The zany and entertaining sport of wife carrying made its much-anticipated comeback at the this year's Lakeland Country Fair in Lac La Biche held over the July 12 weekend.
The Alberta Wife Carrying Championship was one of the events at this year’s fair that also included a horticultural bench show, a rodeo, and a children’s festival.
The second-ever wife carrying contest to be held in Lac La Biche played out on Saturday on a specially-created course of obstacles and water holes on the Lac La Biche Agricultural Society grounds.
As the name sounds, carriers hoisted their partners onto their backs before proceeding to race through a 270-yard course comprised of three dry obstacles and one wet obstacle-without stopping or dropping their partner.
Winners get beer and cash
This year's races featured 13 teams competing in seven heats with the last heat, comprised of Vanessa Muz and Derek Daoust, competing solo. The top three teams made it to the winners' podium, with the top place team – returning competitors from Edmonton Joel and Alysha Jackson – winning Alysha's weight in beer and three times her weight in cash. The second and third place teams –Lac La Biche's Jamie Toutant and Corbin Ockerman of Elk Point, and Caleb Thompson and Julia Schaub – winning smaller portions of beer and cash.
Last year, Lac La Biche County had the distinction of being the only location in Canada where people could come to watch a sanctioned wife-carrying event. That event drew competitors from from near and far – near being race winners Reece Kingdon and Cora Cummings of Hylo, and far being Chris and Phillipa Bowman, who were visiting the area from Queensland, Australia.
The sport of wife-carrying is an international event. A North America contest is held each year in Maine, with the winners eligible to compete at the World Wife Carrying Championships in Finland. The most recent world champs are a husband and wife team from Lithuania.