Vancouver named mag of the year at Western Magazine Awards

Writer Chris Koentges has had quite a couple of weeks. He won a gold and a silver award at the National Magazine awards for a memoir of his mother Helen (those were two of the four medals he won that night); now, for the same article, he has won two awards at the Western Magazine Awards, which was published in Calgary's Swerve magazine (a supplement to the Calgary Herald).

"What a gift for Calgarians to have such an original homegrown talent publishing his best work here," said Shelley Youngblut, the magazine's editor-in-chief.

Youngblut herself won the lifetime achievement award at the Western magazine awards gala in Vancouver on Friday night. She praised the Calgary Herald in her acceptance speech for the existence of Swerve:

"Thank you to the Calgary Herald, which has enabled the Swerve team to present an original, heartfelt, smart, funny, unpredictable, relentlessly local magazine every week for the past five years. It's weird and wonderful to be its editor."

Youngblut, a native Calgarian, became the founding editor at Swerve in 2004 after a career in Canadian and U.S. magazines, including ESPN: The Magazine, Western Living, Cosmopolitan, West and All About Men

Magazine of the year for western Canada and for BC/Yukon was Vancouver magazine (shown is November 08 cover). Other provincial/regional magazines of the year were:

• Alberta/NWT: Unlimited
• BC/Yukon: Vancouver
• Saskatchewan: Blackflash
• Manitoba: Border Crossings
  

Best new magazine was Techlife (published by the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology)

Trade magazine of the year was Enterprise (the "voice of Canadian credit unions" is published in B.C. and has been trade mag of the year four out of the past five years)

Gold awards for best article by province/region were:

• Alberta/NWT: Chris Koentges -- Helen Koentges (Swerve)
• BC/Yukon: Chris Koentges -- Tourists, Stay Away (up! magazine)
• Saskatchewan: Allan Casey -- The Little Boat that Could (Westworld)
• Manitoba: Chris Webb, Nelle Oosterom, Phil Koch -- 10 Photos that Changed Canada (The Beaver)

Full details of winners and runners-up in all categories