Royal City residents took the advice to vote and vote often to heart, beating out Nelson, B.C. in an online contest and raising $25,000 for the new Youth Centre @ Moody Park and a street party.

The Kraft Celebration Tour announced the results of the online voting on Monday and New Westminster clobbered Nelson - who were hoping fo use the cash for an upgrade to their curling club - by a score of 220,531 to 154,709 in the 24 hour contest that ran from 9 a.m. Friday to Saturday. Not bad for a city with an estimated population of around 60,000.

"That makes staying up to 4:30 a.m. all worthwhile," said Coun. Jonathan Cote, who burned the midnight oil to help ensure New West would be the winning B.C. entry of the coast-to-coast contest that will also see 10 communities (one in each province) profiled on TSN's Sportcentre sometime in late August. Each of the 10 winning cities will receive $25,000 to put towards community projects.

The new youth centre, currently under construction, will be attached to Century House in Moody Park .