MOLI VIEW™

TORONTO, October 28: It's a crisp Sunday morning and a guy in his twenties, wearing a brown suit, handlebar mustache, and newsboy cap, is sitting on the front steps of the Gladstone Hotel smoking a pipe. It's just a few days before Halloween, but this doesn't appear to be a costume. Down the street, for blocks in either direction, bikes are locked to every post and tree, their rusty chrome fenders shining dully in the autumn sun. Strolling past the man with the pipe, up the steps, and into the hotel is a steady stream of young and equally hip-looking kids dressed in vintage sweaters and thick-framed glasses. They wear Chuck Taylors and knitted scarves and have come here, the ones who didn't bike that is, from across the country. They bear boxes full of photocopied and stapled pages, CDs, postcards, and all manner of homemade artsy things. They have come to participate in the indie culture extravaganza that is Canzine.

Now in its twelfth year, Canzine is one of the country's largest gatherings of independent publishers, zine-makers, and crafters of weird, funky stuff. Broken Pencil, a quarterly magazine covering all things Canadian and indie, organizes the event, and has seen it grow from a few tables in the mid-'90s to its present size. The attendance of more than 200 exhibitors, attention from the mainstream press, and the capacity crowd attest both to the event's popularity, and to the growing scope of indie culture in Canada. There are two Canzines, in fact: One in Halifax, also convened by Broken Pencil, took place October 20.

Inside the Gladstone (a restored Victorian building and a central point in Toronto's burgeoning Queen West art scene), tables are lined across every square foot of floor space from the lobby to the ballroom to the bar. The second floor is equally crammed, with exhibitors spilling into the open doors of emptied hotel rooms. Lindsay Gibb, Broken Pencil's editor, sees Canzine as a unique opportunity for zine publishers to meet each other, attract new readers, and exchange ideas. "It started as a way to expose zines and bring the whole community together," she says.

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