| Subject: So I have been getting asked a lot lately why I quit….and why I stayed so long in the first place. |
Author:
Christi
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Date Posted: 16:47:29 04/23/12 Mon
The answer is simple. I stayed and backed MCI and Sylvia for so long because A) I believed in what she was trying to accomplish and B) because I thought she was always honest with me (although now I have doubts). I always said I would stay until I felt that I was being misled or lied to and that is exactly what happened. Her boyfriend/business partner admitted to some activities that were an attempt at a direct sabotage of a competitor pageant. Unfortunately for him, he was completely wrong in his thought process so it didn’t work out for him, but the tactics he used to try to hurt someone else’s business showed me #1 he didn’t have faith in MCI’s ability to make it on its own merits, #2 he can’t be trusted and #3 he is not a decent human being and he lies very, very easily....and holy immature!!!!!
I feel I need to acknowledge where I was coming from in defending MCI and Sylvia for all these years, and a huge part of it was the negative ‘news’ articles that could be easily explained away. Every one of them was based on misinformation and media slant to vilify Sylvia using the wrong information or outright lies. It is easy to defend someone who is being lied about in the press. If the press would have just gotten their stories straight it wouldn’t have been so easy for her to convince myself and others that she was a victim of bad press and never really did anything wrong.
Press Lie #1 Helena Guergis sued Sylvia. Heather Davidson sued Miss Huronia Inc. in small claims court. Miss Huronia Inc. was a company Sylvia created, but Sylvia was never sued personally. Sylvia lost the case and Heather was awarded $500. Miss Huronia Inc. went bankrupt before Heather could collect and before Helena could file her suit. So when the press continually states that Sylvia was sued by Helena Guergis, it’s just a big fat lie to create interest because people know who Helena Guergis is, no one knows who Heather Davidson is.
Press Lie #2 Sylvia Assaulted a Teen Titleholder
I was not there when this supposedly happened but there was a bus full of delegates and not one girl witnessed Sylvia do anything. There were no police involved, no charges were filed, nothing….but the press ran stories about the ‘alleged’ assault, which didn’t take place….laying the groundwork for the organization to convince ppl that the press was just out to get her.
Press Lie #3 Girls suing MCI
Then there was the divorced single mother from Vaughn who went running to the press when she was denied entry into MCI after winning a local pageant (that was not in the control of MCI). She ran to the press talking about how she was going to sue MCI etc. etc. etc. when in reality she didn’t qualify for MCI and was simply told no. Her local pageant was to blame for allowing her in to their local, not MCI. Going to the press created a buzz again and some other disgruntled formers got together and told the press they were suing Sylvia….a lawsuit NEVER happened. They talked about it. They had a press conference, but a lawsuit never took place. I don’t even think they could find a lawyer to take the case and a few months later one of the girls involved got arrested for staging her own kidnapping, then breached probation to go to Disney lol. So bad reporting once again paved the way for Sylvia to look like the victim of bad press.
Press Lie #4 Miss PEI
A few years back, MCI contacted a pageant that was being run in Australia called Miss Teen WorldWide or something along that line. They were given the directorship by the international director, a guy named Gavin Dooley, who assured them that they were the only people sending from Canada and they were the national directors for Canada. This question came up in more than a few e-mails and every time he reassured them that they were the directors for Canada. Although MCI did not pay the fee right away, and were working to get sponsorship, they were still under the impression they were sending the Canadian delegate. Then all of a sudden another pageant laid claim to the Canadian directorship, awarded the title to a girl they were sending and went to the press, as any pageant would do when sending internationally. Then the confusion started. The girl MCI was sending didn't know what was going on, MCI didn't know what was going on and the new girl didn't know what was going on and the new directors didn't know there had already been a directorship awarded to someone else. The press of course ran with the story of Sylvia lied....when in fact the international pageant lied to both Sylvia and the new directors and the press. Their response to MCI was that they could do whatever they wanted because MCI hadn’t paid the fee yet...even though in more than 1 e-mail they stated that they had not even talked to anyone else from Canada. So the international pageant threw her under the bus BUT Sylvia did not show the press the proof that she had from the international pageant. Her 'no comment' stance has been a huge downfall, if you are not going to defend yourself how is anyone going to know the other side or....as the public sees it....no comment means 'I screwed up and I’m not going to talk about it'. So again the press prints a false story and she can claim to be the victim of bad press and a witch hunt.
