Crowds flooded the Ottawa Art Gallery on Oct. 13 for Canzine Ottawa, the city’s first festival of zine culture and the independent arts, run by Canadian magazine Broken Pencil.
A zine is a self-made, self-published booklet that anybody can create.
Canzine has been hosted in other cities across Canada including Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary.
Beccy Champagne, a local Ottawa artist and zine-maker who tabled at the festival, said that the best part of the zine community is it is very accessible, with zines being about everything from potatoes to comics about traumatic events.
“The thing I like about zines is that it feels very difficult to define so it just feels like a physical manifestation of whatever you need it to be,” Champagne said.
Zines are unique in their lack of definition, allowing more artistic freedom than book and comics, she said.
Events throughout the day included a zine-making workshop, zine readings, and a do-it-yourself silk screen printing workshop.
Ottawa’s zine history was also highlighted with an exhibit from zine-maker Julia Pine and Janine Frenken (No Cause for Concern?) of their personal collection of Ottawa punk zines from the 70s and 80s.
Jonathan Valelly, editor of the Broken Pencil Magazine, said the event has been an utter success.
“We have had hundreds of people come through and the zine readings were packed and demonstrated a really awesome diversity of zine content and reading styles,” he said.
“I was really pleased with that. So, I am pretty blown away by how folks in Ottawa have really shown out for the zine community.”
Vendors were selling everything from zines to stickers, shirts to artworks, and books to handmade pins.
“Very positive vibes, you know, a lot of what I find with zinesters is there’s a lot of words of encouragement and excitement,” Vallely said.
“I’m really stoked that they decided to come here,” said Champagne. “This feels very dedicated to original stuff and that’s really exciting.
The table cost is accessible and the variety of art here is just like really exciting.”
Broken Pencil and Canzine hope to grow in Ottawa next year.
Photo by Jasmine Foong
