Nancy Silverman -Who Dat???

One of the reasons I love being a writer and journalist is not because of the perks or because I get to meet celebrities.

Sure, I get sent a ton of stuff (which I usually always give away to Nanny Mimi. I swear, I'm on this mailing list for a makeup company and I get sent 12 new bottles of nail polish every month!) and I can brag about meeting Nicholas Cage, Jennifer Lopez or an Olson Twin. (Actually, I met both twins. Aren't I so cool?)

I like writing because I like finding interesting people and helping them out. I do. Really. I love finding people who came up with an idea for a business and worked hard at that business and now are offering interesting products.

Last week, in my Saturday Globe and Mail Column, I wrote about these two women who founded a t-shirt company, out of Vancouver. Who knew about them? Well, Maddox's mommy, Angelina had (She bought some for Maddox.) But no one in Canada had written about them before.

Once, I wrote a piece about a cool company in New York, run by one woman, who did cute greeting cards. No one in Canada had heard about her before. She wrote to tell me how many Canadians ordered stuff from her after my story came out.

PR people e-mail dozens and dozens of story ideas for their clients. But my heart does lie in the individual business people trying to get some press, so people know about them, and they can make a success out of their businesses. Especially Canadians.

Thanks for all the free stuff BIG MAKE UP COMPANY, but you don't need any press. I love your stuff, don't get me wrong. But I like finding and helping the little people out.

By the end of my old job at my old paper I was literally saying, "I'll only do the story if no one else has done it before" to PR companies. That's because I'm also super competitive and I hate repeating stories that other papers have already done.

I'm so American in my competitiveness. I swear, when I read something in a Canadian paper that I know I read...just...last...week in The New York Times or Wall Street Journal, I throw down my paper in disgust. Why the heck are we always following America?

So how competitive am I? Well, let's just say when I hear about a story that is going to come out in an American paper, I always tell my Canadian editors, so I can do it first. I know, sad. But why shouldn't I want to beat the NY Times? I do want to beat The Times.

Plus, are we not good enough to find our own stories? Canada has a ton of interesting stories and people who need a little bit of help. Press helps their businesses out, so why not?

Anyway, at this point you're probably asking, What's up with Nancy Silverman?

Nancy Silverman is a competitor on Canadian Idol. I love her. I want her to go very very far in the competition. So I just wanted you to hear it here first. Of course, I didn't "find" her. However, I want to give her some sort of press. Nancy Silverman. Nancy Silverman. Remember the name.

Because I give her "props." Which is actually the real reason I love watching Canadian Idol. I get to use the word "props."