Press Lie #5 Miss Teen NS
The teen from NS who went to the press a couple years ago claiming the pageant was cancelled and that she was then disqualified because of her age and wanted her money back, also claiming that she thought Teddy Bears of Hope was a charity and that she had collected bears that TBoH didn't want....just a total pack of lies. The pageant was postponed from its set date of October 2010, at the time it was postponed there were not enough delegates entered to run a pageant; I believe the number was less than 5. MCI had no choice but to cancel or postpone and they went with postpone to at least allow the girls who had entered the opportunity to compete the following year. Due to the fact the NS delegate turned 19 prior to the new date which would put her into the Miss division rather than the Teen division, she was given the option to compete as a Teen or a Miss, it was entirely her choice and she was never ever told she was not qualified, special circumstances called for special handling of the divisions. From the beginning, before the girl even sent in her entry application forms, long before a single penny was sent in, I personally had a discussion with her via Facebook, so I have transcripts to back this, regarding the status of TBoH and if it was or was not a charity. She was told and she acknowledged that she understood that it was not a charity and that there would be no receipts, people could not claim anything on income tax etc. She was also told that she had to fundraise for her entry fee and we discussed on a few occasions a fundraising dinner she was holding, the funds to go towards Teddy Bears of Hope, as required for her participation in the pageant. People came to her fundraisers and donated to Teddy Bears of Hope, she used the TBoH logo, and she promoted the TBoH platform. The funds raised were earmarked for TBoH. When the pageant was postponed and she decided she no longer wanted to participate she asked for the funds that she had raised through her community for Teddy Bears of Hope, to be returned to HER. MCI said no, so she ran straight to the press thinking she could force a refund....the money was not hers in the first place! Charity or not, it was raised for TBoH not her personally. The lame news story did not go into any detail regarding the police investigation of her and funds that were not turned over, or the teddy bears that she was made to turn over by the police and once again in the press Sylvia was vilified based on a story that was complete fabrication....and once again she was able to claim to be the victim of bad press and the Sylvia Witch Hunt.
There have been other controversies that have been ‘reported’ on by the press but done in such a way that if you are the least bit versed on pageants, which the general public is not, you would take her side on them. A girl from BC was married yet signed an affidavit stating she was single….she said Sylvia told her to lie….Sylvia denied it. It was all ‘she said/she said’, yet one person signed an affidavit, a legal document, in which she lied, so who looks like the person telling the truth? Another girl threw a fit in the press because she said she didn’t qualify for MCI because she was too old for Miss World. One had nothing to do with the other, but the press ran with it, and again left people who understood how pageants work rolling their eyes. The press even reported that the girls sued Sylvia and MCI and this never happened! The girl was still 100% eligible to compete and win at MCI she just would not have gone on to Miss World if she had of won, but the press again made it look like a witch hunt and gave more room for Sylvia to defend herself and look like a victim of bad press. Other girls dropped out of the pageant one year claiming they were not being fed or treated fairly; one of the girls was sponsored by her boss who took her to small claims court for the money he spent back. In court under oath, she testified that she was having fun, that she was being fed and well cared for but was pressured by a chaperone to quit with 2 other girls. She ended up having to pay her boss back the money he had sponsored her because there was no reason for her to have dropped out in the first place....that never made the press at all !
If the press would spend some time doing some actual investigative journalism instead of slapping a story together without researching or corroborating anything they may have some REAL facts to present and some REAL stories to tell. How about a story about 100, 000 bears sitting in storage instead of being shipped to Africa as promised.
