Requiem for a Zine

In the fall of 1995, a friend and I started a Toronto-based zine called Broken Pencil. It was an act of joy and hubris. Barely out of college, we railed against the corporate hegemony that controlled the commanding heights of culture, viewing ourselves as part of the “resistance.” I was an emerging writer and reader of the obscure who loved unearthing anything that was unsettling, nonconforming, and weird. We found the stuff we liked and put it in our magazine, hoping to share a different kind of art with the world.