By Susan Stopford
Something wonderful is happening in our little Town lately. In mid-October Krista Wright advised us through the “Revitalise Annapolis” Facebook site that the Reader’s Digest was holding a competition to find, “Canada’s Most Interesting Town.”
There are seven categories to choose from and it seemed to me that the “Artistic” category best suited our town. With help on the ARCAC statistics from Grace Butland and a lovely photograph taken by Trish Fry featuring Sherrie Caldwell being creative in the Historic Gardens during last year’s Paint the Town, an entry was submitted.
Then came the hard part, I thought.
While the winner is not decided by votes alone, the number of votes count when it comes to garnering publicity for the Town. The entries with the most votes will be featured in a future magazine article and in other print and on-line versions of the Reader’s Digest. Super publicity for our town and the main reason for our entry.
I put out the rallying cry, prodded and poked daily, and probably made a nuisance of myself, but it worked! To date, (Sunday, Dec. 2), we have racked up over 57,000 votes. This puts us in second place in all of Canada in every category. The response has been nothing short of amazing! With our current voting rate we should be in first place within the week. This is quite an achievement for a town of less than 500 people. Second place – and soon to be first out of over 250 entries.
The contest voting ends on December 18 and the winner will be announced on January 17. The judge’s decision is based on originality, adherence to the contest theme, and persuasiveness of the article. If we were fortunate enough to win the grand prize we would win $5,000 for the town and $5,000 for the submitter of the winning entry which I have stated I will donate to causes in Annapolis.
We’d love to have more people voting with us for this last push to the finish line. If you’d like to see more about the contest go to www.readersdigest.ca/cmit and read all about it, see our entry in the “Artistic” category and add your vote. Don’t be afraid to vote multiple times, we have people voting over 100 times several times a day. Amazing!
This would not have been possible without the dedication and support of an awful lot of people – it just goes to show how much we can achieve when we all work together towards a common goal. We’re already thinking about what we can do next with all the extra time we’re going to have on our hands.
Thank you voters, you’re doing a great job. Two weeks to go, almost there!
