PORT HARDY—North Island's Toastmasters raised a glass last weekend to their club's founder and VP Education Brian Scott.
Scott led by example, claiming top spot in both the best speech and best evaluator categories during the club's inaugural speech competition.
The competition was the first for the club in its current incarnation and, despite the relative inexperience of the speakers, the standard of the speeches made the judges' task an unenviable one.
The event began with the evaluation portion, as Scott and club president Michael White heard a speech from the Toastmasters Area 12 Governor Katie Healey and were given five minutes to critique her offering.
The evaluation contest challenged the participants' critical thinking skills as well as their ability to formulate a structured and constructive response with minimal preparation. There was little to separate White and Scott, who both picked up on similar aspects of Healey's delivery, though the judges gave the nod to Scott's critique.
The prepared speech portion saw local club members Sandra Boyd, Victor Papp and Dusty Cairns join Scott to deliver a short speech on the topic of their choice.
The audience heard the contestants wax lyrical on a range of topics from Boyd's informative discussion of the organ donor program to Papp's cautionary tale derived from an examination of Sir Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado.
After the judges' ballots were counted, Cairns took the runner up spot for her speech on bullying while Scott's speech on changing oneself was awarded top honours.
Scott will go on to represent the local club in both evaluation and speech categories at Toastmasters' Area 12 evaluation and international speech contest in Campbell River this weekend.
The competition continues, eventually pitting the best in the world against each other in the organization's international finals, to be held this year in Cincinnati.
Toastmasters' Lt.Governor of Marketing Chris Kozakowski congratulated all the speakers on the standard they displayed, noting that the members had come a long way in a short time.
She and Margaret Page, District Governor for the organization, then presented White with the official paperwork to mark the local club's recent chartering and thanked the club's executives for the leadership they had displayed in bringing the club to its current level.
The local club meets each Wednesday evening at 7 p.m. at North Island College in Port Hardy. For more information on the club contact scott at brianscott03@gmail.com.