There is one moment at the Award of Excellence Gala that is different from all the others.
Not louder. Not more spectacular. Different in a way that is almost impossible to put into words — a difference of weight, of gravity, of the kind of silence that descends over a room when everyone in it understands simultaneously that what they are about to witness matters in a way that transcends the evening, transcends the year, and reaches into something permanent.
That moment is the Grand Master.
I have spent a great deal of my life in this industry, and a great deal of that time thinking about what recognition at its highest level truly means. I have presented awards in every category we honour at this Gala and I am proud of every single one. But the Grand Master is different. It has always been different. Because it does not ask what you have done this year. It asks what you have meant — to this industry, to the people in it, and to the communities that depend on it — across a lifetime of complete and unconditional devotion to a craft that demands everything and gives everything back in return.
To receive the Grand Master is not simply to win an award. It is to be written permanently into the history of Canadian jewellery. It is to join a roster of individuals whose names will be spoken with reverence in this industry long after any of us who stood in that room on Sunday night are gone.
And to be nominated — to be among the names considered for this honour by the most respected judges in the industry — is itself one of the most significant recognitions a career in Canadian jewellery can produce.
A Category That Is Growing Because This Industry Is Growing
The Grand Master category exists because extraordinary people exist. And I want to say something about that directly: the fact that this category is expanding — that the field of exceptional individuals worthy of this conversation is growing — is not something to take lightly.
It is a reflection of the extraordinary depth of talent, leadership, and devotion that this industry has cultivated over generations. It is a reflection of the fact that Canadian jewellery is producing, at an accelerating rate, the kind of individuals who do not simply work in an industry — they shape it. They defend it. They carry it forward on their shoulders through every era of change with the same love and the same conviction they brought to it on the very first day.
The Grand Master category is growing because this industry deserves to be celebrated at this level. Because there are people in it — remarkable, singular, irreplaceable people — who have given decades of their professional lives to building something that all of us benefit from, often without fully recognizing the debt we owe them.
This year’s six nominees are six of those people. And I want you to know each of them — truly know them — before the winner is revealed in the pages of the next issue.
Anita Agrawal — Best Bargains / Jewels 4 Ever
I want to begin with Anita. Because I believe that what Anita Agrawal represents in the context of this nomination — and in the context of this industry — deserves to be said clearly and without any softening.
Anita Agrawal is the first woman in the history of the Grand Master category to step into this arena and go toe to toe with the giants of Canadian jewellery. And I do not use the word giants lightly. The other nominees in this category are individuals whose careers span decades of industry-defining achievement. To stand alongside them is itself an act of remarkable courage and remarkable merit.
But here is the truth: Anita has earned every inch of this ground.
She is the CEO of Best Bargains, a Canadian boutique jewellery manufacturing company founded in 1991 and built from the ground up in the heart of Toronto’s jewellery district into a business with over twenty thousand B2B clients in more than twenty countries, over ten thousand SKUs, and a reach that extends from independent boutiques to Walmart Canada, TD Rewards, Amazon, The RealReal, and Airmiles. She is the founder of Jewels 4 Ever — a brand she built on the conviction that Canadian-made fine jewellery should be accessible, beautiful, and commercially brilliant simultaneously. She is a multi-award winner, including four INSTORE magazine jewellery design awards. She is the 2024 Manufacturer of the Year at our own Award of Excellence. She is the recipient of the Alumni of Distinction Award from Centennial College. She is a contract professor at Centennial College and George Brown College. She is a GIA-certified diamantaire. She is a keynote speaker at international jewellery events including the Bangkok International Gem and Jewellery Fair. She was invited to join the Federal Government’s committee for Gender and Trade Policy. She has run as both a provincial and federal political candidate. She has delivered a TEDx talk on women in leadership. She has spoken in over two hundred public forums — at the Provincial Legislature, the Toronto Region Board of Trade, on BNN, CBC, in the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail — on the subjects of small business, women’s empowerment, and the future of Canadian manufacturing.
She is, in the most complete and accurate sense of the phrase, a force. Not merely in this industry — but in the world beyond it. A woman who has taken everything this craft gave her and used it as a platform to make the broader world better for small businesses, for women, for Canadian manufacturers, and for the next generation of jewellers who will build this industry after us.
The Grand Master category has never seen anyone quite like Anita Agrawal. And this industry is richer, stronger, and more ambitious because she is in it.
Sako Krikorian — Diamond by Sako
Sako Krikorian arrived in Canada from Lebanon in 1990 with a love of diamonds and a vision for what fine jewellery could be in the hands of someone who genuinely understood both the stone and the person who would wear it.
Over thirty years later, Diamond by Sako stands as one of the most distinctive and most respected diamond jewellery brands in the country. Sako’s approach has never changed: source only the finest GIA-certified diamonds from the most ethical and reputable suppliers in the world, design and manufacture in Canada with the highest possible standards, and serve every client — from the independent boutique retailer to the person choosing their engagement ring — with the same absolute commitment to excellence and the same complete, personal devotion.
His wholesale division supplies upscale boutiques and major chain jewellery stores across Canada. His design division produces pieces that have been described as the work of a jeweller who understands not only what a diamond looks like, but what it means. Sako travels the world in search of the most exceptional stones and the most compelling new designs — and brings them back to Canada as pieces that carry within them the spirit of a man who has never once stopped being surprised and delighted by what this craft can produce.
