On a September evening under the festival tent in Shediac, the Atlantic Canadian events community gathered to recognize the people, partnerships, and events that make this region worth travelling for.
Hosted by Noémie Robichaud as part of the 2026 Event Atlantic Summit, the Excellence Awards are nominated by the industry and scored against a published matrix. Several categories came down to very close calls this year. Here are the recipients.
Corporate Partner
Winner: George Georgoudis and family, Vito’s | Saint John region, New Brunswick
Two decades of backing events, charities, and amateur sport across southern New Brunswick, and almost none of it stopping at a cheque. Title sponsors of the Vito’s U16 and U18 Major Hockey Program. Hosts of KV Music Fest at their own restaurant for more than twenty years. Meals for athletes at the 2025 IIHF World Under-17 Hockey Challenge and the 2023 World Para Hockey Cup. More than $500,000 raised for P.R.O. Kids through twenty-four years of the Dickie Crossman Memorial Golf Tournament. Organizers describe them as partners rather than sponsors, and that is the distinction this award was built to recognize.
Runner up: Fortis Inc., first major partner of the 2025 Canada Games and a funder of the $34 million Fortis Canada Games Complex in St. John’s.
Volunteer of the Year
Winner: Patricia Bourque-Chevarie | Shediac, New Brunswick
Selected by New Brunswick as the 2026 Summit host province.
Twenty-five years of showing up for her community, through Centre-ville Shediac Downtown, Centre Courage, the 50+ Acadie Games, parent committees, and eighteen years with the Shediac Lobster Festival, several of them on its Board of Directors. That festival took Event of the Year this year, and people like Patricia are the reason events like it last. She was recently elected the first woman Mayor of Shediac, which is a new chapter in a life already built around bringing people together. New Brunswick selected her as the 2026 Summit host province.
Chair’s Award
Winner: Andrée Gracie, Grey-Sea Artist and Event Management Inc. | Nova Scotia
Selected by the Event Atlantic Board of Directors.
Three decades of artist development, event production, and advocacy, and a hand in many of the cultural moments Nova Scotians remember. JUNO Awards Week in Halifax in 2006 and again in 2023. Democracy 250. Membertou 400 and Mawiomi. Tall Ships. The relaunch of Bluenose II. The opening of the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre. APTN’s Indigenous Day Live across multiple years. She has chaired both the East Coast Music Association and the Music Industry Association of Nova Scotia, led trade missions to Norway, Sweden, Estonia, and Scotland, and managed artists including John Gracie and Jay Mayne. Most recently she has produced the Mi’kmaq Artist Emergence Program, opening mentorship and high-profile stages to emerging Indigenous artists. Her career has been spent making room for other people’s, which is exactly what this award is for.
Champion of the Year
Winner: John Abbott, General Manager, Eastlink Centre Charlottetown
More than fifteen years in the industry, including a decade chairing Charlottetown Civic Centre Management Inc. before taking the General Manager role four years ago and steadying a venue that had cycled through three GMs. Eastlink Centre now draws over 300,000 visitors a year and generates roughly $40 million in annual economic impact, with a $60 million redevelopment in the works. What earned him this award is the work beyond Charlottetown: trading operational insight through the Atlantic Canada major event venue group, promoting the whole region at Sport Event Congress and SpoHo X, and serving on hosting committees from the 2023 Canada Winter Games to the 2027 Scotties. He has also put real effort into succession planning, which is not common and says a lot.
Runner up: Jeff Wilson, who built the Miramichi Striper Cup over twelve years into one of the country’s largest competitive fishing tournaments, grounded in conservation science.
Event of the Year
Judged in three budget categories so a community festival is never measured against a national championship.
Under $100,000
Winner: Día de los Muertos Atlantic | Saint John, New Brunswick
A one-day celebration in 2022, now a fifteen-day festival across multiple venues drawing more than 6,000 participants. Community partners have grown from five organizations to more than thirty. The 2025 edition contracted over 56 artists and cultural practitioners and was supported by roughly 300 volunteers. Its defining moment was a collaboration between Grupo Aztlán from Mexico and the Menahqesk Wabanaki Powwow, bringing Indigenous and Mexican ceremonial traditions together in an exchange rarely seen here. The mix of free and ticketed programming keeps it open to families while building toward sustainability, which is the hard part at this scale.
Runner up: Atlantic Canada 48 Hour Film Project, eleven years and more than 100 short films.
$100,000 to $500,000
Winner: 2025 PWHL Takeover Tour, Halifax
Halifax bid for one game and was awarded two, the first in the Atlantic region. December sold out in minutes, January in days, for a combined 20,890 at Scotiabank Centre. National broadcast plus coverage reaching at least 8.53 million. Away from the ice, ten community engagements reached more than 1,000 youth and minor hockey players, including 40 youth from the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre and 150 free minor hockey registrations through Hockey Nova Scotia. The question was whether this market would show up for elite women’s hockey. It did, twice.
Runner up: Atlantic Balloon Fiesta, forty years of free admission in Sussex, a town of 6,500 that hosts up to 100,000 visitors.
Over $500,000
Winner: Festival du Homard de Shediac
A certain symmetry to this one, taking the top category in the same week it helped host the Summit in its own town. The 76th anniversary edition ran nine days across six stages with 28,839 in attendance and more than $7 million in direct participant spending, against a $650,000 budget. The volunteer model is the standout: 150 volunteers delivering 2,500 hours, coordinated through six partner community associations that fundraise through their own involvement, so the effort flows back into local non-profits. Admission stays at $6 for adults and free for children under six, and 6,650 people attended free off-site events in 2025.
Runner up: 2025 Montana’s Canadian Curling Trials in Halifax, 109,133 spectators and $42.2 million in economic activity for Nova Scotia.
Congratulations to every 2026 recipient and runner up, and to everyone who took the time to write a nomination. This year’s submissions made the committee’s job genuinely difficult.
Nominations for the 2027 Excellence Awards open early 2027, ahead of the Summit in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, October 4 to 6th, 2027. Start thinking now about who you will put forward.