Is Vaughan's Albert Tam Canada's Smartest Person?

YorkRegion.com
Nov. 2, 2014
By Adam Martin-Robbins

Heading into the first round of CBC reality show Canada’s Smartest Person, Albert Tam just hoping to avoid embarrassment - instead he outsmarted the competition to advance to the finals, being broadcast Sunday night.

“When the score banners come up at the end of the show, I didn’t want it to be Tova, 20 points, Kiel, 20 points, Roselyn, 15 points, Albert, two points. I just didn’t want to be that guy. Being on a show and being, unofficially, Canada’s 30-second smartest person,” the 25-year-old Woodbridge resident said. “I knew, going in, I was going to try my best at everything and I was kind of blown away at how well I did.”

Tam and his three opponents - Tova Sherman, Kiel Lemmen and Roselyn Kelada-Sedra - had to complete complex challenges that test six areas of intelligence: linguistic, physical, musical, visual, social and logical.

He got off to a good start, winning the first two challenges, which he credits with carrying him to victory.

“The fact I was able to get early success motivated me to be like: ‘OK, I can actually win this thing,’” Tam recalled. “I had like 10 points after the first two challenges and I was like, ‘Holy crap, this is actually possible so I ratcheted it up a bit.’”

For Tam, the hardest challenge was one called twisty tune.

It involves a spinning pipe that has been bent into five nodes, each of which plays a different note, he explained.

A seven-note song is played on the pipe and contestants have to recreate the song, as quickly as possible, using a wand to touch the different nodes on the pipe as it spins.

Touching the wrong area of the pipe or hitting a wrong note gets you a five-second penalty.

“I was terrible at music and never had great fine motor skills - and the test was worth double the points - that was tough,” Tam said.

It wasn’t enough to stop Tam, who handily won the multi-challenge “gauntlet” round, in a head-to-head battle against Kelada-Sedra, to advance to the finals.

Tam says he was a solid C student in elementary school, but then hit his intellectual stride in high school and university once he was able to focus on the subjects he’s most passionate about.

He’s currently working toward an MBA at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo and is doing a co-op placement at Canada’s National Ballet School.

His journey to Canada’s Smartest Person began on a Friday night after a long day at the office followed by a long commute home from Toronto.

He was watching TV when a commercial for the show aired.

“I was like Canada’s Smartest Person? I don’t think Canadians are allowed to be that arrogant? Are we allowed to be that arrogant?” Tam said. “I ended up pulling up the website and reading about (it) and I thought, ‘Hey this actually sounds pretty cool.” Because what it ends up doing is it’s testing aptitude, more than anything, in my opinion... It really subverts the idea that trivia and IQ are the way that we identify who is smart and who is not.”

At about 9:30 p.m., Tam started filling out the online application form and made “a super grainy video” to upload to YouTube.

“Next thing you know, they called me saying they liked my application,” he recalled.

After five rigorous rounds of casting, Tam landed a spot on the show.

Winning the first round of the competition earned him a berth in the finals with seven other competitors.

Since the show’s final episode doesn’t air until Sunday (Nov. 23) Tam isn’t allowed to reveal whether or not he can claim the title of Canada’s Smartest Person.

Regardless, he says, taking part in the show was an enlightening experience.

“When I signed up for it, I did it cuz hey it looked like fun and also I thought it was an opportunity to learn a bit about myself; see what I’m good at and what I’m not so good at. And see how I am under significant pressure,” he said. “I’ve come out of this whole experience with a lot more confidence about my own skill set and how I present myself.”

Of course, it’s also given his friends and family more material to use in teasing him.

“I get a lot of razzing,” Tam said. “If I can’t do something, I have friends who are like, ‘Come on Albert, you’re one of Canada’s smartest people and you can’t open this jar?’”

To find out more about the show, visit cbc.ca/smartestperson.