This morning, five Reckoner staff members travelled to the Toronto Star’s printing and media centre in Woodbridge to attend the seventeenth annual Toronto Star High School Newspaper Awards. Being the paper’s first year, we had not been to these awards before, but the number of awards we received managed to turn some heads. We were humbled with the following awards:

  • Best Electronic Newspaper (1st Place)
  • Best Electronic Layout and Design (1st Place) – Mahan Nekoui and Soheil Koushan
  • Best Critical Writing (1st Place) – MJ Chen
  • Best Editorial Writing (1st Place) – Mahan Nekoui
  • Best Editorial Cartoonist (Runner-up) – Yancheng Lu
  • Best Humour Work (Runner-up) – Yancheng Lu

According to Catherine King, the manager of the awards, judges sifted through no fewer than 895 entries this year from all over Ontario, with some categories such as Editorial and Critical writing gathering nearly 100 entries apiece.

We would like to thank the Toronto Star not only for honouring us with these awards but also for organizing a wonderful morning. Guests were treated to a full tour of the plant and to talks from inspiring guest speakers Katie Daubs and Bob Hepburn.

We would like to thank Mrs. Helen Brown, who acted as our teacher contact for the duration of the contest, and whose style, charisma and experience has been a constant source of support, encouragement and inspiration since before launch day.

We would like to thank the school administration  for being accommodating of an independent, student-run publication as representative of the school. Namely, we would like to thank Ms. Mazzaferro for acting as our contact in the administration.

And personally, I would like to express my thanks to the entire staff. If you read the letter I sent to the Star when we entered this award, you already know how I feel about the paper. I can’t stress enough how amazed I am with all we’ve done this year. I was aiming to publish 50 articles this year and now we’re pushing for 250. Thank you for letting me be your editor.

Finally to you, the reader: it’s obvious that this publication would not exist without you, so we owe you the utmost appreciation for your support and enthusiasm. We started this paper because we felt the students’ voice was hushed in the school, and with every new reader, we are closer and closer to changing that.

Keep reading, my friends. Keep writing and thinking and sharing. The voice of Marc Garneau C.I.’s students has grown farther from a hushed murmur this year, and closer to a resonant cry. We can’t think of anything of which we’d be prouder.

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