The Canadian Unity Fan Fund has a contested race for the first time since 2003, reports Diane Lacey, one of the fans who’ll be on the ballot. She helped administer the Hugos for last year’s Worldcon in Montreal.
Her rival for CUFF is Rob Uhrig, a member of the Klingon Assault Group (KAG/Kanada).
Voting takes place from February 5 to February 25. The winner will attend Keycon in Winnipeg over the May 22-24 weekend.
Diane’s nominators from the West are Fran Skene, Dave Clement, Richard Graeme Cameron and Tim Hogue. From the East they are Murray Moore, Rene Walling, Lance Sibley and Colin Hinz.
Rob’s nominators are: Dayna Dickens, Tourism Coordinator for the town of Vulcan; Margie Welsh, Thought Admiral Klingon Strike Force (KSF); Dana Dean, Minister and retired Admiral Starfleet Canada; Lori Lightfoot, KAG Kanada; David James, KAG Kanada; Paul Carreau, Thought Admiral (Retired) KAG Kanada.
[Thanks to Diane Lacey for the story.]
Update 2/5/2010: Added Rob Uhrig’s nominators per the comment below.
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Diane, you have our support, plus a copy of our trip report to give you an idea, hint, hint…
Lloyd, should I win, I absolutely intend to write a trip report.
Here’s a question… does anyone know how many CUFF winners have definitely written trip reports? There’s been one or two attempts to list them, but I don’t think any was complete or certain.
Taral: Absolute numbers I don’t know offhand but Murray Moore in (I think) 2000 is the last one to have written a report.
I haven’t time to do an exhaustive search today, but I found some tantalizing leads to two more CUFF reports, one still online:
R. Graeme Cameron wrote several installments of his CUFF report for WCSFAzine. I verified that “Typical CUFF Trip Report” Part Four was in issue #12, and Part Five was in issue #13. Presumably the rest of the report can be found in earlier issues.
And an old issue of Australian SF Bullsheet (v. 1 n. 131) quotes Garth Spencer announcing his CUFF report titled “What I Did on My
October Vacation” from 1999. (The related link no longer works.)
I’m pretty sure I wrote one, but I don’t remember where it was published. It will turn up eventally… I know I wrote a speech for when I was CUFF “winner” (the fix was in) at Keycon in the 80s. But nobody knew I was there and I wasn’t penciled into any of the programming, so I ended up adapting the speech into an article on CUFF’s history. There are reasons I tend to be a little cynical about this fund.
I am one of the nominators for Rob Uhrig. The question has been raised as to who nominated Rob.
Dayna Dickens, Tourism Coordinator for the town of Vulcan.
Margie Welsh, Thought Admiral Klingon Strike Force (KSF)
Dana Dean, Minister and retired Admiral Starfleet Canada.
Lori Lightfoot, KAG Kanada
David James, KAG Kanada
Paul Carreau (moi) Thought Admiral (Retired) KAG Kanada
I would like to comment on Taral Wayne’s comment. In all my years of involvement in fandom, this is the first I have heard of C.U.F.F.
I have always maintained that recognition, outside of our respective organizations, for the efforts (read work – hard work) of fans is sadly lacking.
I do not know Diane, however she has a reputation worthy of a Klingon Warrior.
In answer to Paul, and no doubt to the dismay of everyone working to promote Canadian fandom, I have to say that Candadian fandom has never been as successful as its British, US or Australian cousins at networking or creating a core community. In effect, there IS NO Canadian fandom in the same sense there is in other countries. There are just a lot of different centers of fandom in each city.
“Promoting” takes the place of actual networking, and while it might be the best that can be done under the circumstances, its limitations are obvious — here we have someone running for CUFF and at least one of his nominators had never heard of the fund until this moment.
I do not think any of Rob’s nominators were aware of CUFF until they were approached. One of my Facebook friends from HalCon in Halifax sent a letter on wide distribution. I also am of the opinion that the letter that was sent to me was a re-posting.
My experience; helping to organize two Maritmie Science Fiction Festivals in Halifax and two ConVersions in Calgary, (one of which I was a co-chair), CUFF was not on my radar.
Networking – what a concept!
My Google research found Rob Uhrig quoted in news articles about the town of Vulcan’s annual Star Trek festival from 2009. Coincidentally, I wrote about the festival a year before he attended.