My Dearest Reader, 

There comes a time in every writer’s career when they inevitably come face to face with that which we all most fear. It’s a malaise felt deep within the soul, a profound, immiserating nausea which saps the inspiration of the creative mind. 

I hear the kids these days call it “writer’s block.”

We, the editorial team of this fine masthead, have done our best to stave off the inevitability of this crushing melancholy by way of circle-jer—I mean—brainstorming sessions and pilgrimages to the student centre to procure oversaccharine eight-dollar coffee, though alas our efforts have produced little in the way of results.

However, writers long before us have fought these demons by the time-honoured expedient of “running away to the woods for a bit,” and who are we to argue with their methods? So, in a fit of desperation myself and my wonderful co-conspirators rented the cheapest cabin we could find on Craigslist in a bid to have a writing retreat on an Arthur budget. 

You know, like The Shining.

Yes the times they are a changin’ here at Arthur, and not just in the sense of our having welcomed two new editors (and one old dog whomst we’re desperately trying to teach some new tricks).

Here in the office we’ve got cold drinks in the mini-fridge, all our fans on “Hi” and female singer-songwriter music blasting from the iMac between bouts of the Tragically Hip, the simpering lesbicious cock-rock of Bruce Springsteen, and a deeply concerning amount of midwest emo. This is our own summer, and you can rest assured that we’re going to shove it, but in order to do that we first need to be quiet and drive far away.

Thusly, armed with nothing but the clothes on our backs, a handful of pens procured from socialists at the latest labour protest of the week, and an industrial sized palette of bubly™, we collectively piled into Sebastian’s white, sticker-adorned, 2009 Dodge Calibre (stick-shift he’ll have you know, ladies) and made for the great outdoors.

However, quickly finding ourselves bored we frantically scrounged ideas for means of entertainment. Realizing that “iSpy” is rather difficult to play in a moving car, and the person driving would be unavoidably handicapped in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate by virtue of needing to have a hand on the gearstick, we decided instead to honour the late, great Gord Downie by introducing ourselves. 

To this end, we revised our existing biographies to better channel the beat poet spirit this summer for us embodies (though Sebastian has kindly declined partaking in the benzedrine and blunt rotation). The result is that which follows, and for best effect should be read in the most ridiculous ethnographically caucasian accent you deem to be appropriate.

After much deliberation as to who should go first—as dyed-in-the-wool Anarchist Sebastian impressed upon us the claim that any ordering of our names was an implicit hierarchy—we decided to abide the chief hierarchy with which we are all saddled, namely the progressive ordering of the English alphabet. 

Thus it fell to Abby to deliver the opening salvo.

“Abbigale Kernya is a co-Editor of Arthur who won’t shut up about having spent the latter half of her youth unwillingly cosplaying as someone who enjoyed John Frusciante’s “Your Pussy’s Glued To A Building On Fire”. That being said, Abbigale is ready to commit herself to yet another greasy rag with a human name that frequently publishes obscenities.

Avoid mentioning boygenius in her presence if you wish to save yourself from a three hour powerpoint presentation detailing boygenius lore.”

Having taken sufficient pause to listen to the aforementioned song, and nodded sagely at Frusciante’s poetic description of his lover as being “[a] little duck house,” we passed the proverbial talking ball to the Bass.

“Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay, Editor-in-Chief and Arthur’s resident dad who ‘just wants to grill for God’s sake!’ is a notoriously anti-social journalist, male Pharb, and recovering academic whose proclivity for slander and libel knows no bounds. Local cops have called him ‘misleading and divisive,’ and local women have called him ‘DILFy’ and ‘lesbicious’. 

He has managed to become rich beyond measure during his tenure at Arthur due to his willful ignorance of non-profit governance and shameless crypto investments. He is a ruthless employer who demands spotless copy and is unreservedly hostile in demeanour to all those whose work falls below the very high bar he sets.

Of his many enemies, Sebastian thinks little, owing to his grandiose sense of self-importance as editor of a student paper.”

Upon the conclusion of this speech, someone expounded “she Sebastian on my Johnston till I Lindsay,” sending the car into riotous upheaval for the next five minutes much like that Joker movie.