Since the inception of Teddy Bears of Hope, which in and of itself is a cute concept, the pageant has taken a downward turn. Directors have all quit, and there is almost no interest in the pageant from delegates or sponsors. Delegate selection is always left until so late in the year and it is haphazard to say the least. In 2010 the pageant was originally slated for October and we were recruiting in August!!!!! I felt like I was constantly motivating someone who didn’t want to be motivated and then at the last minute, a bunch of girls would get accepted and none of them would pay because it was such short notice, so they would get in for discounted rates or free and then the pageant was being left in dire financial straits. Instead of countering this activity by recruiting delegates earlier and using better tactics to do so, the same scenario was repeated year after year. Instead of looking at correcting the mistakes and procrastination, fingers were pointed at everyone and everything else instead of at the person responsible for the actual delegate recruiting, and that is the CEO herself. She was letting herself and MCI down; no one else was responsible for the failures at delegate recruiting. That is the number one ‘failure’ of MCI and without delegates you don’t have a pageant! Or you have a pageant and are left with tens of thousands of dollars of debt and delegates are not given a quality experience which has been the case for MCI for the past few years. MCI teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, all I heard the last night I was there was how much in debt they were and all she wanted to do was close the company and then she would talk about starting it all up again under a new name…..woah!! That’s just wrong on SOOOO many levels!!
Instead of recruiting and being forthright with delegates, I found there to be more and more shady practices regarding cutting other pageants down blaming them for ‘stealing’ delegates (um, no one ‘owns’ these girls!) and simple misrepresentation of the truth about MCI and its history and background. Last summer when I was still managing the website, Sylvia’s boyfriend and new partner ‘director of operations’, Richard called me and told me to add the words ‘The Original’ to the website. I flat out refused and told him that I would resign before I would allow myself to be a part of something so misleading. His argument was that MCI is the Original Miss Canada International….knowing full well that it was actually misleading people who don't understand the concept of how titles work and they would think that ‘The Original’ meant they were The Original Miss Canada which we all know it is not. We argued about it at length and in the end I prevailed and I thought I had talked some sense into him. Apparently I had not though, since the website now claims that MCI and MTCI are ‘The Original’. This was done after I quit…I did NOT add that to the site and it was NOT on there when it was hosted with the company who redid the site last summer.
The website is another issue. I had talked a close friend of mine into creating and donating a new website, a site worth at minimum $20,000 which he designed, hosted and donated at my request. He even gave deeply discounted hosting rates and instead of paying the hosting fees, MCI switched companies and never gave them a cent …that was the thanks they got for their $20,000 donation! That is how they treat sponsors yet complain that it's someone else’s fault when a sponsor is lost.
The constant misrepresentation of their titles is another hot button issue with me. I was forever editing and amending things to add in ‘International’ to titles. If you look on their Facebook fan pages, it’s all over the place Miss Teen Canada….and guess what…all she does is blame other people. ‘Oh I didn’t write that, the titleholder did', or 'her mother did’ or one of the other site admins, it’s never Sylvia! Well guess what, she is an admin and has the power to edit and make it right if that was the case….however I highly doubt the teen is misrepresenting her title when she is actually proud of it. The signs on cars in parades that she organizes are almost always missing the word ‘International’. Sponsors are misled to believe they are getting Miss Canada or Miss Teen Canada at an event or are donating a prize to, the word International is rarely even mentioned in most of the correspondence. People are fooled and she never corrects them.
So if you constantly misrepresent the titles then you must not be very proud of them and it begs the question, how do you expect to promote them to potential delegates if you are not proud of them and your brand? It also leads to the question of credibility in all other aspects.
