Miss Northern Ontario was crowned Miss Peace on Saturday but over the course of the Miss Canada Globe beauty pageant, Kristie Kennedy found a deeper peace and got her confidence back.
Kennedy was well on her career path, already working as a personnel manager by the end of her second year of her Human Resources program at Confederation College. The 21-year-old had good relationships with her family and her boyfriend was teaching her to play the bass guitar.
None of it helped her shake the nagging feeling she’d lost herself in a bout of depression that hit her near the end of high school.
With no modeling or acting experience at all, Kennedy managed to qualify for Miss Canada Globe through a phone interview.
As exciting as it was competing with dozens of other young women in Toronto at her first-ever beauty pageant, Kennedy said she was “slumpy,” and “walking like a duck” in high heels.
But when her first runway walk came, her first step was a leap in attitude she’d been trying to take for years.
“I thought, I have to walk in front of all these girls? This is so bad,” Kennedy recalled.
“And I got to the little ‘x’ on the floor and I just took a deep breath and said, ‘OK you’re here, just do it.’ And I walked and everyone was clapping and everyone was smiling. At that moment I thought, 'I have something. Someone sees something in me.'
“I think they saw a girl who went to sleep and needed to be woken back up.”
The next week was late nights and early mornings of hard work learning about the industry and taking the confidence lessons she was finally ready to accept.
In telephone conversations with her parents and her boyfriend back home, she said her family could already feel she'd transformed.
Kennedy won Miss Northern Ontario on Aug. 16, one of the regional second positions behind the provincial titles. She competed through public speaking, modeling and even pulled out the bass for a rendition of Led Zeppelin’s Ramble On.
At the eleventh hour, she fell out of first place in the People’s Choice category, where online voting would have granted her a bye into the Top 10.
But when Miss Canada Globe was crowned on Aug. 22, the crown for Miss Peace would belong to Miss Northern Ontario.
“You get 60 or 70 girls in a group and there’s always something, right? So they gave it to me because I kept out of the drama, I kept the peace between the girls, I was a bit of a problem-solver,” Kennedy said.
“They told me it was just somebody who stood out as being over all a really great person.”
Kennedy is already thinking of how she can use the title to benefit community back home in Thunder Bay.
As she works as a scout for Miss Canada Globe, she hopes to speak to high school students, become involved in campaigns against cyber-bullying and mobilize support for her charity of choice: the Canadian Mental Health Association.
Above all, Kennedy came home with peace in her heart to match the sash over her shoulder.
“It’s very much about how you go out there and be confident, how you answer your questions in a confident manner, how you can do a walk and not care that you’re carrying an extra 10 pounds and the girl behind you is very fit. It’s how you wear it,” she said.
“I’m not the thinnest girl and I definitely wasn’t the thinnest girl at the pageant but they taught me how to be confident in my body and be confident with who I am.”
