WASHINGTON – Crack Canadian speller Finola Hackett was one of the final two at the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington today, tripped up only by the word "weltschmerz" (a form of depression)
(Ed Note: We weren’t even aware that was a word – even Microsoft Word’s spell-check doesn’t know it. It looks more like a jumble of Scrabble tiles!)
Hackett, of Tofield, Alberta started out as one of 275 student spellers at the prestigious competition, having won the Canadian championship, the CanWest CanSpell finals. The winner in Washington was Katharine Close of New Jersey, who was making her fifth trip to the finals.
Hackett, a two-time CanSpell winner, was one of 13 finalists competing in front of a live prime time television audience in Canada on the CH television stations, across the United States, and around the world.
"The achievement of Finola and all the Canadian spellers in Washington is a point of pride for CanWest and all of our employees who have helped create the CanWest CanSpell national spelling program," said David Asper, executive vice-president of CanWest Global Communications Corp. and chairman of the National Post. "On behalf of all the 10,000 plus CanWest employees in Canada and the 160,000 Canadian students who started out in the school level competitions at the beginning of the year, we offer our congratulations to Finola and the 13 other Canadian spellers who represented our Company and our country with such poise and grace."
The Scripps National Spelling Bee is the largest and most prestigious spelling competition in the world. It is estimated that more than 10 million students in the United States, Canada, and other countries compete at school-level bees hoping to get to the final rounds in Washington.
