Joe McWilliams
Lakeside Leader

It’s nice to be recognized by your peers. The Lakeside Leader received some of that sort of recognition recently from the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association, in its Better Newspapers Competition awards.

Held June 3 in Edmonton, the awards recognize excellence in various specific categories, as well as in the ‘general excellence’ category.

The Leader won five awards and received honourable mention in a sixth. As follows:

Best Local News Story: second place for Joe McWilliams’ piece from early 2021, entitled, ‘Fed-up town council calls for MLA Pat Rehn to resign.’

In the Best Local Editorial category, The Leader again placed second, for the editorial (on the same topic) called, ‘Different notions of representation,’ also by McWilliams.

McWilliams’ photo of a black bear walking on the CN rail was also judged second best in the Spot News Photo category of the AWNA Photographic Awards.

In this category, Evan Buhler’s photo in the Rocky Mountain Outlook, of a team of rescuers hauling a deer out of a hole in the ice, got first place.

Moving along, in the General Excellence Awards, The Leader had two third-place finishes, in Best Front Page and Best Sports Page/Section.

For these awards, The Leader sent in two newspapers one from each of two months selected by AWNA.
The newspapers were from May 26 and Novemer 10, 2021.

Finally, honourable mention was given to The Leader in the Best Habitat Conservation Story, for Pearl Lorentzen’s article entitled ‘Swan River First Nation working toward ecological reconciliation.’