By Robert Hough
One thing I’ve found about being a novelist is that the profession, while gluing you to a chair for the majority of your life, can also, on occasion, place you in unusual situations. Case in point: In September I published a novel which dramatizes anarchist Emma Goldman’s plot to assassinate the Gilded Age industrialist Henry C. Frick, a mission she undertook with her lifelong companion, a fellow revolutionary named Alexander Berkman.
As such, I recently found myself with a table at an event called the Hamilton Anarchist Bookfair, which is held every September at the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre, a beautiful stone building from the mid-1800s that has hosted worker and union-related events since 1996. It was a beautiful fall morning, and I left downtown Toronto with my wife, who had charitably agreed to sell copies at the event, thus freeing me up to do some reporting. We arrived right at the start time of 10 a.m. Already the place was bustling. After checking in, I was given a table in a corner next to a vendor named Francois, who introduced himself as being a ‘distro.’ This, I learned, was short for distributor: He sat behind a table covered in anarchist-themed zines, all of which were produced by other people. “I’ve been selling zines for 25 years,” he told me. “And I’ve never made one myself.”
After perusing his wares, I picked up a 12-page, photocopied publication from 2024 called The Third Rail; Criminals and Collaborators in the Time of Genocide. On the cover was a picture of a grinning Joe Biden, who, in the interior pages, was referred to as “Genocide Joe, U.S. Puppet-in-Chief.” I gave Francois $5 for the issue.
