British Columbia Magazine

British Columbia Magazine was a big winner in Reno recently–but not at the slots.

The “Biggest Little City in the World” played host for this year’s International Regional Magazine Association’s annual conference and awards night. British Columbia Magazine was honoured in nine categories and brought home the following awards:

Gold, General Feature, “Island Survivor,” by J.B. MacKinnon
Silver,  Public Issues, “Orca Encounters,” by Isabelle Groc
Silver, Travel, “Desolation Sounds,” by Maria Coffey
Bronze, Food, “Fresh Trips,” by Jim Sutherland
Award of Merit, Culture, “Little Girl Gets her Name,” by David Leach
Award of Merit, Environment, “It’s not easy being green,” by Leslie Anthony
Award of Merit, Profile, “The Great Bateman,” by Bruce Obee
Award of Merit, Reader Service, “Kootenay: Four Treks, Four Seasons,” by Vivian Bowers
Award of Merit, Department, for text and design, “Kitsilano Love-in (writer: Daniel Wood, designer Ken Seabrook); “Sorrento” (writer: Frances Backhouse, designer Ken Seabrook), “Nelson” (writer: Jane Nahirny, designer Ken Seabrook).

Congratulations and thank you to our talented writers and staff!

High fives to British Columbia Magazine contributor Frances Backhouse, who took home the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize last night for her adult non-fiction work, Children of the Klondike, published by Whitecap Books.

Frances, who had to awaken at 3:50 a.m. this morning to catch a flight to attend a writers’ conference, is still a little stunned. “Despite the lack of sleep, it was a thrilling night,” she reports.

Each year, the International Regional Magazine Association (IRMA) hosts its own version of the Academy Awards. This year, we were called to the podium nine times at the association’s 30th annual awards ceremony, held September 26 in Branson, Missouri.

Our awards for excellence in magazine publishing included Finalist of the Year, Gold for Nature Feature, and Gold for Special Focus for our Summer 2009 issue (our big 50th anniversary issue that featured the full-length special feature “50 Things to Do in B.C. Before You Die”).

With a mere month under my belt as editor here at the magazine, all I could say was, “Wow!”
Thanks and heartfelt congratulations to our talented staff and our fabulous contributors who worked so hard on these issues!

The awards are selected by a panel of independent writing and design judges across more than 20 magazine categories.  Our nine awards included:

• Finalist, Magazine of the Year
• Gold, for Nature Feature (GSI: Grizzly Site Investigators, Fall 2009, by Dave Quinn)
• Gold, for Special Focus (50 Things to Do Before You Die, Summer 2009)
• Silver, for Illustration (50 Things to Do Before You Die, Summer 2009)
• Bronze, for Profile (Annie Oakley of the Chilcotin, Fall 2009, by Danielle Egan)
• Bronze, for overall art direction of a magazine over 40,000 circulation (our own art director, Ken Seabrook)
• Award of Merit, for Art Direction of a Single Story (Nick Bantock’s Saltspring, Spring 2009 (again, our art director,  Ken Seabrook)
• Award of Merit, for Travel Feature (Itcha Ilgachuz, Spring 2009, by Larry Pynn)
• Award of Merit, for Culture Feature (Secrets of Klemtu, Fall 2009, by David Leach)

Cheers to British Columbia Magazine contributor Frances Backhouse. The Victoria writer and biologist was recently nominated for a City of Victoria Butler Book Prize for her non-fiction work, Children of the Klondike, in the adult book category. The award goes out each year, along with a children’s book prize, to a writer living in the Capital Region.

Frances, the author of five books, wrote “Children of the Chilkoot” for our Spring 2010 issue, and has contributed several other articles and features to our pages.The awards take place October 13, 2010, and Frances is among some excellent company. Congratulations, Frances! We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

Editor-in-Chief Anita Willis has something new and shiny to carry home from the annual International Regional Magazine Association conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, this week: a first-place plaque for her 2008 Front Lines editor’s columns!

Willis, who says she is “thrilled” at the results, accepted this and a handful of other prizes awarded to British Columbia Magazine at a special ceremony held over the weekend. Each of the following stories from 2008 beat out the entries from nearly 40 other North American magazines.

• Gold, Column: “What to do about the caribou?”; “The getaway that keeps on giving”; “Revealing secrets of the Empress Hotel” by Anita Willis
• Gold, Environmental Feature: “Desert dreams” by Brian Payton
• Silver, Travel: “The lure of Tatlayoko” by J.B. MacKinnon
• Silver, General Feature: “The good earth” by Daniel Wood
• Merit, Nature feature: “Grizzlies in paradise” by Frances Backhouse

Congratulations to all of our contributors and to Editor Anita Willis on this remarkable achievement.

Our adventurous Contributing Editor Larry Pynn has been welcomed into the Explorers Club. Based in New York, the multi-disciplinary club includes about 3,000 members in more than 60 countries; its honorary chair is the late Sir Edmund Hillary, first to climb Mount Everest in 1953. The organization was founded in 1904 to promote advancement in research, scientific exploration, and “the instinct to explore.”