The Teddy Bears of Hope is a great concept, so sweet that the teen titleholder came up with it…however it really does suck that Sylvia is running around taking full credit for it and claiming to be the founder….what about Amanda….the titleholder who’s idea it was in the first place? I mean it is absolutely awesome that the organization worked with her so hard to make it a reality and have continued the project, but shouldn’t credit be given where credit is due? The girl is barely given a mention! The real founder of TBoH is Amanda, not Sylvia and although she may be the one putting her heart and soul into it now, Amanda should always be recognized as the founder.
The Teddy Bears have gone to several different countries and collecting them with a toonie makes it easier for the delegates to raise the $4000 required to participate in MCI, but the way that the program is being presented to delegates and to the ppl who donate to the program, is again, misleading.
In 2009 delegates were told to collect 2000 bears and 2000 toonies in order to participate in the pageant. Girls from all over Canada collected bears and brought them to the pageant. The premise of the bear coming from a child in Canada to be given to a child in an underdeveloped country who has nothing is very sweet. No one can say that there is not compassion behind the program, but the manner in which it is being implemented is in my opinion, less than honest, a grey area bordering on a clear breach of the law.
The delegates and benefactors are told that the toonie that is being collected is for cleaning, shipping and storage. However, in 2009 the delegates had to bring the bears to Toronto on their own dime! They were responsible for shipping the bears they had collected, to Toronto. They could not use any of the $4000 they had raised to pay for shipping the bears to Toronto either, they had to raise additional funds or pay for it themselves. They were told the toonies they collected were for shipping the bears to Africa, not from their hometowns to Toronto.
Well, those bears, almost 100,000 of them, STILL sit in a storage locker in Ontario (they did as of the day I quit in February 2012). A storage locker that according to Sylvia herself is being donated to TBoH! The bears are not cleaned, they are sorted and the dirty, ratty ones go in the garbage and the good ones are stored for future shipments, but none have been shipped since the Canadian Armed Forces took them to Afghanistan in 2007. Bridget did pass out some toys when she went to India. However the trip was sponsored and paid for by someone in India who brought several titleholders from all across the world to India for a promotion. It was not a TBoH trip, TBoH piggybacked onto that trip. Children did benefit and received toys, but it was not sponsored for or paid by TBoH or any of the toonies that were collected. This information came from Sylvia herself; she is the one who told me that the trip was sponsored by this Indian person and how great it was that it was not costing MCI anything.
MCI also held a yard sale and sold some of the toys in 2010. These toys were donated for other children, not to sell to pay the debts of MCI! This in itself makes the entire program, the premise of TBoH a big fat lie. Even if they only sold 1 bear, it made everything that happened up to that point a lie. The bears do not belong to MCI, Sylvia or TBoH, anymore than they belong to the girls who collected them. They belong to the children in the orphanages in Africa that we are being told they are being sent to.
So if the bears are sitting in a free storage locker, and are not being cleaned and are not being shipped to Africa, what are the toonies really being collected for? The toonies are to pay for the pageant to take place. The pageant is in deep financial debt, the bears for Africa from 2009 are still in Ontario and they are starting to collect bears for Haiti under the same plan, $2 with each bear to pay for cleaning, storage and shipping, all things they are not currently spending the money on. They even have a transport company willing to bring the bears from across Canada to Toronto. The justification for this is that the pageant crowns a winner to become the spokesperson for TBoH, which is fine, but none of the money that the girls are collecting from their communities is going for what they’re being told it is going for and that is just wrong! Just charge an entry fee and stop misleading people with the thinly veiled ‘charitable cause’ fluff. The toonies are being used to pay for years of bad business decisions and debt incurred by MCI for the pageant and pageant related expenses.
