The Toronto Open took place this weekend in Toronto. The competition was a success with lots of fun had by most. Congratulations to all the winners, including Justin Jaffray who set the NR for 2x2 average, and Harris Chan for setting the NR for One Handed Single at 14.78 and average at 17.83. He also set the NAR for 3x3 single with 7.33 seconds.

Full results have been sent to the WCA and will be available as soon as they post the data. They will be available here.

Many thanks, as always, to our volunteers and cubers that jumped in to scramble or judge when needed. It is a group effort to pull these off. Thank you. We had about 100 competitors in total, with 92 competitors in the 3x3 event itself.

The next competition in Toronto will most likely be in either March or April. Keep your eye on this site for news.

Today we are announcing the next Toronto area speedcubing competition, hosted by canadianCUBING. The Toronto Open, Winter 2010 will take place on Saturday January 30, 2010 at the Seneca Residence and Conference Center. For complete details, including registration, please visit the information page.

Just a reminder, the weather in Toronto is unpredictable at the best of times. We have experienced a huge snow storm the day of the competition in the past. Unless the army has to be called in again, we will be there and the competition will happen. But we encourage you to use your best discretion, as safety should come first.

We hope to see you all there.

The Canadian Open 2009 took place this weekend at the Ontario Science Centre. It marked the first two day competition canadianCUBING had done, and all in all, things went pretty well.

Harris Chan won the event with an amazing average of 11.11 seconds in the final, setting the North American record. He also broke and then tied the National Record for single solves with 9.16 seconds in the same round. Eric Limeback came second with a 12.53 average and Derrick Eide finished third with a 12.99 seconds average.

To see the rough results of the competition before the WCA posts them tomorrow night, you can click here to download a ZIP file of PDF files from the results book. These are just rough, and some WCA IDs and names will be touched up. We will have lots of pictures up soon.

Many thanks to Kroeger, The Ontario Science Centre, Cubetech, all the volunteers, and all the cubers that helped to make both days run virtually on time. The weekend was a lot of fun. Next up for canadianCUBING is the World Championships in Germany this October. Once we are back, we will then start to think about our next Ontario event.

The Vancouver Open, 2009 competition happened yesterday in Burnaby, BC. The competition made for a long day, but everyone seemed to have a good time. Ibrahim Vajgel-Shedid won the competition with an average of 13.89 seconds in the final round of the 3x3x3 event. History was made, as two females finished out the top three in the event, with Deseree Aune coming in second with an average of 13.91 and Sarah Strong came third with an average of 15.70 seconds.

Several National Records were broken for Canada, mostly by Ibrahim, who very clearly dominiated the competition and became the clear cut recipient of the title of fastest big cube cuber in Canada. He set NRs for 5x5, 6x6, and 7x7 with times that won’t be easily broken.

Other notable achievements were made by Justin Jaffray who broke his own NR for 2x2 average, with an average of 3.91 seconds. Sarah Strong and Deseree Aune each hit a 10 second 3x3 solve, and Ibrahim hit a sub 10 in the 3x3. And finally, Forte Shinko broke the NR for the Square-1 average with a time of 25.20 seconds.

Congratulations to all the winners. It was amazing to see some of the progress made by many of the Vancouver cubers. Many thanks to our volunteers who helped make the competition run as well as it did. Special thanks to Dana Spiller for her amazing data entry skills. Without her, the competition would have taken much longer.

Results will be posted soon. The link can be found under the Results link for the Vancouver Open, 2009 section on the Events page. Next up for canadianCUBING is the Canadian Open next weekend in Toronto.

In one of the more unusual variants to speedsolving, Vancouver-based cubers Vince Yim and Hong Chen are taking their love of speedsolving to new extremes.

With the cooperation of Canadian Blood Services, members of the Vancouver canadianCUBING community will be at Canadian Blood Services (4750 Oak Street, Vancouver) donating blood this Saturday (August 29th at 2:30) while doing one-handed solves to raise awareness of the need for blood donors and to promote the upcoming Vancouver Open, happening in September 12, 2009.

Vince and Hong plan to be donating and solving along with fellow cubers Brian Pamandanan, Nicholas Leung, and Sarah Strong, who will be visiting from Toronto.

For anyone interested in donating blood, please go to Canadian Blood Services’ website to see their donor guidelines. Donor candidates must be over the age of 17 and in good health.