Who won Big Brother Canada 11? A recap of the finale and its surprises

Thursday’s two-hour Big Brother Canada 11 finale was packed, and kept a pretty good pace even though it was too packed, and felt a bit frantic at times. But that’s how both Canada and USA wrap up their Big Brother seasons.

It wasn’t live, but there was an audience, made up of cast family and friends, alumni, and probably some staffers. Arisa said it was the first live audience in over two years. I believe the last time would have been before COVID shut down Season 8.

Of course they kicked things off with a recap of the past week, as well as the nine weeks before that. The first season review of the night ran for about 13 minutes, accompanied by soaring cinematic music.

Then they went right into Part 1 of the final HOH comp.

It was sponsored by Disney and their upcoming Little Mermaid movie, and the set was Ariel’s secret underground grotto. It looked great in deep blues with underwater-like lighting, and Daniel, Ty, Claudia were dressed in metallic blue merman/maid suits.

They had to sort through a tidepool-type basin to uncover a diagram, then transfer two discs at a time to a pedestal where they had to stack and balance a total of 30 discs according to their diagram, which was different for each of them. They also had to spin their pedestals via a tension rope as they approached it and as they walked away.

It was not easy, and there were several dumps along the way, causing whoever dumped to start over.

Notably, Ty’s stack dumped when he had 26 of the 30 discs needed to win. Claudia then won Part 1, advancing her to Part 3. She also won a ticket to The Little Mermaid’s Canadian premiere.

Part 2 was called Hands of Time, with Daniel and Ty competing in individually timed runs.

It had a large horizontal clock-type face; the competitors stood in the middle, and there was a long, rotating watch hand made up of two rails that swept around the circular platform. They had to drop a ball down the rails to land in the correct slot to answer questions about season events.

Both guys had problems with some of the questions, which were detailed and not necessarily the kind of questions hamsters tend to study.

Ty won that in one hour, one minute, 14 seconds, and Daniel was second yet again with a time of one hour, 17 minutes, 58 seconds.

Then it was the jury roundtable discussion which was hosted by last year’s winner Kevin Jacobs.

Fourth place Anika was brought out to join them, and she was heated. She said Ty didn’t deserve to win just because he had comp wins, when he had no social game. Anika and Kuzie argued about Kuzie having told Ty about the Crown alliance before she was evicted.

It was a chaotic discussion, but sadly we only saw about five minutes of it.

Part 3 of the final HOH comp was Claudia versus Ty and while it was just questions, it had another unique and pretty cool setup. Their faces and answers were in a giant video chessboard that shifted between horizontal and vertical placement, with jurors superimposed on the horizontal part when a question pertained to them.

The questions had A or B choices and again involved season events trivia. Both finalists got the first four correct, Claudia the fifth and Ty the sixth. Then Claudia got the seventh and final question right and Ty didn’t, giving her the win for the final Head of Household of the season.

That meant Claudia had the lone vote to determine third place, and she evicted Daniel. A curious decision, since she could have conceivably (and probably) beaten Daniel for the season win, but she’d decided some time ago to go all-in with Ty.

Arisa welcomed the jury to the stage, and Daniel was brought out to join them. Dan—remember him?—said he’d been at the jury house for SO long, he was just happy to have finally been able to leave. (He was evicted way back on Day 34, and Thursday was Day 69.)

The jurors each asked a question of either Ty or Claudia, and while some were fluff or obvious as usual, pointed questions were asked by Jonathan, Hope, Renee to Ty, and by Kuzie, Shanaya, Anika to Claudia.

Both finalists had answers at the ready and both sounded good on paper, but neither of them really answered the questions as well as they could/should have.

Then it was the final speeches of the season.

Ty said he’d been a comp beast and veto king, and he’d dismantled the Crown and Girlypops alliances, but his social game had been overlooked and undetected. (That’s kind of an oxymoron if you ask me.) And he wrapped up by sending love to his mom.

Claudia said she’d fulfilled her goals of staying true to herself and playing as a strong female, she’d had a good social game, and she won the important comps when she had to. She added that she’d never considered quitting (which Ty seriously did), and that she was proud to be the last female standing.

Arisa stressed to the jurors—as she always has since Topaz messed up her Season 1 jury vote—that they were voting for who should win, and the jury members placed their keys or whatever in the voting box, which coincidentally(?) looked like a crown. Dan popped another funny by saying he was finally casting his first vote of the season.

Pre-jurors JM and Rob were joined onstage by leavers Amal and Vanessa. Quitter Zach was not there.

Arisa asked their thoughts about watching the season unfold, and Vanessa scored the line of the night by saying Hope had the biggest impact on the season because without him (and his girlfriend’s note), Zach wouldn’t have left. Zing!

Then came more season review in segments featuring fun group activities, crying, and fights. This season really had a lot of all three and I think the feeds would have been great fun for fans of cheap entertainment like myself, if we’d had feeds.

Finally it was time to get down to the real business of the night.

Arisa announced Jonathan had won the viewer favorite vote and $10,000.

Many (including me) thought Kuzie had that in the bag, but East Coast Canadians nearly always do well in viewer votes on this show. Jonathan seems to be a prince of a guy though, so I can’t complain.

Then Arisa read the votes. Dan, Jonathan, Santina, Hope, Kuzie all voted for Ty, which was all he needed for the win.

Later, Arisa said all the votes were for Ty except Shanaya’s for Claudia, so he won the season with a tally of 8-1.

Fireworks went off on stage (blindingly and with a distracting hum), the confetti flew, and Ty and Claudia finally joined everyone else onstage for hugs and congratulations.

And that’s a wrap! You can find the season stats and everyone’s individual winnings at Hamsterwatch.com, where you can also get the links and information about how and where to watch all the archived episodes, Digital Dailies, and assorted extras. If any of that or these recaps have been useful for you, feel free to leave me a tip via Ko-fi, and thank you!

Thanks also to Andy here at reality blurred for the opportunity to recap the shows and Dailies here! It’s been a different pace from my usual BB coverage but I’ve enjoyed it.

Most of all, HUGE THANKS to those of you who’ve been reading me here this season. Be sure to keep checking out Andy’s comprehensive coverage here of all things reality TV—he works harder than the Energizer bunny.