There are so many issues that are misrepresentations which are just enough inside of the grey area to keep them out of legal trouble. The ‘scholarship’ of ‘up to $10,000.00’ is in reality only a $1000 scholarship. In the past there was no guaranteed amount, in 2011 a guaranteed amount was written into the winners contracts and it is $1000. The amount awarded is actually whatever Sylvia decides to give based on how much she likes the titleholder and how much she feels they deserve. Although she always blames the ‘committee’ for the decision on how much but there really was never a ‘committee’ just a bunch of volunteers that she cc’s on e-mails and the last and final word and decision was ALWAYS hers and always way less than recommended when she did ask for an opinion. No MCI or MTCI titleholder has ever received the full $10,000.00 amount and a few of them have not received anything at all. This is going back quite a few years too. At least 3 teens have not received a single cent in scholarship funds, even though they are all going to or have completed college or university. 2 of the Miss have not received their entire scholarship they were promised and 3 have not received anything at all even though they also have completed or are going to college of university. All of the girls who are coming in expecting a $10,000 scholarship are all being misled by the wording of the scholarship commitment. The girls who are still owed scholarships….how can they ever expect to get paid off when the organization goes further and further into debt each year? The bad part is that they continue to promote and ‘produce’ the pageant….and claim the scholarship is being held in trust….there is no trust fund, if there were the scholarships would be paid and no one would be owed anything. The money goes into the general MCI bank account and is spent on MCI expenses, which is why the scholarships have not been paid, because there is simply no money.
They also claim to be the only scholarship based pageant yet both Miss Canada Globe, the biggest scam in pageantry, who I hate with every part of my being, gives a cash scholarship …cash meaning the winner can use it however she wants…..Miss Teen Canada World gives a cash scholarship….again cash so the girl can use it however she wants and as well a bursary for an optional category, so scholarships can be won by more than just the titleholder. Clearly MCI is not the ONLY one and they are not the first to do it either, the REAL original Miss Canada and Miss Teen Canada did that, but they mislead people with that statement or tell prospective delegates that the other pageants scholarships are for modeling or make up classes not real school, which is completely false.
I think my biggest peeve of this year is the treatment of the titleholders. Without going in to specifics, as much as I tried to protect one of the girls from realizing that her reign is not what it should be to protect her feelings, there is no denying that there is unbridled favoritism with the titleholders this year and in retrospect there is every year. Sylvia simply cannot get along with both the teen and the miss at the same time or in the same year. She has wanted to dethrone the last 3 Miss and 2 of the last 3 Teens just because she didn’t like them at various points of their reigns....and that goes for both the current Miss and the current Teen as well. Miraculously at the end she ‘loves them like daughters’ but the whole year she complained about how unprofessional and ungrateful they were and how dare they… blah blah blah. Clear jealousy over attention, prizes and treatment of the titleholder by the public over her gave her cause to become hateful towards each of them. Not necessarily to their faces, I am talking about long drawn out conversations with me on the phone. One of the reasons I became ‘liaison’ was to keep the peace so that she didn’t dethrone every girl she crowned! Every time I called a titleholder or e-mailed them a friendly ‘how are things, is there anything you need to or want to talk about I am always here for you’ e-mail it was because I had just received a phone call from Sylvia that the girl was about to be dethroned for one reason or another, and NONE of them were valid or rational reasons.
I got tired of being the only one in the organization to have a conscience, of feeling like I was the only one to actually give a crap about the feelings of the girls beyond the title. It felt more and more like delegates and titleholders alike were nothing more than an avenue for her to continue MCI in hopes that one day it will be this big spectacular amazing pageant that it will never be. It had potential when they had the Miss World directorship, but that fell apart too and they will never get it back, they will never rival Miss Canada Universe, or Miss Teen Canada World. They will never be ‘the most prestigious’ pageant in Canada, they will never be respected among the pageant community simply because they refuse to be forthcoming, honest and transparent.
It is a shame because like I said there was potential, the idea of MCI and MTCI and TBoH are all good ideas, they are just all being so badly mis-handled that it will eventually be its own undoing.
