Alain and Audrey share their thoughts about being eliminated from The Amazing Race Canada

And then there were none!

The second and only remaining Montreal-based team on CTV’s TheAmazing Race Canada has been eliminated. Super couple Alain Chanoine and Audrey Tousignant-Maurice from the South Shore saw their dream of winning it all end with a last place finish  in picturesque Prince Edward Island.

It was a detour (a decision between two tasks, each with its own pros and cons) requiring them to strip a bin full of mussels that did them in. “Those mussels smelled pretty disgusting,” said Audrey, who joined me by telephone with Alain the morning after the telecast. Added  Alain: “The way we looked it is a good thing we did not need to race to a taxi.”

Alain and Audrey were  overtaken by Ryan and Rob, who also had to complete a Speed Bump which involved finding moonshine bottles buried in a steaming pile of horse manure. Ryan and Rob have survived being bounced twice already thanks to finding out they were part of non-elimination rounds when they arrived at the pit stop dead last.  This included the previous episode in Montreal. “We thought P.E.I. was going to be the non-elimination round,” said Alain. “We were not aware , of course, that this had occurred in Montreal.”

Alain (L) and Audrey (R) learn they are the seventh team eliminated when they join host Jon Montgomery at the mat in Rustico, Prince Edward Island.

Now that their adventure is over,  Alain and Audrey no longer have to keep their fate secret with friends, family and fans. Two episodes earlier, in Paris. Alain proposed marriage and Audrey accepted. “That was taped four months ago,” said Alain. “So for all of that time I had to still keep calling Audrey my girlfriend. Now I can call her my fiancée."

There is no question that any couple’s compatibility is tested in a competition like this whereby they are together 24/7 and according to show rules unable to communicate with anyone from the outside world,  including family. At the hotels radios, TVs and phones are removed. No newspapers are accessible. Guards are placed in front of each door to ensure you do not leave the premises. No contact is permitted between teams. “It is like being incarcerated,” Alain told me in an earlier talk. “We loved this entire experience. We’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

Alain the stuntman and Audrey the real estate agent will likely walk down the aisle next spring.  Just like last year's Montreal couple, physicians Brett Burstein and Holly Agostino, we clearly have a rock solid head over heals in love two some here. And yes, they have spent time with Brett and Holly.

 “I’m sad this experience is over,” said Audrey. “But we’re gonna start our life together and that’s absolutely wonderful.”  

The four remaining teams competing for the biggest grand prize in Canadian television history ($250,000, two Chevrolet Silverado trucks, free gasoline for life from Petro Canada and the ability to fly for free anywhere for a year with Air Canada in business class)  are Mickey and Pete, best friends from Muskoka, Ont; Sukhi and Jinder, siblings, from Terrace, B.C.;  Natalie and Meaghan,  Canadian Olympic women’s hockey team players from Scarborough, Ont. and Calgary; and Ryan and Rob, co-workers from Vancouver, B.C.

Twin brothers Pierre and Michel Forget from Terrebonne were eliminated a few weeks ago. There was no love lost between them and Alain and Audrey and they hardly became friends. The twins claim that they offered the couple a chance to work together early on in the show and never got a proper response. Audrey and Alain said they considered the twins to be quite unfamiliar with what the show is all about and for that reason they wanted them to succeed. “We were a strong team and they wanted us out,”  said Alain. “That was a compliment.”

 

Next week it is  semi-final time (Tuesday, Sept. 16 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CTV and CTV GO) as ther teams race to New Brunswick to fight for a spot in the finale. It’s an uphill battle as racers claw their way through a gruelling Roadblock. Teams face a blizzard of a time at an Acadian birthday party, but a complicated coastal Detour leaves them desperately waving a white flag.

Below is a link to episode 8 of the series, my personal favorite from Paris, France, when Alain proposed to Audrey near the end and the twins were eliminated.

