It’s the holiday season and as it turns out, Shenani-Girl has a little bit of time on her hands to answer your questions. Whether they’re about comics, life, movies, various geekery or other things, get your questions into Shenanigans for a brand-new Dear Abby style column that’ll be up as frequently as our podcasting superhero can handle. You can send in your questions to stephaniecooke@talkingcomicbooks.com or via Shenani-Girl’s Tumblr page (all responses from Tumblr will be posted on the site).
Hey Shenani-Girl,
I figured as a fellow Canadian you could help me out. I was wondering what are some of the big Comic-cons in Canada. I am hoping to attend one sometime soon. I live in Yellowknife, NT ((Shenani-Girl: that’s the Northwest Territories for non-Canadians)) but travel east to visit family from time to time.
Thanks for taking to time to read my question and keep up the great work, you represent us Canucks well.
Luciano
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Luciano,
First of all, thank you very much for the compliment. It’s nice to know that we have some fellow Canadian listeners out there!
I would be more than happy to help you out with that! I’m a big fan of conventions and it’s nice to try to be able to share some of my knowledge of some of the better ones.
I’ll list them geographically from West to East and I’ll list the web sites and when each show is running for 2013.
- Calgary Expo which takes place from April 26-28 in Calgary, Alberta (I know you know where Calgary is, but if anyone else reading this isn’t familiar with Canada’s geography, I thought I would just be extra helpful…). This is one of the bigger Canadian conventions and it brings in a pretty wide variety of artists, writers, creators etc.
A random bonus guest (not related to comics) that’ll be at that convention is parody singer/songwriter extraordinaire “Weird Al” Yankovic. - Fan Expo This was the first convention that I ever went to in Toronto, Ontario. I believe it’s the biggest comic convention in Canada and while it has a few flaws because of it being a fairly big show, it’s pretty dear to my heart since it helped really solidify my geekdom. Fan Expo will be running next year from August 22-25. Fan Expo additionally has a show on the West Coast in Vancouver that runs from April 20-21.
- TCAF stands for the Toronto Comic Arts Festival and it is a fantastic show. Seriously. It’s run out of the Toronto Public Library and in addition to how well run it is, how many brilliant guests they get and events that go on around TCAF… this show is free, free, FREE. Have I mentioned that it’s free? Anyone can show up and take part in the festivities and it’s well-worth checking out.
The 2013 show hasn’t been announced yet, but if you follow the web site, you should be able to sign up for their newsletter that will keep you up to date with all their news. Last year’s show took place at the beginning of May, so I’m going to assume that 2013 show would be around the same time. - Hal-Con just finished wrapping up this year’s show but they’ve already gone ahead and announced that their 2013 show will be on November 8-10. Hal-Con is the premiere comics convention for the East Coast and it takes place in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It’s not a huge show, but it’s well run and they get pretty good guests to come out and if you haven’t been to Halifax before, it’s a really good excuse to go check it out.
- And although this one isn’t in Canada, Emerald City Comic Con is on the West Coast and it’s by far my favourite comic book convention in North America. They’re wonderfully focused on comics and the show is so incredibly well organized and in the beautiful city of Seattle, WA.
Anyways Luciano, I hope this has helped you out a bit! There are a bunch of other Canadian shows out there, but these are the ones that I’m familiar with and comfortable encouraging other people to attend.
Thanks so much for writing in and I’m more than happy to answer any other questions that you may have!
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