Uploaded October 2020 | Updated September 2026, 3 hours ago

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"Why am I so stupid?"

After six seasons where the title of the "worst" could be argued to be sent to the right person for their respective season (arguably in the cases of Season 4's Ashley and Season 6's Lance), Season 7 takes that and completely throws it out of the window. Shirley, heralding from the island of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, is a driver who learned a long time ago, and because of being in a rural area, never really had to do too much major driving where she could be considered a hazard. However, after her daughter Janis moved to the province's capital in Halifax, Shirley had to start making five-hour drives in order to visit her, which is where her problems started to form. She often appeared confused and struggled to apply any of her abilities around other pedestrians, and had a dangerous habit of stopping when trying to merge onto the highway. Janis brought her to rehab in order to get herself up to date with the rules of the road and to get her out of her dangerous habits.

Her stay in rehab in nearly any other season could've EASILY made her a graduate based on her technical skill alone. She actually PASSED more challenges than she failed, and showed genuine interest in improving as a driver, saying she was "completely fascinated" by the whole concept of driver rehab. However, on the few episodes where she had been shortlisted, she was either blocked from being able to graduate due to a certain challenge she failed, or was outdone by another one of her fellow contestants. The penultimate episode ultimately was what put her in the final three for the running of the title, but after passing the reversing challenge and performing the best out of the three in the MEGA Challenge, she seemed like she was bound to possibly become the final graduate.... atleast that was until her final road test, where her confusion of the roads of Hamilton (such as dual-turn lanes and stopping in pedestrian crosswalks) begins to unravel her. Ultimately, including an incident where she drives down the wrong way in front of a police vehicle AND up a blind hill next to a double yellow line, aswell as stopping on the highway and not going fast enough to merge, she ultimately finished with a final road test that was so disastrous, she ended up committing 26 moving violations (costing a total of $2,860), one of the worst runs up to that point. Unfortunately, as the other two nominees left had only minor incidents during their road tests, Shirley's drive was ultimately the catalyst hat gave her the unwanted title of being "Canada's Worst Driver". However, due to her leaps and bounds of improvement, Andrew convinced Shirley to continue driving and to continue improving.

Shirley would return for the 9th season, showing that she took Andrew's message to heart, continuously getting private lessons with her provincial driving school, as well as getting her husband to help with setting up cones for challenges at her home. Not only did both her (and Janis) felt that she was NOT going to be named the worst, but that she improved so much they felt she'd be one of the first graduates. Ultimately, after passing every challenge in the second episode of the season, she would completely redeem herself from Season 7, and become the second contestant to graduate.