I am a huge pageant supporter but I am a huge supporter in honesty! The reason I do this is not for glory, or because I missed the chance for myself or because I want or get something out of it…I did this for 15 years for FREE. Everything I did was as a volunteer, I used my own money to fund trips to Toronto, pitching in here and there when needed with little things….because I love what pageantry does for the girls who participate. I love seeing a shy young girl blossom into a strong confident young woman over the period of a couple of weeks. I am amazed at the transformations during pageant week and their reigns and I deeply cherish the lifelong friends I have made. I love that girls still call me for advice or to chat and I love being their mentor or just someone to talk to when they aren’t sure who else to talk to. I will always be involved in pageantry in some aspect but I will never again support MCI MTCI or Teddy Bears of Hope and I will never encourage anyone else to participate. I won’t go out of my way to tell them not to…..but I sure as heck won’t recommend it to anyone LOL
I wanted to leave on a professional note but every day I think of the girls who want to participate and think they are getting into something amazing and they are being fooled and I just can't sit by and let other girls have their dreams turn into a nightmare. There are some good sweet honest hardworking young ladies out there who really do want to make a difference, there are so many other paths to take that can really make a difference, I just don't think MCI/MTCI/TBoH is the right one for most of them.
What sucks the absolute most of all of this is that for 15 years, someone whom I considered my friend is gone from my life for good. She was someone I had great times with, shared a lot of laughs, my god we would laugh until we cried sometimes. She seemed so genuine in those moments, like a good person, with a big heart. We would talk about her aging mom whom she is so close to, her personal life, things real girlfriends share, but the other things have overshadowed that and I look back now and wonder about the entire friendship. In retrospect it seems almost like there were 2 Sylvia’s, one was my friend and the other one ran a pageant, would say or do anything to achieve her goals….including being less than honest with me…and that I can’t forgive or forget.
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| | Replies: |
- OMG, who cares. (NT) -- TorCanFan, 02:58:48 04/24/12 Tue
- Well if I was christi I would want ppl to know I was no longer with MCI too especially since she defended before she needed to make sure NO one thinks she still does..hmmm the biggest concern is that those bears aren’t going anywhere... I mean its one thing that they always say they are a charity and they are not.. its another not even to do the thing ppl are paying for as well the scholarships not being paid out etc. And how they are paid out over time.. That is silly. MTCW gives $4000 to the winner ( use to be $3000) CASH we write a cheque the night of the crowning of her successor. And a $2000 Bursary to school of the academic winner. And send 2 girls on 3 week long africa service trips. Miss Canada Globe gives a cash prize between 3-4 thousand not sure of the amount anymore…. MCI gives NOTHING it seems…. Where does all the money go? (NT) -- Michelle, 23:30:37 04/24/12 Tue
 next big thing -- Leanne Little, 08:49:36 04/25/12 Wed
- Glad to see you came to your sense... too bad you had to hurt so many people along the way for the sake of Sylvia... (NT) -- Still hurts, 11:58:56 04/25/12 Wed
- To any girls who may have gotten hurt along the way, truly I apologize! It was never my intent to see any delegate or titleholder suffer and I hope that none of them feel any of the actions that caused them any grief came from me! I believed the information I was being fed from the top, and a lot of the time it was negative towards the titleholders and I couldn't stand the animosity, which is why I asked to be named liaison, so that I could be the go between after Rachel's year, so that I could be sure the girls were not getting hurt! I wanted to keep the peace, and I wanted the girls to have a good and memorable year. It was a very frustrating job to say the least and a lot of my suggestions fell on deaf ears...I could give input but ultimately the decisions, all decisions were head offices, at the end of the day, I was just a volunteer with no authority at all. (NT) --
 Christi, 19:02:23 04/25/12 Wed
- Christi.... for what it is worth.... I am applauding you right now. Yes, I know that the media went to town several years ago and we must realize that sometimes stories are not always fully factual.... but BRAVO for you to tell your story... honestly, I think your story outweighs any of the media titalation that we have seen in the past. I am giving you a standing ovation at this point. I fully believe EVERYTHING you have said. (NT) -- gaj, 22:11:27 04/25/12 Wed
- About time -- Terri C, 14:31:17 04/26/12 Thu
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