Miss Canada was a scholarship competition for young women in Canada. It was founded in Hamilton in 1946.
The first broadcast of the Miss Canada pageant aired in 1963 on CTV with news anchors Peter Jennings and Baden Langton hosting. Jennings remained as solo host until 1966. American-born Jim Perry hosted the pageant from 1967 until 1990. Dominique Dufour, the winner of the Miss Canada Pageant in 1981, co-hosted with Perry from 1982 until 1990. The final pageant, airing in late-1991, was hosted by Peter Feniak and Liz Grogan.
The show was popular in 1970s, with up to 5 million viewers, but declined in the 1980s, until it was cancelled. Producers of the show cited mounting production costs, as the reason for cancellation, along with the absence of host Jim Perry, who went into semi-retirement after the 1991 pageant. The last winner was Miss Canada 1992 Nicole Dunsdon from British Columbia.
Winnifred Blair of Saint John, New Brunswick was proclaimed the first Miss Canada on 11 February 1923 at an earlier, unrelated competition during the Montreal Winter Carnival. The runner-up in that event was Muriel Harper of Winnipeg, Manitoba.
The Miss Canada Pageant obtained the franchise for the Miss Universe Pageant in 1978, when that year's first runner-up, Andrea Leslie Eng, competed internationally. From 1979 to the final contest, the winners of Miss Canada went on to compete. Miss Canada 1982, Karen Baldwin, being the only Miss Canada to also win Miss Universe. Since 2003, Canada's representative to Miss Universe has been chosen by the Miss Universe Canada pageant.
Read more about Miss Canada: Winners
Famous quotes containing the word canada:
“Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dantes scheme, Limbo is to Hell.”
—Irving Layton (b. 1912)