Bachelor Canada Tim Warmels had never seen show; was ready to try something new

TORONTO – Tim Warmels had never seen an episode of “The Bachelor Canada” before he signed on to be its resident romance-seeker.

But the tech entrepreneur — who admitted he “doesn’t watch a lot of TV” — was willing to try anything to find love.

“It’s being 28 and being single. That’s what it is,” Warmels said. “It’s having a choice in front of you to do exactly what you’ve been doing for the last six years, or you can try something very, very different for the next two months.”

And he has no regrets. “The Bachelor Canada” premieres Thursday on City, and although Warmels won’t share any spoilers, he believes he made the right choice.

Warmels grew up in Campbellville, Ont., where he worked on horse ranches in the summer and played hockey five days a week. After graduating from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, he moved to Toronto and worked on Bay Street before launching his own tech company.

He wound up on the second season of “The Bachelor Canada” in an unusual way. Rather than auditioning, a friend recommended him to a producer earlier this year. Two weeks later, he had a contract in hand.

Asked what he was looking for in a girlfriend at the start of filming, Warmels said he preferred to keep an open mind.

“I’m always really surprised at what about a person will attract me to them,” he said. “Whether you like sports, or whether you like art, or whether you like doing this with your weekends or that with your weekends — I’m always surprised at how much those things don’t matter.”

Competing for Warmels’s heart are 25 bachelorettes like April, a 30-year-old esthetician from Victoria, who prefers the term “vagician,” and Jennifer, a 26-year-old “joyologist” from Montreal.

Asked which dates will be the most entertaining to watch, Warmels was tight-lipped.

“That is absolutely something you’ll have to watch to find out,” he said. “They really do a good job at trying to find lots of very different people because you never really know what’s going to get a guy.”

His parents are “very traditional” people who were apprehensive at first about him being on the show, he said.

“They were worried about me. They love me, and they just wanted the best for me,” he said. “It was something so new and so scary to them. When they saw me partway through the process they knew I was going to be OK. This was something that was going to be positive for me.”

Now, he plans to watch the show with his mom.

“I’ll probably have to tell her to cover her eyes at some points,” he said, laughing.

He said “there’s no way” he could prepare for the fame and scrutiny that being on the show will bring. But he expects his life will return to normal in a few months.

“I think the best you can do is not really care about how it goes. If it goes great, then great. If it doesn’t, then you know yourself, and have to be happy with the decisions you made on a personal level,” he said.

In his spare time, his interests range from building custom furniture to writing his blog timwarmels.wordpress.com, where he unpacks scientific studies that relate to finding happiness and efficiency. Although a country boy at heart, he said he loves the culture of Toronto.

“The energy of the city is fantastic. I love seeing live music,” he said. “On the weekends, you can probably find me sitting in some weird cafe, drinking coffee and reading.”