The adventures of Andrea Moda Formula kept everyone amused once again with the team not having any engines because of legal actions and flight delays. The result was that the team borrowed one Judd from Brabham and Roberto Moreno completed a total of four laps before his car broke down. Perry McCarthy did not even get to run. Fondmetal finally finished the first of the new GR02 chassis which Gabriele Tarquini used.

Nigel Mansell, the winner of five of the six races to that point, seemed to be a man under stress in Canada and rumours suggested that this was because the Williams team was deep in negotiation with Alain Prost, who was sitting out the year, having been dumped late in 1991 by Ferrari.

This explained the fact that for the first time in quite a while Ayrton Senna was in pole position again. The McLaren-Honda driver was just ahead of Riccardo Patrese's Williams, while Mansell was third. Gerhard Berger was fourth in the second McLaren while Michael Schumacher was fifth in his Benetton. Then came Johnny Herbert in the promising Lotus 107, Martin Brundle's Benetton, the Ferraris of Jean Alési and Ivan Capelli and Mika Häkkinen in the second Lotus. Ukyo Katayama was a promising 11th in his Venturi Larrousse.

At the start Senna held the lead but Mansell got ahead of Patrese and the Italian was left at the head of a train consisting of Berger, Schumacher, Brundle, Herbert, Häkkinen, Alési, Karl Wendlinger (March-Ilmor) and Capelli. The order would not change for 14 laps. Further back the Venturi-Larrousse challenge was wiped out when Bertrand Gachot ran into the back of his team mate Katayama. Gachot would later be black-flagged and ordered back to the pits for a push-start after a second accident.

On lap 15 Mansell made a bid for the lead at the final chicane. He was travelling too fast and overshot the corner, bouncing over the kerb and landing on its front wing in the sandtrap. Mansell then spun in front of Senna. Patrese hesitated while trying to go around his errant team mate and he lost a place to Berger and so McLaren was suddenly running 1-2 at the front. Mansell had done nothing to help his cause with the men at Williams-Renault. Having made a complete mess of his race, Mansell then compounded his idiocy by abusing McLaren boss Ron Dennis and then turned his anger on the press who turned up to ask him questions. The stewards would not listen.

While Mansell was going through this theatrical performance in the paddock, Capelli smashed his Ferrari up badly when something broke on the car.

On lap 38 Senna slowed with a gearbox problem. He was out. Berger was left in the lead with Patrese second under pressure from Schumacher and Martin Brundle. Martin then overtook Michael while they were in traffic. Patrese and Brundle then both retired with broken gearboxes and so Schumacher inherited second with Alési third, Wendlinger fourth in the March, Katayama's Venturi-Larrousse fifth and Andrea de Cesaris (Tyrrell) sixth. Before the end of the race Katayama went out with engine failure which allowed Érik Comas to take sixth place, the point he scored moving Ligier ahead of Larrousse in the battle to stay out of pre-qualifying.