Adam Bishop

Adam Bishop
Noted subjects	History, mythology, popular music
Current college	Toronto (2004-2007)
Past colleges	Western Ontario (1999-2004)
High school	John Paul II (1998-1999)
Stats	HDWhite • NAQT

Adam Bishop is the former president of Western Ontario Quiz Bowl and a former member of the Toronto Trivia Club.

Western

He played for John Paul II Secondary School in London, Ontario, in 1998 and 1999. JPII finished second place to Saunders in the 1999 city Reach for the Top championship, and 17th in the 1999 provincial tournament.

In 1999 he joined the Western Ontario club, and led the club to a second place finish against Case Western at Mackenzie Bowell. When the club's founder, David Thorsley, graduated, Adam was elected as the new president, mostly out of apathy on the part of everyone else. Continued apathy, or the perception that he was doing a good job, led him to be unanimously elected president every year until he left Western in 2004.

According to university rules the club had four other executive positions - vice-president, secretary, treasurer, and communications. Adam had originally run for communications upon joining the club in 1999, on the platform of "using the internet frequently", and had received zero votes. The other positions were filled every year, but Adam performed every position himself as a micromanaging dictator. He also raised money for the club by recruiting dozens of new members each year, most of whom never came to practices or tournaments, and by hosting NAQT and TRASH regional tournaments.

Among the jobs which he performed extremely poorly were directing said tournaments hosted at Western, one of which was included on a list of worst tournaments ever by Leo Wolpert, and organizing trips to other tournaments. He went on trips to the yearly MLK/Ann B. Davis tournaments at Michigan, as well as NAQT events at Case Western and Cornell. Western, always a mediocre academic team at best, progressed from no wins at all at MLK in 2000 to a proud winning record of 7-4 in 2004. Thanks to Bridget Ker, the club was always better at ABD and other trash tournaments. Adam won a Canadian Trash Singles tournament in 2003 only because Bridget was sick and did not participate.

In the summer of 2001, after the VETO mirror at Western, Adam and Matt Trudgen lost the Trans-Canada Championship match to Vancouver's VETO winner Peter McCorquodale. Adam and Matt, as well as fellow Quiz Bowl history students Adam Toews and Jonathan Altman, also participated in the Western Ontario History Society Trivia Bowl, which they won in 2001 and 2003.

Toronto

Adam was very tangentially involved in the foundation of the U of T Trivia Club. Luke Chao asked, somewhere on the Internet, if Toronto had a team. Two years later, Adam read the post and replied that there was a small but inactive team there, which Luke subsequently joined and helped organize into its current form.

Adam entered grad school in Toronto in 2004 and also joined the team. He was a member of the winning team at the 2005 Ottawa Hybrid Tournament. Playing by himself, he finished 3rd at the 2005 Ontario Bowl, but won the singles tournament later in the day. He was also a member of the winning team at the 2007 NAQT Canada East Sectionals.

With Toronto teammates Eric Smith and Bobby Hsu he has also participated in random university trivia events. They won the Hart House Trivia Tournament in 2005 and finished second in 2006, and in 2005 they also finished second in a St. Michael's College trivia tournament. Adam occasionally reunites with fellow Western alumni for the VETO summer tournament, for which he lazily writes packets with accidental medieval history themes.

At the 2006 VETO, Adam won the prize for the worst question, a bonus asking teams to complete impossible tasks from music lyrics ("Blow Up the Outside World", etc) which was written as a protest against the tournament's requirement for "action bonuses." His prize was a copy of Simon Cowell's autobiography "I Don't Mean To Be Rude, But...", which is proudly displayed on his bookshelf.

Because of his job, his thesis, and his new baby, he is currently mostly inactive, but played on the winning Toronto A ("Lepers of Jihad") team at the 2008 VETO. He also still shows up occasionally on the Quizbowl IRC channel under the unimaginative name "ambishop", where he adds annoying comments about Canada at every opportunity.