1) Added GENRE PLAT (#4) Winter/Spring 1980 & (#5) Fall 1983 edited by Allyn Cadogan under SF Zines, British Columbia, Allyn Cadogan.

Currently my site is not allowing me to upload any new zines. All I get is an ‘error’ message saying ‘try again later.’ Hope this is a temporary glitch.

Ah! The glitch finally went away.

1) Added CENSORED (#3) 1942 edited by Fred Hurter Jr, under SF Zines, Historic.

2) Added GENRE PLAT (#2) Summer 1977 edited by Allyn Cadogan, under SF Zines, British Columbia, both Susan and Allyn.

1) Added OTTAWA SF STATEMENT (#411) July 2013 edited by Grant Duff, under SF Zines, Zines You Can Read, Ontario Zines, Ottawa SF Statement.

2) Added GENRE PLAT (#1) Spring 1977 edited by Allyn Cadogan, Susan Wood, Bill Gibson, under SF Zines, Zines You Can Read, British Columbia, Susan.

1) Added Taral Wayne’s BROKEN TOYS (#19) Late July 2013, under SF Fanzines, Ontario Zines, Taral.

2) Reviewed Broken Toys #19. See Sidebar.

3) Added essay ‘THOUGHTS ON CENSORED’ July 2013 by Taral Wayne to SF Fanzines, Historic, Censored.

4) Added Mike Glicksohn & Susan Wood’s ENERGUMEN (#4), the 16 issue run hosted here is now complete, under SF Fanzines, Zines You Can Read, Ontario Zines, Taral Wayne Zines.

For me birthdays are a form of athletics. I race past each goalpost determined to rack up as high a score as possible. I just turned 62, chortling with glee because now it is absolutely impossible for me to die at the age of 61. Now to find out if I can make it to 63! Each and every birthday is a milestone, a triumph, and a victory lap. I find myself feeling better and happier every July 25th. No sprinter I, but a long distance runner. The race goes on!

Besides, I recently decided to start counting from 50. Currently that makes me 12 years old, which fits in well with my second childhood. The way I see it, I won’t enter middle age until I celebrate my centenary. Oddly enough, that’s probably when I will transform into a sprinter…

1) Added VCON 3 (1974) Program Book under SF Conventions, VCON 3.

Haven’t done much lately, tomorrow probably nothing (it being my birthday), but I will pick up the pace after that.

1) Replaced CENSORED files with improved scans as per request of Taral Wayne, the owner of the originals.

1) Added CENSORED (#5) Fall 1942 — edited by FRED HURTER JR. — under SF Zines,Historic.

Taral informs me he is busy scanning CENSORED #5 from 1948 and will send it to me shortly. Huzzah! Then the site will host 3 out of the 6 issues produced. Fantastic. Anybody have the other three (#1,3,6) and willing to scan?

Looking through the two issues already posted, now I understand why Forrest J. Ackerman accused Barbara Bovard of being Leslie A. Croutch in disguise. They share the same lowbrow, rather crude (though rarely rude) puerile sense of humour. Almost indistinguishable in fact. Lest modern readers turn up their nose, I consider their columns, japes and jests to be a sort of historical artifact reflecting the typical humour of young fen in the 1940s, and valuable evidence for what fandom was like back then.

Alas, as a fan historian I wish the contributors had spent more time writing about each other and themselves rather than ‘timeless’ humour columns. Not to mention, writing articles about contemporary fandom rather than printing fiction. But tis a fact many zines in that era were still hung up on the idea of imitating prozines (a big fad in the 30s and slowly fading in the 40s).

It must have been sad for Nils Helmer Frome to see one of his art pieces reproduced in CENSORED but have to read in the same issue Fred Hurter Jr. grudgingly admitting that Croutch’s publications predated CENSORED as ‘the first’ Canadian fanmag when in truth Frome’s SUPRAMUNDANE STORIES had been the first (#1-1937, #2-1938) to make a big splash. It does seem that Frome’s role as a faned was unknown to fellow Canadian fen within 3 or 4 years of his last issue. He seems to have been viewed as a fan artist, writer, and loccer, but SUPRAMUNDANE COMPLETELY forgotten, if they ever knew about it in the first place. Sad.

Also somewhat sad, I’m getting about 12 spams a day and zero comments. Oh well. I prefer to imagine all of you are too busy reading and researching the zines for your own pleasure to make any comments. This is the sort of site I always dreamed of having access to, and now I’m in the position to create it for others. Great fun actually.

But what I do hope will happen is that those of you with rare early Canadian fanzines in your collection will offer to scan them and send me the pdfs so that I can post them and make them available to all who may be interested. That would please me very much.

Cheers!  The Graeme

1) Absolutely fantastic day! Checked my email and discovered Taral had sent me scans of two zines from his collection, namely the legendary CENSORED by Fred Hurter Jr!

CENSORED (#2) October 1941

CENSORED (#4) June 1942

Words can not describe how excited and thrilled I was to receive these. Literally never thought I’d live to read any CENSOREDs, never mind two of them! So naturally I’m posting them on this site immediately!

It is a day full of exclamation points! I’m grinning from ear to ear!