The Forget twins are eliminated from The Amazing Race Canada

Twin brothers Pierre and Michel Forget from North Shore Terrebonne have become the sixth team eliminated on CTV’s  The Amazing Race Canada and they did not part generating any warm feelings with the only other Montreal team,  the newly engaged couple of  Alain Chanoine and Audrey Tousignant-Maurice.

The August 26 episode saw the teams travel to Paris, France. Starting this eighth  leg in second place, the twins made a tenuous pact at the Bayeux Train Station with Alain and Audrey as fellow Quebecers to not U-Turn (forcing one team to complete both ends of a detour) each other.

From the Pit Start in the medieval town of Bayeux in Normandy, teams made their way by train to Paris. Once there they found their first clue at the iconic monument Arc de Triomphe, which sent them to the little-known Place du Canada, where they chose one of the two Detours, either dressmaking or finding and serving three dishes for patrons waiting in a café in the Marais District. Teams then went to Centre Pompidou and found the Double U-Turn board, where the twins broke their promise and sent Audrey and Alain back to complete the café challenge.

 “I believe their strategy was to kick us out of the race,”  Pierre told me. “Their alliances had collapsed so they tried to save their backs by teaming up with us. We felt the only way to deal with liars and hypocrites is to lie to them as well.  Unfortunately it did not work out the way we planned.”

It was at the Roadblock where the playing field levelled, however, as each team struggled recreating artist Bastek’s creation using Mentos candies. In the end it was Pierre and Michel who would arrive last at the Pit Stop, located on the bank of the Seine, near the breath-taking Notre Dame Cathedral. “This is not  The Amazing Help Canada,” said Michel. “Yet the other teams were helping each other. The challenge looked easy, but it was not.”

 

Pierre and Michel get the bad news.

With their sixth overall first-place win, Canadian Olympic women’s hockey team players Meaghan and Natalie earned a trip on Air Canada’s new Premium rouge service to any of their European destinations, and $3,000 on their Scotiabank Gold American Express card.

Were Audrey and Alain steamed with the twins? They had other things on their mind as Alain dropped to his knees and proposed marriage. “I wish them a happy life together,” said Pierre. “We do not expect to be invited to the wedding. How we acted does not  make us bad people. We reacted to a threat. They were one of the strongest teams.”

The episode will encore  on CTV and CTV GO (Saturday, Aug. 30 at 8 p.m. ET/PT and Sunday, Aug. 31 at 5 p.m. ET/PT – and is also now available on demand at CTV GO. All-new episodes air Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CTV and CTV GO.

The race next comes home to Canada as teams fly to Montreal (Tuesday, Sept. 2 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CTV and CTV GO) where the competition kicks into high gear. A cheesy Detour causes confusion and queasiness, and teams are challenged to bare it all.

Holly and Brett from The Amazing Race Canada: the inside story

It has been almost two months now since  married Montreal pediatrians Brett Burstein and Holly Agostino were eliminated in the seventh leg of CTV’s The Amazing Race Canada. Depicted by the show as villains from the get go,  the couple sat down with The Suburban  at the Montreal Children’s  Hospital during a break from Brett’s shift in the emergency room and Holly doing rounds to share their thoughts and provide some insight into some of the behind the scenes mysteries viewers are not privy to.

Here I am with the "Amazing" couple.

CTV’s first-ever season of  The Amazing Race Canada was a ratings success, attracting more  3.6 million viewers for the final episode in which the father and son team of Tim Sr. and Tim Jr.  took home the $250,000 grand prize.   Brett, 33, and Holly, 32, met 10 years ago at McGill Medical School. He is from Toronto, but came here to do his undergraduate work and never left; she  was raised in West Island Pointe Claire.

The couple laugh at how the camera portrayed them right up until their elimination in  Iqaluit, Nunavut: bickering, hiding maps in an airport store and Holly suffering numerous meltdowns. “We were unfairly portrayed,” said Brett. “The storyline was written before we even showed up. We were definitely  brought there to be rooted against.” 

