Michael Linklater and his son Amari Linklater made it through the most scrappy leg of The Amazing Race Canada Season 10 on CTV, but unfortunately they weren’t quick enough to beat the remaining teams, being eliminated from the race this week. The father-son team from Saskatchewan, who wanted to represent their Indigenous ancestry and heritage on the Canadian reality show, had an emotional end to the competition, with Michael breaking down into tears.
“When [host Jon Montgomery] asked how proud I was of Amari, that’s where I couldn’t contain my emotion anymore,” Michael told Yahoo Canada. “Thinking about how wonderful of a young man he is and how proud I was of who he’s become, from what he’s had to overcome in terms of our lives and his experiences, and … for his character to shine through that entire experience, was very meaningful to me.”
Amari added that he was “exhausted” by the time the race ended for the team.
“It was a long last two legs there, but overall I was really happy and I was really proud of how far we made it, and how we enjoyed ourselves the entire time,” he said.
Michael and Amari are the first Indigenous father-son duo on Amazing Race Canada. Michael is an ex-professional basketball player, previously ranking first in Canada and sixth worldwide, and Amari is following in his father’s footsteps. He’s a college-level basketball player in Alberta who has played for Saskatchewan’s U19 team at the North American Indigenous Games.
While the duo proved to have a strong bond and excelled in teamwork, they couldn’t completely get away from being wrapped up in some of the Amazing Race Canada drama.
Most notably that includes the challenge at Stade Saputo in Montreal, Que., where the racers had to look through the nearly 20,000 seats to find two matching tokens. The first three teams that found two matching tokens got seats on the first train to Cornwall, Ont.
The challenge caused a bit of a frenzy when teams had two tokens that didn’t match, starting a debate about whether they should trade between the teams.
“It was a social challenge, so they really were trying to get us to work with one another, … and we realized that pretty early,” Amari explained. “Some of the other teams didn’t really recognize that as early as we did. So I think that’s where some of the drama started.”
“The [team] that actually had [no tokens] was the one that had the most bargaining power, because if everybody had two tokens, they kind of shot themselves in the foot,” Michael added.
“We found it hilarious that this is what the production team wanted and we found it funny that the whole intent of that game is to create drama, and the whole intent of that is to make good TV, and you want to see people upset and that’s why it was put in there. … We found it even more funny that people didn’t clue into it.”
A significant setback for Michael and Amari was during the Detour, where the racers had to choose between “Spend Some Coins,” a math challenge to add up coins to buy haggis, or “Gird your Loins,” a challenge of memorizing how to fold tartan fabric into a kilt. The father-son team initially picked “Gird Your Loins,” but switched midway through after they misplaced the pin necessary to secure the kilt.
“We were kind of shying away from the coin, just because we were a little bit worried about our math skills,” Amari said, reflecting on the Detour challenges. “Looking back we probably should have stayed there, but seeing some of the other teams at the [Spend Some Coins], we probably should have went and joined them, and got some help from them.”
“We’ve always kept a positive attitude,” Michael added. “You just have to stay focused because I think that’s where teams get themselves into trouble, is when they start focusing elsewhere. … You’re losing focus on the task at hand, which is what is most important.”
“I have to give all the credit to my son. He is the one that got us through that challenge, because I was zero help to him in that, because my brain, for whatever reason, was just shut off.”
Episode 8 of this season of Amazing Race Canada continued the evolution of tensions between The Traitors Canada stars Kevin Martin and Gurleen Maan, and some of the other teams, primarily twins Lauren and Nicole Peters in this week’s episode. While Martin and Maan have evaluated possible sabotage throughout the game, Michael stressed that it’s well within the rules to race that way and to use it as their strategy.
“I never took anything personal,” Michael highlighted. “Our strategy helped them, because we literally gave them the answer on more than two occasions. And the same thing with the wrestlers [Taylor McPherson and Katie Mulkay], who won that leg, we gave them the token to get on that first bus. So to know that we’ve helped I think almost all of the teams that are still in it, it feels good.”
“That’s the message we want Canadians to take away from this is, it doesn’t take much to help one another, and I think our society would be a much better place if we just took the time to help one another.”
