In the 25 years that GayCalgary has been around, we have received several awards and accolades. They are for the work that GayCalgary does in the LGBTQ+ community throughout Alberta and we totally appreciate them when we get them. The accolades come from groups and organizations that we have worked closely with, so we do not need to nominate ourselves or have our readers vote for us in a popularity contest like the "best of" awards.

In early 2017, Travel Gay Canada gave us the opportunity to nominate some of our travel articles for their "Journalism - Best LGBT Focused Travel Story Award" category. According to their guidelines for the award, the travel feature needed to be published in print or digital format in 2016. The article must be LGBT Travel Focused and have been developed in Canada by Canadian based brand or agency. Their judges would consider: Interest and engagement, including the story, images; degree of import to furthering the cause of LGBT travel; response from readers, viewers, listeners, etc. directly or on social media; and value/reach of publication.

The article that I submitted was "Jasper, Alberta: Welcoming Town in the Heart of Natural Beauty" (http://gaycalgary.com/a5039  ) which also had the sub articles "Whistler’s Inn" (http://gaycalgary.com/a5040 ) , "Maligne Canyon Icewalk" ( http://gaycalgary.com/a5041 ) and "Jasper Pride 2016" (http://gaycalgary.com/a5042).

This is not the first time I have submitted articles for awards, but in the past, it was to the Alberta Magazine Awards. There is stiff competition out there from main stream magazines like Avenue Magazine, West World, Western Living, WestJet Magazine, Where Magazine and others. I know that with their big budgets and large editorial staff, that there is no way that an article in GayCalgary would ever win. Putting an article up against other publications in Canada that write LGBTQ+ interest travel articles, I thought it would be a long shot and at least it was free to enter.

A month and a half went by and I received the following email from Colin Sines, Executive Director of Travel Gay Canada.

I was totally surprised. I never thought that I would win an award for the articles that I wrote, and for something that I have been enjoying writing about too! Wearing so many hats while running the magazine, having someone acknowledge you as a journalist, made it become more than just a task I do as part of creating content for our audience to read. I have never in the past classed myself as a journalist, but it hit me that after 14 years of writing for the magazine, ok, I am a journalist.

The awards would be presented at their conference in Toronto.  I had let Colin know that I would not be able to attend the conference. With the lack of advertising coming in for the magazine, the cost was just too much to fly to Toronto and stay for two nights. Hearing that he was going to be in Calgary for Rendezvous, which is a travel conference for the Canadian travel industry, at least it made it easier to pick up the award. I popped down to Rendezvous to meet Colin Sines in person for the first time and was handed the award. No presentations, photos or anything since only Colin and I knew what was going on.

After the conference in Toronto, Colin did say that the award presentation happened, and a press release had gone out for it. I ran the press release on the GayCalgary website, but never really announced directly that I won one of the awards (http://gaycalgary.com/n2478).

Now about a year later, I have decided that I should announce it. After the eye-opening experience that I had at Whistler Pride this year, which I talked about in the last edition, I thought that I should let our readers know that I have done something exceptional.

When it has come to patting myself on the back, I have always avoided doing it. I wanted to be as humble as possible. I will bring up the stats of GayCalgary.com or the magazine and use it in advertising. But the goal is to get advertisers on board or create better awareness of what we do. I also find that because I don’t bring up the magazines accomplishments, people forget or don’t know what we have done. After seeing many businesses and people proud to have received "best of" awards and other community acknowledgements, after 25 years, I think it is time that I stop hiding them in boxes under the stairs and start being proud to show off our accomplishments too!

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Contributor Steve Polyak |

Locale Calgary | Jasper |

Topic Jasper Pride | Publisher's Column | Travel |