As usual I am not very happy with the result of the WLM evaluations (Maybe they should take into account the community by selecting juries among commons users and not clubs or photographers of interredicha quality who don't know the criteria of our community). I remember having stopped participating in WLM Venezuela since the winners were selected with Facebook likes also the best photographer in commons of Venezuela withdrew from commons due to this problem (User:Paolostefano1412). In the case of Canada, I don't know how the photographs were evaluated and it would be very easy to say from my winning position (I won 5 pictures of the top 10) that I agree with the results but no, I think there were many better photos even than the first place that were not selected, It also leaves much to think about the third place that is not even a monument.

Why don't you get in contact with the organizers and ask them to include you in next year's jury? This way you will have a say in how the pictures are evaluated and those other (better, in your view) photographers will have a better chance.

This is exactly what happened with last year's winner in Romania and I believe he made for a very good jury member :)

Anyway, it is already something known, these contests say absolutely nothing, and every year they lose more participation

The more years a country has organized WLM, the harder it is to get diverse monuments into the contest. This in turn makes it harder to use the images on the projects, which is something the grant team looks at when giving you the money to organize.

Some contests then concentrate on having great images, while other concentrate on monuments diversity and the international organizers aim for more abstract targets, as Lily described above. That means that the local contest might not necessarily say anything about your photography skills, but that's OK - there are always other events in our community that you might want to consider participating in.

Former WLM organizer and current critic. :)