On Nov. 30, we’ll celebrate your favourite people, places and things, but first, we need your votes to determine the winners! Voting is open for this year’s Uniter 30, where we celebrate so many of the gems that Winnipeg has to offer.

The back page of this week’s issue functions as a ballot – just fill it out and drop it in the mailbox outside our office (ORM14 in the University of Winnipeg). Or if you’d prefer to submit your vote online, visit uniter.ca/uniter30 to have your say.

You may notice some familiar categories and many more that are new to this year’s 30. We didn’t want any of these categories to lend themselves to an obvious shoo-in. Instead, we wanted to offer prompts that might get you thinking about more of the movers and shakers that make our city so much better every day.

For example, we had a lot of different artists lumped into the favourite local visual artist category, so to reflect the breadth and diversity of our artistic community, we expanded this theme and added three new categories: favourite local photographer, favourite public art piece and favourite local gallery or artist centre.

We also shifted slightly to celebrate the people behind the projects with categories like favourite local baker/favourite local chef and favourite local social media presence/content creator. And as a nod to nostalgia and to all our faves that aren’t with us anymore, we added favourite local establishment that no longer exists.

So grab your favourite writing utensil or ready your fingers over the keypad/screen and send us your faves, so we can celebrate them together!

– Anastasia Chipelski

Published in Volume 72, Number 7 of The Uniter (October 26, 2017)