Friday, February 24, 2012


Some light snow this AM breaking a run of nice, mainly sunny, days.

Harking back to the Parks Canada contest, MyParksPass:

JHMS of Nain is way ahead in the voting, as of this morning they have accumulated 2,489 votes. The second place school is yet to break 1,000.

Early days yet but JHMS is out voting all other schools expediently.

Which for me raises some questions as to; why was the original vote cancelled and the vote count reset to 0.
Reasons given by Parks are; unusual voting patterns, trouble with the server and, someone seemed to have hacked into the site with multiple voting on any single day. In other words- goosing the poles.

The old rules stipulated that people could vote on any entrant once a day for the duration of the voting period.

Given the enthusiasm that fans of the JHMS entrant under the new rules are showing one could reason that that same enthusiasm was in play under the old rules. 

But that is just me and my lack of knowledge of the technical aspects of running a contest such as this. This is just below the knowledge of some Parks people it would seem.

As a commenter mentioned.  The rules state that:

Travel dates: May 28 – 31, 2012. Travel dates are firm and no deviations are permitted. There are no blackout periods.
· Round-trip flights to and from the winning classroom’s nearest major airport  to Calgary will be provided by Air Canada, courtesy of Banff Lake Louise Tourism; regular economy class.

This would create a little problem if JHMS were to win. Return flights to Goose Bay [assuming GB qualifies as a major airport] are over $800:00.

Then you would have accommodations for at least one night on the way out in GB.
The $ are starting to add up.

Another note of caution; The rules also state; The top 10 videos with the most votes will be short-listed and judged by a panel of judges.

We wont speculate the outcome if the judges decided on a winner other that the one with the most votes.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

But if Parks Canada won't pay for the trip to the airport or an overnight stay there, will the kids from JHMS be able to go even if they win? And what if GB isn't a "major airport"? Someone at the school should find out some answers before these kids get their hopes totally crushed.

Anonymous said...

Totally agree... I won't blame Parks Canada in general but whoever is running the contest really should considering the impact on the kids a bit more closely at this point.