A Kelowna restaurant server is the new Miss Canada International for 2009.
Catherine Thomas, 22, was crowned Saturday night at a ceremony in Mississauga, Ont., and flew home to the Okanagan late Monday night.
Moments after she was named the winner in front of 550 people, she called home on her cellphone.
“She was all excited and said, ’Mom, I‘m Miss Canada!‘” her mother, Gisele Thomas, said shortly before her daughter‘s arrival in Kelowna. “She was weeping at the same time.
“I yelled it to the family. We started yelling and running around the living room like crazy people.”
Thomas, who entered the pageant as Miss Kelowna, B.C., graduated from Heritage Christian School in 2004.
She attended the Canadian College of Performing Arts in Victoria last year, where she focussed on dance, acting and singing.
Unlike old-style pageants, the contestants are not judged on their looks, organizers say. Instead, judges concentrate on their personality, charity work and intellect.
“It‘s more than a beauty contest, although my daughter is very beautiful,” said her father, Stephen Thomas.
“They have to do an essay. They‘re asked questions about civil government, current affairs and Canadian history.”
Thomas‘s charity of choice is New Opportunities for Women Canada, a Kelowna-based society that provides programs and shelter for sexually exploited girls and women.
A group in Nova Scotia has already invited her to a public function there in a few weeks. She‘ll be available to speak to young people in the Okanagan and across Canada, her mother said.
In the interim, she‘ll continue living with her parents and working as a server at Moxie‘s Classic Grill in Kelowna.
Miss Canada International is a scholarship pageant for Canadian women founded in 1995. Competitors aged 18 to 26 receive academic scholarships, which they can use at the school of their choice.
Kimberly Hooper of Kelowna was Miss Teen Canada in 2006. Top of Page
