TCAF 2025 thoughts
I went to TCAF (Toronto Comics Arts Festival) last weekend, as show I was very happy was happening. You see normally the show is at the Toronto Reference Library, but at the end of last years show it was announced that the Library would be undergoing a 2 year renovation (I suspect it will take longer than that) and they would need a new place to have the show. Also the current festival director was stepping down and a new one would need to be brought in.
In discussing with with my friend Adam, I wasn’t sure where they could host the show and still make it free to attend. Especially with the amount of space that they would need. Yes they probably could use a convention centre but then they’d need to charge for attendees’ for admittance and that goes against TCAF’s ethos of making the show free to attend in order to get as many people to show up and have money to spend on books.
Thankfully Amie Wright stepped up as the new festival director and they found a place, the old Maple Leafs Gardens aka the Mattamy Athletic Centre. I’m sure it wasn’t free as they were asking for donations to keep the show free, but I’m assuming it was low cost enough they thought/hoped they could get enough donations from fans to cover it. There were multiple benefits to this location in that there was nearby hotels, one which they were able to use for panels, which is something they used to be able to do before covid, and also nearby food.
The area around the Toronto Reference Library became a bit of a dead zone for food as a lot of stores in the area closed up and their locations are still empty. Also the hotel that many people stayed at and got used for extra panel space got renovated and now it was half condos, half awful hotel rooms and no space for panels. Everybody was now staying several blocks or more from the library and the amount of programming they could hold was cut, even Librarian and Educator day was cut.
The new location was better for all of that, hotels, food, panel space, etc.. but that being said not everything was perfect. There were 2 main spaces for the exhibitors, the hockey floor and the basketball court. The basketball court was the smaller of the two and I’m guessing they had a lot less foot traffic, I’m sure exhibitors are not going to want to be in that room next year, especially with the issue of “waterfall gate” where an overhead pipe leaked spraying water on some exhibitor tables. For some reason the floor for the event was tarp taped together, which makes me suspect this happens on occasion in there. Hopefully they install new pipes in that room before next years show.
TCAF 2025 Crowd Shot
The hockey arena was nice in that it was big, but they jammed in some of the rows too tightly together. The place was jam packed to the point where it was impossible to move around in some sections. They had also placed all the major publishers in the middle, but left no room for the long lines that happened when popular creators were doing signings, which made things worse. In short, they’re going to need to re-think the floor plan for next year to make it more navigable. There needs to be more spaces between the isle and they can use the outside edge much better. Being a hockey rink there is a zamboni entrance/area that could be used for some of the lineups, but that would require moving the more popular publishers to the outside edge of the floor.
There is extra space at the location with wide isles outside the main rooms and a section upstairs where there is room for tables. I’m sure some exhibitors won’t like being there, but then again I heard one say they were happy they weren’t on the 3rd floor of the Library like they were last year. TCAF has always had issues with ‘dead zones’ that don’t get as much foot traffic as the main exhibitor floors.
One of the nice bonuses about the place being a hockey arena was lots of seats, which attendees made use of (including me). It was good if you just wanted to get off your feet and chill out a bit. The Mattamy Athletic Centre does also have escalators to get up (and at the end of the day) down from floors, which I appreciate, plus there are multiple elevators. There was a food vendor inside, but I wouldn’t recommend eating anything from there unless it’s packaged food like chips or chocolate bars.
Librarian and Educator day was back and that was really nice. That was one aspect of the show I really missed since it went away after it came back from Covid. Only issue was there wasn’t any signage on how to get it and where to go once you got in. My friend Adam and I had to ‘sneak’ into the building grabbing a door when somebody else who had access went in or was leaving. There were apparently were “main doors” that you could go into but no indication as to where they were.
Once you got in, finding the correct elevator to get to the right spot was confusing. We did see a sign by the stairs that said it was on the forth floor, but when we took the elevator to the 4th floor we couldn’t find the event. Thankfully somebody noticed us walking around looking lost and was able to walk us to the hidden elevator on the 2nd floor that gets you to the correct spot.
There was a word balloon event happening at the same time as Librarian and Educator day, but it was at the hotel. While there were panels there I’d have liked to attend, some of the panels were re-do’s of panels I had already attended in previous years. I am told that it was very hot in those rooms though and during the convention they had brought in some fans to help out with the heat.
One of the nice things about TCAF is you meet people you’ve ‘known’ online for a while, or at least your friends know and says good things about. Sadly there were people who I do know and haven’t seen in a while that were at the show and I never got to see. Some of that was on me as I was busy doing panels, some of that was on the floor plan being so jammed up I couldn’t walk around and explore much when I did have some free time.
The show this year was more Canadian focused in both programming and guests as plenty of US creators were worried about crossing the border and back with all that’s going on with how policies are being enforced and deportations of anybody that’s non-white regardless of their legal status and without due process. Dealing with censorship, particularly at the Library level was also a big topic for the show.
As usual I did record (18) panels and the Doug Wright Awards and also took pictures with my new and much improved camera.
