Okay, on with the first team. Brian and Cynthia Boyd are two married cops who live in Winnipeg. Good to see another team from the west. I was worried that there would be too much focus on the Greater Southern Ontario area, although there already is. These married couple met while serving in the Canadian Armed Forces and then both became police officers in Winnipeg. They don't work together (I think there's some kind of policy against that). They both say they are small town folks but Winnipeg's not a small town. Norway House is a small town, Didsbury is a small town, not Winnipeg. Anyway, he's afraid of fire (good fear, fire bad when it gets out of control) and she's afraid of ladders (that one I don't understand unless it's the climbing of ladders or just ladders in general). Good to see an older team, he's 46 and she's 41 but again, according to Gord and I, that's still young. Some of the younger teams may not see these guys as a threat but couples who have been married so long — almost 20 years — have a strength other teams don't. And since they are cops in a season with other law enforcement folks, an alliance will be very helpful to them. Watch out for that and don't count these folks out.
That's it for the teams. There are 12 in all, look to be good teams who could play well off each other. But I'm disappointed in the fact that half the teams come from the same profession: law enforcement. That's an instant alliance development there. Also, there is a concentration of teams from Southern Ontario area. In all there are only three teams from the West (two from the Vancouver area), one team from Quebec and only two teams from the Maritimes. I know the Sweeney brothers were born in Nova Scotia but they do live and study in Toronto. And I believe they will stay in Toronto once their schooling is done. Finally, and I say this every season, as an indigenous person, I'm disappointed in the lack of indigenous teams on the race, at least those who identify as one. (Like me, a team could be indigenous and not look it but no one identifies that way in their bio). We had one Metis racer in Season 1 but Pierre mostly identified with the cowboy side of his life. To be fair, they were eliminated too early for him to mention his Metis identity. It's just that this race is to celebrate all that is Canada and they've done a great job representing various geographical parts of Canada, the LGBT community (especially last season with three teams and this year with a transgendered person), people of colour and immigrants. But Canada's First Peoples aren't well represented in the team side of the race in the first three season. This is true of the US version Amazing Race.
That's my soapbox moment. Look forward to how all these teams do on the race. If you have a fav team so far, don't be afraid to comment. Any other comments, please go ahead. After the first episode, we'll have our written recaps and this year our video recaps will be shot in a bar as we drink beer. Also, we'll have a fan fav from Season 2 as for our Ex-Racer commentator. Also, look for our pre-race interview with Jon Montgomery again. Spoiler alert: one of the major topics of discussion will be beer. See you soon.