Saturday, July 08, 2006

Swerve takes top honours in Western Magazine Awards

Swerve, a startup magazine tabloid published as a supplement to the Calgary Herald, led the field at the 24th annual Western Magazine Awards presented Friday evening in Vancouver. It won both Best New Magazine and Magazine of the Year for Western Canada, as well as Magazine of the Year, Alberta/NWT and 2 other categories.

Stephen Osborne, the editor of Geist, received the Lifetime Achievement Award. He made a funny and moving acceptance speech that recalled the early days of alternative publishing in Vancouver.

Western Living won 4 awards, including the Gold award for best article in BC/Yukon. Vancouver magazine and the Georgia Straight each won 3 awards. Other winners were:
  • Magazine of the Year, Manitoba -- Border Crossings
  • Magazine of the Year, Saskatchewan -- BlackFlash
  • Written categories
    • Business -- Charlies Smith, "Boon or Boondoggle", The Georgia Straight
    • Science, Technology & Medicine -- Andrew Struthers, "Barney's Vision", Western Living
    • Arts, Culture and Entertainment --Bill Reynolds, "Too Old to Rock", Swerve
    • Travel & Leisure -- Kerry Banks, "All Roads Lead to Moscow", Westworld
    • Regular column or department --Jason Henderson, Music, Swerve
    • Fiction -- Lee Henderson, "Conjugation", Border Crossings
    • Profile -- Richard Littlemore, "The Most Hated Man in Business", BC Business
    • Human Experience -- Russell Wangersky, "Desperate", Prairie Fire
    • Public Issues -- Terry Glavin, "This Haunted Place", The Georgia Straight
    • Service -- Staff and contributors, "The 16th annual restaurant guide", Avenue magazine
    • Gold award best article Manitoba, Charlotte Gray, "85 Years of The Beaver", The Beaver magazine
    • Gold award best article Saskatchewan, Norm Sacuta, "The Gleaners", Alberta Views
    • Gold award, best article BC/Yukon, Andrew Struthers, "Once Were Planters" Western Living
  • Visual categories
    • Best photograph, architectural, landscape or still life, Martin Tessler, "Living on the Edge", Western Living
    • Best photographic feature or series, Sylvain Bouthillette et al, "Paradise", Blackflash
    • Best photograph, people and portraiture, Martin Tessler, "Malcolm Parry", Western Living
    • Best illustration or illustration feature, Mark Atomos Pilon, "Running on Empty", The Georgia Straight
    • Best art direction, article, Randall Watson, "Lady Killers", Vancouver magazine
    • Best art direction, cover, Sandro Grison & Chris Wellard, Color 3.1, Color magazine
This year, for the first time, winners receive a prize of $1,000.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Stephen Osborne's speedch was "funny" and "moving"? It almost moved me to put my fork through my eye, in order to relieve the tedium.

It was "funny" if your idea of fun was sticking a fork in your eye.

5:57 pm  
Blogger D. B. Scott said...

It was funny and moving if your idea of funny was empathizing about the earlier days of publishing in this country. If that's not your idea of a good time, I guess it would be fairly tedious. Of course, you could always have excused yourself...

7:57 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sorry, D.B., but everyone here was comparing it to an infamous time-no-object opus delivered by a previous lifetime award recipient. The consensus was that this exercise in precious and exasperating long-windedness topped that, and by a long shot.

Oh, and people did excuse themselves. Some of them you may have even recognized.

2:56 pm  
Blogger D. B. Scott said...

I dunno; in my personal experience of windbaggery, this speech wasn't even a runner-up. Too long, perhaps, but hell Stephen Osborne had earned the time and respect of those present. But I haven't been to the Western Awards for a good many years, so perhaps I don't have the standard of comparison that you do.

3:08 pm  

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