted by big business.
Their exhibit’s statement said “they love to illustrate detailed environments and explore how a body can fit in the natural world and how that is often more caring than the current capitalist structures we exist in.” To this end, their exhibit has printed emotional labour invoices (free for anyone to take!) and boxes of boy- and girl juice. “Full of vitamin E” read the girl juice, while the boy juice had “Great T flavour!” I thought it was a nice riff on how estradiol valerate and testosterone enathate are commonly referred to in online circles. Meanwhile, fake ads sold binders at Staples, two-for-one top surgery at Claire’s, and HRT shots at Booster Juice.
At the same time, Peterson’s exhibit also had a sharply political message. Stickers showed the Toronto Public Library logo with the message “The T stands for transmisogynist,” while printed slips said the Toronto Transgender Library both doesn’t have “boring cis books here” and that Megan Murphy is banned from it’s location. Both of these reference the 2019 event when the TPL hosted Murphy, who says that transgender women shouldn’t be allowed in women’s bathrooms and that transgender women undermine women’s rights. TPL head librarian Vickery Bowles defended Murphy’s appearance, which led to protests outside the library; my friend David was photographed at one and ended up in the National Post, which would’ve been amusing if it didn’t end up with him getting a bunch of shit from strangers.
In the years since this event, the TPL has been remarkably quiet about trans issues, which makes Peterson’s piece all the more powerful: it’s not just a reminder of what happened, but also about the ways public libraries are often at the forefront of these cultural battles. For every drag queen reading, there’s a librarian defending Transgender Craze, Abigail Shrier’s book about how trans men can’t be trusted to make their own choices.
Throughout Canzine, there was a marked trans presence. Many booths were selling queer art, sitckers with the trans flag on them, that sort of thing. But Peterson’s exhibit took a strong stance towards the venue and towards the culture surrounding it. I thought it was a very effective piece, and it put Peterson on my radar. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for more of their work.