Joshua Williams

**Joshua Williams** was a contestant on Season 3.

## Background

*Retrieved from CBC.ca*

Blessed with an abundance of talent, Joshua has always been both a gifted athlete and a passionate musician. Though he was recruited for football scholarships and recording a perfect score on his PSAT test, he chose to stay in Canada to attend university rather than accept offers from American schools. His heart wasn’t in athletics or the studies he pursued at university, and after dropping out, Josh found himself in conflict with his family, and ultimately homeless. With the support of influential people in his life he was able to turn things around, eventually pursuing his true passion, music, through studies at the famed Berklee College of Music.

Having learned personally the benefit of a helping hand in a young person’s life, Joshua is proud to be a Program Director at the Boy’s and Girl’s Club. He hopes that the kids he works with will be inspired by his participation in the show to know that they can do anything they set their minds to.

Josh’s story of overcoming obstacles to pursue your dreams sounds like a perfect road map to the Canada’s Smartest Person winner’s podium.

## Episode 302

As Joshua entered the stage with his competitors, a clip of him and the other five contestants, Christine Cho, Donna Hartt, Jennifer Martin, Chad "CJ" Studer, and Chris Williams, introducing themselves was shown. In this clip, Joshua stated that this would be an awesome opportunity to prove to the people that he is working with that anything is possible. In the first challenge, the Speed Round, Joshua received an overall percentage score of 72%. As a result, Joshua finished in 2nd place and was awarded 3 overall points.

With the first challenge and the resulting double elimination out of the way, a more elaborate clip presenting Joshua, Donna, Chris, and Jennifer in that order was shown. In this clip, Joshua revealed that he went from getting kicked out of the house to getting accepted into the Berklee College of Music in Boston. In the second challenge, Human Lie Detector, Joshua was the third contestant to ask guest Kardinal Offishall his question about one of his stories. He asked what the name of the venue was where he and Rihanna performed at. Kardinal Offishall replied that it was right along the West Side Highway in New York. Donna and Joshua both got 3 correct answers, but Kardinal Offishall deemed that Joshua's question was better than Donna's question. As a result, Joshua finished in 1st place and was awarded 5 overall points.

In the third challenge, Beat It, Donna and Joshua both got 3 correct answers, but the latter answered faster on average than the former did. As a result, Joshua finished in 1st place and was awarded 5 overall points.

In the fourth challenge, Wobble Words, Joshua dropped his blocks once 53 seconds into the challenge and successfully stacked his word, 'errand', 2 minutes and 3 seconds into the challenge. As a result, Joshua finished in 1st place and was awarded 10 overall points. After the first four challenges, Joshua had received a total of 23 overall points. As a result, he finished in 1st place and was congratulated by Jessi, along with Donna, for qualifying for the Gauntlet.

In the fifth and final challenge, the Gauntlet, Donna struggled at the physical section, which allowed for Joshua to make it all the way to the visual section with a confident lead. Once she got past the physical section, Donna breezed through the logical section and recovered a lot of lost ground against Joshua. Though she was close, Donna never surpassed Joshua at the musical section and he went on to complete the linguistic section. Ultimately, Donna stopped at the musical section as Joshua hit the buzzer, which signalled his victory and his spot in the season finale. After the challenge ended and Joshua was declared the second finalist of the season, Donna and Joshua celebrated onstage with Jessi.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 https://www.cbc.ca/smartestperson/participants/joshua-williams