When all the votes were finally tallied, Glo McNeill, the outgoing octogenarian from Lunenburg, was declared the winner of the $250,000 top prize on Food Network Canada's inaugural season of "Recipe to Riches."

 The final episode of the show, which offered contestants a chance to win the largest cash prize ever offered on a Canadian television reality program, was aired December 14.

 That marked the culmination of a whirlwind 10-month journey for the feisty grandmother and her winning Luscious Lemon Pudding recipe, which began when she and four friends from the area travelled to Halifax last March, prepared recipes in hand, for auditions.

 Shortly after that event, Ms McNeill learned she was one of 21 entrants from across the country who had been selected to compete in seven food categories to determine who would go through to the finals.

 On October 19, during the inaugural show of the series, a panel of judges chose Ms McNeill's recipe as the winner of the sweet puddings and pies category, garnering her a prize of $25,000, and setting off seven weeks of frantic campaigning before the on-line voting began December 7.

 The next day as the voting process continued, Ms McNeill found herself on a plane bound for Toronto and what would be an exhausting, yet ultimately rewarding, weekend of activity.

 While hopeful of her chances on winning, she was certainly not over-confident that the finale would turn out in her favour.

 "I didn't count any chickens before they hatched," she laughed. "Nothing was sure."

 Day 1 in the Ontario capital began with a wardrobe check where staff of the show looked at each contestant's clothes and told them what they should wear, not only on the final show, but also during a public appearance that was slated for that afternoon at Loblaw's new flagship store which recently opened in Maple Leaf Gardens.

 "So we're picked up by the hotel in two limos and taken to this Loblaw's. We're taken upstairs to their kitchen where there is a gang of press, all kinds of people, cameras and everything, and displays of our individual products," Ms McNeill recalls. "Chefs are prepping them and heating and proportioning them. The idea was we stand beside our product and the reporters take us one on one."

 After lunch, the contestants were filmed doing "a hurried, brisk walk" through the store before arriving at their respective display stations where they gave out samples to the public.

 "That little walk through the store, we repeated that a half a dozen times, or more," she said. "I was winded, and I had a very dry throat, I was just gasping. Thank God for Fisherman's Friend."

 Next up was a return trip to the studios for more one-on-one interviews which would be used as voice-overs for the final show.

 "Everybody kept thinking I was going to have a heart attack or something. I kept telling them, I may be old, but I'm tough," she laughed. "But by the end of the day, I was so tired."

 Saturday was an off day so Ms McNeill went out into the wilds of the city to do a bit of Christmas shopping, "which was kind of scary.

 "I was still being timid. I did a bit of Christmas shopping, but I still couldn't count on a quarter of a million dollars and I was still thinking of what I had left of my $25,000 after the mortgage payments had been put aside," she said.

 One of the more exciting events of the day happened when she went into a shoe store and was immediately recognized by one of the clerks.

 "She said, 'Oh! It's Glo from TV. Can I have my photo taken with you?" So she had her photo taken then somebody else in the store said, 'Oh, I know her," so all these people were crowding around," she laughed. "And later, when I was walking through the Eaton's Centre every once in awhile someone would say, 'Oh, I know you." I was almost to the stage that I should put on a big hat and dark glasses, but it's new enough to me that I'm thrilled to be recognized."

 Ms McNeill's husband, Gerry, arrived that evening and she said from that point on, things changed.

 "I was no longer the little old lady on the fringe of the group. I had somebody."

 The next morning the contestants were whisked from the hotel to the studio where she spent the first couple of hours having her hair and makeup done.

 Joining Mr. McNeill in the "Glo" section of the audience were a pair of Ms McNeill's cousins from Ontario, as well as Bridgewater Superstore manager Shelley Blanchard and David Francis, who runs the Lunenburg Save Easy.

 Even Brad Gash, one of the contestants who lost to Ms McNeill in the sweet puddings and pies final, travelled to Toronto from Gatineau, Quebec, to cheer her on.

 While the contestants waited anxiously in a holding room for the taping of the finale to begin, "G-Lo," as she had become affectionately known, donned another hat - that of Lunenburg ambassador.

 "Everyone that came in I gave a Lunenburg pin. Hair dressers had them, their assistants, actually people were coming up to me for them," she laughed.

 Eventually, the finalists, which by this point had been reduced to six because of a disqualification, took the stage and watched as the show's judges filed in.

 "I still didn't know how they were going to do it," she recalled. "I knew they were going to have to eliminate us one at a time to build attention."

 Contestants were eliminated as the show wore on until, finally, the last two left standing were Ms McNeill and John Grass of Riverview, New Brunswick, who had won the appetizers category with his Chicken Grenades.

 "I didn't realize they were so popular," she said of her competitor's product. "A huge segment of the public loved them."

 Fortunately for Ms McNeill, that group was not huge enough.

 The tension on the show mounted until at last host Jesse Palmer announced that she was indeed the winner, and Lunenburg's most recognizable grandmother was doused with a shower of gold confetti which fell from above.

 "I"m still in this daze, people hugging me and people congratulating me, and all of a sudden I'm being pulled this way and that way," she said. "I have no idea what I said and no idea who I talked to. A lot of that was a blur."

 The next morning Mr. McNeill flew back to Halifax, followed later by Ms McNeill, who had to take a later flight due to an interview that had been scheduled with Food Network Canada.

 Still under a secrecy order not to divulge the results of the show, the couple decided to take a hotel room and relax in the city for a couple of days before heading for home on the day the program aired.

 "We didn't tell our children, we didn't tell anyone," she said. "We were sworn to secrecy."

 That evening, a dozen family members and friends gathered in the McNeills' living room to watch as Canadian television history - and the lives of a Lunenburg family - was changed forever.

 Now that the show is over, Ms McNeill said she and her husband will sit down after the holidays and take a serious look at the variety of necessities that their new-found resources could be used for.

 In the meantime, however, they are not going to worry about it.

 "We're just going to have a damn good Christmas," she laughed.