Good Things Happening in Norfolk

[kishgo]

As it does every year, the chamber honoured a number of local businesses and individuals:

• Annaleise Carr can add the chamber’s Outstanding Community Service Award to the long list of honours she has received since becoming the youngest person to swim Lake Ontario on the traditional Niagara-to-Toronto route in August.

Carr, 14, has become more than just a local celebrity since making the historic swim, noted chamber board member John Vallee. Her fame has gone national and international.

The teen has had more than 800 requests for appearances, Vallee told the crowd before presenting her with the award, and “a book and a documentary are in the works.”

Carr, who recently was awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, was given a standing ovation as she went to the stage.

• Townsend Butchers received the Business Achievement Award.

The Miedema family has owned its butcher shop on a country road northeast of Simcoe for 40 years and has passed the operation from generation to generation.

The secret to success, said Doug Miedema, has been “learning how to treat people. You treat people the way you want to be treated.”

All the meats they sell, he noted, are produced locally and handled in the store, allowing customers to know exactly where their purchase has come from.

• The Bell Communications Innovation Award went to the agricultural research station run by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs just east of Simcoe.

The station has been a leader in developing new vegetable and fruit varieties for the Ontario sand plain since 1961.

In accepting the award, Wally Andres also gave praise to local farmers for being “leaders in trying to adapt” the new varieties to their fields.

The station’s success, he said, couldn’t have happened “without their input and financial support.”

• The Educational Achievement Award went to Lonna Booker. A dropout at age 16, Booker went back to school four decades later to first get her high school equivalency and then a diploma in social work from the Simcoe campus of Fanshawe College.

Booker said she decided to go back to school after she realized her lack of formal education had become a “barrier” to advancing the workplace.

• The Burning Kiln Winery near Turkey Point took home the chamber’s Special Recognition Award.

Burning Kiln has taken the wine industry by storm since opening a year and a half ago.

The winery’s technique is to dry grapes in abandoned tobacco kilns, giving its product its unique flavour.

The result: Burning Kiln has been named Norfolk’s entrepreneur of the year, its Strip Room red was named the official wine of Queen’s Park last year, and its winemaker was named winemaker of the year in 2012.

[growler]

thanks for the "good news" kish! ! i read the news on the reformer site,the globe,the star,98.9 and many other places,even the times of india on a daily basis and yours is some of the "best" news i've seen !
maybe you should start a new career ?