It was with excitement a few weeks ago that I’d read on one of the gay news sites that a company was going to finally put all of the issues of XY Magazine online and make them available for public viewing.  It’s been quite a few years since the last issue of XY was published, and since then I’ve graduated naturally to Attitude magazine based out of the UK.

However, it was exciting to know that the magazine that had been there for the first few years of my coming out and figuring out who I was would be available completely, for me to check out the issues that I had missed before that point of coming out online. Apart from Attitude, there has been no other queer publication I have been religiously devoted to other than XY.

I bought my first issue in May of 2007. It was issue number 7, the body issue. There were features on Pansy Division, a quick blurb on the man who wrote Beautiful Thing (I had seen the film three months prior), and of course resources for coming out.  Another thing that caught my attention was the photos that were displayed insider the magazine. Full of life, color and many different locations, XY was repeatedly revered and dismissed as a publication more on the side of soft porn. Those people who had criticized it for the latter obviously didn’t read the articles on the inside as well.

I always bought the issues at Café Browse in Saskatoon, or when I wasn’t able to, picked it up at either my local Coles, or wherever I happened to be travelling. I had bought the Scene issue while I was in Denver. And more recently the last few issues I bought while I was in Montreal on work related trips. Sometimes I would be able to time it just right when I would make my way down to The Front Page, a magazine shop that remained open until 2008 in downtown Edmonton. Sometimes the issues came much later then they should have, however eagerly anticipating Tough Love by Abby Denson was completely worth it.

Then there was the monthly check-ins by Peter Ian Cummings. He always had something  important on his mind, which would later make their way into the beginning pages of the issues. One of the things that I always and admired about him as well as the magazine was that it was brave in its articles and bringing issues important to gay youth to the forefront, without the influence of a major corporation or a parent magazine company censoring the material that some of us needed to know.  Peter made it very clear that the magazine was about us, and for us, with no plans to compromise. And issue after issue, there was no doubt of that in my mind.

Another important issue that they published was the XY survival guide, a guide on relationships, coming out, sex and being comfortable with being gay. I bought the guide, in addition to the different photo issues that they had spun off to compliment the main magazine. In a lot of ways, XY was my sanity for the time it was out. I’d even submitted a short story to the magazine, in the hopes that it would make its way into its storied pages.

Then in 2008, issue 49 became the last issue, and the magazine vanished. I would continually check any of the gay bookshops as well as Coles/Chapters for the next issue, however nothing appeared. Later down the road I’d discovered Peter Ian Cummings online on Myspace and sent him a message on how much the magazine meant to me, etc. I also offered any help that I could to keep it going. I never heard from him, and I assumed since he had left the magazine with that last issue, I’m sure that he got that message a million times over from everyone. It was a shame that it didn’t see life beyond its 49th issue, because I still view it as an important tool for any teenager who still is figuring him/herself out. More than any other North American queer publication XY truly was an important magazine on a continuously evolving queer landscape.

And even though  I’ve said this a few times already, thank you Peter and company for making the coming out phase that much easier. You can view the magazine archive by following this link.  https://www.vfiles.com/users/xymagazine