For the last five years, in June, the Seeker has been putting on an incredible Anniversary Dinner filled with glitz and glamour, which always doubles as a fundraiser.   The Seekers Choice Awards aims at recognizing hard working people in our community, with an emphasis on small businesses and on the arts community.

This year marked a very important milestone for Julia Lucio and Mai-Liis Renaud, the founders of the Cornwall Seeker Newspaper: They celebrated their fifth year in business.

The winners in ten categories were announced Friday night at the event.  A special Seeker Volunteer award was also given to Siiri and Olaf Reiman, the delivery team, who has been getting the Seeker to Readers all around Cornwall from day one.

Here are the winners:

• Home Based Business of the Year– Fairy Sweet
• New Business  of the Year – Cornwall Newswatch
• Existing Business  of the Year – Fantasy Realm
• Musical Artist of the Year – The Lost Boyz
• Literary Artist  of the Year – Thom Racine

• Visual Artist  of the Year– Chad Coleman
• Performing Artist of the Year – Jane Hennessy Craibe
• Athlete of the Year – Kaedyn Martin
• Volunteer of the Year – Paul Poirier
• Seeker’s Contributor of the Year – Marlene Baker

The process of selecting the winners started back in February with nominations.  The top 10 nominees were then entered in the online voting process.   When the voting ended, the top 5 were revealed and entered in the last judging round.

“We learned form the first 3 years that a selection process that is only done online is flawed, so we opted for a 80-20 model that was introduced last year,” said Julia Lucio, Awards Chair and Managing Editor of the Seeker. “Eighty percent of the vote comes from the online voters and twenty percent is decided by the awards panel which consists of 8 people who have a 2.5 percent say in the results.  They carefully review the nominees and evaluate their accomplishments to better decide where to place their vote.  It seems to work well and helps make the process as fair as it can be”

The Seeker would like to thank all the sponsors and congratulate all the nominees and the winners.  “We wish we could give an award to every single one of the people nominated,” said Mai-Liis Renaud, co-owner of the Seeker. ” They all deserve it.  Unfortunately, there can only be one award recipient.  But the nominees are all winners.”

The proceeds of the event always go to charity.  This year’s event collected over $4000 for Cornwall Hospice.

Here are a few snapshots of the event.