After ten long, twisted, weeks there is finally a winner for Big Brother Canada Season 3. And how.

Of course, this being reality television the finale was a two hour show the first ten minutes alone dedicated to recapping the season thus far with dramatic voice overs from the three remaining HGs. And it wasn’t until the last 5 minutes that anything of real importance was revealed.

Well, I shouldn’t say of any importance. We did get down to the business of declaring a final in a fairly timely fashion.

The past week we had the possibility for a Big Brother first, three women in the final three. I was hoping against hope that when Sarah won HOH and Ashleigh won the Power of Veto that we would see it happen. In one of the strongest female dominated seasons of the show that I’ve seen in North America if there ever was going to be a time it would have been now.

And then Godfrey starting talking… and talking… and talked his way into the final three. How on earth Godfrey managed to save his ass so many times I’ll never know. He doesn’t seem that adept at the long term manipulation. Or even the short term one. Week after week we saw him talk about his clever strategy and the reactions of all the HGs totally not buying it. So how did it always seem to work? Well, I think Godfrey owes a lot of him being safe not to his own game play but just of timing and the opposing play of others.

Basically… he got lucky. Really, really, REALLY lucky.

That is, until the final three.

Then we saw the sleeping giant wake up. And boy did he ever.

As always the final HOH is done in a three part competition. Sadly they’ve become rather routine on the US shows, and hardly have any creativity to them at all any more. So much so that the HGs often know which part they need to win and which they can throw.

Not so in Canada, because the real winner (as always) was the stellar production team. The first part of the final HOH was INTENSE. They staged the apocalypse in the backyard. Fires, falling ashes, earthquakes, steam, explosions… I was basically waiting for them to say that the final HOH was sponsored by the new film San Andreas. And when I say intense, I mean they actually had to wear respirators to protect their lungs.

The object of the game was to not let a giant silo full of sand empty despite the hole in the bottom. They were each given a bucket and had to run up and down stairs putting the sand back in. And the closer they came to the bottom the faster the sand would run. After Sarah was eliminated first Ashleigh and Godfrey went on for over two hours before Ashleigh finally called it quits.

And thus Godfrey won the first part.

Next up Sarah and Ashleigh had to connect HGs with clues on a giant cog. A style of competition we’ve seen before, but with a (TWISTOS) twist in that the names were all on a giant cog that had to be pushed by the gear they were standing on to give them access to the top. I didn’t explain that well, but suffice it to say that it was hard. Sarah got overwhelmed and started to panic fairly quickly, as we’ve seen her do all season long. The amount of times I took notes that said “Sarah cries” would astound you. Even worse is the fact that she often followed it up by some really damaging self talk. I really hope that she can look back at the footage and learn to be more compassionate with herself.

Ashleigh on the other hand nailed it. 4 minutes 55 seconds. BOOM! Ashleigh wins the HOH part two.

So at that point Sarah had to rely on talking herself into the final. She cornered Godfrey in the pantry and went on and on about how popular Ashleigh was, and how she’d won so many competitions lately. Basically telling him that he’d have no chance against her. Though, let’s be honest, did he have a chance against anyone? The man slept through the first half of the game and didn’t win a thing until the end! If it weren’t for Canada’s twists and Boss Britt there is just no way he would have gotten that far.

I digress.

Sarah’s tactic with Ashleigh was far more direct… if you cut me I’ll vote for Godfrey.

Yikes.

So we get to the live show and Godfrey faces off against Ashleigh in the final HOH of the season. It was a 7 question round of A/B questions. After which the two were tied. So they went to sudden death… and it was still tied. And then came the tie breaker question… How many hours was Sindy With An S in the house the second time around. Closest without going over won. And poor Ashleigh had the dead right answer, erased it and went over. So Godfrey got lucky one more time.

And then the miraculous happened… he decided to take Sarah.

Why? I have no idea. He had a much better shot with Ashleigh.

Before they were even finished polling half the jury Sarah had won. She even got the vote they decided to throw out from Jordan.

So there you have it… your season three winner is Sarah.

Though I think we all know that the real winner this season has been the Production team. They really pulled off something spectacular this season. Creative, unexpected, and full of smartly sponsored Twists to keep all of Canada involved. Give yourself a pat on the back, Production Team, you deserve it!