2013 Miss Teen Canada World, Megha Sandhu at Pure Spirits in Distillery

In what has now become something of an annual tradition, Megha Sandhu the 2013 Miss Teen Canada World visited the Distillery District today August 10th 2012, and spent some time walking around and admiring the old buildings, modern outdoor furniture and hip art work before being tutored on the fine art of blogging and the subtleties of digital communication by Smojoe.

Below is the quintessential Balzacs Coffee Doorway shot that I have done for three years running now. Type ‘Miss Teen Balzacs’ into Google image search and you will see the others.

Ranked as one of the top ten bloggers in the Miss Teen Canada Blog Network before the pageant event, Megha is now the official voice of the Miss Teen Canada World pageant and will remain the foremost blogger until July 2013 when the next Delegate wins the 2014 crown. That’s how it works.

This is actually a large responsibility considering the Miss Teen Canada World website homepage now defaults to the blog to showcase the adventures of the young Miss Teen as she hobnobs with celebrities and lends her voice to charity and cultural events. And lets not forget about the Teen World competition in Guatemala this year – Megha could win the ultimate Miss Teen World crown! (and several thousand dollars, and increase Canada’s prestige all over the world).

During the course of the day, Megha got a chance to ride a Segway two-wheeled vehicle at Segway of Ontario, and this has also become something of a tradition. The guys are so good about training the reigning Miss Teen and then parading her around the grounds. They get a kick out of it too.

I have some video but unfortunately I had the camera on the wrong setting and we ended up with a time lapse video of her two-wheeled trek. It would be perfect for Benny Hill style comedy movie. The second movie was made on Toronto roof looking down into the courtyard, but I’m saving that piece of rich media.

Last week, Megha was just one of sixty four competitors who came to Toronto seeking the Miss Teen Canada crown in Toronto on July 21st at Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Exhibition Place. Hosted by Luke Bilyk and Cynthia Loewen, the show dramatically cut the competition down from sixty four to twenty girls, and then ten, and then finally to the top five. After skill testing questions and public speaking, there was eventually just two people, Megha and Sasha Stewart 2012 Miss Teen Ontario, who is the runner up in the pageant and will be the ‘stand-in’ for lack of a better word to Megha should she be unable to fulfill her duties at any time throughout the year.

At Pure Spirits restaurant we dined on delicious salads and I had a seafood linguine. Megha told me that she was training for the Miss Teen competition everyday – memorizing speech components and practicing her public speaking is the hardest part for Megha and one of the most important parts of the teen pageant.

Anyway here is Megha Sandhu, a smart eighteen year old girl who comes from a long line of professionals, first in India and now in Montreal Canada.

While touring around The Distillery District in sash and crown she got a lot of looks from tourists who of course wanted to take pictures with her – even in the restaurant she was approached by young girls who stood awkwardly beside her as their mom snapped pictures. She is their role model.

Megha enjoyed the GAIA exhibit, and knows a lot about Guy Laliberte who is also native to Quebec and Montreal in particular. He is one of her heroes and she is of course very aware of his new girlfriend who is also a fashion model. Because of this Megha really liked touring the Thompson Landry gallery and seeing the GAIA exhibit which consists of images of planet Earth taken from space. All this really brings Megha’s title – World into perspective.