FBC, an arm of Glacier FarmMedia, earned a total of 10 gold, silver and bronze awards on Oct. 1 from the Canadian Farm Writers Federation (CFWF), which held its annual conference that weekend in Saskatoon.

FBC’s Quebec farm journal, Le Bulletin des agriculteurs, also earned three awards on Oct. 7 from CFWF’s Quebec counterpart, the Association des communicateurs et redacteurs de l’agroalimentaire (ACRA). This year’s ACRA annual meeting was held at Saint-Jean-de-Matha, west of Trois-Rivieres.

Le Bulletin won the Prix Roger-Blais, a prize honouring farm newsletters, for its July 6 e-newsletter. Le Bulletin writer Marie-Josee Parent also earned two Prix Moise Cossette awards, one for technical feature writing and the other a special “jurors’ favourite” prize.

At the CFWF awards banquet in Saskatoon, Grainews editor Leeann Minogue and Country Guide contributor Gerald Pilger earned the gold and silver Frank Jacobs Award respectively for best press column.

Writing in Country Guide, Jay Whetter, editor of the Canola Council of Canada’s Canola Watch, and Canadian Cattlemen contributor Madeleine Baerg earned the CFWF’s gold and silver Jack Cram Award respectively for monthly press reporting.

Manitoba Co-operator reporter Shannon VanRaes, as part of a Glacier FarmMedia analysis of the proposed Canada/EU free trade agreement, and Alberta Farmer Express reporter Jennifer Blair won the CFWF’s gold and bronze Q.H. Martinson Award for weekly press reporting. VanRaes also earned the silver John Phillips Award for news photography.

Country Guide field editor Ralph Pearce and Grainews columnist Sarah Weigum also earned the CFWF’s silver and bronze Peter Lewington Award for best technical feature, while Country Guide contributor Angela Lovell won the silver Dick Beamish Award for press feature writing.

CFWF, ACRA and the Eastern Canada Farm Writers’ Association (ECFWA) plan to hold their next annual conferences jointly in September 2017 in Quebec City.

FBC’s Grainews, Country Guide and Manitoba Co-operator are also nominated this year for a total of four Canadian Online Publishing Awards (COPAs), to be announced next month in Toronto. — AGCanada.com Network

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The COPAs, to be presented Nov. 7 in Toronto, are a juried competition to promote and support Canada’s digital publishing industry, and are operated by Mississauga-based publishing sector magazine Masthead.

Finalists for the 2016 COPAs were announced Wednesday in the competition’s three divisions: Blue (Business/B2B/Trade/Academic), Red (Consumer) and Green (News).

The four COPA finalists from FBC in the Blue division this year include Country-Guide.ca, for Best Trade Media Website, and Grainews.ca, for Best Editorial Packaging.

The E-Quip Blog with Scott Garvey, a farm machinery and equipment blog by Grainews machinery editor Garvey, is a finalist in the same division for Best Blog or Column.

Also, in the Best Video Content category, FBC’s ManitobaCooperator.ca is represented by Titans of the Garden, a segment produced by Co-operator reporter Lorraine Stevenson following a grower of giant pumpkins from planting through to the weigh-in at Manitoba’s prestigious Roland Pumpkin Fair.

Various websites and mobile apps produced by Glacier Media’s FBC division have earned one gold and five silver COPAs in the Blue division over the last three years. — AGCanada.com Network

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The Vancouver company said its donation is also on behalf of individual Glacier business units, which will undertake their own awareness and fundraising efforts to help the city and its residents rebuild their community and their lives, Glacier executive vice-president Bill Whitelaw said in a release.

Glacier, one of Canada’s top media and information services companies, has also set up an integrated online crowdfunding campaign, with all proceeds going toward the Red Cross’ efforts.

Through this campaign, “we can rally our readers, our customers and our communities to get behind the Red Cross efforts in a way that allows contributions of all sizes,” Tim Shoults, Glacier’s vice-president of content and audience development, said in the same release.

It’s important for Canadians to have a sense beyond the headlines of how important Fort McMurray is to the country’s economy, Whitelaw said.

