Big Brother Canada winner: Respect yourself. Trust yourself.

By John Powell – GlobalTV.com

It took her 69 long days but finally Bayleigh Pelham has her name on the marquee as the winner of Big Brother Canada. Bayleigh’s tour de force performance won over the jury, well, everyone except for that Goose fellow. Still, it was more than enough for Bayleigh to claim the spotlight of her own and become Big Brother Canada’s leading lady.

John Powell: Congratulations on winning Big Brother Canada!

Bayleigh Pelham: Thank you so much!

John Powell: I know that you have only had a hot minute to think about it but do you have any plans for the prize money?

Bayleigh Pelham: I’m going do a lot with it! I am not used to this kind of money and it’s really going to help me out! I really need to set myself up for success for my future. I have a lot of plans for my future and now I can actually start thinking about that in real time. I also really just want to support and help the people that have been supporting and helping me. I’m going to be taking care of my people and or course I’m going to celebrate!

John Powell: Were you shocked by Anthony’s decision last night to take you over Lexus?

Bayleigh Pelham: I wasn’t shocked that he took me. I was shocked about the reason why he chose me. Whether he truly believed I was more beatable than Lexus, I knew that I wasn’t. I was surprised to hear him say that though. I was in the background, rolling my eyes and fully expecting to walk out the door. When he took me I was pleasantly surprised but I also thought that I have a chance of winning and he doesn’t even know that.

John Powell: If you were in his shoes who would you have picked?

Bayleigh Pelham: I would have taken Lexus. I was telling Anthony that I was going to bring him but that’s maybe the one lie I ever told him. He promised me a final two weeks prior to this so I felt like I had to agree to that. My mission and goal in this game was for woman to win and I knew that if faced with a choice I would always choose to sit next to a woman whether I feel like I can beat them or not. I do feel like I would have gotten the votes with Lexus but even if I didn’t that’s a decision that I knew I wouldn’t regret. If I took Anthony I might have regretted it.

John Powell: In your final speech you really sunk Anthony’s game by targeting and making an issue of loyalty. When did you devise that highly successful strategy?

Bayleigh Pelham: I just played this game with true loyalty the entire time. I know that Anthony had lots of loyalty in this game but he was also lying and manipulating a lot. That was something that I wasn’t doing.

When I was comparing our games I knew that that was kind of the direction I needed to go in with the jury to show them that I was more trustworthy.

I was more loyal. Those. Are. Facts.

Unfortunately, I don’t think he could manipulate his way out of that. (laughs)

John Powell: Yours was a very interesting Big Brother Canada journey. We saw you butt heads with Vivek and the Tola but then there was a shift in your game and tone. Was that intentional?

Bayleigh Pelham: No, it was not a conscious thing. It’s very true to who I am. At the beginning of this game I wasn’t fully confident in where I stood in the game, who I was in this game, who everyone was in this game.

I think throughout the game I really learned to trust myself, trust my gut and stuck to who I was, was working for me. I really just zeroed in on that a lot more and kind of stepped into my own. I felt way more confident with the person that I was with the player that I was and developed those relationships where I felt like my voice did matter. In my everyday life, it’s very much like that, very chaotic. (laughs)

John Powell: What alliance that you didn’t know about really shocked you?

Bayleigh Pelham: There was some sort of Directors alliance that Elijah named? (laughs) That one that one shocked me but the Hot Chocolate alliance definitely got the red flags up because I had no idea about that and I was working very closely with members of that alliance so my suspicions were high after Spicy exposed that one.

John Powell: You really put Anthony’s feet to the fire when you confronted him about Hot Chocolate. Did him admitting what he did make you trust him any less?

Bayleigh Pelham: I wouldn’t say it made me trust him any less because that trust for me was already very rocky. I never fully trusted Anthony in this game. It was only until the last two or three days that I felt that he was truly going to bring me to final two. He was telling the truth about that. Otherwise, I knew that he wasn’t telling me the truth about everything.

John Powell: Speaking of number ones who was your real ‘ride or die’?

Bayleigh Pelham: Spicy truly was the person that I wanted to go all the way to the end of the game with. Avery, Spicy and I was our final three. Throughout the game I had to think about which one I wanted to sit next to and I just played so closely with Spicy the whole game. We were on the same page about what we wanted and the moves we had to make. We were the ones convincing Avery to do this and Kayla to do that. I felt that we were partners in this game. She truly was my number one but I trusted Todd much more in the game. When it came down to it again I was going to take a girl and I wanted that girl to be Spicy. She kind went another direction though and I had to let her go.

John Powell: If anything, what do you think was your biggest flaw in the game?

Bayleigh Pelham: I think blindly trusting that the female alliance was as solid as it was. I had no idea that the reason Anthony knew I wanted him out was because Spicy told him that. So right from the beginning I shouldn’t have trusted her as much as I did.

It made me adjust my game completely and that was the best thing for my game in the end. It’s hard for me to have any regrets because I did win but I think just blindly trusting people the way that I naturally do is it’s sometimes a fault.

John Powell: You mentioned Donna going home. Was that the turning point for you in the game?

Bayleigh Pelham: I definitely think Donna leaving was a huge wake-up call for me in that maybe I shouldn’t be aligning so exclusively with certain people. I needed to create other relationships in the game because clearly people don’t have my back as much as I have theirs. If they can do that to Donna, they can do that to me. I needed to make sure I was not playing this game for them anymore. I’m playing for myself. That’s when I really started playing more of an individual game than with the group.

John Powell: What did you learn about yourself and other people by being in the Big Brother house?

Bayleigh Pelham: Oh, my gosh! I learned so much about myself! One, I have much more anxiety than I ever thought! (laughs)

I also learned just how resilient I really am. I mean, I was up against it mentally and physically a lot for this game and I was terrified and very, very stressed and overwhelmed but I still persevered. I still fought very, very hard.

I always knew that I had fight in me but truly you don’t know how resilient you are until you are put in that position. I learned that about myself and in terms of other people? I learned just how conniving they can really be. (laughs) I wanted to believe that people were being truly honest with me because I was being truly honest with them. I learned that you shouldn’t trust everything or everyone.

John Powell: What would you say to future Big Brother Canada houseguests?

Bayleigh Pelham: I would tell them that you need to be exactly who you are. Know who you are. Respect yourself. Trust yourself. Trust that is enough. You do not have to please everybody. The only person you need to please is yourself. When you lay your head on the pillow at night you should be proud of who that person is. Just stand up for something because if you don’t you’ll fall for anything.