Advocating for women’s rights and loving art are just two aspects of the personality of a 19-year-old from Sables-Spanish Rivers Township who will represent her home at next week’s Miss North Ontario 2019 Pageant in Sudbury.
Montana Brandow is a strong advocate for 4-H and AYA Youth Fishing, the focus of much of her volunteer work through her teen years.
And, she also advocates for women’s hunting rights with the Northeastern Ontario chapter of the Safari Club International,
She has also been a featured artist at the Massey Museum Art Show and has had artwork featured at the Sudbury Art Gallery.
She will host a yard sale this Saturday for the pageant’s cause, the Northern Ontario Families of Children with Cancer starting at 9:00 am at 190 Government Road West.
Growing up in a small farming community, she quickly learned the value of hard work and dedication.
She never thought she was a type of girl who would be suited for a pageant, but this one is different. It is based on involvement within your community and fundraising for a good cause for the NOFCC (Northern Ontario Families of Children with Cancer).
“Being a contestant within the pageant is exciting, and a great confidence building opportunity where you get to meet new friends and have new challenges that you have to overcome. I feel that NOFCC is an excellent cause to help fundraise money for there are many families that have been touched by cancer and need help with the cost of care.”
Growing up and being involved with 4-H, gave her a lot of leadership skills and motivation to achieve her goals by helping to volunteer with community clubs and events.
Starting at a young age, helping out at the Massey Fall Fair, yearly Safari Club Banquets and AYA Youth Fishing tournaments assisted with my passion to help grow my community involvement to volunteer.”
Montana also enjoys spending her time outdoors, hunting and at an early age, she learned to love the outdoors with her family where she enjoyed fishing and the sport of hunting. She started taking part in a Women’s Range Day events with Amanda Mayhew, from “Just Hunt”. A day that just wasn’t outside, but a day of opportunity to try different hunting ability from Archery, Skeet Shooting, High-Performance Rifles, and Handguns.
“We are able to properly handle all guns and try them, I think my new sport is handgun competition, which I enjoy. The purpose for Women Range Day is to advocate a woman to enjoy hunting as and a sport and to help sustain food for their family.”
She is a second-year Graphic Design student at Cambrian College where her program is ranked one of the highest for Registered Graphic Designers in Ontario. She has accomplished been a featured artist at the Massey Museum Art Show and has a piece of artwork hanging in the Sudbury Art Gallery for two consecutive years.
Her love of farm animals has grown over the last the past couple of years as she works on a Dairy Farm for Emiry Farms as a farm hand cleaning pens, feeding baby calves and help to milk when an extra hand is needed. She’s been around dairy cows for eight years, which began when she joined the local Sables-Spanish River 4-H Club. She does show cow lessons and help youth learn how to show their cattle; walking, grooming and teaching how to properly take care of them for showmanship and confirmation contests.
She is also working at Chutes Provincial Park located in Massey.
“Having the opportunity to meet and welcome people into the park from all over is exciting. It is also exciting to learn how far people travel to see our park and they say it is one of the prettiest parks with the most beautiful waterfalls. With comments like that, I feel proud to represent Sables-Spanish Rivers.”
Her current fundraiser to raise money for NOFCC will be a blow out yard sale, BBQ on Saturday, May 4th from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm in Massey, at 190 Government Road West.