In the end there was no sense of defeat or loss for Pierre Cadieux – only the thrill he belonged and had fun every step of the way.
“There are no regrets. If you ask me about the entire experience, it was one of the most rewarding and challenging and amazing things I have ever done in my life, and I would race again tomorrow,” said Cadieux.
The 38-year-old Innisfailian was eliminated July 22 after the second leg of the inaugural The Amazing Race Canada. Cadieux and his partner, Airdrie's Jamie Cumberland, were unable to catch up with the other teams after gamely trying to make up a three-hour deficit, which the show's producers attempted to show was caused by an ill-advised stop at a bank machine that forced the Alberta pair to miss a flight from Kelowna to Vancouver.
“It looked like we struggled at the bank machine and it made a difference. We were definitely the only team that went to the bank machine first, but I am telling you I knew where that machine was, and it was on the way to the airport and it took just under two minutes,” said Cadieux. “At the end of the day the bank machine had no bearing on our elimination. Yes, we were tight for that flight but we probably could have made it if there were any seats left. It was completely oversold.”
Nevertheless, missing the flight put the Alberta pair three hours behind the other teams. Cadieux and Cumberland fought back hard and made up two and a half hours but just could not catch up.
“We needed someone else to do really, really poorly and make a crucial mistake. They made some but nothing that put them back by hours,” said Cadieux. “At the end of the day it was the three-hour deficit. It is hard to come back from that. It wasn't the bank machine and it wasn't anything else.
“I feel bad in that I felt I let Alberta down,” added Cadieux. “That is the harder pill to swallow but my friends said, ‘Come on, it was amazing just to watch you.'
“It was a real cool experience just to get on the show,” he added.
Cadieux and Cumberland went on the CTV-produced show to “push barriers.” The two men are proud cowboys, and they are gay. The pre-season hype by the network advertised them as “gay cowboys.”
Cadieux said the strategy was a winning one in terms of the ultimate support he received from fellow competitors, and from friends, family and Innisfailians.
“That was what was amazing to us, even more amazing than we thought. We didn't know Canadians would watch the show as much as they did. What was really surprising was that people who knew me were really super supportive, even after the elimination,” said Cadieux, adding it was rewarding for him and Cumberland to become closer with their show competitors as time went on. “No other team ever referred to us as the gay cowboy team. We just became the cowboys to them. They didn't care. They didn't care about our sexual orientation. Everybody was just very open, very accepting, and very Canadian. That's what makes this nation so incredible.”
And now Cadieux will just watch the rest of this season's show like thousands of other Canadians. He will continue to work as a corporate executive with ATB Financial.
And he will continue to live in Innisfail with the two boys he has raised alone following the death of his life partner Dwayne Sparks in 2010.
“It is back to a regular routine. I'm excited to just get back to living in Innisfail,” said Cadieux. “I like my life. I'm enjoying everything. This show was a cool thing to do. Now it is just back to the daily grind, to what was already awesome in my life.”
