Notable Awards honour youth
Website’s first provincial ceremony held in Montreal
In 2008, Julian Brass was 25 years old and living in his father’s basement. Only four years later, Brass is running the largest website for young professionals in Canada: Notable.ca. With more than one million monthly visitors, Notable draws attention to young Canadians who are doing “notable” things. The site features a wide variety of columnists who regularly publish posts about people, places, products, parties and events. It also acts as a hub to bring young professionals together.
For the past three months, Brass has been residing in Montreal to prepare for the inaugural Quebec Notable Awards. Hosted by TV personality Geneviève Borne, the awards honoured young professionals from across the province in 19 fields. The nominees were from industries as far-ranging as social entrepreneurship, DJing and fashion design. From an initial batch of 500 nominees, 100 finalists were selected. The winners were then chosen through an online vote on the Notable website. The event took place Thursday night at the Montreal Science Centre in the Old Port.
“The Notable Awards were created with the prospect and the vision of taking what we stand for as an online brand, off-line,” Brass said. “We want to recognize those types of people that we’re speaking to every day on the website and that we’re featuring on the site, and actually give them a medium and a platform to be recognized in the real world.”
Last year a version of the awards was held in Toronto with nominees from across the country. Brass’s goal, however, is to stage the event in every province and recognize local talent. Drawing from analytics gleaned from the website, Brass and his team noticed that a large portion of their readership resides in Montreal. Hence, the decision was made to kick the process off here.
While some people fear many young professionals are leaving the province to seek opportunities elsewhere, Brass sees things differently.
“You’ve got smart people that are from here and smart people that have moved here. Like most majorc ities, there’s a brain drain. In Toronto you have it and in Montreal you have it. People do move away. I found in Toronto and I find in Montreal those that have stayed in their city are really proud and have a loyalty to it. They want to see their city grow and progress and be better and better,” Brass explained.
The awards were presented in five groups of categories and were followed by a brief question-and-answer period between Borne and the winners.
Jojo Flores, the winner of the DJ category and co-founder of the popular nightclub Peopl, noted that in order to stand out in Montreal’s vast music and nightlife scene it’s crucial to be different.
“Somebody asked me if I wanted to get involved in starting a club, and I said OK, but only if I could have carte blanche in branding it and the overall artistic direction,” Flores said. “So I became a partner and we turned it into a boutique club. People can buy the artwork on the walls and we have display cases with T-shirts and CDs.
“You can buy the equipment and, in the future, even the couch that you’re sitting on.”
Another of the winners was 33-year-old Eran Elfassy, co-founder of the outerwear company Mackage, who was presented with the fashion award.
Since it was launched in 2000, Mackage has expanded internationally. It now has boutiques in New York and Paris, and its clothing can be found in specialty stores around the world.
“I used to go out in a leather jacket in minus-40 weather, but obviously I’d be freezing. My brothers were in the leather business, so we worked together and started to design fashion outerwear,” Elfassy said, recounting the early days of the company.
During the interview, a woman approached to congratulate Elfassy on his award and to tell him that 10 years ago she received a Mackage jacket as a gift for passing her driver’s test. She gushed that being given the jacket was a bigger milestone than getting her permit, and that she still has it tucked away in her closet.
“Those are the kind of stories that keep me going,” Elfassy said afterward. “Sometimes you get so caught up in the work that you forget why you’re doing it.”