Three young women are getting ready to represent the Sault and Algoma at the Miss North Ontario 2017 pageant.
Lauren Moore, Lily Elgie, and Kallie Boucher, will square off against other northern competitors May 12 and 13 in Sudbury at Laurentian University’s Fraser Auditorium.
“I’m very excited,” said Elgie, 14.
“I’ve always loved pageants and modelling, so when I heard about Miss North Ontario, I read their website, and I like it because it’s about who you are on the inside,” Elgie told SooToday.
“The pageant has a lot of workshops to help build confidence and make you feel powerful as a girl.”
“It’s important to make girls more confident with themselves, to love themselves and not compare themselves with others.”
“Every girl who has gone to the pageant has explained how much they’ve grown as a person, with their confidence, so hopefully when I come back from the pageant I can do something to help other girls feel confident,” Elgie said.
Pageant contestants are judged on formal wear, personal interviews with judges, scholastic testing, a talent component, public speaking and pre-pageant participation.
“I’m ready to go, I feel fantastic, I’m 100 per cent ready to compete,” said Moore.
Moore, 21, is an Algoma University student, certified soccer coach and part-time employee of the Delta Sault Ste. Marie Waterfront Hotel.
“One of the main things I love about the pageant is that it empowers young women,” she told SooToday.
“Its not just the standards of beauty you see in the magazines and the pop culture of today, it stands for the fact that beauty is more than just skin deep.”
“For me, it's about empowering young women, for them to be more than they ever imagined themselves to be, its about confidence…and always, always to believe in yourself.”
Boucher, a Sudbury native who has lived in the Sault since she was five, is representing Algoma in the pageant.
Boucher was invited by a Facebook friend to enter the pageant, and she accepted.
“It seems like a good learning experience and opportunity,” Boucher said.
“The pageant is really interesting to me because their main charity is Northern Ontario Families of Children with Cancer, and I’m personally tied to that because my younger cousin has recently recovered from a bout with cancer. NOFCC really helped my family out, so I just want to give back.”
Boucher, 17, is a Grade 11 student at St. Mary’s College and works part time at McDonald’s.
Elgie is a Grade 9 student at Korah Collegiate, currently working part time at Sweet Greetings.
Elgie looks back fondly on her experience running Lily and Claudia's ice cream parlour during the summers of 2015 and 2016.
“I loved it, it was a good experience.”
Elgie says she is community minded and is a supporter of Pauline’s Place, and, in Oct. 2014, took part in the We Scare Hunger campaign locally.
With the help of Maitland Ford and by enlisting the help of local sports celebrities Rico Fata and the Marcoux brothers, Elgie helped fill three Ford F-150 trucks with donated food, which was distributed to several community shelters.
As for her future?
“I want to be a pediatrician,” she said.
“I love to help kids. There are people I know who’ve been to Sick Kids Hospital.”
“Lily’s a very special individual, she cares about people deeply, she always has,” said Dionne Elgie, Lily’s mother.
Moore is a Halifax, Nova Scotia native who moved to Mississauga, Ontario in 2011.
She travelled north to Sault Ste. Marie to attend Algoma University, and is currently in her third year of study, double majoring in law and politics.
“I’m very, very driven,” said Moore, who plans to attend law school (preferably the University of Windsor’s faculty of law, she said) after completing her undergraduate studies at Algoma in spring, 2018.
But the pageant is also important to Moore for other reasons.
“My grandmother died of cancer in 2011, she was like my whole world, so its a real push for me to try and get as much money for this charity as I possibly can,” Moore said.
The annual Miss North Ontario pageant does its part to fight cancer.
Specifically, it supports the Sudbury-based Northern Ontario Families of Children with Cancer (NOFCC).
The Miss North Ontario organization has donated over $130,000 to NOFCC over the last decade.
Each contestant must raise a minimum of $100 for NOFCC.
Each Sault and Algoma 2017 candidate has easily met that goal.
Moore said she is looking forward to spending time with other contestants as a form of bonding and sisterhood.
Boucher is a member of the St. Mary’s College dance team, which recently came back as a winning squad from the 2017 Kick it Up dance competition in Mississauga.
Science is Boucher's favourite academic subject, and she plans to be a nurse practitioner.
“I think the pageant is going to be fun, to meet a lot of new people.”
The Miss North Ontario pageant has been held every year since 2006.
It is a northern Ontario preliminary to Top Model Search Canada, Miss Teenage Canada, Miss Teen Canada World and Miss Universe Canada.There are awards given in several categories, including most photogenic, fitness, friendship, talent, public speaking, role model, best pageant promotion, most inspirational story, volunteer work and community service.
Miss North Ontario applicants must:
- Reach age 13 by the date of the pageant and be no older than 26 by year end unless special circumstances warrant age exception.
- Be a single (never married) female resident of northern Ontario.
- Be in attendance in, or graduate from, a secondary school program.
- Be of good moral character and personality.
- Be willing, interested and focused in participation in the event, in representing the area in which the applicant resides and promoting herself and her community and northern Ontario.
- Live in the 705 or 807 area code
Sault Ste. Marie’s Kylee Vachon went on to be a Miss Teenage Canada 2016 finalist after last year’s pageant.
The Sault’s Taylor Foisy went on to be a Top 20 contestant for the Miss Teen Canada World in 2010.
(Full disclosure: Lily Elgie’s father is Jeff Elgie, president of SooToday’s parent company Village Media)