The poll asked readers to submit their suggestions in order to get the “inside scoop on old favourites and hot new spots for the savviest business travelers in 2011.”
Readers were then able to vote through the magazine for the best Atlantic Canada has to offer.
Chris Ball, manager of the Astor Theatre, says he had no idea the theatre had been submitted for voting.
“It's not anything that we submitted to” he says. “It was something that, just out of the blue, we'd noticed someone submitted our name to the poll.”
Ball found out from a friend last Monday the Astor had been placed as runner up, and essentially second place in Nova Scotia.
“Someone else actually saw it in the magazine and told me about it,” says Ball, who doesn’t read the magazine personally. “Someone who gets it here in town saw it and emailed me the link.”
When Ball heard the news, he says he was “a little shocked.” He went to check out the website and saw the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax had won Best Cultural Space, then he looked a little further.
“I thought, Pier 21 won, OK great. Then I looked under that and went, 'wait a minute, runner up,’” he says. “I was confused for a minute, shocked to stay the least. It felt good.”
“I was confused for a minute, shocked to stay the least. It felt good.” - Chris Ball, Astor Theatre manager
The Astor was runner up alongside places such as the Imperial Theatre in Saint John, New Brunswick and The Rooms, a large museum and cultural space in Saint John’s, Newfoundland.
The theatre may not have won top spot overall, but it did take second place in all of Nova Scotia. “Even just being in the company of those two was amazing,” says Ball.
“It's good because it's one of those things where someone else nominates you and people vote on it,” says Ball. “It's not like somewhere you nominate yourself. We didn't know this was going on, so when they asked for submissions obviously someone put our name forward.”
Ball adds it was nice to place in a poll that wasn't controlled. “The jury didn't sit down with four people around a table picking out a winner, it was voted on by people who actually used the facility.”
