LAC LA BICHE – The gruelling and entertaining sport of wife carrying, which made its debut in Lac La Biche in 2023, is set to return for this year’s Lakeland Country Fair.
According to Aurel Langevin, president of the Lac La Biche Agricultural Society, the 2025 edition of the Alberta Wife Carrying Championship will get underway on the grounds of Lac La Biche’s Lakeland Agricom on Aug. 2 at 3 p.m.
It will be one of the events featured at the upcoming Lakeland Country Fair, which runs from Aug. 1-2.
Langevin explained that the ag society has registered the name of the competition, which is the only sanctioned wife-carrying event in Canada.
“We follow all the rules that the North American Wife Carrying Association have set up,” he explained.
As with any sport, wife carrying - which originated in Finland - has rules that competitors are obliged to adhere to. Those who enter the arena to compete will sprint down a course that is 254 metres in length.
Carrying one’s spouse, girlfriend, or partner over their shoulders for that distance might seem challenging enough, but the teams will also need to overcome three dry obstacles, and one wet obstacle.
According to Langevin, competing teams will race for prizes, which include not only generous amounts of cash, but also sizable quantities of beer.
“The first place gets the wife’s weight in beer and five times her weight in cash, the second place team gets half of that, and the third place team gets a third of that,” he explained.
Although teammates who sign up to be the carriers and to be carried don’t need to be legally married, they must be a minimum of 20 years of age. As to why this rule is in place, Langevin explained it is also the age limit to enter the North American Wife Carrying Championship.
“We thought that if they wanted to go from the Alberta wife carrying right to the North American wife carrying, they have to be 20, so we set the age at 20,” he said.
While the wife carrying contest is normally held in mid-July, this year the decision was made to host the spectacle alongside the many other events that are taking place as part of Lac La Biche Pow Days, which run from July 31 to Aug. 4.
The Lac La Biche Agricultural Society, Langevin said, was contacted by the Lac La Biche Pow Wow and Fish Derby Association to see if they could host the Lakeland Country Fair on the same weekend.
Since the inaugural Alberta Wife Carrying Championship came to town in 2023, Langevin said, there have been 13 teams competing each year. These teams have included local residents, those from around Alberta and Western Canada, along with couples from Ontario, and even one from Australia who just happened to be vacationing in the area and decided to enter.
Given the growing popularity of the event, Langevin is hopeful that more teams will sign up to compete.
“I’d like to see at least 15 this year,” he said.
The wife carrying championship, according to Langevin, has been good for the Lac La Biche area as it brings people to the community and shows the initiative that the agricultural society has put into bringing new attractions to Lac La Biche County.
“It’s a very novel entertainment venue. Nobody else does wife carrying in their fairs, so it’s pretty unique to us,” he said. “We focus on family-oriented entertainment, and this kind of fits right in with that.”
For more information about the 2025 Alberta Wife Carrying Championship, contact the Lac La Biche Agricultural Society at 780-623-7888 or [email protected].