“It’s just not an Alberta dynamic… all Canadians need to step up and help get this engine running on all cylinders again, putting people, companies and their welfare front and centre.”

The company said its operations in mining, agriculture, environmental services and community media will also advance awareness of the challenges Fort McMurray and the area faces in the coming weeks and months, Whitelaw said.

“In one way or another, all of our businesses touch Fort McMurray and Wood Buffalo. Besting the fire was just the first among many challenges still to come.”

As of Wednesday evening, 19 wildfires were burning in Alberta. The Fort McMurray wildfire, now made up of two fires that have joined, has covered over 565,000 acres and extended to within 25-30 km of the Saskatchewan border.

Fort McMurray, Anzac, Gregoire Lake Estates and Fort McMurray First Nation remain under mandatory evacuation orders. A schedule for re-entry is expected within two weeks, the province said Wednesday.

The Alberta government has asked that all evacuees register with the Red Cross, either by phone (1-888-350-6070) or online, no matter where they are currently, to help ensure they have access to services they may need, including emergency financial assistance.

Financial assistance is being provided to eligible residents who have been displaced, in the form of debit cards, worth $1,250 per adult and $500 per dependant.

Donations to the Red Cross are currently being matched by both the federal and Alberta governments. — AGCanada.com Network

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The Manitoba Co-operator’s website, ManitobaCooperator.ca, part of Glacier Media’s Farm Business Communications division in Winnipeg, won silver for Best Media Website, coming in second behind SalonMagazine.ca in the Blue division (scholarly, farm and B2B publishing).

The Best Media Website award goes to “the media website that best serves its target audience through content, design, navigation and overall reader experience on any device that includes desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones.” A “media” website is a site bearing the brand of a media property such as a newspaper, magazine or broadcast outlet.

ManitobaCooperator.ca’s second silver in the Blue division came in the Best Editorial Packaging category, for “the digital property that provides an editorial message that meets the highest journalist(ic) standards in serving (its) intended audience.”

The site finished second in Best Editorial Packaging behind foreign policy and international affairs site OpenCanada.org.

ManitobaCooperator.ca was also a finalist in the Blue division for Best Video Content, while sister site AGCanada.com was a finalist in the same division for Best News Coverage.

The COPAs, an annual juried awards competition run by Mississauga-based publishing industry magazine Masthead, were held Thursday night at Toronto’s Phoenix Concert Theatre.

Manitobans earning COPAs Thursday night also included Winnipeg-based Canada’s History, which won gold for Best Email Newsletter Design and Engagement; Winnipeg web company Modern Earth, which won silver for Best Website Design, for its site for law firm Pollock and Co., both in the Red (consumer magazines and websites) division; and the Winnipeg Free Press, which earned silvers for Best Editorial Packaging and Best Infographic/Data Visualization in the Green (news) division.

Another Glacier Media site, Vitamin Daily, earned silver in the Red division for Best Use of Social Media.

The Co-operator site also earned national silver, the Henry Heald Award for best World Wide Website, at the Canadian Farm Writers Federation awards in Calgary in September. — AGCanada.com Network

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Rance replaces John Morriss, who continues as associate publisher of Farm Business Communications and who will be working in a new capacity developing Glacier FarmMedia’s online grain and livestock reporting and analysis services.

Rance will oversee the print and online news, feature and content delivery for all publications in the FBC family, which include the Manitoba Co-operator, Alberta Farmer Express, Grainews, Le Bulletin des agriculteurs, Country Guide, Canadian Cattlemen and this website. She will continue as editor of the Manitoba Co-operator.

Rance has worked in agricultural journalism for more than three decades, beginning her career in daily newspapers before joining the Western Producer and later moving to the Co-operator. Morriss and Rance were among six partners who formed the Farmers’ Independent Weekly, which operated for five years before merging with the Co-operator in 2007.

Morriss, also a career agricultural journalist, was formerly publisher of the Co-operator and director of information for the Canadian Wheat Board.

Glacier FarmMedia is the agricultural division of Glacier Media Inc., an information communications company focused on the provision of primary and essential information and related services through print, electronic and online media.

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