MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK:
Amazing Race is awesome,
but now it's setting up cheaper shop in Canada
The Amazing Race has been on TV for 21 seasons and continues to
be the reality TV show of choice in our humble abode, including Sunday night’s
finale in New York City where two gay goat farmers surprisingly claimed the $1
million first-place prize.
The show combines exotic travel, cool challenges, partner
and rival tensions, cab drivers with no sense of direction, superb scenery,
trip rewards to die for, sleep deprivation, jet lag, language barriers, evil
scheming, relationship breakdowns and emotional meltdowns.
Now we learn that CTV is doing a Canadian spinoff. As in
cheaper, dummied-down, no international border crossings. The spin-filled news
release indicates that “The Amazing Race Canada will explore the world within
Canada . . . and is a huge opportunity for racers, viewers and advertisers.”
Well, hold on to your Timmy’s coffee, maple syrup and
lumberjack shirt cuz this is going to be interesting, eh?
What would an Amazing Race Canada look like? Hmmm. Go to Ottawa and find the one senator who works? Find
a winning sports team in Toronto? Find a guy in Calgary who doesn’t own a
pickup with a Wife In Trunk decal on the passenger’s window?
Find a woman in
Edmonton who doesn’t think the Edmonton Mall is one of the Eight Wonders of the
World? Find a free parking spot in Vancouver or five sober males who don’t carry
weapons to firework displays or hockey gatherings? Or find who decided that French would be the second official language in B.C. when only 1.3 per cent speak it?
Go to Regina and find a Pilsner-loving woman who hasn’t
dated a Roughrider or someone who owns a Saskatchewan Wheat Pool hat? Find
someone in Winnipeg who hasn’t danced on a table at a bonspiel or a stranger’s wedding? Find
someone in Quebec City who doesn’t like smokers or French-only business signs, or
is happy being part of Canada?
See if you can run across Prince Edward Island
in 22 minutes and confuse ships by turning the lights in your hotel room on and off
every three minutes?
It is a tad interesting, given that we are the world’s “second
largest country with a wonderful backdrop,” that The Amazing Race has not spent much time here in the past. Why is that?
Perhaps Canadians will have to solve why Don Cherry gets $800,000 a year to
vent on Coach’s Corner while Ron MacLean, who works all year, only gets
$500,000? Or why we buy hotdogs in packages of 12 and buns in packages of
eight? Or why our drive-thru ATMs have Braille lettering?
If you think you've got what it takes, sign up and good luck!
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