And so it fell to me, three-time returning camper and one-third co-Editor, Evan Robins, “aspiring novelist, hardcore country musician and enemy of the state who opines at length in the pages of Arthur and dresses like a dollar-store Dr. Ellie Sattler. Her life could, at various points, be described as ‘fucking in tents,’ and despite a number of her nascent experience of the homosexual persuasion having been cemented in the dog days of summer, they were entirely more comparable to Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning than to Call Me By Your Name.

When not crushing brewskis and sippin’ pints on the patio of the Only Cafe, Evan can be found around Peterborough leaning out the passenger seat of her friend’s Hyundai Elantra Touring blasting the dulcet tones of Skinny Puppy in traffic.

She hopes to one day settle down and raise kids in a rural lesbian commune with her seventeen girlfriends.”

Having just then completed our respective self-aggrandizing soliloquies, we fortuitously happened upon a young woman in need hitchhiking by the side of the road. Naturally, being the discerning editors and philanthropists we are, we hired her on the spot.

On paper, Summer Journalist Isla Gole is “not very much, but leave it to her grandmother and three Instagram reply guys to attest to her quick wit, cat-like reflexes & jolly old soul. Frequently described as ‘the dead wife in the main character of an indie movie’s flashback’ by her peers, Isla Gole has also been compared to the mannerisms of Lisa Rinna. Isla is far more than just a mezzo-soprano, NEXUS card holder with a 31-minute 5km time… she is also a reformed depop scammer.

Isla enjoys exploring the sociocultural significance of inefficient urban planning, hyper-specified social media aesthetics and dancing like Kamala Harris. When she is not embarking on the aforementioned topics, Isla unwinds by exercising a unique physiological adaptation where her brain is able to retract into a skinless grape-like aberration, absent of coiling or critical thinking ability. 

You are most likely to find our Gemini starlet on a plastic lawn chair, 2 (no more, no less) sugar free seltzers deep, shut-eyed and listening to ‘Get Rich Quick | Wealth Attraction Subliminal’ YouTube videos.”

God Bless.

Verily, Isla Gole joined our summer team, and we had to do our introductions all over again, somehow even more raucous in our histrionic cacophony than the first time.

With that matter finally resolved, we pulled down the lane of our rustic escape with all the aplomb of a group of hapless horror movie protagonists poised to bang and drink their way to oblivion (though us, being the socially reclusive involuntary celibates we are, were simply there to write).

While I type this out on the dying battery of my cellular phone, Abby sits at the kitchen table trying to plug a computer monitor into a typewriter. Isla has already adopted the shut-eyed, seltzer-drunk lawn-chaired position while a VHS copy of Moneyball plays on the CRT TV. Sebastian is trying to find a cooler big enough for all that bubly™.

Here’s hoping this latest hare-brained scheme of ours proves useful and not a massive waste of time. 

Welcome, dear reader, to Arthur’s ‘23 Wilderness Sabbatical.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” you might ask. Not a whole lot, rest assured, at least not where it counts. However, with the regular trappings of the school year shut for the next several months, you can expect fewer accounts of student union antics and more of City Councillors acting like children! The summer is a time for fun and frolicking, and there’s no better place to do that than in these very pages of Arthur’s own Bowlcut. 

We’re very excited to have hired Isla Gole, who presented us with a number of incredible pitches that we can’t wait for you to read. In the interim, I am toiling away at the preparations for that annual blowout which is Arthur Issue 0. While this is at least in part my job, when it comes to graphic design, it’s always a passion project.

You can submit to Issue 0 before the July 31st deadline by emailing submissions and inquiries to editors@trentarthur.ca with the subject line “Issue 0 Submission”. We accept news, opinion pieces, interviews, arts & culture coverage, satire, nudes, photography, poetry, classifieds, letters, calls to arms, poetry, visual art, and revolutionary eco-anarchist manifestos. 

Come visit us in our shack in Suite 104 of Sadleir House if you so please, or else direct all suspicious brown paper-wrapped packages, hate mail, or proposals of marriage to:

C/O Arthur Newspaper

Sadleir House

Suite 104

751 George Street North

Peterborough, ON

K9H 3T2

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All the best, and yours truly,

Evan Robins 

on behalf of the editors of Arthur (she/they)

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