Added Holly: “It definitely was tough to watch,” said Holly. “We watched each episode live and 20 family and friends around the TV with us.   Going through the race, I know that I had many moments where I was really on the verge of fully losing it, but in the end we still succeeded.  So, I had left the race really feeling that, you know, we had done our best and we had done a good job.  So, to see it edited, you know, I mean I did have those breakdowns.  It’s true, but there was a lot of effort that went into it before that happened, so yeah, it’s a bit tough to watch, but I mean, overall we’re still, you know, very happy with the show and happy we had the chance to participate.”

Added Brett: “I think one thing that maybe people don’t know through the editing process is how important for us the race was to do, to be able to contribute  charitably back to our hospital that has already given us so much,” said Brett. “ If we won the Amazing Race Canada, it would not have even cut  our educational debt in half.We were committed to giving 25 percent of the prize to the hospital.  We love where we work and we love that they sort of supported us the whole time.”

One of the more memorable challenges saw the teams trying to find  toys in  six-feet-deep lentil bins.  “ I can’t do it,”   Holly said in the episode. “I have no more strength in my legs. I’m spent Brett . . . I’m going on one hour sleep. I can’t dig in this pit anymore.”

With more than two hours and 20 minutes having passed since Holly and Brett arrived at the lentil challenge, they made the decision to incur a two-hour penalty and not complete the challenge.   “ For me, I know that emotionally the game actually almost became easier after the lentil bin,” said Holly.

Working with the hospital’s Foundation, Brett and Holly started a blog called  Amazingcause.com which also allowed people to make donations. In the end, $21,000 was collected.

So what is it like behind the scenes of the show?  They applied to become competitors last February and were only notified they made it two weeks before departure after first submitting a video, doing a screen test and undergoing medical and psychological evaluations. Since nobody was to know where they were going, the cover story was a five week trip to China. A week prior to filming,  they were literally cut off from the world as  training camp began. They were not allowed to use any kind of phones.  The teams could not mix socially. When they stayed at hotels, the rooms were stripped of phones, televisions, radios and even things to read. A guard was posted outside their door and they could have one hour a day of exercise in solitude. They could not even use a washing machine, instead ringing clothing out in the hotel sink. “It really was like being in prison,” Holly laughed. “But when we were filming, people figured out this was The Amazing Race Canada. Our cover story was the show was called The Marathon, but through social media our pictures were all over the place before the program even aired.”

Each team had a camera and sound operator following them, lugging 50 pounds of equipment. “We always had to make sure they kept up to us,” Holly said. “And when we arrived at the airport, if there were not four available seats on the plane we could not go.”

Once home, the couple had to keep quiet about the outcome or face a $1 million fine.

After being eliminated from the race, Brett and Holly remained with the group and actually did a dry run of the final leg in Toronto to assist production with the timing of the episode.

The couple presently reside downtown near the hospital. Holly attended Northview Elementary School  and Lindsay Place High, moving on to John Abbott College and then McGill. Her dad Andrew is a high school teacher on the South Shore while mom Louise works with special needs children. She has a sister, Erin, 28,  an actress who appeared on the CBC sitcome 18 to Life.

Brett says when he was 11 years old he decided that one day he wanted  to become a pediatric cardiologist. He did in fact complete his PhD in cardiology, but says his passion remains in the emergency room. Holly focuses her attention on adolescent medicine.

Growing up in the Toronto neighbourhood of North York, seven years ago Brett and his younger brother participated in a Birthright Israel trip. “It was an incredible  experience I will never forget,” he said.   

Brett and Holly said quite directly that they have remained good friends with all of the teams, except exercise gurus Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod. “We visited the Tims in Halifax,”  said Brett. “Most of them have come to Montreal already and stayed with us.”

Oddly enough, the couple do not find themselves being  recognized  a lot in Montreal. “In Toronto, yes,” said Brett. “And when we went to see the Tims in Halifax, we were all mobbed.”

You can see my video interview with them here.