It’s certainly not the first prestigious nomination for Pynn, also a longtime environment reporter for Vancouver Sun. He has received 15 journalism awards, including the Jack Webster Award for excellence in British Columbia journalism.

Some of his top adventures, Pynn says, have been in service of British Columbia Magazine. He made first ascents of three unnamed peaks—the tallest more than 2,400 metres–while researching an article for us on Clendinning Provincial Park, northwest of Whistler. (See “The Clendinning challenge,” Spring 2004.). To write “Pinballing down the Pitt” (Fall 2005), he made the first-known descent of the upper Pitt River, Greater Vancouver’s most remote tributary.

Other major journalistic exploits include a 19-day hike through the Northwest Territories on the Canol Trail, and exploration by kayak and foot of Sirmilik National Park in Canada’s high Arctic, north of Baffin Island. Pynn has also researched and written two non-fiction books: The Forgotten Trail: One Man’s Adventures on the Canadian Route to the Klondike and Last Stands: A Journey Through North America’s Vanishing Ancient Rainforests.

No question: our contributing editor is an adventurer of the first order. Congratulations, Larry!

Start spreading the news…British Columbia Magazine’s “The lure of Tatlayoko,” published in our Fall 2008 issue, has won the top prize for magazine article at the 12th annual Northern Lights Awards for excellence in travel journalism. The feature was written by Vancouver-based contributor J.B. MacKinnon.

The awards, recently presented at the Waldorf=Astoria hotel in New York, recognize excellence in North American travel writing and photography. MacKinnon and British Columbia Magazine editor Anita Willis travelled to New York to accept the award. The Northern Lights awards are sponsored by the Canadian Tourism Commission.

Did you hear my whoop of joy? At the International Regional Magazine Association awards ceremony on October 8, I let loose an ecstatic “Yahoo!” when British Columbia Magazine was named a co-finalist for Magazine of the Year. It was the highlight of a night filled with accolades for your favourite magazine.

Each one of the following earned a prize at the 2008 IRMA awards, competing against the entries of nearly 40 other North American regional magazines. Remember these wonderful stories from 2007?

•    Gold, Travel Feature: “Finding our way in Spatsizi” by James MacKinnon.
•    Silver, Culture Feature: “Sunset theatre” by Daniel Wood.
•    Silver, General Feature: “Terror on Bugaboo Spire” by Daniel Wood.
•    Bronze, Reader Service Article: “Snow school” by Larry Pynn.
•    Bronze, Environmental Feature: “Fields of gold” by Brian Payton.
•    Award of Merit, Art Direction of a Single Story, “Fields of gold,” designed by Ken Seabrook.
•    Award of Merit, Department, “Echoes,” by Nadine Pedersen and Rosemary Neering.
•    Award of Merit, Cover, Winter 2007 issue promoting “Life and death on Bugaboo Spire.”

The elegant plaque for Magazine of the Year finalist will take an honoured place on the office wall at British Columbia Magazine. The editor promises to polish it weekly.

Well, I learned something today. How many of you knew that a wine could win a Lieutenant Governor’s Award?

True oenophiles will wince at my ignorance, but this was news to me. Apparently, British Columbia wineries may enter up to four wines in the annual B.C. Lieutenant Governor’s competition. These are judged by a panel of wine critics, who select eight to 10 wines they deem to have achieved “excellence.” The winning wineries are announced in July.

Here is the 2008 list of honoured wineries and wines. If you have any of these vintages in your cellar (or, heaven forbid, in the cupboard above your stove), consider yourself a winner:

Desert Hills Estate Winery
2004 Syrah Select

Golden Mile Cellars Estate Winery
2005 Black Arts Pinot Noir

Jackson-Triggs Okanagan Estates
2005 Proprietors’ Reserve Shiraz

Joie Wines
2006 Muscat

Noble Ridge Vineyard and Winery
2005 Chardonnay

Sandhill
2006 Small Lots Viognier

Sumac Ridge Estate Winery
2003 Steller’s Jay Brut
2004 Black Sage Vineyard Meritage

Thornhaven Estates Winery
2006 Gewurztraminer

Nichol Vineyard and Estate Winery
2004 Syrah

There is only one thing I like better than when British Columbia Magazine wins awards for its editorial content—and that’s when the award givers bestow prizes directly on our contributors for work that has appeared in our magazine.

That’s what happened last week when Northern Lights Awards Canada announced the winners in their annual search “for excellence in travel journalism.”

Chilcotin resident Chris Harris took First Prize in the Photography category, while First Prize for Independent Magazine Journalist went to Brian Payton of Vancouver. The winning article for both men was “Fields of gold” from our Fall 2007 issue, an outstanding photo feature on British Columbia’s diminishing Chilcotin grasslands habitat.

Payton’s article and Harris’s photography ranked top among more than 200 entries submitted to the contest, which is judged by faculty of Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communications. Harris and Payton will be flown to Beverly Hills, California, to receive their prizes at an upcoming awards ceremony. I congratulate them both, and thank them once again for creating an important and exceptionally beautiful article for British Columbia Magazine.