He is, in every sense, a master.
Gino DeVuono — The DeVuono Group
Gino DeVuono is one of the most significant contributors to the governance, the culture, and the collective advancement of this industry that Canada has ever produced.
As President of the Canadian Jewellers Twenty-Four Karat Club and a director of the Canadian Jewellers Association, Gino has served at the highest levels of industry leadership with a dedication and a generosity of spirit that has made the entire trade stronger. He has been the person in the room who asks the difficult questions, who holds the long view, who understands that an industry’s health is not measured in any single year’s sales but in the strength of its institutions, the depth of its relationships, and the integrity of its leadership.
The DeVuono Group’s national distribution of exceptional products — including Stackers jewellery boxes — reflects the same philosophy that has defined Gino’s career: find the best, represent it honestly, and build the kinds of partnerships that last not for seasons but for decades. His contribution to this industry extends far beyond any product or any sales figure. It lives in the culture of professionalism and mutual respect that he has helped to build and sustain across a career of genuine and unrelenting service.
Brett Haliday — Froggo Business Services
Brett Haliday is, by any measure, one of the most consequential strategic minds this industry has produced.
As the former President of Michael Hill North America, Brett was the architect of one of the most ambitious and most successful retail expansions in the history of Canadian jewellery — building the Michael Hill brand to eighty-six stores coast to coast and reshaping the competitive landscape of the Canadian retail jewellery market in the process. The scale of that achievement — the discipline, the vision, the execution required to build a national retail network of that magnitude — is simply extraordinary.
Through Froggo Business Services, Brett has translated thirty years of industry experience into a strategic advisory practice that has helped retailers, brands, and industry associations navigate some of the most challenging moments this trade has faced. His partnership with the Canadian Jewellers Association on business strategy during the pandemic — providing critical guidance to retailers at precisely the moment they needed it most — is the kind of contribution that does not show up in any box score but that this industry will feel for years to come.
He is a strategist, a builder, and a genuine champion of the retail jeweller. And his fingerprints are on the landscape of Canadian jewellery in ways that will outlast any single business cycle.
Haimy Mann — CrownRing
In 1999, Haimy Mann co-founded CrownRing with a belief that the wedding band — the most fundamental and most enduring piece of fine jewellery a person will ever wear — deserved to be made with the same level of craft, creativity, and attention as any other category in fine jewellery.
Twenty-six years later, CrownRing has established itself as one of the most beloved and most trusted bridal brands in Canada, with a portfolio of collections spanning classic, carved, and diamond styles that have accompanied some of the most meaningful moments in millions of Canadian lives. The brand’s commitment to exceptional craftsmanship, to comfort of fit, and to the kind of design that honours the significance of what the ring represents — a lifetime of love and commitment — has made it a first choice for jewellery retailers across the country and for the clients who trust those retailers with the most important purchase of their lives.
Haimy Mann built something that goes far beyond a product line. He built a brand with a soul. And that soul is felt in every ring that leaves the CrownRing showcase and is placed on a finger in a moment that will never be forgotten.
Kevin Vantyghem — Vantyghem Diamonds
The story of Vantyghem Diamonds begins in Antwerp, Belgium — the diamond capital of the world — where Kevin Vantyghem’s parents, Arlette and Ralph, grew up among the diamond cutters whose craft defined the finest diamonds on earth. They brought that expertise to Canada in 1973, founding Vantyghem Diamonds and beginning a relationship with Canadian independent jewellers that has now spanned over fifty years and two generations.
Kevin Vantyghem carries that legacy forward with a combination of deep gemological knowledge — he is a GIA Diamond Graduate who completed hands-on training in Antwerp — and an innovator’s instinct for what the modern diamond market demands. Under his stewardship, Vantyghem Diamonds became a pioneer of branded Canadian diamonds, developing the Diamond Certification and Authentication Plate System — a proprietary innovation that allows both the jeweller and their client to verify the origin, grading, and provenance of every stone at their fingertips.
As a longtime director of the Canadian Jewellers Association and a member of the American Gem Society, Kevin has served this industry’s governance with the same quiet integrity and unimpeachable ethics that have defined the Vantyghem name since the day his family first brought the brilliance of Antwerp to Canadian shores.
He is the second-generation steward of one of the most trusted names in Canadian diamonds. And he has honoured that inheritance completely.
The Weight of This Moment
Six nominees. Six individuals whose careers represent the full range of what extraordinary looks like in this industry — from the manufacturing floor to the boardroom, from the design studio to the retail floor, from the trade association committee room to the international stage.
Each of them has given something to this industry that cannot be replaced. Each of them has shaped, in their own distinct and irreplaceable way, the landscape that all of us inhabit. Each of them deserves to have this industry rise for them — not as a courtesy, not as a formality, but as a genuine expression of the gratitude and the admiration that their careers have earned.
And each of them — every single one — deserves to have their name spoken with the reverence that this nomination carries. Because to be nominated for the Grand Master of the Award of Excellence is not a participation in a competition. It is the industry’s formal recognition that you belong in the permanent record of Canadian jewellery.
That is not a small thing. That is everything.
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Because the Grand Master of Canadian jewellery deserves to be honoured in print. Permanently. Without reservation. And with everything this industry has.
