The Amazing Race Canada: We Got the Beaver. And the Cousins Got the Win!

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Episode 5 of The Amazing Race Canada!

Well, that was a good week for Cousin Watch.

After a tougher sixth-place finish in Montréal last week, our Régnier cousins Sacha and Sébastien came roaring back, taking first place in Peterborough and the Kawarthas and earning their second leg win of the season.

Not bad, cousins. Not bad at all.

Welcome to Cottage Country

This week's episode, appropriately titled "We Got the Beaver," took the eight remaining teams from Québec to Ontario, where the race wound its way through Peterborough and the Kawarthas.

It was a very Canadian leg: cottage games, canoes, snapping turtles, butter tarts, Kawartha Dairy ice cream and, yes, a beaver.

Before all of that, however, there was some strategy to deal with.

Teams encountered a U-Turn Vote, giving racers the opportunity to vote for another team to be U-Turned and forced to complete both sides of the upcoming Detour.

The voting produced plenty of scrambling and deal-making;  ultimately Keshia and Nova found themselves facing both Detour challenges.

Apparently Cottage Games Are Serious Business

One of the deceptively difficult challenges of the night involved three familiar backyard games.

It looked easy.

It was not.

Teams had to successfully complete all three games in sequence, and some of them spent a very long time trying.

Keshia and Nova reportedly needed 71 attempts. Chayla and Chyana needed 86.

And Ameen and Surria?

161 attempts.

At that point it stops being a cottage game and becomes a test of the human spirit.

One of the games involved knocking a little beaver from its perch with a Frisbee,  which, naturally, gave us the episode title.

And a quick shout-out to Chayla and Chyana. The sisters seemed to make pretty quick work of that pesky beaver! The rest of the cottage games weren't quite so cooperative, though, and it ultimately took them 86 attempts to complete all three. But they got it done, survived another leg and remain in the race.

A little North of Fifty aside...

I couldn't help laughing at all the beaver business.

Beaver was my mother's maiden name.

So while everyone else was watching contestants repeatedly hurl Frisbees at a wooden beaver, I was sitting there thinking, Well, this episode feels strangely personal.

More Than Just a Canoe

The Detour took racers to the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, where teams had a choice: test their powers of observation inside the museum or head outside and test their paddling skills on Little Lake.

The canoe challenge was fun to watch, but it also provided one of those moments where The Amazing Race Canada touches on something much bigger than the race itself.

Long before the canoe became associated with summer camps and cottage weekends, Indigenous Peoples were designing, building and travelling in canoes.

For First Nations across much of this land, waterways were transportation routes. Canoes made it possible to travel great distances for hunting, fishing, harvesting and trade, connecting communities and territories for generations.

Europeans later adopted Indigenous canoe technology, and the canoe became essential to exploration and the fur trade.

So while today we tend to think of canoeing as a quintessentially "Canadian" activity, its roots on this land are much older.

The canoe is part of Indigenous history first, and Canadian history because of it.

And there was something rather fitting about seeing that story acknowledged at the Canadian Canoe Museum while racers were simultaneously discovering that paddling a canoe in a straight line isn't quite as easy as it looks.

Turtles, Butter Tarts and Ice Cream

Next came one of the more endearing stops of the leg.

Teams visited the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre, where they helped care for rescued snapping turtles.

From there it was on to Bobcaygeon and another challenge that could hardly have been more Kawarthas if it tried: racers delivered local treats including butter tarts and Kawartha Dairy ice cream around the village.

There are definitely worse Amazing Race challenges.

Cousin Watch: Back on Top!

And now to the important part.

After last week's sixth-place finish in Montréal, Sacha and Sébastien needed a strong leg.

They got one.

The brothers raced to the Pit Stop at Lock 31 on the Trent-Severn Waterway in Buckhorn and arrived FIRST.

That gives them an impressive record through the first five legs:

4th → 2nd → 1st → 6th → 1st

Two wins in five legs and three top-two finishes!

Okay, cousins. We're officially impressed.

And yes, we're claiming them.

For those just joining our weekly Cousin Watch, Sacha and Sébastien Régnier are Franco-Métis brothers from Winnipeg. Their Régnier family roots trace back to the Red River Métis community, which happens to be part of my own family history as well.

So naturally, North of Fifty has adopted them for the season.

No pressure, guys.

But winning is appreciated.

Goodbye to Keshia & Nova

At the other end of the standings, the U-Turn proved difficult for Keshia and Nova to overcome.

They actually fought their way through a respectable leg despite having to complete both sides of the Detour, but ultimately arrived at the Pit Stop in eighth place and were eliminated.

That leaves seven teams still racing.

And five legs into the season, the competition at the top is starting to look very interesting.

Sacha and Sébastien now have two leg wins. Eamon and Bec have also been consistently strong, while Filipe and Clara and Tina and Liz continue to hang around the front of the pack.

There is still plenty of race left.

But after this week's result?

Cousin Watch is looking pretty darn good.

See you next week, cousins.

 

For more Amazing Race Canada Cousin Watch:

Amazing Race Cousin Watch: Montreal

Amazing Race Cousin Watch: Falkland to Jasper

Amazing Race Cousin Watch: Kelowna

Amazing Race Canada 2026: Premiere